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sanderk

Opinion | Twelve Million Americans Were Tracked Through Their Phones - The New York Times - 0 views

  • a trove of data obtained by Times Opinion. It holds more than 50 billion location pings from the phones of more than 12 million Americans, across several major cities. The data was provided to Times Opinion by sources who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to share it and could face severe penalties for doing so
  • grown alarmed about how it might be abused and urgently wanted to inform the public and lawmakers
  • This is the decade we were brainwashed into surveilling ourselves.
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  • Americans would be furious if the government required that every person must carry a tracking device that broadcast their location dozens of times each day, forever
  • Americans have, with every terms of service agreement they click “agree” on, consented to just such a system run by private companies. Tens of millions of Americans, including many children, are now carrying spies in their pockets.
  • The location tracking industry didn’t really exist until the end of the 2000s. Powerful location-based apps became ubiquitous in the blink of an eye. As the decade closes, we’re inundated with stories of privacy invasions, from data breaches to smart speakers to hackable doorbell cameras and now to location-gobbling apps.
manhefnawi

Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Explained in a Pioneering 1923 Silent Film - Brain Pickings - 0 views

  • “This is a participatory universe,” physicist John Archibald Wheeler, who popularized the term black hole, wrote in his influential theory known as It from Bit, asserting that “physics gives rise to observer-participancy; observer-participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics” — an assertion he could not have made without Einstein’s theory of relativity and its groundbreaking insight into how the laws of physics appear to different observers with different frames of reference.
johnsonel7

Sensory perception | Science Features | Naked Scientists - 0 views

  • Deciphering how the brain processes sight and hearing could have implications for how we understand and treat conditions such as dyslexia, autism and schizophrenia.
  • schizophrenia
  • Through a project called SENSOCOM, she is exploring how sensory perception affects communication, focusing on the brain’s deep subcortical structures.By doing this, she and her team are exploring a part of the brain traditionally excluded by research trying to understand communication impairments found in autism spectrum disorder and dyslexia, conditions which affect around 53 million people in Europe.
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  • To do this they have been focusing on the sensory pathways linked to these deep structures. She and her group discovered that adults with dyslexia have weaker pathway connections between a visual subcortical structure (the left visual thalamus) with an area of the cortex called V5/MT, which is critical for the perception of visual motion. In the auditory mode, there was a similar finding. The team discovered weaker connections between the left auditory thalamus and a cortex structure linked to auditory motion, which is important for speech perception. These connections could therefore be important for reading and for predicting reading skill, according to Dr von Kriegstein.
  • So how might this translate into helping people with dyslexia? This is basic science, says Prof. von Kriegstein, so first it’s crucial to understand the mechanisms behind communications disorders before developing therapy training tools, although she is optimistic these could lie within reach.
  • The way the brain encodes information and in turn directs perception of that sensory experience is a highly variable process.
  • The sensory overload or distorted and heightened perceptions described by schizophrenia patients, for instance, could relate to these deficits. Sensory dysfunction has also been linked to delusions and hallucinations as well as difficulties with attention and reading the emotions or tone of others – all of which can affect social interaction.
  • According to Dr Fellin, decreased connectivity between nerve cells (neurons) appears to play an important role in the progression of schizophrenia. So far, Dr Fellin and his group have identified which specific neurons influence sensory responses in mouse studies, but not yet in animal models of schizophrenia, with similar investigations in glial cells  - the supporting cells of the nervous system.
sanderk

