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Hybrid Work Culture Best Practices
Hybrid Work Culture Best Practices
Source: Orange County Business Journal, by Jessica Word
None of us imagined at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic that we would continue to be working virtually over a year later. Even with the tier restrictions lifting here in Orange County and throughout the state, we have faced a point where decisions are being made to either return our workforce in-person, continue to work from home, or…
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California Could Ease Mask Rules For Fully Vaccinated Workers This Week
California Could Ease Mask Rules For Fully Vaccinated Workers This Week
Source: Los Angeles Times, by Rong-Gong Lin II
Fully vaccinated workers in California may be able to remove masks at work this week if a state safety board approves a proposal by the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA.
The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board is poised on Thursday to approve a plan written by Cal/OSHA that would allow most…
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United States and G7+ Plan to Defeat the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2022 and Prevent the Next Pandemic
United States and G7+ Plan to Defeat the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2022 and Prevent the Next Pandemic
The White House1600 Pennsylvania Ave NWWashington, DC 20500
Today, President Biden welcomed the historic commitment of the leaders of the G7 and guest countries to provide more than 1 billion additional COVID-19 vaccines for the world, starting this summer, of which the United States will contribute half a billion doses.This commitment forms the basis of a comprehensive set of G7+ actions…
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The Plane Crash
Warning: This is not for the faint of heart because it contains graphic detail. When I was in 2nd grade, I experienced something that not many kids get to see — a mid-air collision. It was Culver City, CA in 1974. I remember being on the playground of my Christian school when I heard a strange sound, almost like a car crash. It didn’t affect me too much at first. We went back to playing house. Then, I heard screaming and saw people running around, looking up at the sky. I looked up and saw debris falling from the sky in all different shapes and sizes. I saw a plane falling from the sky. I knew it hit the ground because I saw a ball of fire in the near distance. I was scared at that point. There were no teachers rounding us up, it was just pandemonium. In walking back to the lunchroom, I saw something on the ground. It was someone’s leg, just laying there. I ran to my friend, an African-American girl who was looking down at something, screaming. It was a piece of someone’s scalp. That was it for me, we ran into the lunchroom and hid from everything. My grandfather picked me up and took me home. I was traumatized at that point. I watched TV the rest of the day and tried to forget what I saw, but it was all over the news.
The news reported that a helicopter had collided with a twin-engine aircraft right above my school. The helicopter broke up into hundreds of pieces while the plan crashed into the Culver City Police Department building. Body parts were scattered over several communities. Unfortunately, I don’t have too much information about this crash because it was so long ago, but it still haunts me to this day.
Question: Do you think this type of experience at a young age makes us stronger emotionally?
Derek Wohland
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The Hiking Miracle
When I was in my late teens, my brother and I decided to take a late-spring hike to get away from it all. We were somewhat experienced at hiking and decided to take the South Ridge Trail to Tauquitz Peak form the base in Idyllwild. It was an 8-mile one way trip to the peak. features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as difficult. The trail is primarily used for hiking, running, nature trips, and bird watching and is accessible year-round. The trailhead was tricky to access as you must go up a dirt road off of Saunders Meadow Road to access the "Parking lot" as it is described on the map. We actually hiked from town. That added another 2 miles.
Most experienced hikers would report their trip to the ranger station and get a weather report. However, being teens, we knew everything. The weather was great. Not a cloud in the sky. W both had shorts on and took enough food and water to last one day. We didn’t even bring jackets!
The hike was great. Fresh air, the smell of pine trees and awesome sights. Toward the end was a switchback up the steep mountainside. Still no cloud in the sky, but it was getting colder. When we started the last few switchbacks, it got cold and windy all of a sudden. The sky turned dark. We heard there was a fire lookout at the top that we could possibly take shelter under, so we continued up. Then the snow came. Not just gently falling snow, but blizzard conditions. We couldn’t see anything. Fear took over.
