Wed

06

Feb

2013

Europe Moves Ahead on Privacy

From the Opinion Page of New York Times

For the whole article

The European Union is considering far-reaching privacy regulations that would give the citizens of its member countries significant control over how Web sites and marketing companies collect and use data about them. Years in the making, the effort stands in stark contrast to the much slower pace of discussions about online privacy laws in Washington.

1 Comments

Wed

06

Feb

2013

Overfishing Threatens Food Chain

 

Overfishing Threatens a Critical Link in the Food Chain

Surfrider Foundation soup@surfrider.org

 

The fish near the bottom of the food chain are often overlooked, but they are vital to healthy oceans and estuaries. Collectively known as forage fish, these species, including sardines, anchovies, herrings, and krill, feed on plankton and become food themselves for larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. But, as demand for animal protein has soared, more and more forage fish have been used to feed livestock and farmed fish. A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that current fishing levels are dangerously high, both for the forage fish themselves and for the predators and industries that depend on them. 

 

FOR MORE OF THE ARTICLE

 

2 Comments

Mon

28

Jan

2013

Almost Half of the World's Food is Thrown Away

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 January 2013 02.55 EST

 

Food waste

 

Between 30% and 50% or 1.2-2bn tonnes of food produced around the world never makes it on to a plate. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

Read More 2 Comments

Fri

25

Jan

2013

A House Divided

Why do middle-class blacks have far less wealth than whites

at the same income level?

The answer is in real estate and history.

By Thomas J. Sugrue

Washington Monthly

 

Read More 1 Comments

Fri

25

Jan

2013

Large Dogs

0 Comments

Thu

24

Jan

2013

Chinese and English - Chinglish

It's gelivable! The whole world's speaking Chinese

By Jules Quartly (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-11-17 09:45

 

It's gelivable! The whole world's speaking Chinese

Read More 2 Comments

Sun

20

Jan

2013

Bird Of Paradise

Sorry - this is a youtube "film" - so some countries may be blocked from viewing it

 

0 Comments

Sun

20

Jan

2013

New Understanding of Persons called "Savants"

delanceyplace header

 delanceyplace <daily@delanceyplace.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 3:34 AM


 most people are familiar with the phenomenon of savants (once referred to as idiot savants), individuals with significant brain dysfunction who are nevertheless able to do amazing things such as play complex piano pieces without any training after hearing them once, or count the exact number of matches in a pile in a single glance, or recall what day of the week a given date fell on from hundreds of years ago. However, we may all have the capacity for these kinds of things. Researchers have uncovered that this savant ability relates to two things. First, constraints placed on the right hemisphere of the brain by the patterns of learning and perception of the left hemisphere, so that the impairment of left hemisphere liberates certain aspects of the right hemisphere. Second, compensatory development of the right hemisphere because the left hemisphere has dysfunction. Interestingly, researchers have also discovered that they can induce heightened problem solving skills in individuals with normal function by temporarily quieting neural activity in the left hemisphere:

Read More 1 Comments

Tue

31

Jan

2012

World lacks enough food, fuel as population soars-UN

A woman prepares grains at her shop in the Kibera slum in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Jan. 20, 2012. Kibera is a vast shanty town that lacks even basic services such as sanitation. Many residents are angry that while prices of food have risen, wages ha
A woman prepares grains at her shop in the Kibera slum in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Jan. 20, 2012. Kibera is a vast shanty town that lacks even basic services such as sanitation. Many residents are angry that while prices of food have risen, wages ha
Read More 3 Comments

Tue

31

Jan

2012

UN unveils blueprint for global sustainability

UN report on sustainable development estimates that the world will require at least 50% more food, 45% more energy and 30% more water by 2030 if it is to keep pace with population growth, projected to reach nearly 9 billion by 2040. "We need to chart a new, more sustainable course for the future, one that strengthens equality and economic growth while protecting our planet," Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary-General, said Monday during the release of the report by a special 22-member international panel.

 

0 Comments

Mon

30

Jan

2012

German Satellite Almost Crashed into Beijing

The research satellite Rosat, seen here in a computerized reprodution, crashed to Earth last October.
The research satellite Rosat, seen here in a computerized reprodution, crashed to Earth last October.

 

 

 

                                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last October, the German research satellite Rosat plunged into the Bay of Bengal, more than 20 years after it had been launched into orbit. But had it remained aloft for just seven more minutes, it would have landed in Beijing instead, new calculations show.