How Navy SEALs Conquer Fear and Anxiety - SEALFIT - 1 views

  • Stress just means resistance or pressure. We need stress to grow as humans; it can be a positive force if mentally framed correctly — even enhancing performance to blast through a deadline. But prolonged stress erodes your performance and wellbeing.
  • The workload we endured seemed impossible. But, amazingly, it was. Our “Why” enabled us to tap into our 20X Factor and an uncommon resolve.
  • Despite the chaos, a SEAL is trained to focus with single-mindedness on the immediate threat and dispatch one target at a time. Excessive thinking would have killed me. My unconscious competence combined with relentless training saved my life.
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  • I was useless as a navigator but couldn’t abort the mission. My teammate took over. After my frustration and fear had dissipated, I slowed my breathing and held my breath at the inhale and exhale. I focused my mind on the breathing cycle while repeating the positive mantra, “Feeling good, looking good, ought to be in Hollywood!” thus accelerating my concentration and positivity. Suddenly we came to a halt. We’d arrived at the destination. A miserable three hours felt like an enjoyable 45 minutes just through focused breathing.
  • he had his SEAL Team visualize the mission hundreds of times. They mentally pictured everything that could go wrong, as well as what the victory would look like. They also rehearsed it live in a mock-up of the compound the terrorist was holed up in. This tactic is a key to SEAL success.
  • SEAL’s don’t take anything for granted and ensure that they win in their minds before stepping onto the helo
  • The SEAL ethos makes quitting not an option. SEALs persevere to “find a way or make one.” Things inevitably go wrong, but they don’t entertain the concept of failure
katherineharron

How coronavirus hypocrisy is tarnishing Boris Johnson's government (opinion) - CNN - 0 views

  • Johnson has proved staunch in his defense of his close ally since the latter was accused of breaking the UK's strict lockdown by driving 260 miles with his wife, who he admits was displaying some symptoms of coronavirus, and young son to be near his extended family.
  • In quarantine-fatigued Britain, however, where many have agonized over the command to stay away from frightened, sick and dying relatives, the Prime Minister's words have not gone down well. Highly unusually, several of his own Conservative MPs are now calling for Cummings to be sacked, and even the government-friendly Daily Mail asked: "What Planet Are They On?" of his decision to stand by his man.
  • In one of the more moving responses, Helen Goodman, until December the Labour Party MP for Durham, the northern town Cummings visited to stay in a property belonging to his parents, said she was "appalled" by his behavior, given her own father had died alone from Covid-19 in a local care home after she obeyed the rules and did not visit.
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  • Saying he had no regrets, he added: "I believe in all circumstances I behaved reasonably and legally. The legal rules do not inevitably cover all circumstances - including those I found myself in." Also on Monday, Johnson expressed "regret" for the "confusion, anger and pain" experienced by the British people as a result of the controversy; when pressed on whether he believes Cummings' decision has compromised the government's coronavirus message, Johnson doubled down on his support for Cummings, asserting, "I do not believe that anybody at Number 10 has done anything to undermine our message."
  • "The regulations made clear, I believe, that risks to the health of a small child were an exceptional situation."
  • To talk of the British sense of fair play is almost a cliché. But there is certainly a particular sensitivity among Britons to suggestions of hypocrisy which have thus far thwarted Cummings' attempts to brush off criticism of his excursion, and which contrast with, say, the relative lack of fuss in the US over the revelation that Ivanka Trump, President Donald Trump's daughter, traveled from Washington DC to New Jersey to celebrate Passover last month.
  • A controversial figure who relishes his role as an outsider, he also has a common touch when it comes to distilling a message with a brilliance complemented by Johnson's own flair for capturing the national mood. So while it was Johnson, then-Mayor of London, who in 2016 sensed an appetite for leaving the EU which his more senior colleagues missed, it was Cummings, head of the Vote Leave Campaign, who boiled it down to the simple and devastatingly effective slogan of "Take Back Control."
  • For a man known for his gregarious nature, the British Prime Minister has few close political friends; his inexperienced cabinet was appointed as much for their loyalty and support for his key policy of leading the UK out of the European Union as any long-term affinity with Johnson.
  • At the start of the lockdown, Dr. Catherine Calderwood, Scotland's Chief Medical Officer, fell on her sword after admitting two overnight visits at her seaside holiday cottage, having fronted the campaign urging Scots to stay home. Though Calderwood apologized for her actions and initially said she planned to stay on in her post, she later released a statement that she had quit and acknowledging that the "justifiable focus" on her actions could pose a distraction to the response to the pandemic.
  • As senior adviser since summer 2019 when Johnson became Prime Minister, the notoriously prickly Cummings has rubbed many Downing Street denizens the wrong way. But when coronavirus hit, it was he who crafted the message, "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives," which has come to define Britain's battle against the virus and the protective shield the country threw around its beloved health service.
  • The hitherto wildly popular Johnson's favorability ratings have begun to slip while a recent poll by YouGov found 49% disapproved of the Prime Minister's path out of lockdown compared to 36% who supported it.
  • The former Chief Constable of Durham Police, Mike Barton, has warned that Cummings' behavior, and the Prime Minister's defense of it, will make attempts to enforce the lockdown impossible, potentially endangering the slow but steady progress the UK has made in reducing the spread of the virus.
  • The consequences could be even more serious if a mass loss of faith in both the Johnson government and his lockdown results in the public breaking the rules just at the moment the Prime Minister is urging them to stand firm.
katherineharron

