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Marco Torres – Fruits and Vegetables Reaching an Alarming State of Nutrient Depletion

What if our food has been getting less and less nutritious? What if modern intensive farming methods — many of which solved malnutrition problems when they were first introduced — have affected the mineral and vitamin content of what we eat? Could having a constant supply of varied produce and introducing genetically modified foods be compromising nature’s goodness? Whether it …

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MICHAEL SCHULSON – TED-EVANGELISM HARKENS BACK TO A FORGOTTEN 19TH-CENTURY TRADITION

The top ten most watched TED talks are, in order, about: Creativity Confidence Motivation Vulnerability The Brain Really Cool Technology Orgasm Motivation Motivation Really Cool Science But actually the top ten TED talks are all about you. They’re about the way that ideas can transform your life. They’re about the way you feel when you watch them. They’re about all the …

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Christina Selby – THE NEWEST STRATEGY FOR SAVING BEES IS REALLY, REALLY OLD

February 15, 2016 — In northwestern India, the Himalaya Mountains rise sharply out of pine and cedar forests. The foothills of the Kullu Valley are blanketed with apple trees beginning to bloom. It’s a cool spring morning, and Lihat Ram, a farmer in Nashala village, shows me a small opening in a log hive propped against his house. Stout black-and-yellow native …

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Paul Craig Roberts – The Public Is Being Looted By Privatization And Deregulation

The privatization movement and the deregulation movement have turned out to be failures. Privatization in Britain under the Thatcher government had its origin in the belief that the absence of incentivized managers and shareholders with a stake in the bottom line resulted in nationalized companies operating inefficiently, with their losses covered by government like the big private banks’ losses today. …

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John Whitehead – Welcome to the Age of Authoritarianism

America is at a crossroads. History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we have moved beyond the era of representative …

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Paul Buchheit – Why We Need Democratic Socialism to Fix Our Educational System

Latoya and Jalesa, both 26, grew up on the west side of Chicago, attending Calhoun Public School during the day and stepping across the street to Marillac Social Center for after-school programs. They lived in a tough neighborhood. Latoya said the summer gunshots came as often as the sound of ice-cream truck bells in the suburbs. But everyone knew each …

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Robert S. Becker – America’s Addiction to Firstism — Delusion Decoyed as ‘Greatness’

The magical religion of Firstism in America has two regressive, infantile manifestations. For decades, rightwing chauvinism has worshipped America Firstism. Because the US is always the best country ever, a Christian God grants the US divine rights to perpetual world leadership. Reigniting that equally bizarre muddle, “America, right or wrong,” Trump’s sneering, snarling buffoonery begins and ends with this “self-evident” …

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Chris Arnade – I worked on Wall Street. I am skeptical Hillary Clinton will rein it in

I owe almost my entire Wall Street career to the Clintons. I am not alone; most bankers owe their careers, and their wealth, to them. Over the last 25 years they – with the Clintons it is never just Bill or Hillary – implemented policies that placed Wall Street at the center of the Democratic economic agenda, turning it from …

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Kiese Laymon – I’ll be so proud when my daughter is president and runs a corrupt oligarchy

Iwant my black American daughter to be president of the United States when she grows up – and to evade, at all costs, the question of whether a president of the United States of America can be morally just. I want her to wear boring outfits and pay white people to march in front of cameras after the debates and …

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ROBERT HUNZIKER – Fukushima – Deep Trouble

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster may go down as one of history’s boundless tragedies and not just because of a nuclear meltdown, but rather the tragic loss of a nation’s soul. Imagine the following scenario: 207 million cardboard book boxes, end-to-end, circumnavigating Earth, like railroad tracks, going all the way around the planet. That’s a lot of book …