Friday, September 12, 2008

Dancing Queen - An intimate tribute to the joy of dancing


Sep 12, 2008
	Dancing Queen An intimate tribute to the joy of dancing, this short film by Sumit Roy was shot entirely on a Nokia cell phone--and selected from over 2000 submissions for showcasing on Pangea Day, a day-long global event aimed at bringing the world together through film. Prepare to be delighted.

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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

The Cancer Project - Remove Hot Dogs & Other Processed Meat From Schools - Protect Our Kids

The Cancer Project Launches Major Processed Meat Campaign

girl with school lunch Schools should stop serving hot dogs and other processed meats because even small amounts increase the risk of adult cancer, says a provocative new commercial airing on TV stations around the country. The spot is produced by the Cancer Project, an affiliate of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

The Cancer Project is launching a major campaign to educate the public about the cancer risk found in hot dogs and other processed meats. The campaign includes a provocative new national TV commercial, a survey of processed meat found in the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs, and a grassroots effort to reform federal food policy.

The Cancer Project’s campaign is based on a comprehensive report released late last year by the American Institute for Cancer Research and the World Cancer Research Fund. After reviewing all existing data on nutrition and cancer risk, researchers concluded that processed meat increases one’s risk of colorectal cancer, on average, by 21 percent for every 50 grams consumed daily. (A 50-gram serving is approximately the size of a typical hot dog.) The landmark report clearly states that no amount of processed meat is considered safe to eat.

Each year, 160,000 Americans are diagnosed with colorectal cancer. About half of all cases are already incurable when found. Approximately 50,000 Americans are expected to die of the disease this year.

This summer, The Cancer Project debuted a new 30-second television ad based on the report. “Protect Our Kids” features three children at an elementary school who describe their lives from the perspective of adults with cancer. The ad intersperses their stories with shots of hot dogs, deli meats, and other unhealthy foods so often found on school lunch lines.

"Cancer risk starts early," says Neal Barnard, M.D., president of the Cancer Project. "If we don't protect our kids by removing hot dogs, sausages, and deli slices, and pepperoni from our schools, we're stacking the cards against them. Lifetime cancer risk is already one in three for women and one in two for men. Given the terrible eating habits of so many American children, we're setting them up for even worse odds down the road."

As with tobacco, the cancer risk associated with processed meats seems to increase with long-term exposure, so processed meat consumption that begins in childhood poses a profound concern.

The Cancer Project is currently campaigning to reform the federal Child Nutrition Act, up for renewal in 2009, which determines what foods are served in the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture currently includes processed meats in the lists of commodity foods available to schools.

A new Cancer Project survey of 29 U.S. school districts shows that many school menus are packed with processed meats. All breakfasts offered in Minneapolis elementary, middle, and high schools, for example, contain sausage and other processed meats. The same is true for all regular breakfasts offered in Philadelphia schools.

Sixty percent of all elementary school breakfasts, 80 percent of all middle school breakfasts, and 80 percent of all high school breakfasts in the Los Angeles Unified School District contain processed meats. Half of all elementary and middle school breakfasts in the Chicago Public Schools offer processed meats, as do 100 percent of its high school meals. Eighty-eight percent of breakfasts in D.C. middle and high schools contain processed meats.

School districts with the most processed meat at lunch include Atlanta, Chicago; Clark County, Nevada; Prince George's County, Maryland; Columbus, Ohio; Hancock, West Virginia; New York City; and Detroit.

The Child Nutrition Act, which determines what foods are served in the National School Breakfast and Lunch Programs, is up for reauthorization next year. The USDA is holding these listening sessions around the country. Cancer Project and PCRM representatives are asking for various improvements to the program, including more vegetarian foods, equal reimbursement for nondairy beverages as for cow’s milk, and a removal of processed meats from the list of commodities available to schools.

If you are a parent, teacher, student, or concerned citizen who wants to see processed meats removed from your local school, please get involved in our campaign. Contact Caitlin Breen at 202-686-2210, ext. 325, or cbreen@pcrm.org.

Saturday, August 23, 2008

More Honest Living Based On Experience - "Don't believe everything you think."

Living With Radical Honesty
--Brad Blanton

Listen To Audio!

http://tow.charityfocus.org/audio.php?op=play&tid=580

I learned that the primary cause of most human stress, the primary cause of most conflict between couples and the primary cause of most both psychological and physical illness is being trapped in your mind and removed from your experience. What keeps you trapped in your mind and removed from your experience is lying and we all lie […] all the time. We're taught systematically to lie, to pretend, to maintain a pretense because we're taught that who we are is our performance. Our schools teach us to lie, our parents teach us to lie. We're all suffering from mistaken identity.

We think that who we are is our reputation, what the teacher thinks of us, what kind of grades we make, what kind of job we have. We're constantly spinning our presentation of self, which is a constant process of lying and being trapped in the anticipation of imagining about what other people might think.

