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Boy Scouts make move towards inclusion and acceptance for all by allowing transgender scouts.

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Boy Scouts at New York's gay pride parade in 2014. The Scouts will now admit transgender boys. Credit Credit James Estrin/The New York Times

When the Boy Scouts of America announced Monday that transgender boys would be welcome to camp, hike and earn merit badges alongside their peers, the move brought praise from critics of the organization who for years have called for more inclusive membership rules.

But the decision, which came with little warning and reversed a more than century-old stance of determining gender based on birth certificates, further alienated many religious conservatives who were longtime advocates of the program.

"Now we see once again that the Boy Scouts really is committed to a gender-theory culture war that evangelical Christians and many other Americans just can't accept," said Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Mr. Moore, a former scout, said Southern Baptist churches and others had been dismayed by Boy Scout policies for several years, as the Scouts moved first to allow openly gay youth members, and then openly gay adult leaders. Though several Southern Baptist congregations have stopped sponsoring Scout troops, Mr. Moore said others had held out hope that the organization would return to a more conservative worldview.

"I think, for some, this will be the final sign that it's time to go," Mr. Moore said.

Whether the new rules would lead to an influx of transgender scouts seemed uncertain. Besides one highly publicized case of a transgender boy being excluded from a New Jersey Scouting unit, there had been limited attention on the issue before this week. Boy Scouts officials declined to be interviewed, and would not comment on how many youths the decision might affect.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Boy Scouts said it was "no longer sufficient" to rely on a birth certificate to determine gender. "The B.S.A. is committed to identifying program options that will help us truly serve the whole family," said the spokeswoman, Effie Delimarkos, adding that those efforts would remain "true to our core values, outlined in the Scout Oath and Law."

For many years, the Boy Scouts have found themselves facing conflicting forces on issues of sexuality and inclusion. The Scouts contended with a pattern of declining membership, canceled corporate donations and public criticism over the group's restrictions on gay youths before easing those rules in 2013. And the move this week to allow transgender youths was hailed by some as a positive, overdue step toward equality.

"No one should be denied the opportunity to participate in any Boy Scout troop because of their gender identity or expression," Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement.

But many Scout units are sponsored by conservative religious denominations that have opposed the changes, saying the organization has betrayed its values by loosening membership rules.

Tami Fitzgerald, the executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition, said the transgender decision indicated that the Scouts "have diverged greatly from their founding principles." Ms. Fitzgerald, who said her brother was an Eagle Scout, said the Values Coalition was now encouraging families to consider alternatives to the Boy Scouts.

Such conservative alternatives already exist. After the decision to allow gay members, John Stemberger, a former scoutmaster, pulled his sons out of the Boy Scouts and helped start a new program called Trail Life USA. Mr. Stemberger said Trail Life, which he described as a "distinctly Christian scouting organization," was active in all but a few states with nearly 30,000 members, a tiny fraction of the roughly 2.3 million youths enrolled in Boy Scout programs.

Mr. Stemberger said he expected that the decision on transgender youths might prompt more families to enroll their sons in Trail Life. He said that the Boy Scouts' transgender policy seemed inevitable given the change on gay membership, but that he was surprised by how quickly it came about.

"They are basically doing what gay activists want them to do because they lack the courage to defend their own tradition and their own Scout Oath and their own Scout Law," Mr. Stemberger said.

Despite disenchantment from many on the right, the Boy Scouts have reported less pronounced membership declines in recent years. The Roman Catholic and Mormon churches, which collectively sponsor a large percentage of Scout units, have not left in overwhelming numbers, as some feared, and campouts, service projects and pinewood derbies have continued.

Whether allowing transgender boys to join will lead to significant departures remains unclear. Representatives of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod did not respond to requests for comment about the policy. The Mormon Church said in a statement that its leaders were studying the announcement.

But in some places, reaction was pointed and critical. A statement from the Catholic Archdiocese of St. Louis referred to transgender boys as "girls struggling with gender dysphoria," said Boy Scout policies were "becoming increasingly incompatible with our Catholic values" and expressed hope that the Scouts would "recognize their error."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Boy Scouts' Latest Move Alienates Conservatives. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Conservatives Alienated by Boy Scouts' Shift on Transgender Policy

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When the Boy Scouts of America announced Monday that transgender boys would be welcome to camp, hike and earn merit badges alongside their peers, the move brought praise from critics of the organization who for years have called for more inclusive membership rules.

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Water Could Soon Be Unaffordable For 1/3 of American Households

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If you've noticed that your water bill has been surging in recent years, you're not imagining things.

Recent analyses have confirmed that water bills have been on the rise in many U.S. communities for a variety of reasons - water utilities' cost to repair and improve their crumbling infrastructure systems, the added strain of climate change impacts to those systems and declining customer bases in certain urban areas.

And a new study has found that those extra costs, when they are passed along by water utilities, are increasingly leaving many Americans struggling to pay for their water service - a trend that appears likely to continue in the coming years.

According to the study, published this month in the PLOS ONE journal, more than one-third of U.S. households could struggle to pay for water within the next five years.

The study, funded by the National Science Foundation and conducted by Michigan State University researchers, came to that conclusion by comparing an estimate of an average household's water usage and a national average water bill to median household income data estimated down to the census tract level by the U.S. Census Bureau.

If that water bill figure exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency's recommendation that a household's water and wastewater spending should make up no more than 4.5 percent of a household's income, that census tract was determined to be living in water poverty. The study found that an estimated 13.8 million U.S. households - 11.9 percent of all homes - are already facing this reality.

After projecting water rate hikes between 2010 and 2015 - a surge estimated at 41 percent in a recent industry survey - five years into the future, the researchers found that monthly water bills could reach a national average of nearly $170, a rate they estimate would be unaffordable, by the EPA's definition, to nearly 41 million households.

If these numbers sound alarming, they also came as a surprise to Elizabeth Mack, a Michigan State geographer and the study's co-author.

Mack admitted that some colleagues initially thought her research question was a "ridiculous" concept after she proposed it, considering that water bills have typically been thought of as less expensive than other household utilities.

But after Mack learned that water rates in California rose as a result of the state's drought conditions, she questioned to what extent higher bills there and elsewhere could be affecting families' bottom lines.

Mack's results indicate that many households, largely concentrated in the South, are at risk of just that: The states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky and Arkansas led the nation in percentage of census tracts determined to be at "high risk" of water poverty. In addition, water poverty clusters were identified in downtown areas of urban settings including Detroit, Phoenix and Philadelphia.

Mary Grant, director of the Food and Water Watch advocacy group's Public Water for All campaign, was not surprised by the results, describing them as evidence of a "growing national crisis" of water affordability that is hitting the poorest Americans hardest.

The crisis is already underway in many parts of the country, Grant noted. In Baltimore, where Grant is based, water rates have increased 120 percent over the past 10 years, leaving an estimated one-third of the city's residents struggling to keep up. Last year, the city moved to increase its water rates an additional 31 percent over the next three years - a hike intended to finance infrastructure repairs and a water billing system fix.

"Water bills are incredibly regressive," Grant said. "They disproportionately impact poor, working families. And we will see more of this unless drastic action is taken to change the way we fund our water systems."

Taking action requires solid data to inform said action, and Ed Osann, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council's water program, told The Huffington Post he believes the Michigan State study didn't provide that.

According to Osann, the researchers overestimated the number of households that might struggle with unaffordable water rates by basing all their data on a national monthly household water usage figure - 12,000 gallons per household per month, a somewhat hypothetical number that appears to come from a one-page EPA handout published in 2008 - that was inaccurate. Osann argued that number was too high because it is based on a four-person household and not in line with more reliable estimates produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Further, Osann noted that the study may have overgeneralized its findings by applying its national average water bill uniformly, which could have been responsible for high water poverty rates noted in areas of the country where water rates have typically been lower, such as some of the Southern states specifically highlighted in the report.

"They're saying that these folks cannot afford to pay for water, but aren't calibrating that to the rates and charges they're actually experiencing in these communities," Osann told HuffPost. "That, I think, is a little bit problematic."

Still, Osann agreed that the problem of water affordability is a major one.