By Christian Schwägerl


Press here to read the whole article


0 Comments

Mon

30

Jan

2012

Watch 131 Years of Global Warming in 26 Seconds

 

Watch The Video  

 

From our friends at NASA comes this amazing 26-second video, depicting how temperatures around the globe have warmed since 1880. That year is what scientists call the beginning of the “modern record.” You’ll note an acceleration of those temperatures in the late 1970s as greenhouse gas emissions from energy production increased worldwide and clean air laws reduced emissions of pollutants that had a cooling effect on the climate, and thus were masking some of the global warming signal. The data comes from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures. As NASA notes, “in this animation, reds indicate temperatures higher than the average during a baseline period of 1951-1980, while blues indicate lower temperatures than the baseline average.”

0 Comments

Sat

28

Jan

2012

A Little Computer Wisdom

This ought to make you feel better about  your computer        skills!
 
Tech  support:   What kind of computer do you have?
Customer:          A  white one...
Tech  support:   Click  on the 'my computer' icon on to the left of the screen.
Customer:    Your left or my left?
****************************
Read More 5 Comments

Fri

27

Jan

2012

Introduction to Chat Group

INTRODUCTION


I'm changing the name of My Little Group to Think and Chat, and I will add more people to the group. 

 

Read More 2 Comments

Tue

24

Jan

2012

The future of food

Seaweed harvesting in Bali. From seaweed to slime, algae is the future of food, says Professor Mark Edwards Photograph: Ed Wray/AP
Seaweed harvesting in Bali. From seaweed to slime, algae is the future of food, says Professor Mark Edwards Photograph: Ed Wray/AP


The Observer

(Saturday 21 January 2012)

By 2050 there will be another 2.5 billion people on the planet. How to feed them? Science's answer: a diet of algae, insects and meat grown in a lab

Read More 4 Comments

Sun

22

Jan

2012

China city dwellers exceed villagers for first time

17 Jan 2012 10:51

Source: Reuters // Reuters

 

* China urbanisation ratio above 51 pct, slightly higher than world average

 

* China labour costs to rise steadily as supply falls, analysts say (Add background, China economist view)

By Zhou Xin and Koh Gui Qing

 

BEIJING, Jan 17 (Reuters) - More people lived in China's cities than in the countryside last year for the first time in history, a milestone that also points to labour supply strains in the world's No. 2 economy that could redraw the global manufacturing landscape.

 

Just over 51 percent of the 1.35 billion mainland Chinese lived in towns and cities at the end of 2011, China's National Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday, crossing the halfway mark after three decades of rapid growth in the world's most populous nation.

 

Factories along the Pearl River Delta boomed in the same period as hundreds of millions headed to cities in search of jobs, helping to keep costs low. But an expert on development in the delta said workers are now increasingly demanding higher wages and better terms as urban property and living costs soar.

 

"It's a clear signal to all investors -- China's cheap labour is fading into the past and will never be back," said Cheng Jiansan, a professor with the Guangdong Academy of Social Sciences, the top think-tank in China's export hub.

 

"As far as I know, many plants here are relocating to places like Vietnam and Cambodia -- simply for cheap labour."

 

China became the factory to the world since economic liberalisation began in the early 1980s, exporting goods such as high-end running shoes and television sets as low-cost labour spurred manufacturers around the globe to setup operations mainly in special economic zones along the southern coast.

 

In 2011, China's rural population fell 14.6 million, equal to the number of people in Cambodia, data showed.

But the rate of urbanisation has slowed, dragging on labour supply, even though the massive shift of people will keep driving China's economy for years to come.

 

A rapidly ageing Chinese population further reduces the labour pool with the number of people over 65 at nearly 123 million, almost equal to Japan's population.

 

Ma Jiantang, the statistics agency head, said falling labour supply underpinned a forecast by China for 7 percent economic growth between 2011 and 2015, well below frequent double-digit annual growth rates for much of the past decade.

 

China's economy grew at its weakest pace in 2-1/2 years in the latest quarter to 8.9 percent, data released on Tuesday showed.

But there is debate among analysts about whether the country is near or crossing the Lewis turning point, a theory that wages in a developing nation start surging once there is a shortage in surplus rural labour.

Globally, about 51 percent of the world's 7 billion people live in cities, the United Nations says, with developing countries generally more rural than rich countries. In India, the world's second-most populous nation, only 30 percent live in cities while 82 percent of Americans are urbanites.

