Thanks, gocomics.org
Tag: educated
Sweden shuts down their last coal-fired power plant
Just days after Austria shut its last coal power plant, Sweden has followed suit with the closure of Stockholm Exergi AB’s Värtaverket plant, two years ahead of schedule. Belgium shut down its last coal power station in 2016…
“The closure of KVV6 means that all planned use of coal will cease and thus Stockholm Exergi’s CO2 emissions will be reduced by about half…Our goal is for all our production to come from renewable or recycled energy. This plant has provided the Stockholmers with heat and electricity for a long time. Today we know that we must stop using all fossil fuels, therefore the coal needs to be phased out and we do so several years before the original plan.”
They won’t miss it. More important, their children and grandchildren will thank them.
Real data about same-sex couples instead of homophobe ideology
The US Census Bureau just released information on same-sex couples as part of its release of the 2013 American Community Survey data. Here are some of the highlights from the release.
Same-sex couples are a bit more educated than straight couples. While both married and unmarried gay and lesbian couples are about equally likely to have both partners holding at least a bachelor’s degree, unmarried heterosexual couples are half as likely for this to be the case as married straight couples…
…Same sex couples tend to have higher incomes than straight couples….Unmarried straight couples had the lowest average income…
Interracial marriages are more common among same-sex couples than among heterosexual couples…and we know who that pisses off.
RTFA for more demographics. To read the whole report from the Census Bureau – go here.
Rhode Island rounds out Northeast USA with civil rights for all
Less than a week after New York became the nation’s sixth state to legalize same-sex marriage, Rhode Island state lawmakers on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that permits civil unions between gay and lesbian couples.
The measure, which passed the state Senate by a count of 21-16, is widely seen as a compromise intended to provide same-sex couples with added rights and benefits, while also preventing an expanded legal definition of marriage.
Gov. Lincoln Chafee, an independent, is expected to sign the bill into law, according to his spokesman, Michael Trainor.
…The law would take effect on July 1, making Rhode Island the fifth state in the union to allow civil unions between same-sex couples. Such unions are currently permitted in New Jersey and Illinois, and will be allowed in Delaware and Hawaii beginning January 1, 2012. Three West Coast states — California, Oregon and Washington — plus Nevada, also allow for “comprehensive domestic partnerships,” largely considered an equivalent to their civil union counterparts…
The legislation, which passed overwhelmingly in the state’s lower house on May 19, affords same-sex couples a host of new state tax breaks, health-care benefits and greater ease of inheritance…
The usual clot of religious nutballs and homophobes threw up their hands in a collective whine after passage.
There is a chance the law will have a sticking point over the predictable group of riders supposedly designed to protect religion-based institutions from lawsuit. This often extends all the way to defending hospitals owned by religious groups who refuse decision-making on medical services to civil union partners.
This may not seem like a big problem for our urban-dwelling readers; but, here in Santa Fe County the only for-real hospital is owned by flunkies for the Catholic Church. They’ve already removed a number of procedures formerly allowed – on the basis of ideology and superstition.
In educated secular democracies religion is set for extinction
A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
The team’s mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one. The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland…
Dr Wiener continued: “In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.”
The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the “non-religious” category.
They found…that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them. And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a “network structure” more representative of the one at work in the world.
“Obviously we don’t really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society,” he said. However, he told BBC News that he thought it was “a suggestive result”.
Overdue. Not that I think philosophical idealism will vanish. We have a few too many genes that need to update before that could happen. But, so-called organized religion appears to be working as diligently as possible to become a force for regressive, even reactionary behavior. Probably, because those who profit the most from incumbency fear the only way to maintain power and profit is by drawing back into fundamentalism for protection.
That educated societies choose to assume greater individual freedoms – especially in those areas where organized religion declares that only “revealed” word must govern, e.g., women’s rights, bigotry, racism, war, political power should only be assumed by the “chosen” – individuals learn from experience that a life governed by reason instead of religion proves to be a better life for all.
Since the study concerned educated secular democracies, the United States obviously has little need to fear a change.
Officials ponder family planning and more under health law
The Obama administration is examining whether the new health care law can be used to require insurance plans to offer contraceptives and other family planning services to women free of charge.
Such a requirement could remove cost as a barrier to birth control, a longtime goal of advocates for women’s rights and experts on women’s health. But it is likely to reignite debate over the federal role in health care, especially reproductive health, at a time when Republicans in Congress have vowed to repeal the law or dismantle it piece by piece. It is also raising objections from the Roman Catholic Church and is expected to generate a robust debate about privacy.
Yes, folks. Apparently we’re supposed to get prior approval from the Pope and other experts who disapprove of birth control as an option for modern families from the git-go.
The law says insurers must cover “preventive health services” and cannot charge for them. The administration has asked a panel of outside experts to help identify the specific preventive services that must be covered for women.
Administration officials said they expected the list to include contraception and family planning because a large body of scientific evidence showed the effectiveness of those services. But the officials said they preferred to have the panel of independent experts make the initial recommendations so the public would see them as based on science, not politics…
Uh, OK. You think science means something to the average American? There are part of this country that still aren’t certain about the Earth being round.
Dr. Hal C. Lawrence III, vice president of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said contraceptives fit any reasonable definition of preventive health care because they averted unintended pregnancies and allowed women to control the timing, number and spacing of births. This, in turn, improves maternal and child health by reducing infant mortality, complications of pregnancy and even birth defects, said Dr. Lawrence, who is in charge of the group’s practice guidelines…
In a report more than 15 years ago, the Institute of Medicine said financial barriers to contraception “should be reduced by increasing the proportion of all health insurance policies that cover contraceptive services and supplies, including both male and female sterilization, with no co-payments or other cost-sharing requirements.”
Nothing was done.
Eideard 