Red Meat Raises Diabetes Risk

Red Meat Raises Diabetes Risk:

Consuming red meat – especially processed types (such as deli meats, bacon, and sausage) – raises a person’s risk of developing type-2 diabetes.

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A Town Without Poverty?

A Town Without Poverty?:

Canada's only experiment in guaranteed income finally gets reckoning

WHITEHORSE, YK—Try to imagine a town where the government paid each of the residents a living income, regardless of who they were and what they did, and a Soviet hamlet in the early 1980s may come to mind.

But this experiment happened much closer to home. For a four-year period in the '70s, the poorest families in Dauphin, Manitoba, were granted a guaranteed minimum income by the federal and provincial governments. Thirty-five years later all that remains of the experiment are 2,000 boxes of documents that have gathered dust in the Canadian archives building in Winnipeg.

Until now little has been known about what unfolded over those four years in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had been collected and prevented it from being analyzed.

But after a five year struggle, Evelyn Forget, a professor of health sciences at the University of Manitoba, secured access to those boxes in 2009. Until the data is computerized, any systematic analysis is impossible. Undeterred, Forget has begun to piece together the story by using the census, health records, and the testimony of the program's participants. What is now emerging reveals that the program could have counted many successes.

Beginning in 1974, Pierre Trudeau's Liberals and Manitoba's first elected New Democratic Party government gave money to every person and family in Dauphin who fell below the poverty line. Under the program—called “Mincome”—about 1,000 families received monthly cheques.

Unlike welfare, which only certain individuals qualified for, the guaranteed minimum income project was open to everyone. It was the first—and to this day, only—time that Canada has ever experimented with such an open-door social assistance program.

In today’s conservative political climate, with constant government and media rhetoric about the inefficiency and wastefulness of the welfare state, the Mincome project sounds like nothing short of a fairy tale.

For four years Dauphin was a place where anyone living below the poverty line could receive monthly cheques to boost their income, no questions asked. Single mothers could afford to put their kids through school and low-income families weren't scrambling to pay the rent each month.

For Amy Richardson, it meant she could afford to buy her children books for school. Richardson joined the program in 1977, just after her husband had gone on disability leave from his job. At the time, she was struggling to raise her three youngest children on $1.50 haircuts she gave in her living room beauty parlour.

The $1,200 per year she received in monthly increments was a welcome supplement, in a time when the poverty line was $2,100 a year.

“The extra money meant that I was also able to give my kids something I wouldn't ordinarily be able to, like taking them to a show or some small luxury like that,” said Richardson, now 84, who spoke to The Dominion by phone from Dauphin.

As part of the experiment, an army of researchers were sent to Dauphin to interview the Mincome families. Residents in nearby rural towns who didn't receive Mincome were also surveyed so their statistics could be compared against those from Dauphin. But after the government cut the program in 1978, they simply warehoused the data and never bothered to analyze it.

“When the government introduced the program they really thought it would be a pilot project and that by the end of the decade they would roll this out and everybody would participate,” said Forget. “They thought it would become a universal program. But of course, the idea eventually just died off.”

During the Mincome program, the federal and provincial governments collectively spent $17 million, though it was initially supposed to have cost only a few million.

Meant to last several more years, the program came to a quick halt in 1978 when an economic recession hit Canada. The recession had caused prices to increase 10 per cent each year, so payouts to families under Mincome had increased accordingly.

Trudeau's Liberals, already on the defensive for an overhaul of Canada's employment insurance system, killed the program and withheld any additional money to analyze the data that had been amassed.

“It's hugely unfortunate and typical of the strange ways in which government works that the data was never analyzed,” says Ron Hikel who coordinated the Mincome program. Hikel now works in the United States to promote universal healthcare reform.

“Government officials opposed [to Mincome] didn't want to spend more money to analyze the data and show what they already thought: that it didn't work,” says Hikel, who remains a strong proponent of guaranteed income programs.

“And the people who were in favour of Mincome were worried because if the analysis was done and the data wasn't favourable then they would have just spent another million dollars on analysis and be even more embarrassed.”

But Forget has culled some useful info from Manitoba labour data. Her research confirms numerous positive consequences of the program.

Initially, the Mincome program was conceived as a labour market experiment. The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.

It turns out they did.

Only two segments of Dauphin's labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families.

The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did.

“People didn't have to take the first job that came along,” says Hikel. “They could wait for something better that suited them.”

For some, it meant the opportunity to land a job to help them get by.

When Doreen and Hugh Henderson arrived in Dauphin in 1970 with their two young children they were broke. Doreen suggested moving from Vancouver to her hometown because she thought her husband would have an easier time finding work there. But when they arrived, things weren't any better.