"I don't dispute for a minute that the affordability of water is an issue. It's a real issue and a growing issue," Osann said. "It's an important enough issue that we need better research on the topic, and soon."

This is something we all need to look at irrespective of what side of the political spectrum you're on." Elizabeth Mack, Michigan State University geography professor

The stakes are high for the nation's 155,000 public water systems because federal support for their services has stagnated in recent years and state funds haven't risen to fill the gap. This forces utilities to pass along their additional costs to their customers.

"The utilities are in a very tough spot. I'm not disparaging the utilities," Mack added. "We need to find some way to take pressure off some of these providers."

While some systems have offered assistance programs to help their low-income customers pay their water bills, a recent EPA survey found that only about 28 percent of water utilities offer such programs.

Some cities are taking steps to address the problem, including Philadelphia, which approved a comprehensive income-based water affordability program that goes into effect in July. Grant noted that efforts to bring similar programs to both Detroit and Baltimore are also underway.

A solution to the problem appears unclear, particularly as recent reports have indicated that big changes lie just around the corner for the EPA. An agency memo that leaked last week suggested $513 million in cuts could be coming to the agency's state and tribal assistance grants - a category that includes programs that help support the nation's water systems.

Protection of that funding, Mack noted, should be a priority regardless of how one feels about President Donald Trump or anyone else in Washington.

"This is something we all need to look at irrespective of what side of the political spectrum you're on," Mack said.

Joseph Erbentraut covers promising innovations and challenges in the areas of food and water. In addition, Erbentraut explores the evolving ways Americans are identifying and defining themselves. Follow Erbentraut on Twitter at @robojojo. Tips? Email joseph.erbentraut@huffingtonpost.com.

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Water Could Soon Be Unaffordable For Millions Of Americans

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If you've noticed that your water bill has been surging in recent years, you're not imagining things. Recent analyses have confirmed that water bills have been on the rise in many U.S. communities for a variety of reasons - water utilities' cost to repair and improve their crumbling infrastructure systems, the added strain of climate change impacts to those systems and declining customer bases in certain urban areas.

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Who will be remembered as on the right side of history? The US or Canada?

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Canadians gathered to hear political and community leaders speak in Quebec City on Monday, the day after six worshipers were shot to death at a mosque. Credit Credit Ian Willms for The New York Times

TORONTO - François Deschamps stepped out of his apartment building in the Limoilou neighborhood of Quebec City recently and stopped when he saw a sticker wrapped around a light pole.

"Burn Your Local Mosque," it read, around a silhouette of a Turkish-style mosque against an orange flame. He snapped a cellphone photo and added it to his collection of anti-Muslim propaganda popping up around the city.

Canada is a remarkably open society, a legacy of liberal politicians who set the thinly populated country on the path of aggressive multiculturalism decades ago. Last week, Statistics Canada reported that by 2036, nearly half of all Canadians would be immigrants or the children of immigrants - most of them what the country calls "visible minorities," which means nonwhite.

That rapid transformation is stirring the most conservative elements of the white Canadian population, who see the country as their own, despite the fact that Europeans took the land from a patchwork of indigenous peoples who had long existed there.

Few people believe that this stirring, which is moderate by United States standards, contributed directly the shooting Sunday inside Quebec City's largest mosque, in which six worshipers were killed and eight injured. And no evidence yet has emerged that the accused assailant, a Québécois university student, had ties to specific groups. But the attack has put many on guard that Canada's embrace of Muslim immigration is raising tensions. Even the most radical groups seem to sense that expressing extreme views can be dangerous.

There are at least 100 right-wing extremist groups in Canada, according to two Canadian studies published last year, with most of them active in the provinces of Ontario, Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia.

While their targets include gays and lesbians, Jews and other minorities, Muslims have faced a sizable amount of the hostility. In 2014, the last year for which statistics are available, Canadian police forces recorded 99 religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims - up from 45 in 2012, according to Statistics Canada.

Some critics have blamed Donald J. Trump's nationalistic language, but right-wing extremism has long thrived in Canada among skinheads, white supremacists and others, said Barbara Perry, a global hate crime expert at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Ontario, and the lead author of a report published last year in the journal Studies in Conflict & Terrorism.

"A lot of that sentiment has been there," said Ms. Perry, who said the internet has helped spread the ideology.

Canada has witnessed a flurry of nationalist groups proliferating in recent years, including the Soldiers of Odin, a white nationalist group that began in Finland. While the Canadian group has denied racist beliefs and members have participated in community foot patrols in cities like Edmonton and Vancouver, its main Canada Facebook page has anti-Muslim screeds and derogatory references to immigrants.

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A memorial outside the Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City on Tuesday. The attack there on Sunday has put many on guard that Canada's embrace of Muslim immigration is raising tensions. Credit Ian Willms for The New York Times

The Canadian authorities have recorded thousands of hate-motivated crimes in recent years, but Ms. Perry said Canadian law enforcement officials have played down the threat of right-wing extremists, preferring instead to focus on Islamic terrorism. "That's where all the money and attention goes," she said. "Law enforcement officers in communities with a fairly well known right-wing presence, they either denied they were there or that it was an issue."

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service declined to comment on actions they have taken to monitor and stop the spread of white nationalist groups, though the intelligence service has in the past minimized the movement's influence, telling the Canadian news media that "right-wing extremist circles appear to be fragmented and primarily pose a threat to public order and not to national security."

Anti-racism activists and others opposed to such views say the government has not done enough to protect vulnerable groups. In 2013, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government repealed hate speech provisions in the Canadian Human Rights Act, which supporters said hindered free speech. A federal court ruled that the provisions did not violate freedom of expression, but they have not been reinstated.

Daniel Gallant, a former white supremacist from Vancouver who changed his views 15 years ago and is now a social worker and a law student, said widespread Canadian denial about the prevalence of right-wing extremism was a major problem. "It's everywhere," he said.

A 2016 telephone survey by the Canadian polling firm Forum Research found that in a random sampling of 1,304 Canadians, Muslims were the focus of the most animosity in Quebec, where 48 percent of respondents expressed dislike of the religion.

"It is clear from these findings that respondents in Quebec are the most likely to hold unfavorable feelings towards Jewish and Muslim people," said the firm's president, Lorne Bozinoff.

Nowhere have those elements been as vocal as Quebec City.

Handbills, posters and occasional demonstrations by such groups as the Fédération des Québécois de Souche (which translates roughly as "people of original Québécois stock") have proliferated in the city. Québécois de Souche's slogan is "I exist, so I act," but as with fringe movements everywhere, it and other groups are most active behind the anonymity of the internet.

"It's very hard to know their numbers," said Stéphane Leman-Langlois, a sociology professor at Laval University who studies Quebec's far right, adding that there is a small core to each group and that the followers are less active. He said the movement has fragmented and re-formed and groups have changed names for the past 20 years, although the recent surge in immigration has strengthened their cause. "It's not a new thing," he said.

La Meute, a group that includes many Afghanistan war veterans, has gathered about 43,000 followers since it started a closed Facebook page last year. The name means "wolf pack" in French, and its members are not politically virulent by United States standards but focus on concerns about Muslim immigration.

At the other end of the scale are followers of Légitime Violence, a proudly fascist heavy metal band that announces its concerts to a vetted list of fans and performs songs like "Final Solution," which is as subtle as it sounds.

Other extremist groups in Quebec include Atalante Québec; Pegida Québec, which is an offshoot of a German group; and Soldiers of Odin.

Dominic Maurais, a conservative talk show host in Quebec, is among those who have called for calm in the wake of the mosque shooting. "The tone should definitely be more respectful on all sides," he said. Credit Ian Willms for The New York Times

Calling these groups "far right" may be a misnomer. The Fédération des Québécois de Souche says its members include people with different political beliefs, including socialists and libertarians. The common denominator is an opposition to immigration, particularly by Muslims.

"Our objective is not to shrink to a minority," said Rémi Tremblay, spokesman for the Fédération des Québécois de Souche. He says groups like his have helped to start a debate about immigration and multiculturalism that was "unthinkable" when the group formed 10 years ago. "We want to free the tongues of the people so they start thinking about this without the constraints of political correctness," he said.

