Hormel Foods Struggling To Keep Up With Demand For Spam

AUSTIN, Minn. - The economy is in tatters and, for millions of people, the future is uncertain. But for some employees at the Hormel Foods Corporation plant here, times have never been better. They are working at a furious pace and piling up all the overtime they want. Read more

Prescription Drugs Kill 300 Percent More Americans than Illegal Drugs

A report by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission has concluded that prescription drugs have outstripped illegal drugs as a cause of death.

An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription drug abuse problem.

“The abuse has reached epidemic proportions,” said Lisa McElhaney, a sergeant in the pharmaceutical drug diversion unit of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. “It’s just explosive.” Read more

Big Pharma May be Handed Blanket Immunity for All Drug Side Effects, Deaths

The Supreme Court may rule that pharmaceutical companies cannot be sued for dangerous or even deadly side effects from their drugs if those side effects arise from an FDA-approved use.

Under a legal argument known as “pre-emption,” the FDA’s approval of a drug absolves companies of any responsibility if that drug later turns out to be dangerous, even if information was concealed from the FDA during the approval process. While courts have rejected this argument for decades, the winds appear to be shifting. Read more

Pharmaceutical Market ‘taken over by low-cost Chinese producers’

In the belly of an industrial district south of Lyon, France, just past a sulfurous oil refinery and a synthetic vanilla plant, sits a run-down, eight-story factory that makes aspirin, the first pharmaceutical blockbuster. The Lyon factory is the last of its kind. No other major facility in Europe or the United States makes generic aspirin anymore. The market has been taken over by low-cost Chinese producers. Even Bayer, the German company that created aspirin in the 1890s and has fought for more than a century to distinguish its product as the most trustworthy one, now has backup supplies from China. Read more

Psychological Control: States of Mental Disempowerment

Part II: Deconstructing the Power of the Global Elite

In Part I of “Deconstructing the Power of the Global Elite,” I discussed a threefold model of power: Brute Force, the Power to Hurt and Psychological Control. In Part II, I will address several forms of psychological control designed to induce states of mind that are inherently disempowering, that eliminate or severely diminish our will to take corrective action in the face of grievous harm. Read more

Aspartame Consumption Again Linked to Degeneration of Brain Neurons

(NaturalNews) High intake of the artificial sweetener aspartame may lead to the degeneration of brain cells and various mental disorders, according to a research review conducted by South African scientists from the University of Pretoria and the University of Limpopo and published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

“We propose that excessive aspartame ingestion might be involved in the pathogenesis of certain mental disorders, and also in compromised learning and emotional functioning,” the researchers concluded.

The review of prior research found that aspartame, marketed as NutraSweet, Equal, Canderal and Tropicana Slim, leads to both direct and indirect changes in the brain when consumed in high quantities. Among these effects, the chemical can disrupt amino acid metabolism and structure, degrade nucleic acids, and interfere with the function of nerve cells and hormonal systems. It also appears to change the concentration of certain neurotransmitters in the brain.

The researchers also noted that aspartame appears to cause excessive signaling of nerve cells, and nerve cell damage or even death. By disrupting the functioning of the cells’ mitochondria, or energy source, aspartame leads to a cascade of effects on the whole system.

“The energy systems for certain required enzyme reactions become compromised, thus indirectly leading to the inability of enzymes to function optimally,” the researchers wrote.

This directly contradicts a review published in 2007, which concluded that “aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption … no credible evidence was found that aspartame is carcinogenic, neurotoxic, or has any other adverse effect on health.”

Aspartame is a widely used artificial sweetener, particularly in food and beverage products marketed as low calorie or “diet.” It is used in more than 6,000 products around the world.

The chemical has been controversial since its introduction, with a number of studies linking it to cancer and neurological and behavioral disorders. People have reported experiencing headaches, insomnia and even seizures from aspartame consumption.

The FDA and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA), however, continue to insist that the sweetener is safe.

Sources for this story include: foodqualitynews.com.

