Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Thomas Walkom discusses Canada’s likely NAFTA decision between an even worse deal than exists now, and no deal at all – though it’s worth recognizing that the latter choice shouldn’t be seen as a problem. And Alex Panetta points out the Libs’ total
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Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Richard Seymour follows up on Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral success by highlighting the importance of a grassroots progressive movement which stays active and vibrant between election cycles: Labour needs only a small swing to win a majority if there were to be another election,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Karl Nerenberg examines new research from the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards showing how workers have seen hardly any benefit from four decades of productivity gains which have filled corporate coffers: (I)n Canada, the productivity of labour — the amount
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Andrew Nikiforuk highlights how Donald Trump’s election is just one more predictable consequence of the end of shared growth – even as it figures to perpetuate that reality. And Andrew Coyne argues that Trump’s win under the U.S.’ warped electoral rules should
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.
– Erika Hayasaki surveys the developing body of research on how poverty and deprivation affect a child’s long-term brain development:
Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence as a backdrop in their lives, based on MRI scans, have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing.
…Though it’s still largely based on correlations between brain patterns and particular environments, the research points to a disturbing conclusion: Poverty and the conditions that often accompany it—violence, excessive noise, chaos at home, pollution, malnutrition, abuse and parents without jobs—can affect the interactions, formation and pruning of connections in the young brain.
Two recent influential reports cracked open a public conversation on the matter. In one, researchers found that impoverished children had less gray matter—brain tissue that supports information processing and executive behavior—in their hippocampus (involved in memory), frontal lobe (involved in decision making, problem solving, impulse control, judgment, and social and emotional behavior) and temporal lobe (involved in language, visual and auditory processing and self-awareness). Working together, these brain areas are crucial for following instructions, paying attention and overall learning—some of the keys to academic success.
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The second key study, published in Nature Neuroscience , also in 2015 , looked at 1,099 people between ages 3 and 20, and found that children with parents who had lower incomes had reduced brain surface areas in comparison to children from families bringing home $150,000 or more a year.“We have [long] known about the social class differences in health and learning outcomes,” says Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. But neuroscience has now linked the environment, behavior and brain activity—and that could lead to a stunning overhaul of both educational and social policies, like rethinking Head Start–style programs that have traditionally emphasized early literacy. New approaches, he says, could focus on social and emotional development as well, since science now tells us that relationships and interactions with the environment sculpt the areas of the brain that control behavior (like the ability to concentrate), which also can affect academic achievement (like learning to read).
– Adria Vasil discusses the worldwide trend of water being made available first (and for inexplicably low prices) to for-profit bottlers over citizens who need it. And Martin Regg Cohn examines how the story is playing out in Ontario in particular.
– Mike De Souza reports on how the National Energy Board, rather than acting as a neutral regulator, misled Denis Coderre to try to take free PR for both the NEB itself and fossil fuel development in general. And Carrie Tait points out how the Husky oil spill is raising questions about Saskatchewan’s fully captured regulatory system.
– Ian MacLeod reports on a sudden and unexplained increase in CSE interception of private communications.
– Finally, Andray Domise discusses what Colten Boushie’s shooting and its aftermath say about the blight of racism in Canada.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Afternoon Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading.- Erika Hayasaki surveys the developing body of research on how poverty and deprivation affect a child’s long-term brain development:Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Lucy Shaddock offers a response to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report on poverty and inequality in the UK, while McKinsey finds that hundreds of millions of people in advanced economies are seein…
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canada’s Surveillance Crisis: Spy Agencies Must Come Clean
Three years after Edward Snowden’s eye-opening state surveillance revelations, it’s time for the Communications Security Establishment and Canada’s other spy agencies to come clean.
The post Canada’s Surveillance Crisis: Spy Agencies Must Come Clean…
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Caroline Plante reports on Quebec’s scourge of medical extra-billing and user fees (as identified by its own Auditor General). And Aaron Derfel notes that the federal government has done nothing to app…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Tom Parkin writes about the growing divide between the lucky few who are siphoning wealth out of Canada, and the mass of people facing a precarious economic future. – PressProgress highlights much the same disti…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Ian Welsh discusses the attitude of meanness underlying so much of the U.S.’ political and cultural scene. – Ryan Meili and Adrienne Silnicki write about the dangers of relying on paid plasma donations…
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Justin Trudeau to give Canada’s NSA more powers to spy on Canadians
Justin Trudeau promises to give the Communications Security Establishment, Canada’s most secretive spy agency, more powers to spy on Canadians if the Liberals form the next government after the 2015 federal election. The post Justin Trudeau to give Canada’s NSA more powers to spy on Canadians appeared first on The
Continue readingOpenMedia.ca: Toronto Star: Canada’s electronic spy agency fears threat of informed public
Video by the Toronto Star The Communications Security Establishment seems to view an informed public as its adversary Until that changes, we should probably view the CSE as ours.
Continue readingPolitical Eh-conomy: Jason Kenney gets a growth portfolio
Jason Kenney has long been one of Stephen Harper’s trusted lieutenants and after yesterday’s cabinet reshuffle, he is now Minister of National Defence. In Harperland, this is a decisive promotion: from the “ugh, why are we still doing this?” of Employment and Social Development to the prestigious, patriotic defence portfolio.
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Canada’s Electronic Spy Agency Steals From Criminal Hackers
A report just published by Glenn Greenwald reveals that the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), Canada’s electronic spy agency, steals email content obtained by criminal hackers. The post Canada’s Electronic Spy Agency Steals From Criminal Hackers appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
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