Category Archives: Vintage

Kids Who Have to Share iPads Learn Better Than Kids Who Have Their Own

by SteffenLindrum Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Students who share digital devices do better academically than their peers who have their own devices or no devices at all, a team from Northwestern University has found.

The study, conducted by communications Ph.D. candidate Courtney Blackwell, focused on three Chicago-area elementary schools. One school had iPads for each of its 100 kindergartners, another had roughly one iPad for every five students, and a third had no iPads at all. Blackwell found that the kindergartners who shared iPads scored 28 percent higher on a standardized literacy test at the end of the year compared to the beginning. Kids who had their own devices improved their scores by 24 percent, and those who had no devices at all increased their scores by 20 percent. Though the differences seem small, they are statistically significant, according to Blackwell.

Blackwell attributes the success of the sharing group to “the collaborative learning around the technology.” As an example, she pointed to an activity where students were instructed to find various shapes (squares, rectangles, circles, etc.) in their classroom and report their findings using their device’s microphone and recorder function. “In the shared classroom, two kids would share an iPad so there was much more talk and negotiation,” Blackwell told me. “If one kid pointed and said, ‘I found a square,’ another kid may say, ‘Oh, well that’s not a square—it’s a rectangle.'”

That collaboration enhances learning may seem obvious. But the implications of the study—that students don’t need their own digital devices—could be far-reaching, especially as many districts make major sacrifices in order to be able to afford technology. Take for example, North Carolina’s Mooresville Graded School District, which in 2009 decided to cut 65 staff members, including 37 teachers, in order to buy laptops for all of its students. (While the New York Times reported three years later that the district’s test scores had improved, it attributed the success to other factors as well.)

Probably the most infamous example of the intertwined relationship between tech and tests is the bungled Los Angeles Unified Schools District iPad initiative, which included a $1.3 billion contract with Apple and the testing and curriculum company Pearson. In the 2013-14 school year, the district, which is the second largest in the nation, began rolling out the program, which would outfit its 64,000 students with their own iPads. The effort was quickly deemed a failure—not only were there a lack of basic accessories like keyboards, but students were hacking their iPad security settings to they could spend class time scoping out Facebook and other off-limit sites. By the following summer, the district’s contract with Apple was annulled. Then, last October, the superintendent resigned amid rumors—which the FBI is currently investigating—that he and other administrators had connections with both Apple and Pearson that may have influenced the contract.

While Blackwell’s findings—that kids learn better when they engage with one another—aren’t earth shattering, they do serve as a reminder of the influence that the $7.9 billion educational technology sector holds over schools. It’s not clear yet whether the one-device-per-student approach is in the best interest of kids—or just the companies that make the devices and supply their content.

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Kids Who Have to Share iPads Learn Better Than Kids Who Have Their Own

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Here Is the Secret Jargon Doctors Use to Talk Trash About You to Your Face

by DTHRamon724778 Posted on April 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Medical lingo can be confusing—but maybe ignorance is bliss. In his new book, The Secret Language of Doctors, Toronto-based ER physician Brian Goldman decodes the slang that doctors and nurses use to talk about their jobs, patients, and each other—and some of it is far from flattering.

Of course, not all slang is derogatory. In some cases, it’s a way to pack a lot of information into a single phrase, or to warn colleagues about a potentially difficult patient. A surgeon might say “High Five” when entering the OR to let other staff know they’ll be operating on someone with HIV. Sometimes slang helps hospital staff sound more professional during awkward situations; a nurse might refer to “Code Brown” during a miserable shift with a man who is having constant diarrhea in bed.

In other situations, the book reveals, slang is therapeutic, a form of comic relief that builds camaraderie between overworked doctors and nurses, and which helps them get through long, emotionally heavy days. “The inability to laugh on rounds in an environment like our ICU, where there’s very little to laugh about, is going to be tragic and injurious to safety and to the quality of care,” one respirologist told Goldman. “You need to have those moments where you take a little break and reset.” In any case, check out a selection of lingo below, all pulled from Goldman’s book, so that the next time you’re in the hospital you know what your doctor really thinks of you.

