Student homelessness in the US

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A new report by the National Center for Homeless Education has found that the  number of homeless students in the US is the highest in over a decade.

The most recent data, recorded in 2017-18, shows that the figure of 680,000 homeless students reported in 2004-05 had more than doubled. The research measures the number of children in schools who report being homeless at some point during an academic year and as such does not show the total population of homeless young people in the US.

 The main suspects are insufficient income, unaffordable housing, domestic violence and, recently, the opioid crisis. 

       – Homelessness in the US is usually linked to the national housing crisis.   Millions of people spend more than half their income on housing, and many report that they understandably cannot afford to buy a house. Increasing rents and a housing shortage have forced thousands of people in California, for instance,  to live in caravans or inadequate housing.

       – Then there is the changing economy, with factories closing down, and the rise of the insecure, dire gig economy, which leaves parents and their children unable to pay for a roof over their heads. 

         – Thirdly, the opioid crisis (almost 2 million people are addicted to prescription drugs) has also caused some families to break up or children to be removed from their homes.

         –  A disproportionate number of homeless youth are LGBT, according to the University of California Williams Institute.  Nearly seven in 10 said that family rejection was a major cause of becoming homeless. Abuse at home is  another major problem .

And believe it or not, in a rich, advanced country, less than a third of homeless students were able to read adequately,  and scored even lower in mathematics and science.  

My take:   1,300.000 (approximately) homeless young people!   Can this be true?  How can society allow young people, inadequately educated, to be thrown onto the street?  I wonder at the dreadful level of education outside the cozy corner of elite schools in any case.  There is a scary lack of general knowledge which one encounters all too often. But not being able to read properly!  Did I read that correctly?  No wonder you find young men ( especially) looting shops when they get the opportunity.  They need the goods. We should hide our heads in shame.

Optimism (if you can manage some)

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People with optimistic outlooks tend to live longer than their more negative peers, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine have found.

The study drew on data from two long-running studies of Americans aged over 60: one of 1,500 male war veterans, and one of 70,000 female nurses. At the start of both, the participants had completed questionnaires to gauge how optimistic they were, and had also been asked about other factors likely to influence their longevity, including diet, health and exercise.

Analysis of the data, adjusted to take account of these “confounders”, revealed that most optimistic participants lived 10% to 15% longer on average than the least optimistic ones, and that they were significantly more likely to live to the age of 85. “Healthier behaviours and lower levels of depression only partially explained our findings,” said lead researcher Dr Lewina Lee. “Initial evidence from other studies suggests that more optimistic people tend to have goals and the confidence to reach them, are more effective in problem-solving, and they may be better at regulating their emotions during stressful situations.”

The exciting possibility raised by the findings is that we may be able to “promote healthy and resilient ageing by cultivating psycho-social assets such as optimism” in people. (The Week,  7 September 2019)

My comment:  All fine and well, but in my opinion there are too many threats to human rights and freedoms, too many health and employment insecurities, too much power given to the super-rich,  not to mention too many foreign challenges, to talk about optimism.  Hope maybe, but only someone who ignores current events and lives in la-la land can feel happy and confident living in  either the US or the UK at this time.  Would someone reading this be kind enough to suggest reasons why I am being unduly gloomy, given that I advocate the humanistic and reassuring thoughts of Epicurus?

Happy to use email for any prolonged discussion.

 

Deep sadness

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At 10.30 last night one or more helicopters were flying at low altitude over our house (I counted 15 passes).  Three rapid shots, sounding as if they came from an automatic gun of some kind, rang out on a nearby street.

Crowds have  apparently looted and destroyed shops in our neighborhood, including the two pharmacies upon which we depend (It is 8.20 a.m as I write, and I haven’t seen the damage).  On the local listserve a woman neighbor wrote early this morning: “I looked out of my window and there was antifa on the corner opposite the pharmacy” (sic).  Really?!  Were they advertising “antifa”in neón lights?

And this is America?!

 

 

Misleading figures on US annual flu deaths

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At a White  House briefing in late February Donald Trump reassured the nation that there was little chance of the virus causing significant disruption, and that the flu kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. The coronavirus would be no worse than the flu, and who noticed flu deaths particularly? In April further comparisons with the flu persuaded people that, since the comparison with flu was apparently holding, the country should be reopened for business.