Natural News | David Gutierrez | Thursday, September 25, 2008

Scientists have developed an artificial womb that allows embryos to grow outside the body

Doctors are developing artificial wombs in which embryos can grow outside a woman’s body. The work has been hailed as a breakthrough in treating the childless.

Scientists have created prototypes made out of cells extracted from women’s bodies. Embryos successfully attached themselves to the walls of these laboratory wombs and began to grow. However, experiments had to be terminated after a few days to comply with in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) regulations.

‘We hope to create complete artificial wombs using these techniques in a few years,’ said Dr Hung-Ching Liu of Cornell University’s Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility. ‘Women with damaged uteruses and wombs will be able to have babies for the first time.’

The pace of progress in the field has startled experts. Artificial wombs could end many women’s childbirth problems - but they also raise major ethical headaches which will be debated at a major international conference titled ‘The End of Natural Motherhood?’ in Oklahoma next week.

‘There are going to be real problems,’ said organiser Dr Scott Gelfand, of Oklahoma State University. ‘Some feminists even say artificial wombs mean men could eliminate women from the planet and still perpetuate our species. That’s a bit alarmist. Nevertheless, this subject clearly raises strong feelings.’

Liu’s work involves removing cells from the endometrium, the lining of the womb. ‘We have learnt how to grow these cells in the laboratory using hormones and growth factors,’ she said.

After this Liu and her colleagues grew layers of these cells on scaffolds of biodegradable material which had been modelled into shapes mirroring the interior of the uterus. The cells grew into tissue and the scaffold dissolved. Then nutrients and hormones such as oestrogen were added to the tissue.

‘Finally, we took embryos left over from IVF programmes and put these into our laboratory engineered tissue. The embryos attached themselves to the walls of our prototype wombs and began to settle there.’

The experiments were halted after six days. However, Liu now plans to continue with this research and allow embryos to grow in the artificial wombs for 14 days, the maximum permitted by IVF legislation. ‘We will then see if the embryos put down roots and veins into our artificial wombs’ walls, and see if their cells differentiate into primitive organs and develop a primitive placenta.’

The immediate aim of this work is to help women whose damaged wombs prevent them from conceiving. An artificial womb would be made from their own endometrium cells, an embryo placed inside it, and allowed to settle and grow before the whole package is placed back in her body.

‘The new womb would be made of the woman’s own cells. so there would be no danger of organ rejection,’ Liu added.

However, her research is currently limited by IVF legislation. ‘The next stage will involve experiments with mice or dogs. If that works, we shall ask to take our work beyond the 14-day limit now imposed on such research.’

A different approach has been taken by Yoshinori Kuwabara at Juntendo University in Tokyo. His team has removed foetuses from goats and placed them in clear plastic tanks filled with amniotic fluid stabilised at body temperature. In this way, Kuwabara has kept goat foetuses alive and growing for up to 10 days by connecting their umbilical cords to machines that pump in nutrients and dispose of waste.

While Liu’s work is aimed at helping those having difficulty conceiving, Kuwabara’s is designed to help women who suffer miscarriages or very premature births. In this way Liu is extending the time an embryo can exist in a laboratory before being placed in a woman’s body; Kuwabara is trying to give a foetus a safe home if expelled too early from its natural womb.

Crucially, both believe artificial wombs capable of sustaining a child for nine months will become reality in a few years.

‘Essentially research is moving towards the same goal but from opposite directions,’ UK fertility expert Dr Simon Fishel, of Park Hospital, Nottingham, said. ‘Getting them to meet in the middle will not be easy, however. There are so many critical stages of pregnancy, and so many factors to get right. Nevertheless, this work is very exciting.’

It also has serious ethical implications, as Gelfand pointed out. ‘For a start, there is the issue of abortion. A woman is usually allowed to have one on the grounds she wants to get rid of something alien inside her own body.

‘At present, this means killing the foetus. But if artificial wombs are developed, the foetus could be placed in one, and the woman told she has to look after it once it has developed into a child.’