Elijah Cummings knew how to walk the tightrope of racial politics - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Perhaps no one so visibly crystallized the dissonance between black Americans and their country than Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, who died last Thursday and whose funeral service, at which the Clintons and former President Barack Obama will deliver remarks, is on Friday.
  • "In the Congress, Elijah was considered a north star," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled. "He was a leader of towering character and integrity. He lived the American dream." Pelosi also underscored that Cummings "spoke with unsurpassed clarity and moral integrity" -- that "everyone wanted to hear what Elijah had to say."
  • "Every time we spoke of selecting an individual who can rise to the occasion to be in debate with him, we would look for somebody who was strong, and every time someone was selected, they'd come back to be a very best friend of Elijah Cummings," House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California said.
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  • And yet, those accounts, while surely sincere, are also so simplistically heartwarming that they're misleading -- bowing to America's impulse to see certain black lives as a balm for the bruises of the political moment.
  • Consider the congressman's relationship with President Donald Trump. In March 2017, when the administration was only a few months old, Cummings met with Trump in the Oval Office. The two reportedly spoke openly about race, with the former explaining how the latter's comments about black communities, which he had characterized as poverty-addled hellscapes, were "insulting" and that "probably nobody (had) ever told (him) that."
  • Rather than retreat into defensiveness, Trump replied: "You're right -- nobody has ever told me that."
  • "To know our whites is to understand the psychology of white people and the elasticity of whiteness. It is to be intimate with some white persons but to critically withhold faith in white people categorically," Cottom explained. "It is to anticipate white people's emotions and fears and grievances because their issues are singularly our problem. To know our whites is to survive without letting bitterness rot your soul."
katherineharron

CES 2020: Toyota is building a 'smart' city to test AI, robots and self-driving cars - CNN Style - 0 views

  • armaker Toyota has unveiled plans for a 2,000-person "city of the future," where it will test autonomous vehicles, smart technology and robot-assisted living.
  • "With people buildings and vehicles all connected and communicating with each other through data and sensors, we will be able to test AI technology, in both the virtual and the physical world, maximizing its potential," he said on stage during Tuesday's unveiling. "We want to turn artificial intelligence into intelligence amplified."
  • The project is a collaboration between the Japanese carmaker and Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), which designed the city's master plan. Buildings on the site will be made primarily from wood, and partly constructed using robotics. But the designs also look to Japan's past for inspiration, incorporating traditional joinery techniques and the sweeping roofs characteristic of the country's architecture.
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  • Smart technology will extend inside residents' homes, according to Ingels, whose firm also designed the 2 World Trade Center in New York, and Google's headquarters in both London and Silicon Valley.
  • "In an age when technology, social media and online retail is replacing and eliminating our natural meeting places, the Woven City will explore ways to stimulate human interaction in the urban space," he said. "After all, human connectivity is the kind of connectivity that triggers wellbeing and happiness, productivity and innovation."
katherineharron