But it turns out to have been a massive misunderstanding.  The corona virus deaths are actual deaths of real people. The 25,000 to 69,000 numbers that Trump cited do not represent actual, counted flu deaths per year; they are estimates that the CDC produces by multiplying the number of flu death counts reported by various coefficients produced through complicated algorithms. These coefficients are based on assumptions of how many cases, hospitalizations, and deaths they believe went unreported. In the last six flu seasons, the CDCs reported number of actual confirmed flu deaths­ as between 3,448 to 15,620, far lower than the numbers commonly repeated by public officials and even public health experts.  Doctors simply don’t see the huge number of flu deaths claimed by CDC statistics.

There is, in short, little data to support the CDCs assumption that the number of people who die of flu each year is on average six times greater than the number of flu deaths that are actually confirmed. To make it worse, the CDC figures also include pneumonia deaths!  The objective is, no doubt, to encourage people to get flu shots, a reasonable thing to do, but the estimates should not be used in comparison to those of Covid 19 as a weapon to perilously open up the economy for political purposes, with the message that it is “just another flu”.

(Information from an article by Jeremy Samuel Faust in Scientific American, April 28, 2020.  Article edited for length by me)

 

 

 

Epicurus and the swerve

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If you haven’t read it Stephen Greenblatt’s book, “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern”, do try to find time to do so.  It a very readable.  It introduces the modern reader to the most famous of Epicurean books, de rerum natura of Lucretius.  Greenblatt’s book, which won several prestigious awards, is contentious because it pictures a medieval Christianity mired in reaction and recounts how atomism and the swerve marked the end of feudalism.

The atom as described by Epicurus is obviously very different in fact from what we now know as an atom.  What would you expect?  Times, and technical knowledge, have moved on.  But despite the protests of modern christians, who panned the book as misleading, I maintain that the efforts of the early Epicureans to explain the universe in a rational manner laid the foundation for a modern society free of obscurantism and the deadening hand of centuries of medieval religious dogmatism.  We haven’t quite got there yet, or abandoned outdated things like celibate priests (with some accompanying disgusting behavior) but young people are voting with their feet, and good for them.

Now we have to ensure that those youngsters are brought up with a humanist , Epicurean regard, care and consideration for others.

Fake news

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Fake news may not be as widespread as thought. An analysis of the daily media consumption of people in the US found fake news made up 0.15 per cent of time people spend consuming media. The study found traditional news outlets may be a greater source of misinformation than fake news (Science Advances, advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/14/eaay3539  (New Scientist , 23 May 2020).

My comment:   Are they saying that the New York Times and the Washington Post are greater sources of misinformation than the obvious lies and fabrications that abound on Facebook and other social media?

I read the New Scientist every week – it is a wonderful publication (in the interests of fairness to all, I’m sure some of the articles are based on mistaken data.  This may be one of those rare pieces of research and reporting?).   The Russians, for instance, are conducting a cyber war against the US – against us all. They are not alone.   If you believe a word they say on social medfia, I despair).   The whole point is to get us all to suspect everything we read.  It is proving amazingly successful.

 

 

America’s food chain

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Warren Buffett famously observed that “only when the tide goes out, do you discover who’s been swimming naked”.  And Covid-19 represents “an ebb tide of historic pro-portions”.

One thing it has exposed with brutal clarity are the flaws of America’s industrialised food system. On one side, there are empty supermarket shelves; on the other, farmers discarding milk, eggs and animals because they can’t get produce to market.

This is the result of “economic efficiency gone mad”. Since the 1980s, the US food industry has become absurdly concentrated: just four companies now process more than 80% of the country’s beef cattle; a single plant in South Dakota processes 4% of the pork Americans eat. This has pushed down prices, but resulted in a supply chain so brittle that the closure of a single plant causes havoc. And such disruptions, caused by Covid-19, have been all too common of late. And little wonder, given that the meat-packing lines are staffed by poorly paid workers who must stand shoulder to shoulder, cutting and deboning animals so quickly that they can’t pause long enough to cover a cough, let alone go to the bathroom. The US is paying the price for a food system that has put cost savings ahead of every other consideration. (Michael Pollan,The New York Review of Books  23 May 2020).

My comment:  It’s great that this issue is now being discussed. There is too much industrial concentration and too little competitiveness. The politicians have turned a blind eye to it, and the obscene pay of the bosses, in return for financial support.  The system is corrupt.  It is bad for democracy, for the lousily paid workers and for the health of the population.

The irony is that the Administration wants to lower, if not totally stop, immigration of desperately poor people with the aid of the famous and expensive wall.  Without the immigrants the bosses of the food processing companies would not have their huge incomes, and the politicians would have to forego a sizable portion of their electoral donations.  And the food market would grind to a halt.  Has anyone thought this through?  The system needs the cheap labour.

What has this to do with Epicureanism?  A desire for peace  of mind and a feeling of security and pride in a just and fair system for all.