The bunker: This is a room in the hospital where medical students, residents, and their attending physicians meet behind closed doors to rest and talk about their days. There, one might laugh about the patient in the “monkey jacket,” or hospital gown, who had a case of “chandelier syndrome,” practically leaping up toward the ceiling in surprise when she felt the cold stethoscope. A surgeon might cringe while recalling a “peek-and-shriek,” an operation in which she opened a patient’s belly to find something unexpected, like cancer, and quickly stitched up again.

Cowboys and fleas: Doctors don’t only bad-mouth their patients; they also bad-mouth each other. Hospitals are full of rivalries between departments, Goldman writes. Surgeons may be called “cowboys” to imply they operate first and think later, while internists can be criticized as “fleas,” an acronym for “fucking little esoteric assholes,” as one doctor put it. Urologists might take offense at being calling “plumbers,” and anesthesiologists for being referred to as “gas passers.” FOOBA, which means “found on orthopedics barely alive,” is another insult suggesting that orthopedic surgeons successfully fix bones while missing other signs of disease.

Discharged up: After “calling it” and stopping resuscitation efforts, a patient may be “discharged up,” “discharged to heaven,” or sent to the ECU (the “eternal care unit”). Someone who is dying but still holding onto life is “in the departure lounge” or “entering the drain,” and if he can’t be saved he’s “circling the drain,” Goldman writes. Doctors might note the O Sign, when a person is so close to the end that his mouth stays open like the letter O, or the Q Sign, when his tongue sticks out.

DOMA: “Day off, my ass,” when residents aren’t allowed to leave work until noon and have to be back the next day.

FLK: Funny-looking kid, referring to the facial characteristics of a child with a genetic or congenital condition.

Frequent fliers: These are people who show up at the emergency room again and again, even for nonemergency complaints, potentially because they have nowhere else to receive care. Frequent fliers are often homeless people, known as “curly toes,” because their toenails are so long they’ve curled, Goldman writes. If they don’t have insurance, they may suffer from “nonpayoma” or a “negative wallet biopsy.” If they bring a bag with clothes, determined to stay even before receiving a diagnosis, doctors may note with annoyance their “positive suitcase sign” or “positive Samsonite sign,” in reference to the luggage maker. When doctors “turf,” they’re looking for any possible justification to refer a patient to a different department in the hospital, and if that patient is “bounced,” they are returned back to the original department.

GOMER: Made popular by the 1978 satirical novel, The House of God, GOMER is slang for “get out of my emergency room,” for chronic patients who are admitted with tricky conditions that cannot be cured and need long-term care. (Since these patients are often elderly, GOMER can also stand for “grand old man of the emergency room,” Goldman adds.) But actually, this term is passé. “GOMER has been used on TV shows including Scrubs and ER,” he writes. “When that happens, it’s no longer insider slang, so it gets discarded.” Instead, doctors may refer to “status gomaticus,” or to the “bed blockers” who take up space in acute-care hospitals when they really need placement in a rehabilitation or long-term care facility. They may bemoan an elderly patient’s “failure to die,” inspired by the term “failure to thrive,” used for infants who are too small.

Harpooning the whale: Some physicians are not exactly delicate when it comes to describing overweight and obese patients. A surgeon might use the euphemism “excessive soft tissue” to refer to the layers of fat she needs to cut through before reaching the muscle, writes Goldman, or she might say the patient is “fluffy.” OB-GYNs might talk among themselves about “harpooning the whale,” or inserting an epidural catheter, which provides pain-relief medication, into an obese woman’s spinal canal during the late stages of labor. Since it can be tough to locate the insertion point through fat, one hospital even created a “Prince of Whales Award” for the resident who placed epidurals “in the most tonnage in one shift,” Goldman quotes an anesthesiologist as saying. Some doctors may say they charge a “beemer code,” slang for an additional fee to care for an obese patient, maybe one who’s “two clinic units,” or 400 pounds.

Hollywood code: From Grey’s Anatomy or ER you may be familiar with Blue Code—an emergency code indicating that someone needs immediate resuscitation. But sometimes doctors might realize there’s no way to save the patient. In that case, they may call a “Hollywood Code,” also known as “Show Code,” “Light Blue Code,” or “Slow Code.” Rather than dropping everything and sprinting to the patient’s bed, they stroll to the scene, slowly check for a pulse, and begin their intervention, Goldman explains. “It’s a play for time until it’s acceptable to pronounce the patient dead,” he writes.