“My husband didn't have a very good job and I couldn't find work,” she told The Dominion by phone from Dauphin.

It wasn't until 1978, after receiving Mincome payments for two years, that her husband finally landed janitorial work at the local school, a job he kept for 28 years.

“I don't know how we would have lived without [Mincome],” said Doreen.“I don't know if we would have stayed in Dauphin.”

Although the Mincome experiment was intended to provide a body of information to study labour market trends, Forget discovered that Mincome had a significant effect on people's well being. Two years ago, the professor started studying the health records of Dauphin residents to assess the impacts of the program.

In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.

It's not hard to see why, says Forget.

“When you walk around a hospital, it's pretty clear that a lot of the time what we're treating are the consequences of poverty,” she says.

Give people financial independence and control over their lives and these accidents and illnesses tend to dissipate, says Forget. In today's terms, an 8.5 per cent decrease in hospital visits across Canada would save the government $4 billion annually, by her calculations. And $4 billion is the amount that the federal government is currently trying to save by slashing social programming and arts funding.

Having analyzed the health data, Forget is now working on a cost-benefit analysis to see what a guaranteed income program might save the federal government if it were implemented today. She’s already worked with a Senate committee investigating a guaranteed income program for all low-income Canadians.

The Canadian government's sudden interest in guaranteed income programs doesn't surprise Forget.

Every 10 or 15 years there seems to be a renewed interest in getting Guaranteed Income (GI) programs off the ground, according to Saskatchewan social work professor James Mulvale. He's researched and written extensively about guaranteed income programs and is also part the Canadian chapter of the Basic Income Earth Network, a worldwide organization that advocates for guaranteed income.

GI programs exist in countries like Brazil, Mexico, France and even the state of Alaska.

Although people may not recognize it, subtle forms of guaranteed income already exist in Canada, says Mulvale, pointing to the child benefit tax, guaranteed income for seniors and the modest GST/HST rebate program for low-income earners.

However, a wider-reaching guaranteed income program would go a long way in decreasing poverty, he says.

Mulvale is in favour of a “demo-grant” model of GI that would give automatic cash transfers to everybody in Canada. This kind of plan would also provide the option of taxing higher-income earners at the end of the year so poorer people receive benefits.

A model such as this has a higher chance of broad support because it goes out to everybody, according to Mulvale. GI can also be administered as a negative income tax to the poor, meaning they'd receive an amount of money back directly in proportion to what they make each year.

“GI by itself wouldn't eliminate poverty but it would go a heck of a long way to decrease the extent of poverty in this country,” says Mulvale.

Conservative senator Hugh Segal has been the biggest supporter of this kind of GI, claiming it would eliminate the social assistance programs now administered by the provinces and territories. Rather than having a separate office to administer child tax benefits, welfare, unemployment insurance and income supplement for seniors, they could all be rolled into one GI scheme.

It would also mean that anybody could apply for support. Many people fall through the cracks under the current welfare system, says Forget. Not everybody can access welfare and those who can are penalized for going to school or for working a job since the money they receive from welfare is then clawed back.

If a guaranteed income program can target more people and is more efficient than other social assistance programs, then why doesn't Canada have such a program in place already? Perhaps the biggest barrier is the prevalence of negative stereotypes about poor people.

“There's very strong feelings out there that we shouldn't give people money for nothing,” Mulvale says.

Guaranteed income proponents aren't holding their breaths that they'll see such a program here anytime soon, but they are hopeful that one day Canada will consider the merits of guaranteed income.

The cost would be "not nearly as prohibitive to do as people imagine it is," says Forget. “A guaranteed minimum income program is a superior way of delivering social assistance. The only thing is that it's of course politically difficult to implement.”

Vivian Belik is a freelance journalist based in the frozen northlands of Whitehorse, Yukon. She was, however, raised in Manitoba where she has spotted many of the provinces small-town statues including the giant beaver in Dauphin.

Mincome

NYT on WikiLeaks: Move Along, No Atrocity to See Here

NYT on WikiLeaks: Move Along, No Atrocity to See Here:

(UPDATE: Today's Times includes a story about the WikiLeaks Iraq cable, under the somewhat strange headline "Cable Implicates Americans in Deaths of Iraqi Civilians." Still very little in the rest of the press-- nothing on television, according to a search of the Nexis database).

One of the main media tropes regarding WikiLeaks' release of State Department cables last year was that there was either nothing new to be learned, or that private conversations they revealed were remarkably consistent with what U.S. officials were saying publicly. That was totally misleading, but for many pundits the story seemed to end there.