That conversation among largely anonymous anti-immigration extremists exists in the broader context of a right-leaning talk radio culture in Quebec that has been critical of Muslim immigration and what it sees as a failure by Muslims to assimilate into Canadian culture. Talk radio of this stripe is rare elsewhere in Canada and is reminiscent, albeit far more mild, of the raucous right-wing shows in the United States.

The radio stations Radio X and FM93 are among those cited as giving voice to anti-Muslim activists. While their own commentary may be muted, they give a platform to less-tolerant voices from sites like Point de Bascule, which means Tipping Point, and Poste de Veille, which translates roughly as "Watchtower" and whose website shows a pirate ship with a jihadist flag as its sail approaching Quebec City.

One popular conspiracy theory links Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to the Muslim Brotherhood, a pan-Arab group that supports the application of Islamic law in Muslim communities.

Even Quebec City's mayor, Régis Labeaume, who was visibly moved at a news conference on Monday while showing support for the Muslim community, has expressed frustration with some orthodox Muslim customs.

In 2014, during interviews about the appearance of the "burkini" at community pools, he recalled one extremely hot summer day seeing a man dressed in shorts and sandals while his wife was wearing a full niqab - head-to-toe covering including black gloves. Mayor Labeaume said his own wife had to hold him back from insulting the man and "ripping his head off."

Many people have called for toning down the talk in the wake of Sunday's mosque shooting in a suburb of Quebec City by a professed immigration opponent.

"The tone should definitely be more respectful on all sides," said Dominic Maurais, who hosts a show on Radio X and is a leading voice of Quebec's conservative talk shows. Mr. Maurais noted that he was pro-immigration.

"However, we should all be careful about letting political correctness win over crucial, frank and essential discussions about radical Islam and Islamic values in our democracies," he said in a telephone interview.

The Fédération des Québécois de Souche and Atalante Québec issued a joint statement deploring the violence and calling the gunman deranged.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Anti-Immigrant Fringe Stirs as Canada Transforms. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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As Canada Transforms, an Anti-Immigrant Fringe Stirs

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TORONTO - François Deschamps stepped out of his apartment building in the Limoilou neighborhood of Quebec City recently and stopped when he saw a sticker wrapped around a light pole. "Burn Your Local Mosque," it read, around a silhouette of a Turkish-style mosque against an orange flame.

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Relieve stress by messing with store spam.

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Get a daily email featuring the latest talk, plus a quick mix of trending content.

By subscribing, you understand and agree that we will store, process and manage your personal information according to our Privacy Policy

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James Veitch: The agony of trying to unsubscribe

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It happens to all of us: you unsubscribe from an unwanted marketing email, and a few days later another message from the same company pops up in your inbox. Comedian James Veitch turned this frustration into whimsy when a local supermarket refused to take no for an answer. Hijinks ensued.

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Do old maps from the Lost Colony hold secrets?

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Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

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Michael Sandel: Why we shouldn't trust markets with our civic life

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In the past three decades, says Michael Sandel, the US has drifted from a market economy to a market society; it's fair to say that an American's experience of shared civic life depends on how much money they have. (Three key examples: access to education, access to justice, political influence.)

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What happens when you reply the spam emails

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This is what happens when you reply to spam email

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Suspicious emails: unclaimed insurance bonds, diamond-encrusted safe deposit boxes, close friends marooned in a foreign country. They pop up in our inboxes, and standard procedure is to delete on sight. But what happens when you reply? Follow along as writer and comedian James Veitch narrates a hilarious, weeks-long exchange with a spammer who offered to cut him in on a hot deal.

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Is the world growing addicted to technology? How does technology affect our lives?

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Tech-related burnout is also common in people with certain personality traits, Dr Ramlakhan continues.

"Are you a perfectionist? Are you a control freak? Do you grind your teeth at night?

"That's an A-type personality - they are driven, competitive, aggressive, run on imperatives - have to, must do, should do," she says.

"They are likely to find themselves unable to switch off, they can't relax, if they do they crash into exhaustion.

"Even if they are watching TV they have multi screens. It's a level of hyperactivity driven by a fear of not being in control."

I suggest that perhaps they just want to multi-task.

"It's the accessibility, the sensory experience of swiping that screen, the instant gratification... there is something quite pleasurable about that," she counters.

"Our generation hasn't got the hang of how to respond to it so we respond very reactively.

"For a lot of people it's the lack of offline time which causes hyper-arousal of the brain. People walk about in a state of distractibility."

Author and psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair also thinks multi-tasking - or multi-screening - is a dangerous game, especially for children.

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Meet the tech addiction therapist and the schools turning away from technology in the classroom.

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Can new advanced technology help us determine what happened to the lost colony?

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In 1587, a group of 115 men, women, and children made the first attempt to found a permanent English colony in the New World. Led by Englishman John White, the group settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina.

Later that year, Mr. White made a trip to England for more supplies, but when he returned some three years later, he found the colony abandoned and looted. The only clues of the missing settlers were the word "Croatoan" carved on a post and the letters "CRO" etched into a tree trunk.

Since then, archaeologists, explorers and historians have been trying to uncover the mystery of this "Lost Colony," but have found very few answers - until now.

Two separate teams of archeologists claim they have discovered evidence that suggests the lost colonists may have divided into two factions and moved inland, each assimilating into a different Native American community, National Geographic reports.

One team has been excavating at a site on Hatteras Island called Cape Creek, about 50 miles southeast of the Roanoke Island settlement, where they found several European objects that can be traced back to the colonists.

"The evidence is that they assimilated with the Native Americans but kept their goods," Mark Horton, an archaeologist at Britain's Bristol University who heads the excavation on Hatteras, told National Geographic.

Mr. Horton's team came across a particularly peculiar item at the Cape Creek site: a small piece of slate that was used as a writing tablet, along with a lead pencil, similar to a larger slate found at Jamestown earlier. The slate bears a small letter "M," a clue that suggests it had been owned by someone who could read or write, Horton says.

"This wasn't useful for trade, but was owned by an educated European," he adds.

While Horton's team was digging up these telling discoveries, another group was excavating on the mainland about 50 miles to the northwest of the lost colony, in a location dubbed Site X.

Nick Luccketti of First Colony Foundation says he believes his team of archeologists discovered pottery made of English material called Border ware, which ceased to be imported to the new world at the beginning of the 17th century, along with other items that may have been used by the lost colonists, the New York Times reports.

Mr. Lucketti and others from his foundation have been excavating since 2012, after The British Museum unveiled hidden markings on a watercolor map drawn by White, the English settler. A tiny four-pointed star led Lucketti's team to Site X, and their latest discoveries are consistent with earlier research on the lost settlers.

The First Colony Foundation has submitted the evidence for peer review, but will reveal the findings on Tuesday in Chapel Hill, N.C., along with a theory that at least some of the colonists had in fact moved to Site X.

Both teams and other experts have emphasized that these discoveries can't confirm the fate of the settlers. European goods don't equate to European settlers, says Brett Riggs, an archaeologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is not involved with the excavations.

"Anything of utility [the Native Americans] took back to their homes," he says. "They would vacuum it all up."

While archeologists still have a long way to go to uncover the mystery of the lost colony, the latest evidence will turn their efforts away from Roanoke Island, where researchers have found very little evidence of the early European settlers.

"We need to know more," says Eric Klingelhofer, a history professor at Georgia's Mercer University and vice president for research at the First Colony Foundation. "This whole story is a blank - a blank page, a blank chapter of history, and I think archaeology is the only way to come up with answers."

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Archeologists may have solved mystery of the 'Lost Colony'

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In 1587, a group of 115 men, women, and children made the first attempt to found a permanent English colony in the New World. Led by Englishman John White, the group settled on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina.

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Are there other universes out there? The multiverse theory is leading us to believe there are.

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Is there more than one universe? In this visually rich, action-packed talk, Brian Greene shows how the unanswered questions of physics (starting with a big one: What caused the Big Bang?) have led to the theory that our own universe is just one of many in the “multiverse.”

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Millennials are undoubtedly the most tech-savvy generation, but is harmful?