Incarceritis: The condition of a prisoner who fakes an illness to go to the hospital. If that prisoner is looking for drugs to peddle later to their cellmates, they may have ADD—not attention deficit disorder, but “Acute Dilaudid Deficiency,” with Dilaudid being one of the strongest prescription narcotics. He might try to “cheek” his pills, hiding it in his cheeks while the nurse isn’t looking and then saving it for later sale. Then there are the “swallowers,” people with a mental illness who sometimes swallow objects like forks and nails.

SFU 50 dose: The amount of a sedative or anti-anxiety medication that causes 50 percent of patients to shut the fuck up.

Social injury of the rectum: A euphemism first used in the American Journal of Surgery in 1977, for people who wind up in the hospital after inserting candles, billiard balls, and other objects into their anuses for erotic pleasure. One doctor told Goldman about the time he treated a patient with a florescent light bulb up his rectum. “It broke inside of him,” the doctor said.

Status dramaticus: In a play on the real medical term “status asthmaticus,” an intense asthma attack that doesn’t respond to an inhaler, doctors have come up with the phrase “status dramaticus” for stressed-out patients who believe they’re extremely sick or dying but actually aren’t. Patients who exaggerate their symptoms, acting like they’re in pain to get a response, are “dying swans,” an allusion to a 1905 ballet, The Dying Swan. Or they’re “a Camille,” like the heroine who passes away with great drama in her lover’s arms during La Dame Aux Camélias, by Alexandre Dumas.

Whiney primey: A pregnant woman who keeps returning to the hospital because she thinks she’s in labor but isn’t. When the baby comes, she’ll be “frozen” when she receives an epidural for her pain, and if the epidural stops active labor she’ll become an “ice cube.”

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Here Is the Secret Jargon Doctors Use to Talk Trash About You to Your Face

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Gwyneth Paltrow Confuses Her Latest Master Cleanse with Attempt to Relate to the Poor

by Candy2629jhjqqnw Posted on April 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Who better to speak to the struggles of food stamp recipients than Gwyneth Paltrow? The actress and founder of GOOP, the oft-ridiculed lifestyle blog that peddles everything from $900 throw blankets to $50 sunscreen, was recently summoned by chef Mario Batali in an Ice Bucket-esque challenge to join him in the fight against food stamp cuts.

A worthy cause for sure. But judging by the items she cobbled together to last her an entire week alone, it’s difficult to take Paltrow’s good intentions seriously:

I am no chef, but it looks to me as if the above snapshot would fail miserably in feeding a whole family for even just one meal, let alone a whole week. It does, however, look like the makings of an excellent detox recipe—if you happen to enjoy that kind of thing.

Out of touch is just how we like you, Gwyneth! Stay golden.

(h/t Jezebel)

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Gwyneth Paltrow Confuses Her Latest Master Cleanse with Attempt to Relate to the Poor

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71 Years Ago FDR Dropped a Truthbomb That Still Resonates Today

by SarahBaskervill Posted on April 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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When was the last time you heard an American politician invoke Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies as models to be emulated? Democrats avoid him because his New Deal policies seem to embody the tax-and-spend, overbearing, and intrusive central government that always puts them on the defensive. And why would a Republican bother with Roosevelt when they believe that Obama is so much worse?

Sunday is the seventieth anniversary of FDR’s death on April 12, 1945. Since anniversaries are always good opportunities to reflect on the past, I reread one of Roosevelt’s speeches that I somehow still remember studying in college. It was his penultimate State of the Union Address, which he delivered on January 11, 1944, and the one in which he outlined a “second Bill of Rights”—a list of what should constitute basic economic security for Americans.

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71 Years Ago FDR Dropped a Truthbomb That Still Resonates Today

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Does GE Capital’s Demise Mean Financial Reform Is Working?

by Shavonn02T Posted on April 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Interesting post today from Paul Krugman about the shadow banking system and GE’s recent decision to get out of the finance biz:

GE Capital was a quintessential example of the rise of shadow banking. In most important respects it acted like a bank; it created systemic risks very much like a bank; but it was effectively unregulated, and had to be bailed out through ad hoc arrangements that understandably had many people furious about putting taxpayers on the hook for private irresponsibility.

