It's So Much Harder to Escape Poverty Than You Might ThinkIt Can Take Decades and an Incredible Str

And then you retire and realize that you're poor once again and have to re-learn how to do without...

It's So Much Harder to Escape Poverty Than You Might Think—It Can Take Decades and an Incredible Streak of Good Luck

In order to get out of poverty, you have to basically be extremely lucky for almost 20 years, according to a new bookThe Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, by economist Peter Temin.

So many deep-seeded factors have lead to the economic and wealth inequality in the U.S. today (from slavery through to the new Jim Crow prisons crisis of today, to technological shifts, to globalization, corporatization and so much else) that few Americans stand a realistic chance of ever changing their economic status. Writer Gillian B. White explains this in a detail in an April 27 piece in the Atlantic, which sums up Temin's new book.

In the book, Temin explains the problem via a concept he calls the “dual economy." He divides the American economic system between an “FTE sector” of college educated, computer literate, high-salaried people (he estimates these make up about 20 percent of the roughly 320 million Americans); and the “low-wage sector,” (which represents the majoirty of the nation).

Temin's estimates trace workers' families back to before 1970, and he does the math to determines that America’s economy runs on a two-class system, in which race plays a significant role. He establishes that it would take almost 20 years of “nothing going wrong,” as White’s piece puts it, for an average person in poverty to dig their way out.

As White summarizes in the Atlantic:

“Education is key, Temin writes, but notes that this means plotting, starting in early childhood, a successful path to, and through, college. That’s a 16-year (or longer) plan that, as Temin compellingly observes, can be easily upended. For minorities especially, this means contending with the racially fraught trends Temin identifies earlier in his book, such as mass incarceration and institutional disinvestment in students, for example. Many cities, which house a disproportionate portion of the black (and increasingly, Latino) population, lack adequate funding for schools. And decrepit infrastructure and lackluster public transit can make it difficult for residents to get out of their communities to places with better educational or work opportunities. Temin argues that these impediments exist by design.”

The judge calling for a return to the guillotine

Impeachment is slower, but not as messy.

The judge calling for a return to the guillotine

Ninth Circuit Appeals Court Judge Alex Kozinski holds provocative views on the death penalty. In an interview with Lesley Stahl this week, he advocates for the firing squad — even the guillotine.

“It’s 100 percent effective, and it leaves no doubt that what we are doing is a violent thing,” he tells Stahl on the broadcast.

But look past the shocking sentiment and French Revolution imagery and see Judge Kozinski’s broader notion: killing a person — no matter how it’s carried out and how legally justified courts deem it — is vicious.

“If we’re going to take human life, if we’re going to execute people, if the state is going to snuff out a human being,” he says, “we should not fool ourselves into thinking that it’s anything but a violent, brutal act.”

Family Feud

One of my favorite shows. It's mindless but it can be fun trying to guess what the average polled group of Americans would answer to various questions, some of which are leading with double entendres. And of course, the contestants can be hilariously clueless. Like a recent one who gave an answer that was already given, and then kept assuring Harvey, "It's up there, I know it is!"...

But what is it with Steve Harvey and the cars? All last year when he pointed at the automotive prize for five day winners, it would be "A brand new Ford Fusion" or other Ford product, menationed by name.

But this year the Fords are gone, and instead a perfectly acceptable Jeep Renegade. OK, granted the Renegade is not the most attractive ride, but hell it IS a Jeep. They are not necessarily supposed to be good looking.

So I am guessing that Family Feud had a deal with Ford and part of that deal was to announce the brand and the model several times in each show. Maybe Fiat Chrysler cheapened out, agreed to provide a low end model but didn't sweeten the deal as much as Ford had. Just guessing, mind you. I wouldn't think that Harvey has a love for Fords and a hate for Jeeps. Or does he?

What do you call it when someone lies so massively they soon contradict themselves?

"Going The Full Donald"...

How you can tell if Trump has been busy making promises again...

Twitter sues U.S. over demand for records on anti-Trump account

Source: Reuters

Twitter Inc said in a lawsuit on Thursday that it had received a demand from U.S. officials for records that could reveal the user behind an account opposed to President Donald Trump and that it was challenging the demand in court.

The lawsuit over the anonymous account was filed in federal court in San Francisco, where Twitter is based.

Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/twitter-lawsuit-idUKL2N1HE1JY

Youthful Poo Makes Aged Fish Live Longer

Posting here in lieu of a young killifish health subgroup...

Youthful Poo Makes Aged Fish Live Longer

It may not be the most appetizing way to extend life but researchers have shown for the first time that older fish live longer after they consumed microbes from the poo of younger fish. The findings were posted to the bioRxiv.org preprint server on March 271by Dario Valenzano, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Cologne, Germany, and colleagues.

So-called ‘young blood’ experiments that join the circulatory systems of two rats — one young and the other old — have found that factors coursing through the veins of young rodents can improve the health and longevity of older animals. But the new first-of-its-kind study examined the effects of 'transplanting' gut microbiomes on longevity.

“The paper is quite stunning. It’s very well done,” says Heinrich Jasper, a developmental biologist and geneticist at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, who anticipates that scientists will test whether such microbiome transplants can extend lifespan in other animals.

Life is fleeting for killifish, one of the shortest-lived vertebrates on Earth: the fish hits sexual maturity at three weeks old and dies within a few months. The turquoise killifish (Nothobranchius furzeri) that Valenzano and colleagues studied in the lab inhabits ephemeral ponds that form during rainy seasons in Mozambique and Zimbabwe.