When we arrived at the tower, it was locked up with a chain. All we could do is shelter under the balcony. We had no tools. We were freezing and anticipated death. We prayed. It’s all we could have done at that point.
About 30 minutes had passed and we heard something. It sounded like a pick axe. It was! Two other hikers were making their way up to the tower as well. They were much more prepared for the conditions. They used the axe to break open the chain and we all made it safe inside. We could not have thanked them enough. The interior was warm. It had basic necessities and beds. Below is a pic someone else took, but the layout had not changed much.
We shared stories with the other hikers and went to sleep. In the morning, we were above the clouds and the sun was shining! We let them sleep and cleaned up any mess we had made, put things back where they were and hiked back down the mountain.
Lesson: Always report your plans to the ranger station and always prepare for unexpected weather.
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“The Inside Job” Documentary Review
This documentary describes how the financial state of a stable, functional society can be destabilized and torn apart by deregulation. It describes how prominent economic professors advised corporate executives of ways they could create massive private gains with very little risk. However, this advice proved costly; both to investors and to the public. We continue to recover from the recession created by greed and lack of government oversight.
For the documentary “The Inside Job,” I will use Comte’s structural functionalism theory to analyze the effects of deregulation on the nation’s financial system. Structural Functionalism argues that society is a stable, ordered system of interrelated parts. Each of these parts has a function that contributes to the continued stability or equilibrium of the whole. The documentary provides a clear picture of how the degradation of one institution can affect the other interrelated parts of society.
Prior to deregulation, banks provided an important basic need: to loan money to borrowers to buy homes. In return, these institutions made a profit. This process was regulated by government oversight committees to assure banks followed set standards. This kept the system stable, organized and ethical. For example, a bank would receive a loan application from an entity. The application was underwritten, so that risk to the bank was minimized. The vetted entity would then pay off the loan. The loan stayed with the bank. However, one can argue that the regulation of the financial services industry prohibited free enterprise. One can also argue that removing these restrictions would raise levels of competition, leading to higher productivity. At the time, productivity was in decline. Since regulated industries often controlled the government regulatory agencies, this dysfunction in the structure was bound to lead to change.
Banks and investors sought guidance from economic professors, some of whom served as advisors to U.S. presidents. Eventually, the Regan Administration deregulated the financial services industry. The manifest function of deregulation was to increase profitability and competition. Stock prices went up, housing prices went up, and investors took out huge loans and bought retail establishments. Because regulators did not do their jobs, the latent function of deregulation began to emerge. Agencies that rated institutions began giving high ratings to bad banks because they received money in return. There were massive private gains at public expense, unemployment was at a record high with 15 million people below poverty level. The financial sector consolidated instead of being competitive as intended and decompartmentalization began, removing previous checks and balances. Banks were engaged in money laundering, customers were being defrauded and firms were overstating their earnings. Yet, banks did not have to admit any wrongdoing. New, complex financial products began to emerge, such as sub-prime mortgages, derivatives and credit default swaps which led to securitization.
Under securitization, banks no longer had any risk if the client does not pay. Anyone could get a mortgage, housing prices skyrocketed (this was a manifest function), cash bonuses spiked, the Securities and Exchange Commission allowed banks to gamble more, and people were rewarded for taking huge risks. Since someone else paid the bill, most banks were willing to take these risks. However, one of the largest latent functions was that mortgages began to default. Banks started betting against Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO’s) while telling customers that these were high quality investments. The top priority was to sell bad deals. Rating agencies made money off giving high ratings to risky institutions. Despite many warnings from professionals, banks continued these practices. Eventually the market for CDO’s collapsed and insurers were no longer able to cover their obligations. The federal government had to step in to re-establish order. From a structural functionalist view point, parts were not working together, creating yet another dysfunction and cause for change.
If we were to review this documentary from Marx’s conflict theory perspective, we can see a dynamic model of historical change in the financial services industry. You can see the process of dominance, competition, up-heavel and social change in how the banks control the government and the impact to global society.