 

"It's a milestone in China's urbanisation, but that's too early to say that China's labour supply is drying up," Su Hainan, the deputy head of China Association for Labour Studies, a Beijing-based think-tank.

 

"China is still in the middle of urbanisation, and that means a lot of people have to move into cities."

 

Average Chinese salaries are already rising, albeit from low levels. Per capita urban disposable income rose 14 percent to 21,810 yuan ($3,500) in 2011 from a year ago, while per capita rural income rose 18 percent, although still only to an annual 6,977 yuan ($1,105).

But the income gap between those working in cities and the country is hard to verify as China does not publish a nation-wide "Gini Coefficient", a widely-used measure for wealth divides, likely because of the difficulty of getting true income data on high-income urban residents.

 

But the Gini index for rural China, which is calculated , stood at 0.4 at the end of 2011, suggesting a middle-of-the-road income divide with 1 being most severe and 0 indicating equal distribution of wealth.

 

However, Su said that even a relatively accommodative labour supply from rural areas is not going to prevent factory and other wages from rising.

 

"Labour supply will continue to be abundant, but workers will be more demanding in terms of salaries and other benefits."

 

($1 = 6.3165 Chinese yuan)

 

(Reporting by Zhou Xin and Koh Gui Qing Editing by Nick Edwards; Ken Wills and Ed Lane)

5 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

From Thom Hartmann in Truthout Jan 3rd, 2012

In news you probably won’t hear on GOP TV – there were two arson attacks in New York City against Muslims and Hindus.  On Sunday night – security cameras caught an unidentified man drive up to a Hindu house of worship and hurl a Molotov cocktail at the building.  The night before – two Molotov cocktails were thrown at an Islamic Center in Queens as 80 people were gathered inside for dinner.  Luckily – there were no injuries in either attack – and only minimal damage done to the buildings.  Police are investigating the attacks as as “bias crimes.”

 

http://www.truth-out.org/news-thom-hartmann/1325612530

1 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

Montana State Supreme Court: Citizens United Not Welcome Here

By alexa  Created 2012-01-04 06:55  Sam Ferguson [1]  Source: 
Truthout  Display date: Wednesday 4 January 2012

 

In a rebuke to the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Montana has held that Citizens United does not apply to Montana campaign finance law.

 

Last Friday, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a 1912 voter initiative - the Corrupt Practices Act - that prohibits corporations from making contributions to or expenditures on behalf of state political candidates and political parties. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that a similar federal prohibition was unconstitutional, prompting a wave of bills and court rulings that erased prohibitions on corporate and union political expenditures around the country.

0 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

The Million Moms Challenge: Helping Moms Around the World, One Story at a Time

Huffington Post

Terri Whitecraft


The statistics are staggering: Every 90 seconds, someone in the world dies during pregnancy or childbirth. That's 1000 women and girls every day. Yet experts say more than 80 percent of those deaths are preventable with access to basic medical care -- and that doesn't include the more than 1 million babies a year who are stillborn because their mothers did not receive needed medical care.

 

How can you NOT want to help?

 

Read More 10 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

Popular file-sharing website Megaupload shut down

Popular file-sharing website Megaupload shut down

USA TODAY  By Nick Perry, Associated Press

 

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – With 150 million registered users, about 50 million hits daily and endorsements from music superstars, Megaupload.com was among the world's biggest file-sharing sites. Big enough, according to a U.S. indictment, that it earned founder Kim Dotcom $42 million last year alone.

Read More 0 Comments

Fri

20

Jan

2012

China's riot town: 'No one else is listening'

A photo dated June 12 shows damaged police cars overturned by protesters in Xintang, China
A photo dated June 12 shows damaged police cars overturned by protesters in Xintang, China

China's riot town: 'No one else is listening'

By Eunice Yoon, CNN
June 17, 2011 9:35 p.m. EDT
Xintang, China (CNN) -- The authorities here are obviously nervous. My crew and I are sitting in a local government building being questioned by six propaganda officials.
Read More 0 Comments

Thu

19

Jan

2012

We still eat Neolithic food

delanceyplace header
Date: Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 3:30 AM


In today's encore excerpt - even at the fanciest restaurants, we still eat the same narrow range of meats and grains first domesticated and cultivated in the Neolithic period.