In addition, if combined with cloning technology, artificial wombs raise the prospect that gay couples could give ‘birth’ to their own children. ‘This would no doubt horrify right-wingers, while the implications for abortion law might well please them,’ he added.

Gelfand also warned that artificial wombs could have unexpected consequences for working women and health insurance. ‘They would mean that women would no longer need maternity leave - which employers could become increasingly reluctant to give.

‘It may also turn out that artificial wombs provide safer environments than natural wombs which can be invaded by drugs and alcohol from a mother’s body. Health insurance companies could actually insist that women opt for the artificial way.

‘Certainly, this is going to raise a lot of tricky problems.’

The Observer | Robin McKie | Sunday, February 10, 2002

Study Finds That 35% Of BlackBerry And PDA Users Would Choose Their Device Over Their Spouse

NEW YORK (CBS) - Of all the possible things that can come between spouses, you can now add BlackBerrys — or more precisely — BlackBerry addiction to the list.

A new study reveals BlackBerry’s are becoming — among other things — the 800-pound gorilla in the bedroom.

‘Berry, ‘Berry, addictive?

“I live with it. I can’t live without it,” one New York City resident told CBS 2 HD.

Yeah … there’s a reason some call ‘em … CrackBerrys.

But are you having a love affair with yours?

“I am on my BlackBerry more than I see my boyfriend,” one woman said.

The study of 6,500 traveling executives says 35 percent of them would choose their PDA over their spouse.

“That’s a tough call,” one said.

“Oh you don’t want to go there,” another added.

And apparently that attitude is being seen in the sack. Of those polled, 87 percent said they bring their devices into the bedroom.

Another 84 percent check their e-mails just before they go to sleep. Another 80 percent check them in the morning as soon as they get up.

“It can actually ruin relationships,” said Dr. Susan Bartell, a psychologist and relationship expert. Bartell said couples should be interfacing more, but with each other.

“People are so focused on their PDAs, they’re not focusing on what might be going wrong in their relationships,” Bartell said.

Of those polled, 62 percent said they love their blackberry or PDA, and most of them said it makes their life more productive. However, experts suggest, for the sake of your relationship, you might occasionally …

“Turn it off, spend some time with your partner. Have a real relationship with a living human being,” Bartell said.

The study was done by Sheraton hotels. Among its other findings: More than three quarters of those polled say their gadgets give them more quality time with friends and family… and help them enjoy life more.

Go figure.

WCBSTV | Monday, September 15, 2008

Drinking Water of 41 Million Americans Contaminated with Pharmaceuticals

(NaturalNews) An investigation by the Associated Press (AP) has revealed that the drinking water of at least 41 million people in the United States is contaminated with pharmaceutical drugs.

It has long been known that drugs are not wholly absorbed or broken down by the human body. Significant amounts of any medication taken eventually pass out of the body, primarily through the urine.

“People think that if they take a medication, their body absorbs it and it disappears, but of course that’s not the case,” EPA scientist Christian Daughton said.

While sewage is treated before being released back into the environment, and water from reservoirs or rivers is also treated before being funneled back into the drinking water supply, these treatments are not able to remove all traces of medications. And so far, the EPA has not regulated the presence of pharmaceuticals in drinking water, meaning that there are no laws in existence today that protect consumers from this increasingly dangerous chemical contaminant of the water supply.

Medications for animals also contaminating the water supply

Drugs given to animals are also entering the water supply. One study found that 10 percent of the steroids given to cattle pass directly through their bodies, while another study found that steroid concentrations in the water downstream of a Nebraska feedlot were four times as high as the water upstream. Male fish downstream of the feedlot were found to have depressed levels of testosterone and smaller than normal heads, most likely due to the pharmaceutical contamination in their water.

“It brings a question to people’s minds that if the fish were affected … might there be a potential problem for humans?” said EPA research biologist Vickie Wilson.