Questions:
What is deregulation?
The process of removing government restrictions from an institution, such as the financial services industry. In the documentary, it was further defined though a repeal of prior regulation legislation (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999) which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act.
2. To what extent is the financial crisis due to deregulation?
By removing government restrictions and oversight, it made room for unethical practices and innovative ways to gain massive profits at the expense of the public. In the documentary, we learned that deregulation led to money laundering, fraud and complex new financial products that removed risk from the banks and moved it to the investors.
3. Do you think the Justice Department should pursue criminal investigations of major players and firms on Wall Street that caused the economic meltdown?
I do not believe criminal investigations of major players is necessary in a legal sense, but should be done from a sociological or psychological standpoint in order to learn from our mistakes. What they did was not illegal because the ideas came from professors of academia. The SEC did not investigate or prosecute. In the documentary, we learned that the Obama Administration actually appointed many of the same people that were involved in these schemes to prominent positions.
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“The Seven Five” Documentary Review
The Seven Five is a documentary about police corruption in New York City during the 1980’s. It shows how anyone can be seduced into a life of easy money with seemingly no repercussions. And, how one police officer managed to do this. However, it did not last forever. Michael Dowd brings to light how all this happened and what it’s like to work the streets. The documentary does not speak as much to the penalties of what he did, but seems to glorify his actions.
For the documentary “The Seven Five” I will use the Symbolic Interactionist Paradigm to analyze the day to day interactions between cops and criminals, and how the large-scale structure (police institution) was ignored for the most part. Symbolic Interactionism argues that (1) we act towards things on the basis of their meanings (2) meanings are not inherent (3) meanings can change or be modified through interaction (4) face-to-face interaction is the building block of society. It is a study at the Micro-Level, about human interaction. The film describes how being appreciated, or not appreciated for your work can lead to other actions, such as motivation to work harder, or just the opposite. In Mr’ Dowd’s case, he became pragmatic. He “seeked the truth of an idea by evaluating its usefulness in everyday life.” Since he felt that he was not making enough money for the amount of risk he took every day, he found opportunities in interacting with criminals that proved useful. He began to take small amounts of money without getting caught. This led to him taking more and more until finally he was in so deep with drug cartels, that becoming a good cop again was no longer possible. You might even argue that he had an empathetic understanding of the criminal element (Verstehan). You can also argue that Mr. Dowd began to take on and fulfill the role of a deviant as an act of rebellion to not being paid enough. His partner, Ken Eurell was an alcoholic and the two trusted each other to not rat each other out as they continued their crime spree. One thing that was made knows during the film was that partners always backed each other up, even if they had to tell lies. One day, your partner may have to testify against you, so you want them to be on your side. From an interactionist standpoint, meanings are not inherent. Both of them used gestures and language on a daily basis to influence others and keep the status quo.
You can also analyze the film based on the Social Disorganization Theory, which asserts that crime is most likely to occur in communities with weak social ties and the absence of social control. Clearly, you can see that East New York City is a community with very weak social ties. Crime has created a barrier to the outside world so that even children are isolated from society and kept out of school. A person is not born a criminal, but it is very likely that he or she will become one over time in this type of community. On the other hand, we can use Hirshi’s Control Theory which states that social control is directly affected by the strength of social bonds, and that deviance results from a feeling of disconnection from society. This theory complements the Social Disorganization theory by referencing a disconnection from society.
Questions
1. Do you believe that Michael Dowd was a good cop that became a criminal or a criminal that be became a cop?
Once again, I will point to the Social Disorganization Theory which states a person is not born a criminal, but it is very likely that he or she will become one over time. I believe that Michael was a good cop, initially. He entered the force with good intentions. However, he became a criminal slowly, over time.
2. What level of responsibility, if any does the NYPD as an institution have for the actions of individual officers?
NYPD has the responsibility of training their officers about uprightness of character and soundness of moral principle. However, it is up to the officer to live this out in their daily routine. From a Functionalist perspective, if an institution fails, a change a needed. Hence, the internal auditing department. They investigate violations of officer code of conduct.