Read More 3 Comments

Thu

19

Jan

2012

Slow response to East Africa famine 'cost 'lives'

The US government says 29,000 children under five years old died between May and July 2011
The US government says 29,000 children under five years old died between May and July 2011

 

Thousands of needless deaths occurred from famine in East Africa last year because the international community failed to heed early warnings, say two leading British aid organisations.  BBC


Read More 0 Comments

Wed

18

Jan

2012

Hope for Haiti's Women

Legal reforms look to protect Haitian women

Haiti's struggle to rebuild in the wake of the devastating January 2010 earthquake has included efforts to strengthen protections of the rights of women. The Ministry of Women's Affairs is working on draft legislation to better protect against gender-based violence. Amanda Klasing of Human Rights Watch writes, "[W]e must keep reminding ourselves and others that not everything in Haiti is going wrong. Women's rights leaders in Haiti are proving this again with their remarkable work to change the laws to guarantee justice and equality for women and girls."

From The Huffington Post

Read More 1 Comments

Tue

17

Jan

2012

Experts Predict Global Population Will Plateau

 

The Great Contraction

Experts Predict Global Population Will Plateau

By SPIEGEL Staff  11/03/2011


The 7-billionth human being was born last week as the UN issued dire warnings of an exploding global population. But birth rates are actually in free fall worldwide. Experts predict that the world's population will start shrinking in 2060 and that -- with a bit of imaginative policymaking -- the birth and death rates could actually balance out.

 

In 6 Parts

 

Read More 0 Comments

Tue

17

Jan

2012

UN Food and Agricultural Chief

Somalian refugees at a camp in Kenya: "We need sustainable agriculture tailored to regional conditions."
Somalian refugees at a camp in Kenya: "We need sustainable agriculture tailored to regional conditions."

 

 

UNFAO chief: Battle to end hunger is winnable

Spiegel Online 01/16/2012 

 

Gains in the battle against malnutrition have been made in many countries, but a concerted effort to slash the number of people around the world facing food shortages is still needed, Jose Graziano da Silva, the new head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says in this interview. Da Silva is supporting tighter regulations on speculation, which has been broadly tagged as a major contributing factor to rising food prices.

 

Read More 3 Comments

Mon

16

Jan

2012

Woody Guthrie, more relevant than ever

Woody Guthrie  (Credit: LOC)
Woody Guthrie (Credit: LOC)

Great Recession


Woody Guthrie, more relevant than ever


 

 


 



When conservative Oklahoma finally accepts its lefty prodigal son, it bodes well for a nation steeped in inequality


By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Friday,Jan 13, 2012 10:53 am est

Read More 1 Comments

Sun

15

Jan

2012

Investors set sights on climate change at UN conference

Investors set sights on climate change at UN conference

More than 400 representatives of large institutional investors met Thursday at the United Nations to reconsider climate change from a business perspective on the heels of 5% growth in green energy investment, to $260 billion, in 2011. "The carbon-burning economy is tomorrow's Rust Belt. Your job, it seems to me, is to invest in the Microsofts and Googles of the green economy," Roland Rich, head of the UN Democracy Fund, told investors, who control a collective $26 trillion worldwide. The conference was convened by the UN, the United Nations Foundation and the Ceres coalition.

 

Read More 0 Comments

Sun

15

Jan

2012

Study: US Deaths Tied to Fukushima Disaster Fallout

NOAA has run a numeric model for ocean surface currents to predict the movement of marine debris generated by the Japan tsunami over five years. The model measures the movement of surface currents, as well as the movement of what is in or on the water, 03
NOAA has run a numeric model for ocean surface currents to predict the movement of marine debris generated by the Japan tsunami over five years. The model measures the movement of surface currents, as well as the movement of what is in or on the water, 03

Study: US Deaths Tied to Fukushima Disaster Fallout

By PR Newswire  20 December 11

 

Impact seen as roughly comparable to radiation-related deaths after Chernobyl; infants are hardest hit, with continuing research showing even higher possible death count.


An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.

 

Read More 2 Comments

Sat

07

Jan

2012

UN's Ban outlines priorities for second term

UN's Ban outlines priorities for second term

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says one of his top priorities as he embarks on a new five-year term at the helm of the United Nations is to help ensure that the popular movements toward democracy across the Arab world are sustained. He also plans to do more for young people and women the world over, and influence policies that might narrow the widening gap between rich and poor. The Washington Post/The Associated Press (12/31)

 

1 Comments

Mon

31

Jan

2011

TimeLine: Egypts revolt

An Egyptian army soldier tries to stop anti-government protesters as they walk towards Tahrir Square in Cairo, Sunday, Jan. 30, 2011. The Arab world’s most populous nation appeared to be swiftly moving closer to a point at which it either dissolves into widespread chaos or the military expands its presence and control of the streets. – AP Photo