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Simon Sinek on Millennials in the Workplace

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"People underestimate the power of the situation to influence and shape their behavior."

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How Can the Science of Human Behavior Help Us Understand Abu Ghraib?

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People underestimate the power of the situation to influence and shape their behavior and they show considerable and stable individual differences in their attitudes and in their actions.

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How sleep deprivation affects our body, and what it could do to our life.

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Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences

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America's biggest problem | Kirk Parsley | TEDxReno

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This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. America has an ENORMOUS problem that most of us don't know we have. We've heard about this problem, but we don't think it's impacting "us" individually. We have a very simple, but not so easy way to fix this problem.

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What exactly turns a person evil?
*Some graphic material within the video.

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Philip Zimbardo knows how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. In this talk, he shares insights and graphic unseen photos from the Abu Ghraib trials. Then he talks about the flip side: how easy it is to be a hero, and how we can rise to the challenge.

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What steps are needed in order to make Mars habitable by humans?

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"Nearly 15,000 Somalis who fled their war-torn country to Kenya and planned to resettle in the United States are now stuck in the world's largest refugee camp because President Trump suspended the U.S. asylum program."

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Why does the US have such a low math performance level compared to other developed countries?

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If the United States is going to remain economically competitive and a leader in new technologies, the capacity of its high school and college graduates to do math must improve. Two decades of international comparisons show that the longer American students are in school, the further they fall behind their counterparts in other developed nations. William Schmidt, a Michigan State University professor who studies how U.S. students match up against those in other countries, says most American eighth-graders cannot do relatively simple tasks - such as add fractions - that students in other countries master by fourth grade. Just under half of U.S. eighth graders can correctly place three fractions - 2/7, 1/2, 5/9 - in ascending order. This question, from the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), was categorized as "medium" in difficulty, and students could even use calculators to solve it.

"This is not mental Olympics," Schmidt says. "It's not about one country doing a little bit better than others. It's really about our kids being able to function."

According to the "Nation's Report Card," as NAEP is widely known, only 39 percent of fourth-graders, 34 percent of eighth-graders, and 23 percent of twelfth-graders score at or above the "proficient" level in mathematics. In colleges, demand for remedial math education is high. A 2009 report from Jobs for the Future, a policy and advocacy organization focused on education and workforce opportunities, found that 60 percent of community college students must take at least one so-called "developmental" course before enrolling in college-level classes. Many high school graduates arrive at college needing to learn not just basic algebra but also basic arithmetic.

The sum of these statistics is this: math education in the United States "is broken and must be fixed," according to the National Mathematics Advisory Panel's 2008 report. "This is not a conclusion about any single element of the system. It is about how the many parts do not now work together to achieve a result worthy of this country's values and ambitions," the authors of the report stated.

Francis "Skip" Fennell, a member of the advisory panel and former president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, adds: "More and more of our kids are taking algebra than ever in our history, and yet we have high school performance that is either stagnant or declining, and we have too many kids moving into higher education and having to immediately take remedial classes. To me, that suggests a system that is more than a little out of whack."

Here are six aspects of the problem that math and policy experts say must be addressed:

1. Standards. All 50 states have content standards that say what students should learn in mathematics. Although the standards vary, experts agree that current content standards are generally too voluminous, scattered and repetitive. They don't give teachers clear guidance about what is important. They also return to the same topics over and over. Good standards, as with those that guide instruction in higher-achieving countries, focus on a few topics each year that students are expected to learn in greater depth. When students proceed to the next grade, most have mastered the material and the teacher can move on to teach new topics and skills. That's not the case in the U.S., however.

But change is coming: the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers have designed academic standards for math and English to ensure that students who have mastered them are ready to enter college or career-training programs. Those standards will be finalized in late spring 2010.

Although 48 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are participating in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, it's not known how many actually will embrace the new standards or the new tests that will accompany them. States competing for the $4.35-billion "Race to the Top" program earn points for adopting these standards or their equivalents. "Fewer, clearer and higher" was a guiding principle in the development of the new standards. "The idea here is less is more," Skip Fennell says. "Let's ensure we're teaching what's important and ensure that kids really have it."

2. Curriculum. The federal advisory panel's report argues that curricula should be designed to prepare elementary and middle school students to take a formal algebra class by eighth grade. Students need to understand whole numbers, fractions, measurement and basic geometry if they are to succeed in algebra. Yet, the panel's survey of algebra teachers found that many of their students do not even know the multiplication table or how to do long-division. The teachers surveyed generally blamed such shortcomings on students' overuse of calculators.

3. Graduation Requirements. Many states are increasing the number of math courses students must take to graduate. In Arkansas, beginning with the class of 2010, high school students must complete four years of math, including one year beyond Algebra II. The percentage of high school graduates taking Algebra II or even more advanced math rose from 56 to 77 percent between 1990 and 2005, according to NAEP's High School Transcript Study. Now, 20 states and Washington, D.C. require Algebra II for high school graduation. Prior to 2005, only three states - Arkansas, South Dakota and Texas - had such a requirement in place.

But despite recent increases in graduation requirements, mean scores on the math section of the SAT remain flat, having climbed just six points - from 509 to 515 - since 1972. And when Achieve, Inc. - a nonprofit organization that works with states to raise standards and improve graduation rates - administered an end-of-course assessment for Algebra II in 2009, only 15 percent of students scored at the prepared or well-prepared levels.

4. Textbooks. U.S. math textbooks are typically 700 to 1,000 pages long. Because they are unable to cover everything, teachers often sample the material without a coherent plan.

"Traditional U.S. textbooks rarely get beyond definitions and formulas," focusing on the mechanics of mathematics, concludes a 2005 report by the American Institutes for Research on math education in the United States and Singapore. By contrast, in Singapore, textbooks "build deep understanding of mathematical concepts through multistep problems and concrete illustrations that demonstrate how abstract mathematical concepts are used to solve problems from different perspectives." Singapore's textbooks cover fewer topics and are more focused.

5. Teaching. Among its most notable findings, the federal advisory panel concluded that researchers have no definitive answers about what constitutes good math teaching. The panel challenged claims about the superiority of "student-centered" teaching or "teacher-directed" lessons. There is no high-quality research supporting the exclusive use of either method. The report also found limited benefits from learning math through "real-world" situations. Many math educators have long argued that math is more relevant if it used to solve problems that arise in daily life, such as how to divide a six-slice pizza evenly among eight people. Numerous elementary math programs also use objects, such as cut-out squares of paper or rods of different lengths, to represent quantities. The idea is that numbers themselves are abstract and hard to understand. But this approach frustrates many parents, who don't know how to help their children learn the math. Many also worry that calculators undermine students' knowledge of basic math facts.

The panel concluded that it is essential for teachers to have a deep knowledge of the math they're trying to teach. The panel called for more math content to be covered in teacher preparation programs, increased mentoring of early-career teachers and more opportunities for professional development.

6. Culture. In most countries, math literacy is expected, but in the United States it seems socially acceptable to say "I hate math." Many citizens and parents are complacent about math education. For instance, a 2007 poll of Kansas and Missouri parents conducted by Public Agenda found that only 25 percent thought their children should be studying more math and science; 70 percent "think things are fine as they are now."

In raw numbers, the U.S. actually produces far fewer math majors today than the country did in the 1970s (see graphic), despite large increases in overall college enrollments. Math-averse students are missing out. A 2009 ranking by Careercast.com found that America's top three jobs - based on income, employment outlook stress, work environment and physical demands - were: 1) mathematician; 2) actuary; and 3) statistician.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it's free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Join us today.

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U.S. math education is broken - The Hechinger Report

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If the United States is going to remain economically competitive and a leader in new technologies, the capacity of its high school and college graduates to do math must improve. Two decades of international comparisons show that the longer American students are in school, the further they fall behind their counterparts in other developed nations.

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The old phrase “Water is Life. But water quality is health." Is the US over looking the water crisis?