3. What are your feelings in regard to how Michael Dowd, his partner Kenny Eurell and the drug boss Adam Diaz were portrayed in the film?
My thoughts are that the documentary portrayed each of them as heros, glorifying their lifestyles as if to create a major motion picture about the whole thing. The criminal justice component was not mentioned until the end. In fact, each of them came across as proud of what they did and wanted to show others how cool it was.
4.What is your overall opinion about the film (liked, disliked, indifferent)? Please explain why.
This would depend on how you perceive it. For me, I am mature enough to see through the portrayals of glorified lifestyles and actually put myself in their shoes. I empathized and saw myself doing the same thing if I were them, given their circumstances. Consider the lack of oversight, the abundance of opportunity and the partnerships involved. Who wouldn’t take advantage of this?
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“Aging Out” Documentary Review
Aging Out is a documentary about three case studies within the foster care system that examine the process of aging out of the system when someone becomes an adult. We learned about how each case began, how it progressed and the final outcomes once emancipated.
For the film “Aging Out”, I will use Comte’s functionalist paradigm to analyze the foster care system as an institution. Using this paradigm, we understand that social institutions are organized to meet a basic human need. The most important social institution is the family. It is the first agent of socialization. Any disorganization of this structure must lead to change. When children are abused under the institution of family, the foster care system steps in to protect them. This institution serves a specific need, since the first institution of family had failed. Protection is its manifest function. Education and socialization are latent functions of foster care. One other latent function of foster care would be payments to foster parents. Sometimes they take on too many kids out of greed and the children could possibly become neglected.
Using Risa as an example, her family institution had failed. Because this was a dysfunctional institution, it led to change. This change came in the form of another institution with a manifest function of protection. The intended function was to protect, rehabilitate and release from the system once she became an adult. However, a government institution will never be able to take the place of family as the primary agent of socialization. The manifest function was there, but the latent, or unintended effects were more prominent in my opinion. There were several kids in the home. Dolores could not meet 100% of her needs and Risa resulted to drugs to keep herself going. When she aged out, the foster parent did attempt to take over the role of being a family, but in the end, Risa was the victim yet again.
Merton’s Strain Theory of Deviance can be applied to David’s situation.
From the start, David did not want to Conform. He did not initially conform to the pressure of being successful by conventional means. However, he did get a job and even made an attempt to join the armed forces, but neither option was successful. Therefore, David became an Innovator. Innovators pursue goals they cannot reach through legitimate means by instead using criminal or deviant means. For example, he resorted to burglary. He was also very pragmatic and could manipulate others. David was too young to be Ritualistic or Rebellious. However, he did result to Retreatism at the end because nothing else seemed to work for him. He withdrew himself from society and is now living the life of a transient.
We can use Hirschi’s four types of social bonds that connect people to society to prove that David was 100% disconnected from Society. “Attachment” measures our connections to others. He had no connections with anyone, not even his foster parents. “Commitment” refers to the investments we make in the community. He had no investments in anything because he had nothing but the clothes on his back and had no friends. ”Involvement” pertains to participation in socially legitimate activities. Most of his activities were deviant. “Belief” is an agreement on common values in society. David had no beliefs. From this, we can see that he failed in all four social bonds.
Questions
1. Before watching Aging Out, what impressions came to mind when you heard the term “Foster Care” or “Foster Children?”
A government institution where children are placed in homes because of bad parenting or abuse.
2. What were the sources of your preconception?
Life experience tells us that foster parents milk the system by providing minimal care and pocketing the cash.
3. What are some of the factors influencing the decision of these foster youth to either stay within the foster care system or leave it?
Financial need.
Emotional need.
Desire for independence.
Legal reasons, such as being incarcerated.
4. Has your opinion or views of the foster care system and those who are in it changed after watching the film. If so, how? If not, why?