Stock market today: How the Dow and S&P 500 are trading - CNN - 0 views

  • Royal Caribbean Cruises (RCL) has received a $2.2 billion revolving line credit to help the beleaguered company stay afloat, it announced Monday.
  • Stocks are deep in the red at midday. The Washington gridlock on fiscal stimulus measures has overshadowed hopes that the Federal Reserve's onslaught of new monetary moves would lift markets higher.
  • The novel coronavirus outbreak has forced many people to stay home and work -- and kids are "going" to school virtually as well. That's a big reason why video conferencing company Zoom Video Communications (ZM) has been one of the rare Wall Street winners while the broader market has plunged into bear status.
manhefnawi

A Deep Dive Into the Brain, Hand-Drawn by the Father of Neuroscience - The New York Times - 0 views

  • This process of synaptic messaging between unconnected cells came to be called the Neuron Doctrine
tongoscar

Understanding Culture is the Key to Learning a Language - 0 views

  • If we look at language as simply a network of words and phrases, language learning becomes lifeless and robotic. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but such an approach would omit layers of meaning behind the words.
  • Understanding culture puts you in touch with the development and etymologies of the language, such that a culture-free language learning process would never enable the user to fully understand the language, no matter how well they might learn to parrot it.
  • To really unlock a language, to understand it at its roots, understanding culture is key. Here are a few reasons why the two go hand in hand.
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  • One of the most heated debates an American can ever get into is talking to an Italian about pizza. The latter might swear up and down that traditional Neapolitan pizza is the only legitimate form of the food.
  • Few elements of language expose a cultural worldview better than idioms. In fact, understanding culture and language is achievable in fast forward just by learning idioms.
  • Even the way we speak languages is part of culture. Korean uses the front of the mouth, and is very direct. Speaking a Korean sentence is like throwing a dart. Dak! It’s pointed and quick. American English is the half-swallowed drawl of a standoffish cowboy. It sits in the back of the throat, leaning against the bar, and barely engages the lips.
sanderk

4 Everyday Items Einstein Helped Create - 0 views

  • Albert Einstein is justly famous for devising his theory of relativity, which revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity, and the universe. Relativity also showed us that matter and energy are just two different forms of the same thing—a fact that Einstein expressed as E=mc2, the most widely recognized equation in history.
  • Credit for inventing paper towels goes to the Scott Paper Company of Pennsylvania, which introduced the disposable product in 1907 as a more hygienic alternative to cloth towels. But in the very first physics article that Einstein ever published, he did analyze wicking: the phenomenon that allows paper towels to soak up liquids even when gravity wants to drag the fluid downward.
  • Again, Einstein didn’t invent solar cells; the first crude versions of them date back to 1839. But he did sketch out their basic principle of operation in 1905. His starting point was a simple analogy: If matter is lumpy—that is, if every substance in the universe consists of atoms and molecules—then surely light must be lumpy as well.
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  • Einstein turned this insight into an equation that described the jittering mathematically. His Brownian motion paper is widely recognized as the first incontrovertible proof that atoms and molecules really exist—and it still serves as the basis for some stock market forecasts.
  • He was trying to explain an odd fact that was first noticed by English botanist Robert Brown in 1827. Brown looked through his microscope and saw that the dust grains in a droplet of water were jittering around aimlessly. This Brownian motion, as it was first dubbed, had nothing to do with the grains being alive, so what kept them moving?
  • If you’ve been to a conference or played with a cat, chances are you’ve seen a laser pointer in action. In the nearly six decades since physicists demonstrated the first laboratory prototype of a laser in 1960, the devices have come to occupy almost every niche imaginable, from barcode readers to systems for hair removal.
  • So Einstein made an inspired guess: Maybe photons like to march in step, so that the presence of a bunch of them going in the same direction will increase the probability of a high-energy atom emitting another photon in that direction. He called this process stimulated emission, and when he included it in his equations, his calculations fit the observations perfectly
  • A laser is just a gadget for harnessing this phenomenon
johnsonel7

