As we entered into one of our local, regular breakfast joints, Kris and I observed and then read aloud a printed note on the entrance. It informed us the restaurant would be now be closing earlier, at 3pm Sunday through Wednesday. We were a bit surprised because the restaurant has been serving our community faithfully for years from 6am to 10pm (long days, to be sure). At breakfast we were able to ask our server why the change. His answer, “Not enough workers.” There you have it – an explanation for so many recent, at times small, glitches in American life. Paper supplies have delayed the publication dates. Why? One explanation, “Not enough workers.” Retail: “Not enough workers.”
Photo by Alexander London on Unsplash
Where have all the workers gone?
I have seen no articles giving us sociological stats of the disappearance of workers, but one has to think that the work force is actually shifting from lower paying work to higher paying work. The workers have not mysteriously disappeared or been raptured; nor can one explain it by leaving the country from what I am told. They found better jobs.
Pay them more.
(NewsNation) — Years of crucial research into Alzheimer’s disease may have been tainted by made up scientific findings, a new whistleblower report says.
Vanderbilt University neurologist Matthew Schrag, in a bombshell interview with Science, laid out findings he made that showed over a decade of industrywide Alzheimer’s research may have been based on fabricated pieces of evidence involving a plaque protein found in the brain.
Shrag alerted his findings to the National Institute of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, but also went public in the media with findings he believe will have a big impact on Alzheimer’s research, a branch of science that gets millions of dollars in funding every year.
“You can cheat to get a paper. You can cheat to get a degree. You can cheat to get a grant. You can’t cheat to cure a disease,” Shrag told Science. “Biology doesn’t care.”
Shrag’s finding indicate that Alzheimer’s research conducted by University of Minnesota professors Slyvain Lesne and Karen Ashe may have used images of proteins that were altered to look like something they were not.
A Harvard University researcher who reviewed Shrag’s findings said there was “no other explanation” to contradict that manipulation had occurred in the research, according to Science.
A spokesperson from the University of Minnesota confirmed to NewsNation it is aware of the skepticism surrounding Lesne’s research and said “the university will follow its processes to review the questions any claims have raised.”
Tucked away behind a modest-sized home in Wales is a living repository of human history. Here, on a 3.5-acre garden, Adam Alexander grows around 100 varieties of fruits and vegetables at any given time. The fertile ground contains the progeny of seeds scooped up at markets from Aleppo, Syria, to Yangon, Myanmar. Carefully stored inside his home are jars containing more than 500 different types of heirloom seeds. At least 20 varieties are ones that might have gone extinct without Alexander’s intervention.
By some estimates, as much as 90 percent of crop varieties have disappeared, replaced by monocultural fields of corn, wheat, and soy. While nowadays a handful of varieties of corn, tomatoes, and other vegetables dominate the produce aisle, humanity once cultivated a wildly more biodiverse array of plants. In his forthcoming book The Seed Detective: Uncovering the Secret Histories of Remarkable Vegetables, which comes out September 29, Alexander traces the origins and evolution of vegetables that have shaped human civilization.
The book is the culmination of more than three decades of Alexander’s efforts to save endangered heirloom seeds from around the globe, as well as the stories they represent. He’s sometimes referred to as the “Indiana Jones of Vegetables,” although unlike Harrison Ford’s character, he has no interest in pillaging treasures only to let them rot in a museum.
In her influential 2018 article “Vocational Awe and Librarianship” Fobazi Ettargh explored how the veneration of libraries as institutions has led to many librarians and library workers enduring decidedly unhealthy working conditions. Now, a new study released during the 2022 American Library Association Annual Conference is shedding more light on the extent to which many urban librarians and library workers are experiencing “trauma, stress, and burnout” in the workplace.
The 2022 Urban Libraries Unite Trauma Study draws upon a wide-ranging literature review, survey responses from more than 435 urban library workers (conducted between August and September 2021), focus groups, and a two-day forum. The final report paints a vivid picture of the difficult working conditions facing many urban librarians and library workers, as well as a promising framework through which the library community can begin to address its needs.
“It is clear that there is a crisis of trauma in urban public libraries and the evidence for this is so overwhelmingly compelling that it seems likely that trauma impacts work in libraries of all types across the profession,” reads the report’s conclusion. “It is also clear from the literature search and the conversations that created this report’s conclusions that the library profession is starting to wake up to this deeply corrosive crisis.”
The report describes a range of violent or aggressive patron behavior toward library workers, including racist and sexist verbal abuse, harassment, physical assault including having guns and other weapons brandished, and drug and alcohol issues including overdoses. In addition, library workers reported significant instances of “secondary trauma” from constant interactions with community members (including children) struggling with poverty, homelessness, mental illness, or drug abuse.
