Month: May 2012

Coffee Drinkers Have a Lower Death Risk

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

I’m writing this as I sip my first coffee of the day and it makes me feel good to do both activities at once because coffee drinkers have a lower risk of death than non-coffee drinkers.

Coffee drinkers were less likely to die from heart disease, respiratory disease, stroke, injuries and accidents, diabetes, and infections, although the association was not seen for cancer. These results from a large study of older adults were observed after adjustment for the effects of other risk factors on mortality, such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Researchers caution, however, that they can’t be sure whether these associations mean that drinking coffee actually makes people live longer. The results of the study were published in the May 17, 2012 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.
…
The researchers found that the association between coffee and reduction in risk of death increased with the amount of coffee consumed. Relative to men and women who did not drink coffee, those who consumed three or more cups of coffee per day had approximately a 10 percent lower risk of death. Coffee drinking was not associated with cancer mortality among women, but there was a slight and only marginally statistically significant association of heavier coffee intake with increased risk of cancer death among men.

Read more here.

A New Wave of Feminism in Concert with OWS?

- Adam Clare

Megan Boler has a new article on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement and the current state of feminism and it’s a good read. She looks at the relationships between the feminist movement and the concerns of the people involved in OWS activities.

But the tide seems to have turned. Feminism’s re-emergence was spotted on the horizon by numerous long-term feminist organizers months ago. Kathy Miriam, a professor and feminist organizer who lives in Brooklyn, recognizes this as a, “fluid, dynamic moment” in which anything is possible. As Miriam wrote in a blog post this fall:

“Can feminist solidarity reap the whirlwind and reinvent itself within new forms of social association too? … [T]he dynamism released by Occupy Wall Street [OWS] involves women – lots and lots of young women – who, like their male counter-parts are caught up in the momentum of movement-creating. This means that women are agitating, aroused anew as political actors on the stage of history. If there is any situation then, in which feminist ideas might stick and take root, this is it.

Will Occupy Wall Street be open to re-orientation through the lens of feminist action and vision? Will feminism re-invent itself as a movement within the new political situation and its forcefield of political possibilities?

Read more here.

Vermont Says Frack No

- Adam Clare

Vermont has decided to ban freaking in the state! This follows Quebec’s ban on the ridiculously dangerous way to get oil.

This is a big deal,” Gov. Peter Shumlin said Wednesday. “This bill will ensure that we do not inject chemicals into groundwater in a desperate pursuit for energy.”
Shumlin said fracking contaminates groundwater and the science behind it is “uncertain at best.” He said he hopes other states will follow Vermont’s lead in banning it.

Read more.

Vogue Wants Woman Who Look Real, not Girls

- Adam Clare

Vogue, a fashion magazine, has decided to only show women older than 16 and women who don’t appear to have an eating disorder. This may sound odd that they would have used young girls with eating disorders in the past, but at least they are paving the way forward for other fashion magazines to follow in respecting models.

In a six-point pact to appear in their respective June issues, the editors pledge to not to knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or with those “who appear to have an eating disorder”.

“We will work with models who, in our view, are healthy and help us to promote a healthy body image,” they said.

The editors will also instruct modelling agencies not to send them underage models, require casting directors to check models’ ID prior to photo shoots and encourage “healthy backstage working conditions”.

Fashion designers, meanwhile, will be encouraged – though not obliged – to “consider the consequences of unrealistically small sample (dress) sizes … which encourages the use of extremely thin models.”

Read more here.

A Better Approach Than Zero Tolerance in Schools

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

A school in Walla Walla was essentially a dumping ground for all the students deemed to have behavioural problems and their explosion rate was through the roof. This all changed when a principal ditched the atrocious zero tolerance policy that the school was using (many schools in North America punish and demean students this way).

The principal found that better communication between the school administration, teachers, and students was key to solving a lot of the issues that led students to be expelled. This new approach cut the expulsion rate by quite a bit and improved the overall learning being done inside the school.

2009-2010 (Before new approach)
* 798 suspensions (days students were out of school)
* 50 expulsions
* 600 written referrals

2010-2011 (After new approach)
* 135 suspensions (days students were out of school)
* 30 expulsions
* 320 written referrals

…These suspensions don’t work for schools. Get rid of the “bad” students, and the “good” students can learn, get high scores, live good lives. That’s the myth. The reality? It’s just the opposite. Says the NEPC report: “…research on the frequent use of school suspension has indicated that, after race and poverty are controlled for, higher rates of out-of-school suspension correlate with lower achievement scores.”

There are just two simple rules, says Turner.

Rule No. 1: Take nothing a raging kid says personally. Really. Act like a duck: let the words roll off your back like drops of water.

Rule No. 2: Don’t mirror the kid’s behavior. Take a deep breath. Wait for the storm to pass, and then ask something along the lines of: “Are you okay? Did something happen to you that’s bothering you? Do you want to talk about it?”

It’s not that a kid gets off the hook for bad behavior. “There have to be consequences,” explains Turner. Replace punishment, which doesn’t work, with a system to give kids tools so that they can learn how to recognize their reaction to stress and to control it. “We need to teach the kids how to do something differently if we want to see a different response.”

Read more here.

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