Is politics getting in the way of assessing which films are actually good? | Jessa Crispin | Opinion | The Guardian - 0 views

  • If cinema had the impact on the world that film critics insisted they did in 2019, Joker would have brought about an incel revolution, and Little Women would have ended misogyny.
  • This was the year police departments issued warnings about the possibility of mass shootings at opening-night screenings of Joker, after all. It was a hysteria that built online after film critics saw the movie at festivals and started to complain it somehow “glamorized” or sympathized with violent incels.
  • But if you insist that a movie is important, you don’t really have to deal with whether or not it’s good. You can shame people into seeing it as a political statement, rather than as an entertainment or cultural selection. Same with the “dangerous” or “disturbing” moniker, which got used on everything from Joker to the latest Quentin Tarantino film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, which was marked down for everything from not giving its female co-star Margot Robbie enough lines to its gratuitous violence against a female would-be murderer to its filming of women’s feet (fetishes are now dangerous, I guess). If a critic doesn’t like a film, labeling it as dangerous – and implying you might get killed if you go see it – is an attempt to keep people away.
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  • Saudi Arabia has been showing Black Panther in its theaters, too – the first commercially released film to be screened in almost 35 years in this repressive, autocratic regime. And that’s a political victory too. For the repressive, autocratic regime, of course. Because as revolutionary as Black Panther was hailed as being in America, it is ultimately the story of a monarchy triumphing over the challenge presented by a rebellious force. It turns out that it makes for good propaganda for the Saudi monarchy. Oh, the irony.
tongoscar

Hottest decade ever recorded 'driven by man-made climate change' | Financial Times - 0 views

  • Man-made climate change was the main contributor to what has been the warmest decade,
  • With deadly bushfires raging across large parts of Australia, the UK’s Met Office said that the ten years to 2019 were the warmest since it first began taking measurements in 1850.
  • Global temperatures in 2019 were on average 1.05C above pre-industrial levels and this year could be hotter, the British weather service said.
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  • By the space agency’s calculations, 2019 was the second warmest year on record, behind only 2016. Alaska had its hottest ever year.
  • “We crossed over into more than 2F warming territory in 2015 and we are unlikely to go back,”
tongoscar

Climate change threatens lives and futures of over 19 million children in Bangladesh - 0 views

  • “Climate change is deepening the environmental threat faced by families in Bangladesh’s poorest communities, leaving them unable to keep their children properly housed, fed, healthy and educated,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, who visited Bangladesh in early March 2019. “In Bangladesh and around the world, climate change has the potential to reverse many of the gains that countries have achieved in child survival and development.”
  • Climate change clouds the future of children in Bangladesh, points out that Bangladesh’s flat topography, dense population and weak infrastructure make it uniquely vulnerable to the powerful and unpredictable forces that climate change is compounding.
  • The threat is felt from the flood and drought-prone lowlands in the country’s north to its storm-ravaged coastline along the Bay of Bengal.
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  • UNICEF says that a combination of extreme weather events – such as flooding, storm surges, cyclones and droughts – and longer-term phenomena directly related to climate change – such as sea level rise and salt water intrusion – are forcing families deeper into poverty and displacement. In the process, children’s access to education and health services is severely disrupted.
  • Around 12 million of the children most affected live in and around the powerful river systems which flow through Bangladesh and regularly burst their banks.
annabaldwin_

'Willing to Do Everything,' Mothers Defend Sons Accused of Sexual Assault - The New York Times - 0 views