Most economists, I think, believe that the rise of shadow banking had less to do with real advantages of such nonbank banks than it did with regulatory arbitrage — that is, institutions like GE Capital were all about exploiting the lack of adequate oversight….So Dodd-Frank tries to fix the bad incentives by subjecting systemically important financial institutions — SIFIs — to greater oversight, higher capital and liquidity requirements, etc.. And sure enough, what GE is in effect saying is that if we have to compete on a level playing field, if we can’t play the moral hazard game, it’s not worth being in this business. That’s a clear demonstration that reform is having a real effect.

Read the whole thing for more.

By the way: On the occasions when I come up for air and write blog posts, I’ll probably mostly be doing stuff like this. That is, quick links to something interesting without much additional commentary.

The reason is fatigue, which is nearly everpresent these days. Physically, this is a nuisance, but not much more. Mentally, though, it’s worse, because it leaves me without the—what’s the right word? Cognitive will? Cognitive ability?—to really think hard about stuff. And without that, I can’t blog much even though typing is, obviously, not a very physically demanding activity.

Still, I continue to keep up as best I can, and I really love to blog. I won’t quite say that being unable to blog is the worst part of this whole chemotherapy thing, but it’s close. I just hate having ideas about the stuff I read but being just a little too foggy to really be sure of my ability to say something useful and coherent about it. So I’ll continue pointing out items that interest me, but mostly leaving it at that.

In case you’re curious, I use crossword puzzles as a sort of rough guide to my mental fatigue level. This afternoon, for example, I finished one. Hooray! That means I’m at least moderately alert. However, it was a Thursday puzzle1 and it took me about three hours to finally get through it. That’s not so great. But who knows? Maybe it was just unusually hard. I’ll try another one tonight.

1For those of you who aren’t into crossword puzzles, the New York Times puzzle gets harder as the week progresses. A Thursday puzzle is a bit of a challenge, but usually not a big one. Good solvers can finish them in 5-10 minutes. For me, it’s usually 15-30 minutes. Three hours is well outside my usual range.2

2Hmmm. On the other hand, maybe this wasn’t my fault. I just checked, and the name of the third baseman in Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s On First?” sketch is indeed “I don’t know.” I kept trying to fit that in somewhere, but the answer in the puzzle was “Tell me something.” Where did that come from?

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Does GE Capital’s Demise Mean Financial Reform Is Working?

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

by Shella17Xguiwno Posted on April 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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While Kevin Drum is focused on getting better, we’ve invited some of the remarkable writers and thinkers who have traded links and ideas with him from Blogosphere 1.0 to this day to contribute posts and keep the conversation going. Today we’re honored to have Cheryl Rofer, who for 35 years worked as a chemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. If you don’t follow her already, be sure to check out her writing on national security, women’s issues, science, and nuclear power and weapons at Nuclear Diner.

When I started blogging in November 2004, Kevin was already defining the field with short, topical posts and Friday Cat Blogging. The internet was a smaller place then, and most of us knew all the others, or at least knew of them. We argued. We linked to each other, hoping to boost our SEO. We shared each others’ successes and mourned when Inkblot disappeared. Kevin has been a good companion over the years. His broad coverage of topics and to-the-point style are touchstones, even as I stray into the wonkier corners of the news.

Recently, I’ve been writing a lot about the recent negotiations with Iran. A few days past a deadline that had nuclear wonks on the edge of their seats, the talks between Tehran and officials from six other nations brought forth a plan for a plan.

That’s not nothing, although it sounds vague. Some vagueness is necessary to keep all sides happy—and that means that any description of the deal will sound vague. The United States and its partners in the P5+1 would like a neatly written-down to-do list (which they have sorta provided), and Iran’s Supreme Leader has decreed that all must be written down just once—exactly when isn’t yet clear. The results of negotiations must be spun by the sides to their very different bases.

In America, two consensuses are building. Most in the arms control community and a wide swath of foreign policy experts, including some conservatives, feel that the deal as described in that fact sheet is better than expected and should keep Iran from getting a nuclear weapon for the next decade or more. Not bad.

The more hawkish consensus ranges from bombing Iran now to leaving the talks in hopes of a better deal, which amounts to bombing Iran later. Why not, when you’re confident it would take only a few days of air strikes? They say the deal is no good because it does not guarantee Iranian compliance for perpetuity and does not totally destroy Iran’s enrichment and other nuclear capabilities. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu is apoplectic, but what else is new?