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America's Water Crisis Could Be Worse Than You Know

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'We must be vigilant and rigorous testers of water'

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" The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2011 classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. "

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Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25-million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices. The findings, which chronicle an unprecedented number of rodents subjected to a lifetime of electromagnetic radiation starting in utero, present some of the strongest evidence to date that such exposure is associated with the formation of rare cancers in at least two cell types in the brains and hearts of rats. The results, which were posted on a prepublication Web site run by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, are poised to reignite controversy about how such everyday exposure might affect human health.

Researchers at the National Toxicology Program (NTP), a federal interagency group under the National Institutes of Health, led the study. They chronically exposed rodents to carefully calibrated radio-frequency (RF) radiation levels designed to roughly emulate what humans with heavy cell phone use or exposure could theoretically experience in their daily lives. The animals were placed in specially built chambers that dosed their whole bodies with varying amounts and types of this radiation for approximately nine hours per day throughout their two-year life spans. "This is by far-far and away-the most carefully done cell phone bioassay, a biological assessment. This is a classic study that is done for trying to understand cancers in humans," says Christopher Portier, a retired head of the NTP who helped launch the study and still sometimes works for the federal government as a consultant scientist. "There will have to be a lot of work after this to assess if it causes problems in humans, but the fact that you can do it in rats will be a big issue. It actually has me concerned, and I'm an expert."

More than 90 percent of American adults use cell phones. Relatively little is known about their safety, however, because current exposure guidelines are based largely on knowledge about acute injury from thermal effects, not long-term, low-level exposure. The International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2011 classified RF radiation as a possible human carcinogen. But data from human studies has been "inconsistent," the NTP has said on its website. Such studies are also hampered by the realities of testing in humans, such as recall bias-meaning cancer patients have to try to remember their cell phone use from years before, and how they held their handsets. Those data gaps prompted the NTP to engage in planning these new animal studies back in 2009.

The researchers found that as the thousands of rats in the new study were exposed to greater intensities of RF radiation, more of them developed rare forms of brain and heart cancer that could not be easily explained away, exhibiting a direct dose-response relationship. Overall, the incidence of these rare tumors was still relatively low, which would be expected with rare tumors in general, but the incidence grew with greater levels of exposure to the radiation. Some of the rats had glioma-a tumor of the glial cells in the brain-or schwannoma of the heart. Furthering concern about the findings: In prior epidemiological studies of humans and cell phone exposure, both types of tumors have also cropped up as associations.

In contrast, none of the control rats-those not exposed to the radiation-developed such tumors. But complicating matters was the fact that the findings were mixed across sexes: More such lesions were found in male rats than in female rats. The tumors in the male rats "are considered likely the result of whole-body exposure" to this radiation, the study authors wrote. And the data suggests the relationship was strongest between the RF exposure and the lesions in the heart, rather than the brain: Cardiac schwannomas were observed in male rats at all exposed groups, the authors note. But no "biologically significant effects were observed in the brain or heart of female rats regardless of modulation." Based on these findings, Portier said that this is not just an associated finding-but that the relationship between radiation exposure and cancer is clear. "I would call it a causative study, absolutely. They controlled everything in the study. It's [the cancer] because of the exposure."

Earlier studies had never found that this type of radiation was associated with the formation of these cancers in animals at all. But none of those studies followed as many animals, for as long or with the same larger intensity exposures, says Ron Melnick, a scientist who helped design the study and is now retired from the NTP.

The new results, published on Web site bioRXiv, involved experiments on multiple groups of 90 rats. The study was designed to give scientists a better sense of the magnitude of exposure that would be associated with cancer in rodents. In the study rats were exposed to RF at 900 megahertz. There were three test groups with each species of each sex, tested at different radiation intensities (1.5, three and six watts per kilogram, or W/kg), and one control group. (The lowest-intensity level roughly approximates the levels allowed by U.S. cell phone companies, which is 1.6 W/kg.) "There are only 90 animals per group, so because there is a trend-and this is the purpose of these assays where you do multiple doses you extrapolate downward and calculate a risk for humans from those trends-so that information is useful. Probably what caused cancer at the high doses will cause cancer at lower doses but to a lesser degree," Portier says.

Rodents across all the test groups were chronically exposed to RF for approximately nine hours spread out over the course of the day. (Their entire bodies were exposed because people are exposed to such radiation beyond their heads, especially when they carry them or store them in their bras, says John Bucher, the associate director of the NTP.) During the study the rats were able to run around in their cages, and to eat and sleep as usual. The experiments also included both types of modulations emitted from today's cell phones: Code Division Multiple Access and Global System for Mobile. (Modulations are the way the information is carried, so although the total radiation levels were roughly the same across both types, there were differences in how radiation is emitted from the antenna-either a higher exposure for a relatively short time or a lower exposure for a longer time.) Overall, there was no statistically significant difference between the number of tumors that developed in the animals exposed to CDMA versus GSM modulations. With both modulations and tumor types, there was also a statistically significant trend upward-meaning the incidence increased with more radiation exposure. Yet, drilling down into the data, in the male rats exposed to GSM-modulated RF radiation the number of brain tumors at all levels of exposure was not statistically different than in control males-those who had no exposure at all. "The trend here is important. The question is, 'Should one be concerned?' The answer is clearly 'Yes.' But it raises a number of questions that couldn't be fully answered, " says David Carpenter, a public health clinician and the director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, S.U.N.Y.

The findings are not definitive, and there were other confusing findings that scientists cannot explain-including that male rats exposed to the radiation seemed to live longer than those in the control group. "Overall we feel that the tumors are likely related to the exposures," says Bucher, but such unanswered questions "have been the subject of very intense discussions here."

The NTP released the partial findings on Friday after an online publication called Microwave News reported them earlier this week. The program will still be putting out other results about the work in rats and additional findings about similar testing conducted in mice. The NIH told Scientific American in a statement, "This study in mice and rats is under review by additional experts. It is important to note that previous human, observational data collected in earlier, large-scale population-based studies have found limited evidence of an increased risk for developing cancer from cell phone use." Still, the NTP was clearly expecting these findings to carry some serious weight: Ahead of Friday's publication the NTP said on its Web site that the study (and prior work leading to these experiments) would "provide critical information regarding the safety of exposure to radio-frequency radiation and strengthen the science base for determining any potential health effects in humans."

In response to media queries, cell phone industry group CTIA-The Wireless Association issued a statement Friday saying that it and the wireless industry are still reviewing the study's findings. "Numerous international and U.S. organizations including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, World Health Organization and American Cancer Society have determined that the already existing body of peer-reviewed and published studies shows that there are no established health effects from radio frequency signals used in cellphones," the CTIA statement said.

The Federal Communications Commission, which had been briefed by NIH officials, told Scientific American in a statement, "We are aware that the National Toxicology Program is studying this important issue. Scientific evidence always informs FCC rules on this matter. We will continue to follow all recommendations from federal health and safety experts including whether the FCC should modify its current policies and RF exposure limits."

This animal study was designed primarily to answer questions about cancer risks humans might experience when they use phones themselves, as opposed to smaller levels of exposure from wireless devices in the workplace or from living or working near cell phone towers. But it may have implications for those smaller levels as well, Portier says.

The findings shocked some scientists who had been closely tracking the study. "I was surprised because I had thought it was a waste of money to continue to do animal research in this area. There had been so many studies before that had pretty consistently not shown elevations in cancer. In retrospect the reason for that is that nobody maintained a sufficient number of animals for a sufficient period of time to get results like this," Carpenter says.

Exposing rodents to radiation for this type of experiment is a tricky business. First, scientists need to be able to calculate exactly how much the rats should be exposed to relative to humans. Too much exposure would not be a good proxy for human use. And with finely calculated low-level exposure rates, scientists still need to be sure they are not going to heat the animals enough to kill them or to cause other health problems. (Subsequent work will be published on the animals' temperatures.)

The fact that scientists were able to expose animals to nonionizing radiation (like that emitted by cell phones) and those animals went on to develop tumors but that exposure did not significantly raise the animals' body temperatures was "important" to release, Bucher says.

There are safety steps individuals can take, Carpenter says. Using the speakerphone, keeping the phone on the desk instead of on the body and using a wired headset whenever possible would help limit RF exposure. "We are certainly not going to go back to a pre-wireless age," he says. But there are a number of ways to reduce exposure, particularly among sensitive populations."
Editor's Note (5/27/16, 2:10 P.M.): This story was updated to reflect information provided during an NTP press conference and a statement from an industry group.