Bagavad Ghita, part 2

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(16.15). ( Some people think…)  I am wealthy and well- born!  Who can rival me? I will show my greatness by giving alms and making public sacrifices.  I will rejoice in my glory”.  Thus they boast,  befuddled by their own lack of wisdom.

(16.16). Addled in thought, caught in a spider’s web of delusion, craving only sensual “delights”, they sink in life , and even more so after death, to a foul hell.

(16.17). Vain, heedlessly obstinate, intoxicated by pride in wealth, hypocritical in whatever sacrifices they perform, careless of scriptural injunctions….

(16.18).  egotistical, ruthless, arrogant, lascivious, prone to fits of rage, these evil- intending persons despise Me, though for all that I dwell in them, as in all beings.”

My take:   Years ago one can imagine the man or woman in the street, reading the above and thinking, “It can’t apply here!  It’s inconceivable. Collectively, we are well- governed and rational, on top of the world. Yes, there are important things that need fixing, but in general the country is moving in the right direction”.

In 1963 I hitch-hiked round the US. y car and airplanevisiting 48 States and encountering rich and poor, black and white – a cross- section of the population, getting temporary jobs as I went.  Hardly a day went by when I wasn’t told, “Isn’t this just a great country?”. They meant it and it was; and very open and generous, too.

Epicurean peace of mind?  Not today.

Excerpt from the Bhagavad Gita, Part 1

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……..Virtuous people find it difficult to believe that such evil exists on earth. It’s proponents, moreover, often proclaim (if they have a degree of intelligence) teachings that are designed purposefully to win others to their side: teachings like “the greatest good for the greatest number” and “each according to his need, from each according to his capacity to give”.  On the field of actual activity, however, they show themselves nothing but power hungry, ruthless, and utterly cynical in the application of their so-called “ideals”.

Such people appear in every age.  Usually they are more or less successful according to how many dissatisfied Shudras and idealistic but undiscriminating intellectuals they can persuade to fill their ranks.

(16:10).  Abandoning themselves to insatiable desires, hypocrites, pretending a noble purpose, filled with self-conceit, insolent (to anyone who disagrees with them), their concepts (assuming they have any) twisted by delusion; their actions prompted solely by impure motives.

(16:11). convinced that the fulfillment of physical passion is man’s highest goal, confident that there is no world (and no life) but this one, such persons, until the moment of death, are engrossed in earthly cares and concerns.

(16:12) Bound by the fetters of hundreds of selfish hopes and expectations, enslaved by passion and anger, they strive by unlawful means to amass fortunes with which to purchase sensual physical pleasures.

(16.13) “This much” they say, “I have acquired today, putting me in a position to attain this desire. I have this much money at present; my goal now is to acquire more”.

(16.14)  Or they say: “Today I have slain this enemy.  Next, I shall slay more.  What I’ve wanted I possess. I am successful, powerful and happy”.

 My comment:  It was ever thus.  Regrettably, the sort of people discussed above seem to scrabble to the top, trampling underfoot any who oppose them.  These attacks by the hyper-ambitious, self-reverential and unempathetic seem to come in bursts.  The last outbreak required a worldwide war to dislodge Hitler and  Mussolin, leaving the malevolent Stalin still out and about.  Now we have another eruption, as usual supported by the aggrieved and the economically insecure, who nonetheless support the massive wealth disparities in society.   When will we ever learn?

The robot priest

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A robot priest has been installed at a 400-year-old temple in Kyoto. Costing almost £800,000, the android Kannon is 6ft 5ins tall and is modelled on the Buddhist deity of mercy. “With AI, we hope it will grow in wisdom to help people overcome even the most difficult troubles,” says Tensho Goto, a priest at the Kodaiji temple. The robot can move its head, arms and torso, and is programmed to deliver sermons from the Heart Sutra, a Buddhist text. “You cling to a sense of selfish ego,” the robot warns worshippers. “Worldly desires are nothing more than a mind lost at sea.”  (The American Conservative, 28 September 2019)

Firstly, Epicurus was saying something remarkably similar nearly two thousand years ago.  He didn’t need a programmable, moving robot.

And why believe a machine without empathy and a mind of its own, spouting pre-digested dogma?  This story seems to indicate a collapse in the trust accorded human priests, or maybe a lack of candidates for the priesthood in the first place?  Seems to be a world-wide problem.  

Guns, part 2

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Below are some of the ideas that have been put forward to deal with gun violence:

  1.  Background checks

There are several major bipartisan bills drawing renewed attention in the Senate at the moment, aiming to expand background checks for gun sales.

