Monday, January 13

Journalism

Blacks are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s, but why?
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Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Blacks are at higher risk for Alzheimer’s, but why?

Blacks are at higher risk for several health conditions in the U.S. This is true for heart disease, hypertension, type 2 diabetes and stroke, which are often chronic diseases. And it is also for Alzheimer’s disease, in which blacks have two times higher incidence rates than whites. So, why do these disparities exist, especially in Alzheimer’s disease, which isn’t typically considered a chronic disease but a progressive one, or one that worsens over time? Some researchers attribute the gap to both societal and systemic factors related to inequities in education, socioeconomics, income and health care access. Other factors such as stress, diet, lifestyle and genetics may also contribute. However, there’s a less-explored question in Alzheimer’s that could contribute to this disparity: Is ...
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Why do people believe con artists?
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Journalism, VIDEO REELS

Why do people believe con artists?

What is real can seem pretty arbitrary. It’s easy to be fooled by misinformation disguised as news and deepfake videos showing people doing things they never did or said. Inaccurate information – even deliberately wrong information – doesn’t just come from snake-oil salesmen, door-to-door hucksters and TV shopping channels anymore. Would you buy medicine from this man? Carol M. Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons Even the president of the United States needs constant fact-checking. To date, he has made an average of 15 false or misleading public claims every day of his presidency, according to a tally from the Washington Post. The study of business history reveals that people everywhere have always had a sweet tooth for the unreal, enthralled by what should be taken as too good to be true. Cogn...
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Out-of-context photos are a powerful low-tech form of misinformation
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Journalism

Out-of-context photos are a powerful low-tech form of misinformation

When you think of visual misinformation, maybe you think of deepfakes – videos that appear real but have actually been created using powerful video editing algorithms. The creators edit celebrities into pornographic movies, and they can put words into the mouths of people who never said them. But the majority of visual misinformation that people are exposed to involves much simpler forms of deception. One common technique involves recycling legitimate old photographs and videos and presenting them as evidence of recent events. For example, Turning Point USA, a conservative group with over 1.5 million followers on Facebook, posted a photo of a ransacked grocery store with the caption “YUP! #SocialismSucks.” In reality, the empty supermarket shelves have nothing to do with socialism; the p...
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6 Shows for Some Women-Led Belly Laughs
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CELEBRITY NEWS, Journalism

6 Shows for Some Women-Led Belly Laughs

Time and time again women have proven that viewers are interested in the stories they tell. Before the advent and popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, I watched shows and movies that were available through my cable package. Growing up in the ’90s and early aughts, I rarely watched comedies that starred women. And if I did come across comedies with women in the lead, the women were vying to be the objects of men’s affection, like in Clueless, or men were trying to get their attention (sometimes with ill will), like in 10 Things I Hate About You. In short: The male gaze was ever-present. Often films were cast aside as “chick flicks” and given less attention and smaller budgets, despite their success at the box office. In the 1970s and ’80s—an era often referred to as the...
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Minority patients benefit from having minority doctors, but that’s a hard match to make
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HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Minority patients benefit from having minority doctors, but that’s a hard match to make

In today’s America, minority patients still have markedly worse health outcomes than white patients. The differences are greatest for black Americans: Compared to white patients, they are two to three times as likely to die of preventable heart disease and stroke. They also have higher rates of cancer, asthma, influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and homicide. For many of them, structural racism and unequal treatment remain a contributing factor to disease and death. I am a physician who studies health disparities and ways to improve health care delivery. My work focuses on people of color, including those who are black and indigenous. Improving health care delivery for these groups of people is a complicated and multi-layered task, but solutions exist. One of them is to increase th...
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Hundreds of county jails detained immigrants for ICE
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Journalism

Hundreds of county jails detained immigrants for ICE

Hundreds of county jails in the U.S. are paid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain immigrants facing removal proceedings. Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, California. Emily Ryo, CC BY-SA On a typical day in 2017, for instance, Theo Lacy Facility in Orange, California, operated by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, held about 500 individuals for ICE and received US$118 per person per day, bringing in a total of $59,000 a day. More so than federally operated facilities, county jails, along with facilities operated by for-profit companies, have come to hold for ICE the lion’s share of immigrant detainees facing removal proceedings. Removal proceedings are civil actions that federal immigration authorities bring against individuals alleged to have violated U.S. immigrati...
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Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence
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Journalism

Lynching preachers: How black pastors resisted Jim Crow and white pastors incited racial violence

White lynch mobs in America murdered at least 4,467 people between 1883 and 1941, hanging, burning, dismembering, garroting and blowtorching their victims. Their violence was widespread but not indiscriminate: About 3,300 of the lynched were black, according to the most recent count by sociologists Charles Seguin and David Rigby. The remaining dead were white, Mexican, of Mexican descent, Native American, Chinese or Japanese. Such numbers, based on verifiable newspaper reports, represent a minimum. The full human toll of racial lynching may remain ever beyond reach. Religion was no barrier for these white murderers, as I’ve discovered in my research on Christianity and lynch mobs in the Reconstruction-era South. White preachers incited racial violence, joined the Ku Klux Klan and lynche...
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Employment gaps cause career trouble, especially for former stay-at-home parents
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Journalism

Employment gaps cause career trouble, especially for former stay-at-home parents

Understanding how employment gaps can affect careers is especially relevant given the recent policy discussions around paid family leave and childcare access in the U.S. I am a sociologist whose research examines what happens to people’s careers after they take time out of work. I find that gaps in employment can negatively affect future career prospects in multiple ways, particularly for those who left work for childcare responsibilities. No support for working parents Decisions to leave work often happen because working parents in the U.S. lack support. With no mandated paid parental leave, the high costs of childcare, long work hours and the spillover of work into other parts of life – for example, checking emails or being “on call” – parents in the U.S. may find themselves in a bind....
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How Will We Rebuild The United States After President Trump Is Gone
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Journalism

How Will We Rebuild The United States After President Trump Is Gone

Can we rebuild the United States after President Trump is gone? And how would we do it? It’s a good question, and it’s looking more important as new evidence of his criminality emerges on what feels like a near-daily basis. You would be forgiven if watching the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump last week left you with the feeling that the constitutional system of government is on life support. Even acknowledging that Trump is corrupt and guilty of everything he’s charged with, it’s disheartening to watch Senate Republicans twist themselves into knots to justify a craven vote to not call any witnesses or see any evidence for a trial in which they’re supposed to be impartial jurors. But if there’s anything consistent about Trump, it’s that he doesn’t see the U.S. as an example o...
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Why we knock on wood
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Journalism

Why we knock on wood

Ever said something like, “I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket” – and then quickly, for luck, rapped your knuckles on a wooden table or doorframe? Americans accompany this action by saying, “Knock on wood.” In Great Britain, it’s “Touch wood.” They knock on wood in Turkey, too. As a teacher of folklore – the study of “the expressive culture of everyday life,” as my favorite short definition puts it – I’m often asked why people knock on wood. The answer is complicated The common explanation for knocking on wood claims the ritual is a holdover from Europe’s pagan days, an appeal to tree-dwelling spirits to ward off bad luck or an expression of gratitude for good fortune. According to Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, “traditionally, certain trees, such as the oak, ash, hazel, hawth...
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