Overall, some 68.5% of survey respondents said they have experienced violent or aggressive behavior from patrons at their libraries. Furthermore, a significant number of respondents (22%) said they have experienced violent or aggressive behavior from their co-workers.
The study also reveals the tacit professional acceptance of trauma as part of library work, and the outright failure of many library administrators to properly address incidents of workplace trauma. For example, the majority of respondents (64%) said their library does offer some sort of “workplace mental health resources,” yet only 20 of 435 respondents say they have actually utilized these services. And in many cases, the study found that the administration’s response (or lack thereof) to specific incidents actually made the situations worse.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A big pink diamond of 170 carats has been discovered in Angola and is claimed to be the largest such gemstone found in 300 years.
Called the “Lulo Rose,” the diamond was found at the Lulo alluvial diamond mine, the mine’s owner, the Lucapa Diamond Company, announced Wednesday on its website.
The Lulo mine has already produced the two largest diamonds ever found in Angola, including a 404-carat clear diamond.
The pink gemstone is the fifth largest diamond found at the mine, where 27 diamonds of 100 carats or more have been found, according to Lucapa, which is based in Australia.
The pink diamond will be sold by international tender by the Angolan state diamond marketing company, Sodiam. Angola’s mines make it one of the world’s top 10 producers of diamonds.
What about crime in the USA? in Chicago?
Hardly a day goes by without the media telling us that voters are concerned about crime, worries second only to inflation and the price of gas (which is going down). Just yesterday, NPR reported that former president Trump said “"Our country is now a cesspool of crime … We have blood, death and suffering on a scale once unthinkable because of the Democrat Party's effort to destroy and dismantle law enforcement all throughout America." These concerns regularly show up in opinion surveys as people worry about crime, whether rampant or not. In 2020, Gallup reported that more Americans thought crime was going up than have since the 1990s.
The FBI data always corrects incident reports (actual crimes) into crime rates. Basically, you divide the population figure by 100,000 and then divide the incident count by that figure. If a town of 200,000 people had 24 violent crimes, you’d divide the 24 by 2 and have a crime rate of 12.0
The US violent crime rate peaked in 1992 at just under 778 violent crimes per 100,000 population. The figure for 2020 (the last FBI data available) is 398.5, which is up from 380 in 2019.
The gap between these two charts is telling. From 2003 on, the majority of the public believed that crime was increasing year over year. While there is a minor increase between 2005 to 2007, it’s a steady story of general decline through 2014. Part of the answer for this mismatch is the constant stories (real and fictional) about crime across the country. The actual data tells a very different tale.
By the way, here is data relative to the subtitle above. It is common for politicians and law enforcement types to point at Chicago and say, “why doesn’t somebody do something?”. When you control for population size, you find that Chicago had a homicide rate of 18 per 100,000. That’s bad, for sure. But if you do the same analysis for all reporting municipalities in Illinois, Chicago comes in 21st. On aggravated assault, they finish 30th.
(NewsNation) — There have been multiple heists in the United States just this month.
These crooks are bold, and no place is safe or sacred. They’re not afraid of the police, either.
On Sunday, gun-toting thieves brazenly barged into a Brooklyn church Sunday and robbed a minister and his wife mid-sermon, according to police.
Bishop Lamor Whitehead, 44, was preaching at Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministry at 11:15 a.m. when three male suspects stormed in and robbed the preacher and his wife, 38, at gunpoint, police said. The victims told police the men made off with more than $1 million in jewelry, including rings, watches, and chains.
One of the suspects allegedly pointed a gun in the face of Whitehead’s 8-month-old child, he said in a Facebook post.
“As I was preaching, I see three or four armed men come in … I told everybody to get down,” Whitehead said in the social media post. “I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot the church up or just coming for a robbery.”
Without a steady stream of immigrants we will not have enough workers. Also I think COVID sealed the deal for many older workers who found they actually could live without a job. I’m thinking of school bus drivers.
Some really bizarre facts right there! As far as Alzheimer’s goes, I’m a clinical nutritionist and we use nutritional changes to lower general inflammation in Alzheimer’s patients. The change in their mental condition is nothing short of remarkable and can often halt the progression of the disease for the time the patient sticks with the protocol, especially in earlier stages. This approach comes from the work of Dr Bredison amongst others, and has been reproduced many times over. It is certainly alarming to find the white plaques in the brain theory may have been fudged. Similar things are true also with depression theories.