Our actual identity is as a present tense noticing (and acting) being. I'm someone sitting here talking on the telephone right now and you're sitting there talking on the telephone and writing or doing whatever you're doing.

That's your current identity and this is my current identity and when you start identifying with your current present-tense identity you discover all kinds of things about life that you can't even see or notice when you're trapped in the spin doctoring machine of your mind.

So radical honesty is about delivering yourself from that constant worrisome preoccupation of, "Oh my god. How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing? How am I doing?" Then you can pay attention to what's going on in your body and in the world and even pay attention to what's going on in your mind. […]

Just look at what you notice in front of you right now, your environment, wherever you are in an office or wherever it is. Noticing is an entirely different function than thinking and what we do all the time is that we confuse thinking with noticing.

When we think something we act as though it has the same validity as something that we see.

(From actual experience, using imagination to act to co-create better, more useful experiences, for a better world for everyone - people and nature.)

I've got a bumper sticker on my truck that says, "Don't believe everything you think." It's like your thinking just goes on and on and on and on.

(Experience - Think & Act On It)

--Brad Blanton, Center For Radical Honesty

Listen!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Ways To Encourage Children To Be Healthier By Eating Lots Of Fruit And Vegetables

Parents Shape Whether Their Children Learn To Eat Fruits And Vegetables

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080811200425.htm

ScienceDaily (Aug. 13, 2008) — Providing fruits for snacks and serving vegetables at dinner can shape a preschooler's eating patterns for his or her lifetime.

To combat the increasing problem of childhood obesity, researchers are studying how to get preschoolers to eat more fruits and vegetables. According to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, one way is early home interventions — teaching parents how to create an environment where children reach for a banana instead of potato chips.

"We know that parents have tremendous influence over how many fruits and vegetables their children eat," says Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., a professor at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work. "When parents eat more fruits and vegetables, so do their children. When parents eat and give their children high fat snacks or soft drinks, children learn these eating patterns instead."

Haire-Joshu and researchers at Saint Louis University School of Public Health tested a program that taught parents in their homes how to provide preschool children easy access to more fruits and vegetables and examined whether changes in what the parents ate affected what their children consumed. The study was published in the July issue of the journal Preventive Medicine.

"This research shows that it's important to communicate with parents in real world settings," Haire-Joshu says. "They control the food environment for their young child. This environment is key to not only what children eat today but how they will eat in the future."

Past research has shown that diets high in fruits and vegetables are associated with a lower risk of obesity. Previous studies also have established that children learn to like and eat vegetables at a young age — before they turn five years old.

In this five-year study in rural, southeast Missouri, 1,306 parents and children between the ages of two and five participating in Parents As Teachers, a national parent education program, were randomly assigned to two groups. One group enrolled in the High 5 for Kids program, and the other group received standard visits from Parents as Teachers. In the High 5 for Kids group, parents first completed a pretest interview about fruit and vegetable consumption.

Parent educators then visited the home four times, providing examples of parent-child activities designed around nutrition, such as teaching the child the names and colors of various fruits and vegetables and having the child select a variety of fruits and vegetables for breakfast. At each visit, parents also received materials and informational handouts with suggestions for improving feeding practices and the food environment in the home. Many of these materials were tailored to the individual patterns of that parent, with suggestions for how to improve his or her specific intake and that of their child.

Additionally, children were given four High 5 for Kids sing-along-stories with audiocassettes and coloring books.

The same parent interviewed before the intervention completed a telephone survey to determine changes in the number of fruits and vegetables eaten and behaviors of both the preschool children and parent. The average time between the before and after intervention survey was seven months.

Parents in the High 5 for Kids group ate significantly more fruits and vegetables, and a change in the parent's servings of fruits and vegetables predicted a change in the child's diet, too. An increase of one fruit or vegetable serving per day in a parent was associated with an increase of half a fruit or vegetable serving per day in his or her child. These parents also reported an increase in fruit and vegetable knowledge and availability of fruits and vegetables in the home.

Although the High 5 for Kids program was effective in improving fruit and vegetable intake in children of normal weight, overweight children in this group did not eat more of these foods. "Overweight children have already been exposed to salty, sweet foods and learned to like them," says Haire-Joshu, who also holds an appointment at the School of Medicine as a professor. "To keep a child from becoming overweight, parents need to expose them early to a variety of healthy foods and offer the foods many times."

Haire-Joshu says many children today are taught patterns that lead to obesity. "We want families to provide their child with an environment in which they not only learn how to eat healthy but have the opportunity to practice what they learn," she says. "And by partnering with Parents As Teachers, we now can disseminate this program to their sites nationwide. This further impacts healthy eating patterns in parents and their preschool children."

Adapted from materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Free Learning For The World - Audio and Video From World Universities, Museums, Public Media ...