  • “I was willing to do everything and anything,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • Each had a son who had been accused at college of sexual assault.
  • The women had been meeting regularly to share notes and commiserate.
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  • A few days before, Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had rescinded tough Obama-era guidelines on campus sexual assault, saying they violated principles of fairness, particularly for accused students like their own sons.
  • Women’s groups and victims’ advocates have deplored Ms. DeVos’s moves, saying they will allow colleges to wash their hands of the problem.
  • But a growing corps of legal experts and defense lawyers have argued that the Obama rules created a culture in which accused students, most of them men, were presumed guilty.
  • Away from the public eye, families have spent tens of thousands of dollars and dipped into retirement savings to hire lawyers and therapists for their sons.
  • Seefeld
  • “I was willing to do everything and anything,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • The mothers’ resolve comes from their raw maternal instinct to protect their children.
  • Their sons may not have been falsely accused, the mothers said, but they had been wrongly accused. They made a distinction.
  • The most active mothers said they stepped forward because they often had more time than their husbands, and because they made a strategic decision that they could be effective on the issue of sexual assault precisely because they are women and, as some described themselves, feminists. “We recognized that power,” Ms. Seefeld said.
  • Many women, however, feel exactly the opposite way.
  • They have not been shy about expressing their view of the mothers as “rape deniers” and misogynists who blame women for inviting male violence against them.
  • But if the mothers do not defend their sons, she said, who will?
  • “And pretty much the most significant weapon I had was the weapon of public opinion, so that was the weapon I was wielding the hardest.”
anniina03

A.I. Comes to the Operating Room - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Brain surgeons are bringing artificial intelligence and new imaging techniques into the operating room, to diagnose tumors as accurately as pathologists, and much faster, according to a report in the journal Nature Medicine.
  • The traditional method, which requires sending the tissue to a lab, freezing and staining it, then peering at it through a microscope, takes 20 to 30 minutes or longer. The new technique takes two and a half minutes.
  • In addition to speeding up the process, the new technique can also detect some details that traditional methods may miss, like the spread of a tumor along nerve fibers
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  • The new process may also help in other procedures where doctors need to analyze tissue while they are still operating, such as head and neck, breast, skin and gynecologic surgery, the report said. It also noted that there is a shortage of neuropathologists, and suggested that the new technology might help fill the gap in medical centers that lack the specialty. Video Advertisement LIVE 00:00 1:05
  • Algorithms are also being developed to help detect lung cancers on CT scans, diagnose eye disease in people with diabetes and find cancer on microscope slides.
  • The diagnoses were later judged right or wrong based on whether they agreed with the findings of lengthier and more extensive tests performed after the surgery.The result was a draw: humans, 93.9 percent correct; A.I., 94.6 percent.
  • At some centers, he said, brain surgeons do not even order frozen sections because they do not trust them and prefer to wait for tissue processing after the surgery, which may take weeks to complete.
  • Some types of brain tumor are so rare that there is not enough data on them to train an A.I. system, so the system in the study was designed to essentially toss out samples it could not identify.
  • “It won’t change brain surgery,” he said, “but it’s going to add a significant new tool, more significant than they’ve stated.”
tongoscar

Australia, your country is burning - dangerous climate change is here with you now - 0 views

  • I did not see vast expanses of rainforest framed by distant blue-tinged mountain ranges. Instead I looked out into smoke-filled valleys, with only the faintest ghosts of distant ridges and peaks in the background.
  • They seem disturbingly prescient in light of what we are witnessing unfold in Australia.
  • The brown skies I observed in the Blue Mountains this week are a product of human-caused climate change. Take record heat, combine it with unprecedented drought in already dry regions and you get unprecedented bushfires like the ones engulfing the Blue Mountains and spreading across the continent. It’s not complicated.
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  • The warming of our planet – and the changes in climate associated with it – are due to the fossil fuels we’re burning: oil, whether at midnight or any other hour of the day, natural gas, and the biggest culprit of all, coal. That’s not complicated either.
  • The continent of Australia is figuratively – and in some sense literally – on fire.
  • Australia is experiencing a climate emergency. It is literally burning.
  • Australians must vote out fossil-fuelled politicians who have chosen to be part of the problem and vote in climate champions who are willing to solve it.
krystalxu