While the concentration of drugs in drinking water tends to be low, some medications, such as hormones, are able to operate potently even at concentrations of one part per billion. To make matters worse, there is evidence that the chlorine commonly used to treat drinking water may make some pharmaceutical chemicals more toxic. Thus, the typical claim that “pharmaceuticals are only present in very low concentrations, and therefore could not be dangerous” holds no water (pardon the pun). Not only are some chemicals potentiated (made more toxic) by other chemicals in the water, but to date, there have been absolutely no studies looking at the increased danger posed by combinations of pharmaceuticals now being found.

In other words, nobody knows the level of risk that may be associated with the chemical cocktail of pharmaceuticals now being found in the water supply. No one can say with any degree of honesty that the drug contamination is safe, meaning that the real risks to human remain entirely unknown.

56 different drug chemicals in the drinking water

To determine the extent of drinking water contamination, an Associated Press investigative team surveyed the water providers of the 50 largest cities in the United States and 52 smaller communities, analyzed federal databases and scientific reports, and interviewed government and corporate officials.

The investigation found widespread evidence of drinking water contaminated with both over-the-counter and prescription drugs, including painkillers, hormones, antibiotics, anti-convulsants, anti-depressants, and drugs for cancer or heart disease. Of the 28 major cities that tested their water supplies for pharmaceuticals, only two said those tests showed no pharmaceutical contamination. In Philadelphia, 56 different drugs and drug byproducts were found in treated drinking water, and 63 were found in the city’s watershed.

Of the 35 watersheds that had been tested, 28 were found to be contaminated. Deep-water aquifers near landfills, feedlots and other contaminant sources in 24 states were also found to contain pharmaceuticals. This means that even in rural areas where people get their water from wells, drinking water might still contain drugs.

According to researcher Anthony Aufdenkampe of the Stroud Water Research Center, watersheds in rural areas can be contaminated when people’s septic tanks malfunction. “Septic systems are essentially small treatment plants that are essentially unmanaged and therefore tend to fail,” he said.

Cities do not test the water for pharmaceutical pollution

Even these numbers do not give the full scale of the problem, the AP suggests, because many water providers simply do not test for this kind of contamination, which is not regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Of the 52 small water providers surveyed by AP, only one screened its water for pharmaceuticals.

Other providers do screen, but they conceal the results from the public. According to a group that represents California water providers, the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” from such tests and therefore does not need to hear it! Even companies that test and report their data often screen for only a few chemicals, creating a skewed impression of how contaminated the water actually is.

Water bottling companies also do not screen for pharmaceutical contamination in their water products. It is highly likely, at the same time, that soft drink bottling companies using local tap water supplies to make their beverages are potentially using pharmaceutical-contaminated water.

The EPA sticks its head in the ground over pharmaceutical pollution

According to Shane Snyder, research and development project manager at the Southern Nevada Water Authority, researchers looking into the extent of water contamination are avoiding the important questions.

“I think it’s a shame that so much money is going into monitoring to figure out if these things are out there, and so little is being spent on human health,” Snyder said. “They need to just accept that these things are everywhere; every chemical and pharmaceutical could be there. It’s time for the EPA to step up to the plate and make a statement about the need to study effects, both human and environmental.”

A total of over 100 pharmaceutical products have been detected in water supplies in North America, Europe and Asia, including remote regions such as Swiss lakes and the North Sea. And bottled or filtered water, the AP report notes, is not necessarily safer, as the filters used in homes or bottling plants are rarely designed to remove pharmaceutical residue.

Drug companies, for their part, have done nothing to accept responsibility for the environmental health impact of their polluting chemicals. In fact, Big Pharma hasn’t even yet acknowledged the fact that their products are “pollutants” in any way. Like most pharmaceutical consumers, the drug companies hope to just flush this issue down the toilet and pretend it never existed.