The same hawks also assured us back in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would be a cakewalk. Their arguments this time around are just as boneheaded. According to the fact sheet, Iran would enter into agreements with the International Atomic Energy Agency under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; that would be, as much in perpetuity as any international deal can be. Under that treaty, Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy, and, like any other country with smart scientists, can figure out how to make nuclear weapons. Bombs can’t change that.

The final deal remains to be negotiated. The fact sheet is only an outline, and some issues will be easier to solve than others. Still to be worked out: Sanctions, particularly the schedule on which they are to be lifted. A list of research and development activities that Iran is allowed to pursue may or may not have been drawn up in Lausanne. Details on how Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile will be reduced and the redesign of the Arak reactor are missing.

The extent of Iran’s past activity on nuclear weapons was relegated to the IAEA by the P5+1 throughout the negotiations, and is a lesser provision in the fact sheet. Do we have to know all Iran’s dirty secrets to police a future agreement? Probably not.

The Supreme Leader issued a tweet stream that seems to give his blessing for a deal to go forward, but his words were unclear enough that domestic hardliners could seize on them in an attempt to scuttle the deal. Iran’s President Rouhani has voiced his support. In Israel, even the general who bombed the Osirak reactor thinks it’s a good deal.

Stateside, President Obama is doing what he can to move the agreement along, talking to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), the author of the bill most likely to throw a wrench in the machinery. Democrats who once supported that bill are now reconsidering that stance. The President has given major interviews to Tom Friedman and NPR. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, who was part of the negotiations, is talking to the press.

Yes, if the sanctions are lifted, Iran might be able to make other sorts of trouble in the Middle East. But it’s doing that anyway. We won’t know for some time whether an agreement can mellow Iran by opening it to the world and better economic conditions.

If an agreement can be negotiated to completion, Iran can’t get the bomb for a decade or more. That’s enough for now.

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Never Mind the Doubters: The Iran Deal Is Good Enough

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This Video Game Shows What Sexual Harassment Can Feel Like

by MelisaEPGY Posted on April 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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In most video games, the player’s choices determine the ending. In Freshman Year, a short new work by game designer Nina Freeman, your character can wear jeans or a skirt as she prepares for a night out, go alone or with a friend, drink a little or a lot. But all paths lead to the same outcome: a creepy encounter with a man in the dark.

Freshman Year, which is free to play, explores what it feels like to get unwanted sexual attention. Like much of Freeman’s work, it’s autobiographical—based on an experience Freeman had during her first month of college.

“You feel like you’re doing this everyday life thing, and then someone comes in and disrupts that,” Freeman says. “I wanted to reflect that sense of disruption, where you feel like everything is fine, and then suddenly it’s not okay.”

Players take on the role of Nina, a girl making plans to meet her friend Jen at a bar. You navigate the game mostly by selecting conversation bubbles. For example, Nina can respond to a text from Jen with “lets not get as destroyed as last weekend lol” or “i will get you a drink tonight. i owe you like twenty haha.”

No matter what dialogue you choose for Nina, you lose control over the plotline when she ends up alone with the bar’s bouncer, who tells her she’s pretty and cuts her off as she tries to go back into the bar. Things escalate from there. The game has only one ending.

Freeman—whose other games include Ladylike, which focuses on a 12-year-old girl with a hypercritical mother, and Cibele, which is about her experience of having sex for the first time—says she designs games for the same reason some people keep a diary. “I usually want to make games about memories that I have complex feelings about, that I don’t really understand and need to sit down with,” she says.

In college, Freeman wrote and studied poetry. Confessional poets like Elizabeth Bishop and Frank O’Hara gave her a model for the work she wanted to do: “games that help players try and get close to someone else’s lived experience.”

That impulse makes her part of a wave of designers putting out noncompetitive, often narrative-heavy games. Gone Home, in which players solve a family’s mysteries by exploring an abandoned mansion, won a slew of high-profile awards when it came out in 2013; one critic called it “the future of storytelling.” (Freeman didn’t contribute to Gone Home but is currently working on another project with Fullbright, the Portland-based studio that designed it.) The same year, Depression Quest, which simulates the experience of depression, sparked the online culture war known as Gamergate.

Freeman says she feels encouraged by the response she’s gotten in the two weeks since she released Freshman Year. “People will tweet at me after they play it and be like, ‘Wow, I feel really upset now, but that was amazing,'” she says. “It’s good that they’re connecting with that aspect of it. That’s what I was going for.”