Yes. When I was able to view it from a sociological standpoint, I was able to understand why this institution exists. I was also made aware of the many obstacles they face when they age out.
5. Did anything in the film surprise you? If so, what was surprising? And why was it surprising?
The only thing that surprised me was Risa’s untimely death. It seemed like the system failed big time because so much time, money and resources was wasted to achieve the manifest function, and it was over in an instant when it could have been a different outcome.
6. What is our community’s responsibility for young people leaving foster care?
We do not have a responsibility because they are considered adults. They are on their own.
7. Based on the film what support systems/networks do you feel were needed to assist their transition to independent living?
Regular follow up visits to check on their welfare and progress, but not binding. They should be voluntary with opportunities to get help, if needed.
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Arctic Diet Gone Toxic
Pitching a makeshift tent on sea ice, where the Arctic Ocean meets the North Atlantic, brothers Mamarut and Gedion Kristiansen are ready to savor their favorite meal. Mamarut slices off a piece of raw pink whale blubber as a snack. Mamarut’s wife, Tukummeq Peary, a descendant of famed North Pole explorer Admiral Robert E. Peary, is boiling the main entrée on a camp stove. The family dips hunting knives into the kettle, pulling out steaming ribs of freshly killed ringed seal and devouring the hearty meat with some hot black tea.
Living closer to the North Pole than to any city, factory, or farm, the Kristiansens appear unscathed by the industrial-age ills. They live much as their ancestors did, relying on foods harvested from the sea and skills honed by generations of Inuit. But as northbound winds carry toxic remnants of faraway lands to their hunting ground in extraordinary amounts, their close connection to the environment and their ancestral diet of marine mammals have left the Arctic’s indigenous people vulnerable to the pollutants of modern society. About 200 hazardous compounds, which migrate from industrialized regions and accumulate in ocean-dwelling animals, have been detected in the inhabitants of the far north.
The bodies of Arctic people, particularly Greenland’s Inuit, contain the highest human concentrations of industrial chemicals and pesticides found anywhere on Earth-levels so extreme that the breast milk and tissues of some Greenlanders could be classified as hazardous waste. Nearly all Inuit tested in Greenland and more than half in Canada have levels of PCBs and mercury exceeding international health guidelines. Perched atop a contaminated food chain, the inhabitants of the Arctic have become the world’s lab rats, the involuntary subjects of an accidental human experiment demonstrating what can happen when a heaping brew of chemicals builds up in human bodies.
Studies of infants in Greenland and Arctic Canada suggest that the chemicals are harming children. Babies suffer greater rates of infections because their immune systems seem to be impaired and their brain development is altered, slightly reducing intelligence and memory skills. Scientists say the immune suppression could be responsible, at least in part, for the Arctic’s inordinate number of sick babies. They believe the neurological damage to newborns is similar in scope to the harm done if the mothers drank moderate amounts of alcohol while pregnant. The tragedy for the Inuit is that they have few, if any, ways to protect themselves.
Many Arctic natives say that abandoning their traditional foods would destroy a 4,000 year-old society rooted in hunting. No factory-engineered fleece compares with the warmth of a sealskin parka, mittens, and boots. No motorboat sneaks up on a whale like a handmade kayak latched together with rope. No snowmobile flexes with ice like a dog-pulled sled made of driftwood. And no imported food nourished their bodies, warms their spirit and strengthens their hearts like the flesh they slice from the flanks of a whale or seal.
“Our foods do more than nourish our bodies. They feed our souls.” said the late Ingmar Egede, a Greenlandic educator who promoted the rights of indigenous people. “When many things in our lives are changing, our foods remain the same. They make us feel the same as they have for generations. When I eat Inuit foods, I know who I am.”