Free Learning For The World

Audio and Video From World Universities, Museums, Public Media

MIT Courses ... Global Learning ... any where, any time ... for everyone on the planet.

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Now your favorite destination for music and movies is also a great place to entertain your brain. iTunes U in the iTunes Store offers free audio and video content from top universities, famous museums, public media stations, and other cultural institutions. So whether you want to learn from the world’s leading thinkers, get a sneak peek at the latest MoMA exhibition, or simply brush up on your Spanish, iTunes U makes it easy. To see for yourself, watch the tutorial.

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Children Are Naturally Prone To Be Empathic And Moral

ScienceDaily (July 12, 2008) — Children between the ages of seven and 12 appear to be naturally inclined to feel empathy for others in pain, according to researchers at the University of Chicago, who used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) scans to study responses in children.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080711080957.htm

See also:

Mind & Brain

Reference

When children see an image of a person in pain, portions of their brain register that pain on a fMRI scan. When the children see a person intentionally hurt, portions of the brain associated with moral reasoning are also activated. (Credit: University of Chicago)

The responses on the scans were similar to those found in studies of adults. Researchers found that children, like adults, show responses to pain in the same areas of their brains. The research also found additional aspects of the brain activated in children, when youngsters saw another person intentionally hurt by another individual.

"This study is the first to examine in young children both the neural response to pain in others and the impact of someone causing pain to someone else," said Jean Decety, Professor in the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

The programming for empathy is something that is "hard-wired" into the brains of normal children, and not entirely the product of parental guidance or other nurturing, said Decety. Understanding the brain's role in responding to pain can help researchers understand how brain impairments influence anti-social behavior, such as bullying, he explained.

For their research, the team showed 17 typically developed children, ages seven to 12, animated photos of people experiencing pain, either received accidentally or inflicted intentionally. The group included nine girls and eight boys.

While undergoing fMRI scans, children where shown animations using three photographs of two people whose right hands or right feet only were visible.

The photographs showed people in pain accidently caused, such as when a heavy bowl was dropped on their hands, and situations in which the people were hurt, such as when a person stepped intentionally on someone's foot. They were also shown pictures without pain and animations in which people helped someone alleviate pain.

The scans showed that the parts of the brain activated when adults see pain were also triggered in children.

"Consistent with previous functional MRI studies of pain empathy with adults, the perception of other people in pain in children was associated with increased hemodymamic activity in the neural circuits involved in the processing of first-hand experience of pain, including the insula, somatosensory cortex, anterior midcigulate cortex, periaqueductal gray and supplementary motor area," Decety wrote.

However, when the children saw animations of someone intentionally hurt, the regions of the brain engaged in social interaction and moral reasoning (the temporo-parietal junction, the paracigulate, orital medial frontal cortices and amygdala) also were activated.

The study, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, provides new insights for children between childrens' perceptions of right and wrong and how their brains process information, Decety said. "Although our study did not tap into explicit moral judgment, perceiving an individual intentionally harming another person is likely to elicit the awareness of moral wrongdoing in the observer," he wrote.

Subsequent interviews with the children showed they were aware of wrong-doing in the animations in which someone was hurt. "Thirteen of the children thought that the situations were unfair, and they asked about the reason that could explain this behavior," Decety said.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

US Teacher Is Suspended For Letting Pupils Read Bestseller - Neglecting Their Duty No Less

US Teacher Is Suspended For Letting Pupils Read Bestseller

by Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Published on Thursday, July 3, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/03/10067/

An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months.

The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.

The Writers Diary, a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers, was put together by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives. It was made into a film with Hilary Swank last year.

Connie Heermann, a teacher for 27 years, sought permission to introduce the book to her students last autumn after attending a training workshop held by the Freedom Writers Foundation. “If you read the whole book you will see how these inner-city students grow and change and become articulate, compassionate, educated young people who want to do something good in their lives despite the environment in which they were raised,” she told the Guardian. “I thought my students would very much relate to those kids.”

Her head agreed and Heermann got written permission from nearly 150 parents, but the Perry Meridian high school board urged her to wait for its decision.

Teachers’ union officials say that a single board member objected to swearing in the book. The school board member allegedly persuaded the other six officials to ban Heermann from teaching the book. It remains available in school libraries.

Heermann and the union say there was no explicit ban on the book when she handed it out to pupils on November 15. But later that day she received an email from the board advising her not to teach the book. “That was the pivotal moment of my life, when I saw how my students were taken with the book, how they loved it, and then I am told not to let them read it? I said no,” she said.

After being threatened with dismissal, Heermann was eventually suspended. The union is deciding whether to take the case to court.

The school board denies book banning and accuses Heermann of insubordination. Barbara Thompson, the school board president, wrote in an email yesterday: “She knew she had defied her supervisors’ direction in her work and that her defiance was ‘insubordination’ and ‘neglect of duty’.”