However, she’s careful to clarify that her game isn’t meant to speak for everyone who’s endured unwelcome sexual advances. “It’s obviously a game about sexual harassment, but I don’t want it to be a universal game about sexual harassment in general,” she says. “I always want to emphasize to people that this is just my experience.”

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This Video Game Shows What Sexual Harassment Can Feel Like

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

by TristanQRC Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division released the dashcam footage of the moments leading up to officer Michael Slager’s fatal shooting of Walter Scott. It opens with Slager following Scott, who was driving a Mercedes-Benz, into a parking lot. They stop, then Slager walks up to Scott’s window, asks for his license and registration, and informs him that he was pulled over because of a broken brake light. Slager returns to his car. Moments later, Scott opens his door and runs away. A chase ensues, culminating in Slager firing eight shots and killing Scott.

In the aftermath of Scott’s death, little attention has been paid to fact that it was precipitated by a traffic stop. But Scott certainly wasn’t the first such encounter to go wrong: Both of the two other fatal police shootings in South Carolina over the past year that led to criminal charges also began with traffic stops. One was for a suspected DUI. The other was for a busted tail light.

More MoJo coverage on police shootings:


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


The Cop Who Choked Eric Garner to Death Won’t Have to Pay a Dime in Damages


Philadelphia Cops Shoot and Kill People at 6 Times the Rate of the NYPD


Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men


Congress Is Finally Going to Make Local Law Enforcement Report How Many People They Kill


Hereâ&#128;&#153;s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People

A search of news reports from the past decade turns up several other fatal police encounters that began with traffic stops: The deaths of Julio Eddy Perez in Los Angeles in 2008, DeCarlos Moore in Miami in 2010, Noel Polanco in New York City in 2012, Jerame Reid in New Jersey in 2014, Ezell Ford in Los Angeles in 2014, and David Kassick in Pennsylvania this February. (A 1976 traffic stop that nearly killed a black man prompted the Supreme Court to review—and approve—police officers’ use of chokeholds.)

So how often do traffic stops turn into police shootings? The short answer is that we don’t know. But there’s compelling evidence that black drivers are disproportionately likely to get pulled over. The Department of Justice’s 2011 Public-Police Contact Survey reported that black and Hispanic drivers were pulled over, ticketed, and searched at higher rates than whites. (It also found that cops used physical force against about 1 percent of drivers pulled over at traffic stops, but didn’t specify the drivers’ race.)

In 2014, three sociologists at the University of Kansas surveyed more than 2,300 drivers in and around Kansas City. They discovered that while stops over traffic safety violations showed little racial disparity, when it came to stops related to minor violations, like expired license plate stickers, black drivers were pulled over twice as often.

These “investigatory stops” provided what Slate‘s Jamelle Bouie describes as a “pretext for something more sinister”:

In these, drivers are stopped for exceedingly minor violations—driving too slowly, malfunctioning lights, failure to signal—which are used as pretext for investigations of the driver and the vehicle. Sanctioned by courts and institutionalized in most police departments, investigatory stops are aimed at “suspicious” drivers and meant to stop crime, not traffic offenses. And as the authors note, “virtually all of the wide racial disparity in the likelihood of being stopped is concentrated in one category of stops: discretionary stops for minor violations of the law.”

The difference between the two kinds of stops is dramatic. Where traffic safety stops are mostly painless (other than tickets), investigatory stops involve searches, impromptu interrogations, and occasionally handcuffs and weapons.

That Walter Scott was driving a Mercedes may not have helped. As the University of Kansas researchers found, an African-American man under 40 had a 36 percent chance of getting pulled over for an investigatory stop in a given year if he drove a domestic luxury car—versus 21 percent for if he drove a non-luxury car. (Scott was 50.)

And there’s a growing body of research showing that implicit bias likely played a role in Slager’s split-second decision to shoot Scott. But as Bouie points out, racial bias is hardly relevant when it comes to the traffic stop that started their encounter. “What matters is that this universal suspicion is baked into the culture of police departments across the country, such that all kinds of officers—black as well as white—engage in profiling”—an unknown number of which have turned lethal. And so long as that culture persists, Chris Rock’s selfies will keep coming.