Unexpected Poisons
In 1987, Dr. Eric Dewailly, an epidemiologist at Laval University in Quebec, was surveying contaminants in breast milk of mothers near the industrialized, heavily polluted Gulf of St. Lawrence when he met a midwife from Nunavik, the Arctic portion of the Quebec province. She asked whether he wanted to gather milk samples from women there. Dewailly reluctantly agreed, thinking it might be useful as “blanks”, samples with nondetectable pollution levels. A few months later, the first batch of samples (glass vials holding a half-cup of milk from 24 women from Nunavik) arrived by air mail at the lab in Quebec.
Dewailly soon got a phone call from the lab director. Something was wrong with the Arctic milk. The chemical concentrations were off the charts. The technician thought the samples must have been tainted in transit. Upon checking more breast milk, the scientists soon realized that the chemical concentration numbers were accurate. The Arctic mothers had seven times more PCBs in their milk than mothers in Canada’s biggest cities.
Dwailly contacted the World Health Organization in Geneva, where an expert in chemical safety told him that the PCB levels were the highest that he had ever seen. Those women, the expert said, should stop breast-feeding their babies. Dwailly knew that Nunavik (located on the Hudson Bay) is so remote that mothers had nothing else to feed their infants. As a doctor, he couldn’t in good conscience tell them to quit breast- feeding, but he knew he couldn’t hide the problem either.
“Breast milk is supposed to be a gift,” said Dewailly, who today is among the world’s leading experts on the human health effects of contaminants. “It isn’t supposed to be poison”. Nearly a generation has passed since those first vials of breast milk arrived in the Quebec laboratory. The babies Dewailly agonized over are all grown up and will pass to their own children the chemical load amassing in their bodies.
Top of the World
From ice-clinging algae to polar bears, the Arctic has a long and intricate ladder of life. An estimated 650,000 indigenous people inhabit the top rung, and their population is steadily growing. About 90,000 are the Inuit of Eastern Canada and Greenland-a territory of Denmark under its own home-rule government. Others, spread across eight nations and speak dozens of languages.
Environmental scientists suspect that industrial chemicals first hitched a ride to the Artic in the 1940s. The chemicals originate in cities in North America, Europe, and Asia. They travel thousands of miles via north winds, ocean currents, and rivers. In the Arctic, the sea is a deep-freeze archive storing contaminants that are slow to break down in cold temperatures and low sunlight. Ingested first by zooplankton, the chemicals spread through the food web as one species consumes another.
Scientists say that the Arctic’s water and air are much cleaner than in urban environments. PCBS and DDT in the fish and mammals of such areas as the Great Lakes, the Baltic, and North Sea are 10 to 100 times higher in concentration than in the Arctic Ocean. But most urban dwellers consume food from a host of sources, eating comparatively limited amounts of seafood and no marine mammals or other top predators high on the food web. Instead, they consume mostly land-raised food with low contaminant levels.
Inuit, by contrast, eat much like a polar bear does; consuming the blubber and meat of fish-eating whales, seals, walruses, and seabirds four or five links up the marine food chain. Contaminants, which accumulate in animals’ fat, magnify in concentration with each step up, from plankton to people. In newborns’ umbilical cord blood and mother’s breast milk, average PCB and mercury levels are 20 to 50 times higher in remote villages in Greenland than in urban areas of the United States and Europe.
In far northern villages such as Qaanaaq (where the Kristiansens live) one of every six adults tested exceeds 200 parts per billion of mercury in the blood, a dose known to cause acute symptoms of mercury poisoning. “That’s a huge amount of mercury,” said John Risher, a mercury specialist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control toxic substances agency. “At that level, I would really except to see effects, such as paresthsia, an abnormal tingling or numbness in the hands.”
Few details are known about Russia’s Siberia, but scientists are expected to soon release data showing that residents of the region are more contaminated than Greenlanders. In contrast, Alaska’s Inuit carry low concentrations because they eat bowhead whales that are low on the food web. PCBs and DDT, the so-called legacy chemicals banned three decades ago in most developed countries, peaked in the 1990s and since then have declined, although they remain at substantially higher levels in Arctic people than people elsewhere.