Psychology vs Sociology: What's the Difference? - 0 views

  • Although these disciplines often attract students of similar mindsets and inclinations, the subjects are often confused with one another.
  • Both fields provide researchers with insight into inherent human attributes such as emotions, relationships and behaviors.
  • And both areas have the same ultimate goal: to improve people’s lives and work toward the betterment of society.
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  • Students seeking to make informed decisions about their career path must understand the nature of each subject in order to make the proper choice about their course of study.
  • Asks questions about comprehensive issues, such as “How will ‘x’ affect the continued development or wellness of the community?”
katherineharron

Donald Trump's 'bunker' story tells you everything you need to know about him - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • "Well it was a false report. I was down during the day and I was there for a tiny, little short period of time. And it was much more for an inspection. There was no problem during the day."
  • "I've gone down two or three times, all for inspection. And, you go there, some day you may need it. I went down. I looked at it. It was during the day, and it was not a problem. And I read about it, in like, a big thing. There was never a problem ... nobody ever came close to giving us a problem."
  • This re-framing of history is remarkable solely for the gall it takes to attempt it. After all, every single major media organization reported over the weekend -- with NO pushback from the White House -- that Trump had been taken into the bunker for his own protection, not to, uh, "inspect" it.
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  • "As protesters gathered outside the White House Friday night in Washington, DC, President Donald Trump was briefly taken to the underground bunker for a period of time, according to a White House official and a law enforcement source.
  • "A law enforcement source and another source familiar with the matter tell CNN that first lady Melania Trump and their son, Barron, were also taken to the bunker.
  • So, why would Trump describe it falsely to Fox? Especially when there are a few other things going on in the country -- most notably ongoing protests over the murder of a black man at the hands of police in Minneapolis and a global pandemic that has killed 106,000 Americans and is projected to kill 135,000 by early August.
  • There is nothing Trump hates more than weakness. And the image of him cowering in an underground bunker while protesters stood outside the gates of the White House is simply not something he cannot accept. This is a man who has been telling himself a story of his life -- one in which he is always the toughest, the smartest and the winner-est -- for, well, his entire adult life.
  • He could have gone anytime, of course! It was just a coincidence he was down there amid the protests outside the White House! Just going down to make sure all the buttons worked! All the brass was sufficiently polished! And the like.
johnsonel7

Coronavirus Recession: Fears Of Economic Slowdown Race Around The World : NPR - 0 views

  • As odds of a global recession rise, governments and central banks around the world are racing to fend off the economic damage from the spread of the coronavirus. The toll has already landed hard on jittery financial markets. Stocks continued to sell off on Thursday as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 969 points, or about 3.6%, as investors fled stocks. Companies have shut factories, canceled conferences and drastically scaled back employee travel.
  • Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate on Thursday gave final passage to a roughly $8 billion spending package to provide medical supplies in hard-hit areas and pay for vaccine research. President Trump has said he will sign the bill. Despite such measures, many economists now say growth is likely to slow considerably this year — if not contract altogether.
  • Goldman Sachs projected on Sunday that because of the coronavirus, the U.S. economy would grow by an anemic 0.9% during the first three months of 2020 and would flatline during the second quarter.
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  • The tumult in the U.S. economy still pales in comparison to the damage being felt in other countries. In China, auto sales cratered 80% last month, while a plunge in tourism is expected to push Italy and perhaps France into a recession.
  • The U.S. Travel Association predicts that international travel to the United States will fall by 6% over the next three months. "There is a lot of uncertainty around coronavirus, and it is pretty clear that it is having an effect on travel demand — not just from China, and not just internationally, but for domestic business and leisure travel as well," the association's president, Roger Dow, said in a statement.
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