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Looking for the Link Between Driving While Black And Police Shootings

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Hillary Clinton Is Running for President. Here Are 11 Stories About Her That You Should Read Now.

by GenieAllman Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Finally, after months of speculation, scandal, and shadow campaigning, Hillary Clinton is about to announce she is officially running for president. The Clinton camp leaked to press on Friday that she plans to tweet a video on Sunday announcing her intent to run; the Guardian reported that Clinton will be on a plane to Iowa to begin campaigning when the video goes public.

The former first lady, US senator, and secretary of state is not expected to face any serious competition for the Democratic nomination, and GOP presidential hopefuls have already started attacking her. Bill and Hillary Clinton might be the most covered political figures in history; count on plenty of stories from her life and career to reemerge during the campaign. Start sorting through the clutter by reading Mother Jones‘ extensive Clinton coverage.

Meet the “drum-circle weirdo” tasked with running Hillary’s 2016 campaign.
Bill might be a wild card on the campaign trail, but Hillary’s real family problem could be her two eccentric brothers.
Republicans blew their chance to beat her in 2000. Have they learned their lesson?
How Hillary may have violated email rules—and how her classically Clintonian response antagonized the media.
Read what a close friend of the Clintons had to say about them in his diary. It’s not pretty.
Inside the crusade of former Clinton nemesis David Brock to vanquish Hillary’s enemies.
Millennials might push her to victory.
The story of how Hillary’s State Department sold fracking to the world.
The definitive guide to every Hillary Clinton conspiracy theory—so far.
Does Hillary have a Goldman Sachs problem?
The story of the superfans who got Dems ready for Hillary.

If you’re still hungry for Hillary coverage, check out this ridiculous pro-Hillary country song, or find out why UFO activists can’t wait for another Clinton in the White House.

Source: 

Hillary Clinton Is Running for President. Here Are 11 Stories About Her That You Should Read Now.

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Scott Walker Appointee Says Climate Action Is Pointless Because Volcanoes

by DominikCac Posted on April 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Artisticco/Shutterstock

This story originally appeared on the Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Wisconsin, which has been in the news this week for voting to bar staff of the state public lands board from talking about climate change, is getting a new state official who is skeptical of human contribution to climate change.

Gov. Scott Walker recently appointed Mike Huebsch to the state Public Service Commission, and Huebsch was asked about his views on climate change during his confirmation hearing this week. The Public Service Commission oversees utility issues in the state, including electricity, gas and water.

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“I believe that humans can have an impact to climate change, but I don’t think it’s anywhere near the level of impact of just the natural progression of our planet,” Huebsch said, according to the Wisconsin Radio Network. “You know, the elimination of essentially every automobile would be offset by one volcano exploding. You have to recognize the multiple factors that go into climate change.”

Scientists have studied this issue fairly extensively, and concluded that emissions generated by human activity—specifically, the burning of fossil fuels—far surpass volcanoes when it comes to warming the planet. Human activities generate about 35 gigatons of greenhouse gases per year, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, while all the world’s volcanoes combined spew something in the range of 0.13 to 0.44 gigatons per year. That means the human influence on the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is 80 to 270 times greater than that of volcanoes.

Huebsch, who previously served as the secretary of the Department of Administration under Walker, made the remark in a hearing of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee. During the hearing, he also questioned whether the state needs its renewable portfolio standard, which currently requires the state to draw 10 percent of its power from renewable sources.

“I’m not certain that policy is necessarily required in a law,” Huebsch said, according to the radio network. “Everybody recognizes the value of making sure that we have renewables available to us in a cost-effective way, and doing it in a way that’s going to maintain the grid and the infrastructure available for everyone.”

The Walker administration has been generally hostile to action on cutting emissions. Walker signed the Americans for Prosperity “No Climate Tax” pledge, and this week his administration joined a lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency to block new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

Walker critics say the appointment of someone who thinks volcanoes are causing climate change to the Public Service Commission is just another part of the likely 2016 presidential contender’s assault on environmental regulations.

“It’s not just that Gov. Walker opposes responsible action to try to slow the pace of global climate change and avoid its disastrous consequences if left unchecked,” Mike Browne, deputy director of the progressive group One Wisconsin Now, told The Huffington Post, “he’s also willing to put his cronies with similar science-denying views in charge of regulating an industry central to efforts to stem climate change.”

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Scott Walker Appointee Says Climate Action Is Pointless Because Volcanoes

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