The health impact of pharmaceutical contaminants in water

Very little research has been conducted on the specific effects of trace drugs in drinking water, but what evidence is there gives cause for alarm. Contamination of environmental water sources has caused male fish to exhibit female traits and led to damaging effects on other wildlife species. Laboratory research indicates that small levels of drugs can cause cancer cells to proliferate faster, slow kidney cell growth and cause inflammation in blood cells. At a time when the American population is suffering from skyrocketing infertility and hormone imbalances, it seems outrageous that health authorities would not be looking more closely at this issue and working on ways to protect the public from pharmaceutical pollution.

Because water is consumed regularly in large quantities over a lifetime, and because humans are exposed to many combinations of dozens of different drugs, the effects on the human body may be significantly greater than those seen in the lab. And unlike most pollutants, drugs are specifically designed to cause changes in the human body, thus they are far less likely to be “inert” than other chemicals that might be found in the water supply.

“These are chemicals that are designed to have very specific effects at very low concentrations,” said zoologist John Sumpter of London’s Brunel University. “That’s what pharmaceuticals do. So when they get out to the environment, it should not be a shock to people that they have effects.”

Natural News | David Gutierrez | Friday, August 22, 2008

How Anti-Intellectualism Is Destroying America

“It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.” Barack Obama finally said it.

Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the Right’s stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them — and us — unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society.

American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy, and their parents are as likely to believe in flying saucers as in evolution; roughly 30 to 40 percent believe in each. Their president believes “the jury is still out” on evolution.

Steve Colbert interviewed Georgia Rep. Lynn Westmoreland on “The Colbert Report.” Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill that would require the display of the Ten Commandments in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, but, when asked, couldn’t actually list the commandments.

This stuff would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous.

In the 2004 election, nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed the United States had “clear evidence” that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. To motivate their followers, they label intelligent and informed as “elite,” implying that ignorance is somehow both valuable and under attack. Susan Jacoby confronts our “know-nothingism” — current and historical — in her new book, The Age of American Unreason.

A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Her political blog, The Secularist’s Corner, is on the Web site of the Washington Post.

Terrence McNally: Have things gotten worse? How were things different as you were growing up?

Susan Jacoby: Well, I have just been told that all of my memories of growing up are wrong, because memory is absolutely inaccurate. It’s only a “narrative.”

I’ll give you an example of how stupid this country has become. I’m one of the village atheists on Faith, a panel sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek. In a recent post I wrote that when I was 7 years old, I was taken by my mom to visit a friend who had been stricken by polio and was in an iron lung. Polio has basically been eradicated, but I grew up when polio was still a real threat to children, before the Salk vaccine.

This childhood friend had been playing and running only three weeks before, and now he was in an iron lung. And I asked my mom, “Why would God let something like that happen?” And to her credit, instead of giving me some moronic answer, my mother said, “I don’t know.”

After posting this on Faith, I received an e-mail saying, “All childhood memories are unreliable. We construct narratives to justify what we now think.”

Of course it would be stupid if I’d said I became an atheist at the age of 7. But I hadn’t said that, only that I remembered this childhood experience as making me begin to question what I’d been taught. The whole tone of the e-mail was that nobody’s memory about anything could possibly be accurate — no fact could possibly be true.

TM: That doesn’t sound like a typical evolution doubter. It sounds like an attack on rationality from a rational person.

SJ: That’s right. One of the points I make in my book is that unreason pervades our culture. It’s not just a matter of right-wing religious fundamentalism. There are all kinds of unreason and suspicion of evidence on both the Right and the Left.

TM: Misinformation may well have been the deciding factor in a close election in 2004. I worry not just about the lack of information and knowledge, but also the active disparagement of those who would even care about such things.

SJ: Contempt for fact is very important.

I’ll give you a great example that’s already obsolete. At the end of the primaries, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain endorsed a gas tax holiday for Americans this summer. Every economist, both liberal and conservative, said this would do nothing to help matters. And when Hillary Clinton was asked by the late Tim Russert, “Can you produce one economist to support the gas tax holiday?” she said, “Oh that’s elite thinking.”