Now comes the release of thousands more documents. If you've been reading the New York Times, you know these cables exist. But you don't know much more than that. On August 29, the Times focused on a dispute over whether some names in the cable weren't properly redacted to protect these individuals--"a shift of tactics that has alarmed American officials." WikiLeaks disagrees.

In today's edition of the Times (9/1/11), reporter Scott Shane gives a few examples of what's actually in the cables: criticism of former Philippines President Corazon Aquino, something about the Australian air safety system, human trafficking in Botswana. The rest of the article discusses the controversies over redactions, and whether or not someone has gained access to the entire trove of cables.

Shane adds: "News organizations in dozens of countries are panning for nuggets in the latest and largest dump of diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks."

One "nugget" the Times seems to have trouble finding: A cable that details how U.S. forces executed 11 civilians in a night raid in Iraq in 2006. The victims appear to have been handcuffed. U.S. forces apparently destroyed the evidence--the house--in an airstrike.

McClatchy has a piece by Matthew Schofield (8/31/11) summarizing the matter ( "WikiLeaks: Iraqi Children in U.S. Raid Shot in Head, UN Says"). He reports:

A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a five-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.

The unclassified cable, which was posted on WikiLeaks' website last week, contained questions from a United Nations investigator about the incident, which had angered local Iraqi officials, who demanded some kind of action from their government. U.S. officials denied at the time that anything inappropriate had occurred.

But Philip Alston, the UN's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said in a communication to American officials dated 12 days after the March 15, 2006, incident that autopsies performed in the Iraqi city of Tikrit showed that all the dead had been handcuffed and shot in the head. Among the dead were four women and five children. The children were all 5 years old or younger.

Schofield adds:

At the time, American military officials in Iraq said the accounts of townspeople who witnessed the events were highly unlikely to be true, and they later said the incident didn't warrant further investigation. Military officials also refused to reveal which units might have been involved in the incident.

The Daily Mirror (9/1/11) also has a piece today on this incident ("WikiLeaks Reveals Atrocities by U.S. forces"). John Glaser at Antiwar.com wrote a piece on August 29 detailing the contents of the cable--the first account that I can find, so he deserves credit for that.

But at this point, major U.S. papers like the New York Times are still searching for this nugget.

‘Stairway to Stardom’: The Forgotten Joys of Public Access TV

‘Stairway to Stardom’: The Forgotten Joys of Public Access TV:

Before America’s Got Talent, there was Stairway to Stardom, a public access talent show, broadcast in New York during the late 1970s and 1980s. Shot in what looks like someone’s basement, or the rehearsal room for a David Lynch film, Stairway to Stardom offered the young, the old, and even the deluded a chance to achieve the success their ambition suggested was theirs. Clips of this wonderfully bizarre series have popped up on YouTube over the years, and reveal what fans of Stairway to Stardom have known for years - that this camp, fun and rather charming show is still well ahead of Simon Cowell’s smug, corporate juggernaut.

Horowitz and Spector sing “Something’s Rotten in Translyvania”, 1988

Dante sings the “Theme from Exodus”, 1987

Reason To Live sing “Funky Groove”, 1983

Anthony Ciulla interprets the “Theme to Flashdance”, 1983

Precious Taft delivers a dramatic monologue, 1983

Don Costello does his comedy turn, 1983

Stairway to Stardom - Opening Titles 1984



With thanks to Fernando Caetano

Kashmere Stage Band – Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 (Deluxe Edition)

Kashmere Stage Band – Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 (Deluxe Edition):

Buy here.

Original sessions produced by Conrad O. Johnson.

This anthology produced by Egon.

Art direction by Matt Rowland with Trevor “Karma” Gendron.

Restoration and remastering by Dave Cooley.

CD Tracklist:

Disc One:

1. Boss City

2. Burning Spear

3. Take Five

4. Super Bad

5. Keep Doing It

6. Thunder Soul

7. Do You Dig It, Man?

8. Headwiggle

9. Do Your Thing **

10. Scorpio **

11. Thank You **

12. Al’s Tune

13. All Praises

14. Shaft

15. Kashmere

16. $ Kash Register $

17. Zero Point – Parts 1 & 2 (45 Version) *

18. Getting It Out of My System

Disc Two:

LIVE RECORDINGS (all previously unreleased):

1. Intro

2. Zero Point

3. All Praises / Zero Point (Reprise)

4. Intro

5. Do You Dig It, Man?

6. Don’t Mean a Thing

7. Thank You

8. Ain’t No Sunshine

9. Do You Dig It, Man?

10. All Praises

ALTERNATE TAKES:

11. Thank You (45 Version)

12. Zero Point (LP Version)

13. Do Your Thing (Instrumental)

14. Getting It Out of My System *

LP Tracklist:

Side A:

1. Boss City

2. Burning Spear

3. Take Five

4. Super Bad

5. Keep Doing It

6. Thunder Soul

Side B:

1. Do You Dig It, Man?

2. Headwiggle

3. Do Your Thing **

4. Scorpio **

Side C:

1. Thank You **

2. Al’s Tune

3. All Praises

4. Shaft

Side D:

1. Kashmere

2. $ Kash Register $

3. Zero Point – Parts 1 & 2 (45 Version) *

4. Getting It Out of My System

Side E:

1. Intro

2. Do You Dig It, Man?

3. Thank You

4. Ain’t No Sunshine

5. Do You Dig It, Man?

6. All Praises

Side F:

1. Thank You (45 Version)

2. Zero Point (LP Version)

3. Do Your Thing (Instrumental)

4. Getting It Out of My System *

* previously unreleased

** previously unissued extended version

* previously unreleased

** previously unissued extended version

DVD:

The DVD contains the shorts “Texas Jewels: The Making of Texas Thunder Soul,” by B+ and Flying Lotus, “Kashmere Stage Band on Jazz: Yesterday, Today, Forever,” and “Prof. and his Band: A Documentary by Charles Porter.”

2CD/DVD, 3LP/DVD. 2011. NA5085.

Download high res cover art here.

The spark of the cognitive revolution

The spark of the cognitive revolution:

Monitor on Psychology has a fascinating article on Otto Selz, a little known pioneer of the cognitive revolution who was decades ahead of the rest of psychology, before being captured and killed by the Nazis.

He was so little known, in fact, that the majority of people have never heard of him. In fact, this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything written about him, despite the fact he was a major influence on the key players who launched the concept of ‘mind as information processing metaphor’ in the 1950s.

Selz began to lay the foundation for cognitive research in a series of experiments he and his colleagues conducted from 1910 to 1915. They asked participants to explain their problem-solving thought processes out loud as they tried to complete a task, such as finding a word related to but more generic than “newspaper” or “farmer,” such as “publication” or “worker,” respectively. The participants would explain how they identified the features of those words, how the features fit into larger categories and how the categories led them to new words.

Based on these statements, Selz concluded that their minds were doing more than simply associating words and images they’d heard in conjunction before. To Selz, the participants were operating under what he called a “schema,” or an organizing mental principle, that guided their thoughts. Under this schema, the mind automatically orders relationships between ideas and can anticipate the connections among novel stimuli, serving as a basis for problem-solving. The existence of such an organized mental life would later become a cornerstone of the cognitive revolution.

Selz was actually captured twice by the Nazis. He was first sent to the Dachau concentration camp but was released after five weeks on the condition that he leave the country.

He went to Holland and continued working for two years but was captured again when the Nazi’s invaded. He died while been transported to Auschwitz.

The article has an incredibly poignant moment where it mentions “His last recorded correspondence was a postcard to his colleagues, telling them he planned to begin a lecture series for his fellow inmates.”

Link to APA Monitor article on Otto Selz.

Blaise Cendrars

Blaise Cendrars:

BLAISE CENDRARS (Frédéric Sauser, 1887-1961) was five writers in succession. First he was a poet, whose “Prose of the Transsiberian” (1913) was the first to apply Cubist principles of cut-up and simultaneity to verse, and whose Kodak (retitled Documentaires at the insistence of the Eastman Co.; 1923) was much later shown to have been extracted line by line from Gustave Le Rouge’s science-fiction epic The Mysterious Doctor Cornelius. Then he was a screenwriter and sometime director, best known for his work on Abel Gance’s J’Accuse (1919) and La Roue (1923). After that he was the author of novels that run the gamut from a kind of cinematic documentary montage (Sutter’s Gold, 1925) to hallucinatory yarns that suggest Jules Verne on laudanum (Moravagine, 1926; Dan Yack, 1927). He shone as an imaginative reporter in the 1930s, investigating crime, Hollywood, and the beginnings of World War II in a series of lapidary works that haven’t been translated into English. Finally he was a memoirist of an unusual sort, mixing up time and place in favor of subjective or perhaps cubistic recall, as in The Astonished Man (1945) and Planus (1948). He alternated all his life between wild flights of language and pellucid visual and factual description, consciously constructing parallels between literature and film, photography, and painting. He had a face that looked like it was bashed out of granite, in a corner of which lived a perpetually smoldering hand-rolled cigarette butt. He lost an arm at the Navarin Farm offensive in the Champagne, 1915, and always made a point of displaying his empty sleeve.

***

On his or her birthday, HiLobrow irregularly pays tribute to one of our high-, low-, no-, or hilobrow heroes. Also born this date: Edgar Rice Burroughs.

READ MORE about members of the Modernist Generation (1884-93).