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Major Cell Phone Radiation Study Reignites Cancer Questions

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Federal scientists released partial findings Friday from a $25-million animal study that tested the possibility of links between cancer and chronic exposure to the type of radiation emitted from cell phones and wireless devices.

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Can your cell phones give you cancer over time

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The scientists were right - your cell phone can give you cancer.

There have long been whispers of a cancer connection from your cell - and a new study backs up the claims.

"These data are a clear sign of the real risks this kind of radiation poses for human health," study author Igor Yakymenko said.
CELLPHONE OWNERS WOULD ABANDON THEIR CATS OVER THEIR SMARTPHONES IN A FIRE: SURVEY
Yakymenko's meta-study - basically a study of hundreds of other studies - reveals many findings of previous researchers into how radiofrequency from your phone can damage DNA.

That damage can add up over time and cause a variety of health problems, like cancer, headaches, fatigue and even skin problems.

For example, using your phone for just 20 minutes a day for five years increased the risk of one type of brain tumor threefold, and using the phone an hour a day for four years upped the risk of some tumors three to five times, Yakymenko said.

Cell phone-induced health problems could take decades to develop.

MICROWAVING FOOD IN PLASTIC LINKED TO DIABETES, OTHER PROBLEMS: STUDY
But even though the risk of brain and related cancers is low - in 2012, there were 6.4 cases per 100,000 U.S. adults - Yakymenko says we should be on alert because ailments can take up to 30 years to develop.

"(Our) data were obtained on adults who used cell phones mostly up to 10 years as adults," he said. "The situation can dramatically differ for children who use cells phone in childhood, when their biology much more sensitive to hazardous factors, and will use it over the life."

To minimize your risk, use your phone less and go hands-free to keep the frequency away from your head, Yakymenko said.
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE. mengel@nydailynews.com

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Hold the phone, Central! Cellphone radiation can cause cancer: study

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The scientists were right - your cell phone can give you cancer. There have long been whispers of a cancer connection from your cell - and a new study backs up the claims. "These ...

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"unless humans are able to control and eventually eliminate our fossil fuel emissions, ocean organisms will find themselves under increasing pressure to adapt to their habitat's changing chemistry or perish."

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The ocean. It covers 70 percent of the planet and shelters an incredible diversity of life. It gives us food, jobs, and more than half the oxygen we breathe. We swim and sail it, travel to be near it, and learn from it.

But we're taking too many fish out of the ocean, polluting it, and making it warmer and more acidic. And less than eight percent of it is protected.

National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala launched the Pristine Seas project in 2008 to explore and help save the last wild places in the ocean. These unique ecosystems are a window into the past, revealing what the ocean looked like before overfishing and pollution took their toll. It is essential that we let the world know that these places exist, that they are threatened, and that help is needed to protect them. Read more.

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The ocean. It covers 70 percent of the planet and shelters an incredible diversity of life. It gives us food, jobs, and more than half the oxygen we breathe. We swim and sail it, travel to be near it, and learn from it.

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How is the CO2 in the air affecting our oceans and the species that inhabit it?

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Demystifying ocean acidification and biodiversity impacts

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With the rapid rate of technological innovation, can humans colonize and create a new version of Earth on Mars?

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Stephen Petranek: Your kids might live on Mars. Here's how they'll survive

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It sounds like science fiction, but journalist Stephen Petranek considers it fact: within 20 years, humans will live on Mars. In this provocative talk, Petranek makes the case that humans will become a spacefaring species and describes in fascinating detail how we'll make Mars our next home.

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"White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about “I, racist” and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness. In doing so, they reject the existence of racism. But arguing about personal non-racism is missing the point."

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What follows is the text of a "sermon" that I gave as a "congregational reflection" to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah. Credit for this speech goes to Chaédria LaBouvier, who's "Why We Left" inspired me to speak out about racism; to Robin DiAngelo, who's "White Fragility" gave me an understanding of the topic; and to Reni Eddo-Lodge who said "Why I'm no longer talking to white people about race" long before I had the courage to start doing it again.
A couple weeks ago, I was debating what I was going to talk about in this sermon. I told Pastor Kelly Ryan I had great reservations talking about the one topic that I think about every single day.

Then, a terrorist massacred nine innocent people in a church that I went to, in a city that I still think of as home. At that point, I knew that despite any misgivings, I needed to talk about race.

You see, I don't talk about race with White people. To illustrate why, I'll tell a story:

It was probably about 15 years ago when a conversation took place between my aunt, who is White and lives in New York State, and my sister, who is Black and lives in North Carolina. This conversation can be distilled to a single sentence, said by my Black sister:

"The only difference between people in The North and people in The South is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist."

There was a lot more to that conversation, obviously, but I suggest that it can be distilled into that one sentence because it has been, by my White aunt. Over a decade later, this sentence is still what she talks about. It has become the single most important aspect of my aunt's relationship with my Black family. She is still hurt by the suggestion that people in New York, that she, a northerner, a liberal, a good person who has Black family members, is a racist.

This perfectly illustrates why I don't talk about race with White people. Even- or rather, especially- my own family.

I love my aunt. She's actually my favorite aunt, and believe me, I have a lot of awesome aunts to choose from. But the facts are actually quite in my sister's favor on this one.

New York State is one of the most segregated states in the country. Buffalo, New York where my aunt lives is one of the 10 most segregated school systems in the country. The racial inequality of the area she inhabits is so bad that it has been the subject of reports by the Civil Rights Action Network and the NAACP.

Those, however, are facts that my aunt does not need to know. She does not need to live with the racial segregation and oppression of her home. As a white person with upward mobility, she has continued to improve her situation. She moved out of the area I grew up in- she moved to an area with better schools. She doesn't have to experience racism, and so it is not real to her.

Nor does it dawn on her that the very fact that she moved away from an increasingly Black neighborhood to live in a White suburb might itself be a aspect of racism. She doesn't need to realize that "better schools" exclusively means "whiter schools."

I don't talk about race with White people because I have so often seen it go nowhere. When I was younger, I thought it was because all white people are racist. Recently, I've begun to understand that it's more nuanced than that.

To understand, you have to know that Black people think in terms of Black people. We don't see a shooting of an innocent Black child in another state as something separate from us because we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.

The shooting of Walter Scott in North Charleston resonated with me because Walter Scott was portrayed in the media as a deadbeat and a criminal- but when you look at the facts about the actual man, he was nearly indistinguishable from my own father.

Racism affects us directly because the fact that it happened at a geographically remote location or to another Black person is only a coincidence, an accident. It could just as easily happen to us- right here, right now.

Black people think in terms of we because we live in a society where the social and political structures interact with us as Black people.

White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are "you," I am "one of them." Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.

What they are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my aunt, the suggestion that "people in The North are racist" is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn't exist because they don't see it.

The result of this is an incessantly repeating argument where a Black person says "Racism still exists. It is real," and a white person argues "You're wrong, I'm not racist at all. I don't even see any racism." My aunt's immediate response is not "that is wrong, we should do better." No, her response is self-protection: "That's not my fault, I didn't do anything. You are wrong."

Racism is not slavery. As President Obama said, it's not avoiding the use of the word Nigger. Racism is not white water fountains and the back of the bus. Martin Luther King did not end racism. Racism is a cop severing the spine of an innocent man. It is a 12 year old child being shot for playing with a toy gun in a state where it is legal to openly carry firearms.

But racism is even more subtle than that. It's more nuanced. Racism is the fact that "White" means "normal" and that anything else is different. Racism is our acceptance of an all white Lord of the Rings cast because of historical accuracy, ignoring the fact that this is a world with an entirely fictionalized history.

Even when we make shit up, we want it to be white.

And racism is the fact that we all accept that it is white. Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek. Khan, who is from India. Is there anyone Whiter than Benedict fucking Cumberbatch? What? They needed a "less racial" cast because they already had the Black Uhura character?
That is racism. Once you let yourself see it, it's there all the time.