 

In the past week, inspired by Tunisia’s successful uprising, Egyptian citizens have taken back their country in an uproar against the 30-year regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Here is a breakdown of the events:

Read More 3 Comments

Mon

31

Jan

2011

ElBaradei Returns to Egypt

Read More 0 Comments

Sun

30

Jan

2011

U.S. Offers Evacuation Flights as Mubarak Clings to Power

Egyptian protesters prayed Saturday in front of a military vehicles in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Saturday
Egyptian protesters prayed Saturday in front of a military vehicles in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo on Saturday

More in New York Times 

CAIRO — As President Hosni Mubarak struggled to maintain a tenuous hold on power and the Egyptian military reinforced strategic points in the capital, the United States said on Sunday it was offering evacuation flights for its citizens and urged all Americans currently in Eqypt to “consider leaving as soon as they can safely do so.” By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL Published: January 30, 2011

1 Comments

Sat

29

Jan

2011

Drought in China. Millions face water shortage

Sun Minghua, a rural resident of Bozhou in East China's Anhui province, checks out withering wheat seedlings on his farm on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]
Sun Minghua, a rural resident of Bozhou in East China's Anhui province, checks out withering wheat seedlings on his farm on Thursday. [Photo/China Daily]

Millions face water shortage in China

(China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-29 07:45

JINAN - More than 2.2 million people and 2.7 million livestock are facing a water shortage as the worst drought in decades continues to linger in many parts of China.

Read More 0 Comments

Sat

29

Jan

2011

Stem cell research promising

Stem cell research promising

By Chen Jia and Shan Juan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-01-29 07:42

 

BEIJING - After seeing the fastest development worldwide in stem cell research during the past 10 years, China is "on the verge of achieving a breakthrough", says a top scientist in the field.

 

 

Read More 2 Comments

Sat

29

Jan

2011

Egypt - Turmoil

 

 

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak ordered his Cabinet ministers to resign early Saturday but also vowed to remain in power himself and backed his government's use of force to quell the massive protests that have challenged his 30-year rule.

 

Read More 0 Comments

Wed

26

Jan

2011

Maps of Russia

Read More 1 Comments

Wed

26

Jan

2011

China and all of it's largest cities.

China has about one fourth of the total population of the world and many of those people live in the big cities on the Eastern side of China.

Beijing is the capitol city, and Shanghai has the largest population.

 

0 Comments

Sun

23

Jan

2011

Woodie Guthrie Folk Singer and the Great Depression

In today's excerpt - in the wake of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, folk singer Woody Guthrie wrote the song "This Land is Your Land," a satire and protest against what he saw as the unrealistic vision of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America." It was originally titled "God Bless America for Me," and the original chorus used that line instead of "this land was made for you and me." Guthrie eventually deleted two verses, perhaps because he knew he couldn't get the song published otherwise - one that lamented the lack of help provided by America's churches for the poor, and the other his protest against the idea of private property (read those verses after the author credit below):

Read More 2 Comments

Sun

23

Jan

2011

H.L. Mencken and Today - here we are again

In today's excerpt -H.L. Mencken comments on the impact of crowd psychology. Mencken, known as "The Sage of Baltimore," was a popular journalist, essayist and satirist, and is regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the first half of the 20th century. A caustic critic of American life and culture, Mencken was one of the first in the U.S. to popularize such writers as Friedrich Nietzsche and Joseph Conrad.

Read More 0 Comments

Sun

23

Jan

2011

Define A Person.


 

Wal-Mart Is Not a Person

Thom Hartmann | Monday 17 January 2011

 
The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. —John Stuart Mill
Read More 2 Comments

Sun

23

Jan

2011

Map Comparison of China and USA

I was chatting with Lisa on English Share and we spent a minute commenting on the size of USA and China.  I was sure that China was much bigger.  I was sure wrong.

Read More 1 Comments

Fri

21

Jan

2011

starlight

0 Comments

Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


shutterstock_222422665_151112


DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

2 Comments

Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
0 Comments

Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”

 

This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”

 

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

 

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

 

And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.

 

Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.

 

But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.

 

Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.

 

So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.

 

In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.

 

Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.

 

Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”

 

There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.

 

“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.

 

Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.

 

There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.

 

________________________________

 

A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.

0 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.

 

Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.

Zhou Family Ties

1 Comments

Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


shutterstock_222422665_151112


DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

2 Comments

Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
0 Comments

Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

Read More 1 Comments