Now to say that economists have nothing intelligent to say about whether a gas tax will give people economic relief is like saying that you don’t ask musicians about music; you don’t ask scientists about science. It’s not just an attack on a political idea; it’s an attack on knowledge itself.

TM: And this from a woman who was in the top of her class at Yale Law School.

SJ: Of course, she doesn’t believe it for a minute. It shows that a lot of politicians think they have to play to ignorance and label anything that goes against received opinion as elitism.

I was quite encouraged that the actual majority of Americans — both Republicans and Democrats — said the gas tax was just a stupid gimmick.

TM: They were already getting a tax rebate check. At a certain point we see through this.

SJ: Elite simply means “the best,” not the political meaning that’s been ascribed to it. If you’re having an operation, you don’t want an ordinary surgeon. You want an elite surgeon. You want the best.

TM: I suspect the connotation is better known now than the actual definition. “Elite” now implies stuffy, superior, arrogant — and, most importantly, not one of us.

SJ: These basic knowledge deficits — the fact that American 15-year-olds are near the bottom in mathematical knowledge compared with other countries, for example — actually affect our ability to understand larger public issues. To understand what it means that the top 1 percent of income earners are getting tax breaks, you have to know what 1 percent means.

TM: Richard Hofstadter’s 1963 classic, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, described our anti-intellectualism as “older than our national identity.” Yet our founders developed a form of government that demanded an informed citizenry. How do these two things fit together?

SJ: That’s really the American paradox. For example, there is no country that has had more faith in education as an instrument of social mobility. No country in the West democratized education earlier, but no country has been more suspicious of too much education. We’ve always thought of education as good if it gets you a better job, but bad if it makes you think too much.

Hofstadter was writing at the dawn of video culture, so he could not talk about one of the key things in my book. The domination of culture by mass media, video and 24/7 infotainment has been added to the American mix in the last 40 years. Video culture is the worst possible means for understanding anything more complicated than a sound bite.

TM: I recall the book The Sound Bite Society (by Jeffrey Scheuer, 2000) said that television inherently prefers simplistic arguments, simple solutions, simple answers.

SJ: As we’re talking, I happen to have my computer on. News stories are flashing and off the screen. If they’re on for two seconds, you’re going to miss a lot, and that’s the problem with video culture as translated through computers.

TM: Having all that information at our fingertips is a plus. What’s the negative?

SJ: I love that I don’t have to go through half a dozen books to find a date that I’ve forgotten. The ability to get quick information is great, but if you don’t have a framework of knowledge in which to fit that information, it means nothing.

I’ll give you an example. In my talks to people, I often mention a statistic from the National Constitution Center that almost half of Americans can’t name even one of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. A student stood up at a university in California and said, “That doesn’t matter because you can just look it up on the Internet.” But if you don’t know what the First Amendment is in the first place, you don’t know what question to ask the Web.

Garbage in, garbage out. The Web’s only as good as our ability to ask questions of it. The ability to access information means nothing if you don’t have an educated framework of knowledge to fit it into.

TM: Why America? Other countries have television and the Internet.

SJ: The network of infotainment has no national boundaries, it’s all over the world. But there are a couple of things that make America particularly susceptible.

A fundamentalist is one who believes in a literal interpretation of sacred books, and a third of Americans believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. That’s about 10 times more than any other developed country in the world. It’s entirely possible to be a religious believer and to accept science, but not if you’re a literal religious believer. You can’t believe that the world was literally created in six days, and be open to modern knowledge.

There’s also something else: We’ve always had more faith in technology than other countries. One of our problems with computers is that we believe in technological solutions to what are essentially non-technological problems. Not knowing is a non-technological problem. The idea that the Web is an answer to knowing nothing is wrong, but it’s something that Americans — with our history of believing in technology as the solution to everything — are particularly susceptible to.

TM: I’m beginning to feel like the child who keeps asking “Why?” You say that a much larger percentage of Americans believe in the literal word of holy books. In your investigations, have you come up with some sense of why that is?