Black children learn this when their parents give them "The Talk." When they are sat down at the age of five or so and told that their best friend's father is not sick, and not in a bad mood- he just doesn't want his son playing with you. Black children grow up early to life in The Matrix. We're not given a choice of the red or blue pill. Most white people, like my aunt, never have to choose. The system was made for White people, so White people don't have to think about living in it.

But we can't point this out.

Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we're tone policed, told we're being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are "just being overly sensitive," or "too emotional," or- playing the race card. Or even worse, we're told that we are being racist (Does any intelligent person actually believe a systematically oppressed demographic has the ability to oppress those in power?)

But here is the irony, here's the thing that all the angry Black people know, and no calmly debating White people want to admit: The entire discussion of race in America centers around the protection of White feelings.

Ask any Black person and they'll tell you the same thing. The reality of thousands of innocent people raped, shot, imprisoned, and systematically disenfranchised are less important than the suggestion that a single White person might be complicit in a racist system.

This is the country we live in. Millions of Black lives are valued less than a single White person's hurt feelings.

White people and Black people are not having a discussion about race. Black people, thinking as a group, are talking about living in a racist system. White people, thinking as individuals, refuse to talk about "I, racist" and instead protect their own individual and personal goodness. In doing so, they reject the existence of racism.

But arguing about personal non-racism is missing the point.

Despite what the Charleston Massacre makes things look like, people are dying not because individuals are racist, but because individuals are helping support a racist system by wanting to protect their own non-racist self beliefs.

People are dying because we are supporting a racist system that justifies White people killing Black people.

We see this in the way that one Muslim killer is a sign of Islamic terror; in the way one Mexican thief is a pointer to the importance of border security; in one innocent, unarmed Black man is shot in the back by a cop, then sullied in the media as a thug and criminal.

And in the way a white racist in a state that still flies the confederate flag is seen as "troubling" and "unnerving." In the way people "can't understand why he would do such a thing."

A white person smoking pot is a "Hippie" and a Black person doing it is a "criminal." It's evident in the school to prison pipeline and the fact that there are close to 20 people of color in prison for every white person.

There's a headline from The Independent that sums this up quite nicely: "Charleston shooting: Black and Muslim killers are 'terrorists' and 'thugs'. Why are white shooters called 'mentally ill'?"

I'm gonna read that again: "Black and Muslim killers are 'terrorists' and 'thugs'. Why are white shooters called 'mentally ill'?"

Did you catch that? It's beautifully subtle. This is an article talking specifically about the different way we treat people of color in this nation and even in this article's headline, the white people are "shooters" and the Black and Muslim people are "killers."

Even when we're talking about racism, we're using racist language to make people of color look dangerous and make White people come out as not so bad.

Just let that sink in for a minute, then ask yourself why Black people are angry when they talk about race.

The reality of America is that White people are fundamentally good, and so when a white person commits a crime, it is a sign that they, as an individual, are bad. Their actions as a person are not indicative of any broader social construct. Even the fact that America has a growing number of violent hate groups, populated mostly by white men, and that nearly *all* serial killers are white men can not shadow the fundamental truth of white male goodness. In fact, we like White serial killers so much, we make mini-series about them.

White people are good as a whole, and only act badly as individuals.

People of color, especially Black people (but boy we can talk about "The Mexicans" in this community), are seen as fundamentally bad. There might be a good one- and we are always quick to point them out to our friends, show them off as our Academy Award for "Best Non-Racist in a White Role"- but when we see a bad one, it's just proof that the rest are, as a rule, bad.

This, all of this, expectation, treatment, thought, the underlying social system that puts White in the position of Normal and good, and Black in the position of "other" and "bad," all of this, is racism.

And White people, every single one of you, are complicit in this racism because you benefit directly from it.

This is why I don't like the story of the good samaritan. Everyone likes to think of themselves as the person who sees someone beaten and bloodied and helps him out.

If I could re-write that story, I'd rewrite it from the perspective of Black America. What if the person wasn't beaten and bloody? What if it wasn't so obvious? What if they were just systematically challenged in a thousand small ways that actually made it easier for you to succeed in life?

Would you be so quick to help then, or would you, like most White people, stay silent and let it happen.

Here's what I want to say to you: Racism is so deeply embedded in this country not because of the racist right-wing radicals who practice it openly, it exists because of the silence and hurt feelings of liberal America.

That's what I want to say, but really, I can't. I can't say that because I've spent my life not talking about race to White people. In a big way, it's my fault. Racism exists because I, as a Black person, don't challenge you to look at it.

Racism exists because I, not you, am silent.

But I'm caught in the perfect Catch 22, because when I start pointing out racism, I become the Angry Black Person, and the discussion shuts down again. So I'm stuck.

All the Black voices in the world speaking about racism all the time do not move White people to think about it- but one White John Stewart talking about Charleston has a whole lot of White people talking about it. That's the world we live in. Black people can't change it while White people are silent and deaf to our words.

White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism. The question is: Are they brave enough to use that power to speak against the system that gave it to them?

So I'm asking you to help me. Notice this. Speak up. Don't let it slide. Don't stand watching in silence. Help build a world where it never gets to the point where the Samaritan has to see someone bloodied and broken.

As for me, I will no longer be silent. I'm going to try to speak kindly, and softly, but that's gonna be hard. Because it's getting harder and harder for me to think about the protection of White people's feelings when White people don't seem to care at all about the loss of so many Black lives.
This blog was originally published on Medium.com.

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What follows is the text of a "sermon" that I gave as a "congregational reflection" to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th. The sermon was begun with a reading of The Good Samaritan story, and this wonderful quote from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah.

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What's wrong with education... in a nutshell.

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Sir Ken Robinson: Changing education paradigms

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In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers.

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Is domestic violence really a women's issue?

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Jackson Katz: Violence against women -- it's a men's issue

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Domestic violence and sexual abuse are often called "women's issues." But in this bold, blunt talk, Jackson Katz points out that these are intrinsically men's issues -- and shows how these violent behaviors are tied to definitions of manhood. A clarion call for us all -- women and men -- to call out unacceptable behavior and be leaders of change.

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Are your views affected by how you search for news?

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Pew Research Center's Journalism Project

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When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

The project - part of a year-long effort to shed light on political polarization in America - looks at the ways people get information about government and politics in three different settings: the news media, social media and the way people talk about politics with friends and family. In all three areas, the study finds that those with the most consistent ideological views on the left and right have information streams that are distinct from those of individuals with more mixed political views - and very distinct from each other.

These cleavages can be overstated. The study also suggests that in America today, it is virtually impossible to live in an ideological bubble. Most Americans rely on an array of outlets - with varying audience profiles - for political news. And many consistent conservatives and liberals hear dissenting political views in their everyday lives.

Yet as our major report on political polarization found, those at both the left and right ends of the spectrum, who together comprise about 20% of the public overall, have a greater impact on the political process than do those with more mixed ideological views. They are the most likely to vote, donate to campaigns and participate directly in politics. The five ideological groups in this analysis (consistent liberals, mostly liberals, mixed, mostly conservatives and consistent conservatives) are based on responses to 10 questions about a range of political values. That those who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions have different ways of informing themselves about politics and government is not surprising. But the depth of these divisions - and the differences between those who have strong ideological views and those who do not - are striking.

Overall, the study finds that consistent conservatives:

Are tightly clustered around a single news source, far more than any other group in the survey, with 47% citing Fox News as their main source for news about government and politics.

Express greater distrust than trust of 24 of the 36 news sources measured in the survey. At the same time, fully 88% of consistent conservatives trust Fox News.

Are, when on Facebook, more likely than those in other ideological groups to hear political opinions that are in line with their own views.

Are more likely to have friends who share their own political views. Two-thirds (66%) say most of their close friends share their views on government and politics.

By contrast, those with consistently liberal views:

Are less unified in their media loyalty; they rely on a greater range of news outlets, including some - like NPR and the New York Times- that others use far less.

Express more trust than distrust of 28 of the 36 news outlets in the survey. NPR, PBS and the BBC are the most trusted news sources for consistent liberals.

Are more likely than those in other ideological groups to block or "defriend" someone on a social network - as well as to end a personal friendship - because of politics.