The Fix NICS Act corrects failures in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, provides more funding to states to improve their background check systems, and “penalizes political appointees at federal agencies if they don’t take steps to maintain their records.” ( Hah!)

Since 22% of sales online and at gun shows are conducted without background checks, legislation would close the gap. A previous bill proposed by Sen. Susan Collins to do just this was opposed by the NRA and, amazingly, a bill restricting gun sales to people on a terror watchlist. (patriotic, eh?)
2. Raising the age to buy rifles from 18 to 21

Hand guns can only be purchased at 21, so why not rifles? Missing not a heartbeat the NRA opposes this, calling it “gratuitous gun control”.

3.  Assault weapons ban

One Republican politician, Rep. Brian Mast, R-FL, who lost both legs in Afghanistan, has said that the AR-15 and like weapons gave mass shooters “the best killing tool the Army could put in my hands.”

After a series of high-profile mass shootings, President Bill Clinton signed the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, which restricted features on semi-automatic pistols, rifles and shotguns. It expired in 2004 and the odds of it being passed again in Congress are remote.

4.  Bumpstock ban

Bumpstocks increase the rate of fire to resemble an automatic weapon. Bi-partisan efforts to ban them were effectively nixed by the NRA, which wanted to “regulate” them, not ban them. What regulation actually meant is dubious. However, some state and local governments have advanced their own bump stock bans.

5.  “ Red flag” laws

This involves giving courts more authority to confiscate weapons from people who are considered a threat to themselves and others. Five states have “red flag” laws that allow a judge to issue an extreme risk protection order that temporarily restricts a person from owning a gun if family, household members and police can convince them they’re a danger. This could reduce suicide rates and contain potential violence early on.  Since this idea targets individual behavior rather than control firearms themselves, this proposal does have some bi- partisan support. But, guess what? the NRA thinks such a red flag laws  would “deprive people of their Second Amendment rights without due process of the law.”!   ( It’s o.k, lads – just go on killing!)

6.  Arming teachers

Possibly the most stupid proposal to do with guns in the last century .

7.   My take:  I have the dubious experience of having a .303 military rifle bullet fired at me by one of my own soldiers, carelessly cleaning his rifle with a round up the spout. The bullet grazed the top of my head, passed through my hair and lodged in the door behind me.  I have told this story before, but I repeat it because it explains why I believe that all guns should be licensed, locked away (when not being used for hunting), and that all gun owners should be trained and certified as safe owners.

This annual massacre of the mostly innocent is obscene and disgusting, not to mention contrary to all known christian teaching (except the unique type preached in the US).   It is certainly un-Epicurean. It also misunderstands the intentions of the Founders with regard to militias, but then so few people know any history and emascúlate what they do know.

 

Military-style guns – why do they need them?

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”Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”  So exclaimed Beto O’Rourke during the recent Democratic primary debate, endorsing the idea of mandatory buy-backs of assault weapons. It has become “the newest purity test” for Democratic candidates, but have they thought about the consequences of enforcing such a policy?

“There could be as many as ten million so-called assault weapons in private hands in the US, and moves to confiscate them would be fiercely opposed. At the very least it would require suspending Americans’ constitutional right to trial by jury, as it’s all too easy to imagine juries in, say, rural Montana refusing to convict firearms violators in the same way as “Massachusetts juries in the 1850s often refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act”. It could also lead to bloodshed.

“Gun control advocates scoff at the prospect of armed resistance, pointing out that defiant citizens would be vastly outgunned by the federal government. But remember the Waco siege in 1993, when the storming of a religious sect’s compound in Texas by the FBI led to the deaths of 82 people. Are the politicians advocating mass gun confiscations willing to be held “liable for the carnage that would result”?   (James Bovard, The American Conservative).

My comment:  We already have carnage, Mr. Bovard, without any attempt at confiscation, and the deaths are observed with indifference by the gun advocates, who care nothing for the bloodshed.  So much for Sunday church.

I was born in England. My father had a hunting gun (and a license for it) which was locked up when not in use.  Every three months a policeman visited to check that the weapon was under lock and key.  This rule never stopped my father from legal hunting. He was obeying a sensible safety law.

The foreign way allows reasonable people to have their hunting, and violent criminals and armed bullies cannot harm the public, which they do on a daily basis in America.  Tomorrow I will set out the actions needed to restore civilized life to America in so far as guns are concerned.

 

Anti-corona vaccine

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The Trump administration has announced it is partnering with drugmaker AstraZeneca for at least 300 million doses of a corona virus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, and is committing up to $1.2 billion to the effort.

As an alumnus of Oxford I am naturally proud that my alma mater is at the forefront of the fight against Covid 19.