SJ: That’s in my previous book, Freethinkers. One reason, oddly enough, is our absolute separation of church and state. In secular Europe — as it’s often called sneeringly by people like Justice Antonin Scalia — religious belief and belief in political systems were united. So if you opposed the government, you also had to oppose religion. That wasn’t true in America because we had separation of church and state. Many forms of religious belief survived in America, because you could believe anything you wanted and still not be opposed to your government.

TM: So because religion wasn’t tied to government we had more freedom …

SJ: And more religion.

TM: But what is it in our culture? Is our geographical isolation part of it?

SJ: You anticipated what I was going to say. There’s also the idea of American exceptionalism — that America is different from every other country.

I say in my book that Americans are unwilling to look at how really bad our educational system is because we’ve all been propagandized with the idea that we’re number one. That may have been true after World War II, but not anymore. The idea that we’re number one and special and better than everybody else is a very powerful factor in American life, and it prevents us from examining certain respects in which we’re not number one.

TM: Politicians in particular tend to preface any comment by saying, “Well, of course we have the best education system,” “We have the best health care,” the best this and that. And people accept that even though we have clear evidence that it is no longer true.

SJ: Evidence involving infant mortality and life expectancy. Though the very rich in this country get the best health care in the world, by all of the normal indices of health, we are worse off than Europe and Canada.

TM: Our universities and particularly our graduate schools are still the envy of the world, but with the education available to everyone, that’s no longer so.

SJ: Right, and to call arguments like mine elitist is wrong. I think that the basis of a society is what people with normal levels of education understand. That means we need to be concerned about elementary schools, secondary schools and community colleges — not what people at Harvard and Yale might be learning.

TM: What are the possible solutions?

SJ: There are solutions at a social level, but they have to begin at an individual level.

After the Wisconsin primary, Barack Obama was asked a question about education, and I was very encouraged when he said, “There’s a lot we can do about education, but first of all, in our homes we have to turn off the TV more …” Not altogether, but turn it off more, put the video games on the shelf more and spend more time talking and reading to our kids.

With my book, more than making a prescription, I wanted to start a conversation about how we spend our time. I’m not one of these people who think that you should raise your kids without ever watching TV. We all have to live in the world of our time. I’m saying people ought to look about how much time we spend on this. There is nothing wrong with a parent coming home and putting a kid in front of a video for an hour so they can have a drink and an intelligent conversation with their partner. It’s wrong when the hour turns into two hours or three hours or four hours or five hours, as in too many American homes.

TM: When it becomes just a habit.

SJ: Moderation. I know it’s very unfashionable and it seems like a small idea, but I think more than what people watch on video, what matters is how much they watch it.

TM: I believe we’re finding that as kids become more addicted to television and other screens, they become less familiar with nature, with their own bodies, with what we would call the real world.

It strikes me that intelligence has been defined by so many as just cognitive intelligence. Is part of the solution that we begin to shift our way of thinking, so that intelligence includes emotional intelligence and other forms of intelligence?

SJ: No. I don’t actually recognize these different forms of intelligence. Emotional intelligence depends largely on whether we are brought up to empathize with other people. But it doesn’t matter if you’re kind to others and you understand them if you don’t know anything about your society and history.

These are actually different things, and my point is, one doesn’t substitute for the other. They’re all important. In terms of society, having emotional intelligence without knowledge is useless. And, of course, having knowledge without emotional intelligence is also useless. But they’re not the same thing.

I think spending eight hours a day in front of television — the amount of time the average American family has a television on in its home — is probably bad for both emotional intelligence and knowledge. I don’t think these things are in opposition, they’re both necessary. Neither of them is adequate without the other.

Interviewer Terrence McNally hosts Free Forum on KPFK 90.7 FM, Los Angeles (streaming at kpfk.org). Visit terrencemcnally.net for podcasts of all interviews and more.

AlterNet | Terrence McNally | Friday, August 15, 2008

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