Are more likely to follow issue-based groups, rather than political parties or candidates, in their Facebook feeds.

Those with down-the-line conservative and liberal views do share some common ground; they are much more likely than others to closely follow government and political news. This carries over to their discussions of politics and government. Nearly four-in-ten consistent conservatives (39%) and 30% of consistent liberals tend to drive political discussions - that is, they talk about politics often, say others tend to turn to them for information rather than the reverse, and describe themselves as leaders rather than listeners in these kinds of conversations. Among those with mixed ideological views, just 12% play a similar role.

The Pew Research Center's American Trends Panel

Earlier this year, the Pew Research Center released a major analysis of changes in the American electorate titled Political Polarization in the American Public. The study, based on interviews with more than 10,000 adults nationwide, tracked the growing ideological consistency and partisan antipathy expressed by Americans, and how these views correlate with people's willingness to compromise, relationships with friends and family, and even preferences about where to live.

This report is based on a follow-up survey, about where people get political news and information, conducted among the 88% of panel members with online access. While the picture drawn might be slightly different if those without internet access had been included, this report provides a thorough look at political information consumption by the large online population.

It is important to note, though, that those at either end of the ideological spectrum are not isolated from dissenting views about politics. Nearly half (47%) of across-the-board conservatives - and 59% of across-the-board liberals - say they at least sometimes disagree with one of their closest political discussion partners.

For those closer to the middle of the ideological spectrum, learning about politics, or discussing it with friends and family, is a less of a focus. When they do follow politics, their main news sources include CNN, local TV and Fox News, along with Yahoo News and Google News, which aggregate stories from a wide assortment of outlets; these U.S. adults see more of a mix of views in social media and are less likely to be aware of their friends'political leanings.

This study, the latest in a series of reports on political polarization, is based on an online survey conducted March 19-April 29, 2014 with 2,901 members of the Pew Research Center's new American Trends Panel - a panel recruited from a telephone survey of 10,013 adults conducted earlier this year.

Among the key findings:

Media Sources: Nearly Half of Consistent Conservatives Cite Fox News

When it comes to choosing a media source for political news, conservatives orient strongly around Fox News. Nearly half of consistent conservatives (47%) name it as their main source for government and political news, as do almost a third (31%) of those with mostly conservative views. No other sources come close.

Consistent liberals, on the other hand, volunteer a wider range of main sources for political news - no source is named by more than 15% of consistent liberals and 20% of those who are mostly liberal. Still, consistent liberals are more than twice as likely as web-using adults overall to name NPR (13% vs. 5%), MSNBC (12% vs. 4%) and the New York Times (10% vs. 3%) as their top source for political news.

Among the large group of respondents with mixed ideological views, CNN (20%) and local TV (16%) are top sources; Fox News (8%), Yahoo News (7%) and Google News (6%) round out their top five sources.

Trust and Distrust: Liberals Trust Many, Conservatives Trust Few

At least as important as where people turn for news is whose news they trust. And here, the ideological differences are especially stark.

Respondents were asked whether they had heard of each of the 36 outlets listed in the accompanying graphic. For those they had heard of, they were asked about their trust - or distrust - in each source.

Liberals, overall, trust a much larger mix of news outlets than others do. Of the 36 different outlets considered, 28 are more trusted than distrusted by consistent liberals. Just eight earn higher shares of distrust than trust. Still, among those eight, the levels of distrust can be high: fully 81% of consistent liberals distrust Fox News, and 75% distrust the Rush Limbaugh Show.

Among consistent conservatives, by contrast, there are 24 sources that draw more distrust than trust. The same is true for 15 sources among those with mostly conservative views. And, of the eight outlets more trusted than distrusted by consistent conservatives, all but one, on balance, are distrusted by consistent liberals.

Also at play here is the degree to which people are more familiar with certain news sources than others. Some outlets such as CNN, ABC News and Fox News, are recognized by at least nine-in-ten respondents, meaning that more respondents offer a view of these outlets one way or the other. Outlets currently occupying more niche markets, such as Politico, the Economist or BuzzFeed, are known by only about a third of respondents. Thus, while they may elicit strong views in one direction, the share of respondents weighing in is relatively small.

This section of the report looks in detail at news audiences and trust and distrust of outlets across ideological groups. For more on how the news sources were selected, see Appendix B.

Social Media: Conservatives More Likely to Have Like-Minded Friends

In the growing social media space, most users encounter a mix of political views. But consistent conservatives are twice as likely as the typical Facebook user to see political opinions on Facebook that are mostly in line with their own views (47% vs. 23%). Consistent liberals, on average, hear a somewhat wider range of views than consistent conservatives - about a third (32%) mainly see posts in line with their own opinions.

But that doesn't mean consistent liberals necessarily embrace contrasting views. Roughly four-in-ten consistent liberals on Facebook (44%) say they have blocked or defriended someone on social media because they disagreed with something that person posted about politics. This compares with 31% of consistent conservatives and just 26% of all Facebook users who have done the same.

Consistent liberals who pay attention to politics on Facebook are also more likely than others to "like" or follow issue-based groups: 60% do this, compared with 46% of consistent conservatives and just a third (33%) of those with mixed views. And both the left and the right are more likely than others to follow political parties or elected officials: 49% of consistent conservatives and 42% of consistent liberals do so, compared with 29% of Facebook users overall.

Talking Politics: Dissenting Views Penetrate, but Less Frequently for the Ideologically Consistent

In personal conversations about politics, those on the right and left are more likely to largely hear views in line with their own thinking.

While only a quarter (25%) of respondents with mixed ideological views say most of their close friends share their own political views, that is true of roughly half (52%) of consistent liberals and two-thirds (66%) of consistent conservatives. And, when those who talk about politics are asked to name up to three people they most often talk to about politics, half (50%) of consistent conservatives name only individuals they describe as also being conservative - outpacing the 31% of consistent liberals who name only liberals.

At the same time, consistent liberals are more likely to stop talking to someone because of politics. Roughly a quarter (24%) have done so, compared with 16% of consistent conservatives and around 10% of those with more mixed political views.

Still, a solid portion of even the most ideologically-aligned respondents encounter some political disagreement with their close discussion partners. Nearly half (47%) of consistent conservatives who talk about politics name one or more discussion partners with whom they disagree at least some of the time. This figure rises to more than half (59%) of consistent liberals and even larger shares of those with mostly liberal and ideologically-mixed political views (79% each).

Media Outlets by the Ideological Composition of Their Audience

Ideological differences in media source preferences result in distinct audience profiles for many media outlets. Many sources, such as the Wall Street Journal, USA TODAY, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News have audiences that are, on average, ideologically similar to the average web respondent.

Reflecting liberals' use of a greater number of media sources, there are more outlets whose readers, watchers and listeners fall to the left of the average web respondent than to the right. At the same time, a handful of outlets have audiences that are more conservative than the average respondent.

Fox News sits to the right of the midpoint, but is not nearly as far right as several other sources, such as the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. A closer look at the audience breakdowns reveals why: While consistent conservatives get news from Fox News at very high rates, many of those with less conservative views also use Fox News. By contrast, the audiences for Limbaugh and Beck are overwhelmingly conservative.

By comparison, the average consumer of the Wall Street Journal sits very close to the typical survey respondent, but the range of Journal readers is far broader because it appeals to people on both the left and the right. As a result, while respondents overall cluster toward the center of the ideological spectrum, the Journal's audience is relatively evenly distributed across the continuum: 20% are consistent liberals, 21% mostly liberal, 24% mixed, 22% mostly conservative and 13% consistent conservative.

For a more detailed look at the ideological composition of each source's audience, see the Pew Research Center's interactive database.

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When it comes to getting news about politics and government, liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. There is little overlap in the news sources they turn to and trust. And whether discussing politics online or with friends, they are more likely than others to interact with like-minded individuals, according to a new Pew Research Center study.

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Are you reading fake news?

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Google, democracy and the truth about internet search

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Tech-savvy rightwingers have been able to 'game' the algorithms of internet giants and create a new reality where Hitler is a good guy, Jews are evil and... Donald Trump becomes president