But actually I am concerned (without knowing a thing about vaccine development) that this might turn out to be yet another problem that prolongs the crisis.  I gather that opinion polls are indicating that, apart from the nutcases who won’t be vaccinated at all, ever (!), respondents are expressing reservations about this new vaccine on the grounds that it has been developed too quickly and might cause more problems than it cures.  This attitude, very rational, emerges from repeated comments by experts that an effective vaccine is maybe as much as a year, eighteen months or even two years away, and that you cannot develop a cure this quickly.  Therefore , they will refuse to be treated with it, just in case.

Ouch!

Abortion: the ruthless scam connected with Roe v Wade

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Norma McCorvey, who died in 2017, was the plaintiff known as Jane Roe in the 1973 landmark supreme court case Roe v Wade that led to abortion becoming legal in the United States, made, it turns out, a stunning deathbed confession.

In a new FX documentary McCorvey admits that her infamous reversal on abortion rights “was all an act”. Before she died at the age of 69, she revealed that her role as an anti-abortion advocate was largely funded by ultra-conservative groups such as Operation Rescue.

In 1969, a 22-year-old McCorvey was pregnant and scared. She’d had a difficult childhood, allegedly suffering sexual abuse from a family member. She’d been married at 16 but had left her husband. She had addiction issues. She’d had two children already and placed them for adoption. She was depressed. She was desperate for a safe and legal abortion. Texas, however, wouldn’t give her one. So she challenged the state laws and her case eventually went before the US supreme court, legalizing abortion across America.

After becoming the poster girl of the pro-choice movement, McCorvey performed a very public about-face in the 1990s. She found religion and became a vocal anti-abortion crusader.

As it turns out, it wasn’t God himself directing this new path. It was leaders from the evangelical Christian right. McCorvey received at least $456,911 in “benevolent gifts” from the the evangelical Christian right in exchange for her “conversion”.

“I took their money, McCorvey says in the documentary, and they’d put me out in front of the cameras and tell me what to say. It was all an act. I did it well, too. I am a good actress. Of course, I’m not acting now.”

The Rev Flip Benham, one of the evangelical leaders featured in the new documentary, has no moral qualms about how McCorvey, who was clearly vulnerable, was used. “She chose to be used,” he says. “That’s called work. That’s what you’re paid to be doing!” Ah yes, I remember reading that in the Bible: thou shalt pay others to cravenly lie.

The Rev Rob Schenck, another of the evangelical leaders featured, is rather more thoughtful. “For Christians like me, there is no more important or authoritative voice than Jesus,” he says. “And he said, ‘What does it profit in the end if he should gain the whole world and lose his soul?’ When you do what we did to Norma, you lose your soul.”

Sadly, it seems as though many anti-abortion extremists don’t have much of a soul to lose in the first place. While the right claims to stand for morality and family values they – as AKA Jane Roe makes very clear – are more than happy to lie and cheat in order to propagate their fringe beliefs.  Most Americans, on the other hand, have moderate views when it comes to abortion; according to a 2017 Pew study, 69% of Americans don’t think Roe v Wade should be overturned, only  a small but powerful group of hypocritical extremists with money who preyed on a vulnerable woman in the name of “family values”.  (Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, lightly edited for length).

My comment:  Forcing women to have unwanted babies is a grievous sin against humanity, potentially breeding yet more deeply unhappy, unloved human beings .  We need more happy, adjusted young people, not fewer.  And that is without the effects on the lives of the mothers.

 

 

Religious extremism in the US

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Pastor Rich Vera, who runs a church in Florida, says he believes that faith can stop the coronavirus.  He is one of a vocal minority of Christians in America who feel it’s appropriate to gather to worship despite US federal advice to stay home, and who supports protests against the restrictions in place to try and limit the spread of coronavirus.

When asked whether he took responsibility at all for the increase in covid 19 cases,  he told a reporter “No, I don’t”.  (The Times 28 Apr 2020)

My comment:  A short while ago a woman was interviewed on television about attending a church service where there was no social distancing or masks worn.  Her reply to a journalist’s question about her vulnerability to the virus?

”I am protected by the blood of Jesus. No virus can affect me”.  (Yes, honestly!  I heard the woman say it with my own eyes). Me, I am covered by Aetna Insurance.

Seriously though, fools and fanatics are so sure of themselves and seem to care not a jot for others. They are the  self described “chosen people”, believing that science, and inoculations, are the work of the devil. The wise and intelligent are more self-aware, careful and un-selfish, that is the Epicurean way – respect the science and protect not only yourself but all around you, thoughtfully and kindly.