Other compounds are increasing, including mercury and brominated flame retardants called PBDEs. Much of the mercury comes from coal-burning power plants, largely in Asia, while the United States is the major source of flame retardants, used in plastics and polyurethane foam. Subtle health effects are occurring in certain areas of the Arctic due to contaminants in traditional food, particularly for mercury and PCBs.
Building up over a lifetime, chemicals stored in a mother’s body cross into the womb, contaminating a fetus before birth. Then the newborn gets an added dose from breast milk. A study in Arctic Canada has shown for the first time that the risks of traditional foods seem to outweigh their benefits. 11-month-old Nunavik babies were repeatedly shown a picture while researchers recorded how readily the children recognized images they already had seen. The infants with high amounts of PCBs in their bodies were 10% less likely to recognize the images than infants with low PCB levels.
A separate, smaller study also linked PCBs with slight neurological effects in older children in Qaanaaq. The studies confirm similar neurological effects detected in children elsewhere including the Great Lakes region. Also in Nunavik, infants exposed in the womb to high levels of DDT and PCBs suffered more ear and respiratory infections, particularly in the first six months of life. An increased infection rate is the most serious of the known threats because Arctic children suffer extremely elevated rates of ear infections, which often lead to hearing loss and respiratory infections.” Nunavik has a cluster of sick babies,” Dewaily said, “They fill the waiting rooms of the clinics.”
No Cows, Pigs, Chickens
A year-round icy shield-thicker than a mile in some places-covers 85% of Greenland. The island has no trees, no grass, no fertile soil, which means no cows, no pigs, no chickens, no grains, no vegetables, and no fruit orchards. Instead, the ocean is Greenland’s food basket. Sandwiched between Canada and Scandinavia, Greenland gets the brunt of the world’s contaminants because it is in the path of winds from both European and North American cities.
In remote parts of Greenland, such as the Kristiansen’s village of Qaanaaq, people eat marine mammals and seabirds 36 times a month on average, consuming a pound of whale and seal each week. About one-third of their calories come from traditional foods. “We eat seal meat as you eat cow in your country,” said Greenland’s premier, “it is important to have meat on the table.”
The Inuit say their native food strengthens their bodies, warming them from within like a fire glowing inside a lantern. When they eat anything else, instead of fire, they feel ice. “We are living in a place that is very cold and it’s not by accident what we eat. We are not able to survive on other food,” says a Greenland native, “hunting is so important to us, so fundamental, that we will not be able to survive without it.”
Everything else, from tea to bread, must be imported. In remote villages, stores stock processed and canned food that is expensive, frequently stale and not very tasty or nutritious. In Nunavut, across Baffin Bay from Greenland, store-bought food for a family of four would cost $240 a week, more than one-third of the average family income there. “We can buy lame lettuce, really old oranges, and dried up apples or eat fresh and nutritious beluga, walrus, and fish,” says a local, “there is really no alternative.”
In some respects, the marine diet has made the Inuit among the world’s healthiest people. Beluga whale meat has 10 times the iron of beef, twice the protein, and five times the Vitamin A. Omega 3 fatty acids in seafood protect the Inuit from heart disease and diabetes. Seventy-year-old Inuit men have coronary arteries as elastic as those of twenty-year-old men from European countries. Although heart disease has increased with the introduction of processed foods, especially among Greenlandic young people, it remains more or less unknown.
Public officials are torn whether to encourage the Inuit to continue eating their traditional diet or to reduce their consumption. Government officials and doctors fear that Inuit will switch to imported processed foods loaded with carbohydrates and sugar, risking malnourishment, vitamin deficiencies, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. “The level of contamination is very high in Greenland, but there is a lot of Western food that is worse.” says a doctor.
Greenland’s home-rule government and doctors have issued no advisories. Many Greenlanders are aware of the contamination, although they know few details. In Canada, however, there has been extensive outreach to indigenous people, including trips by Dewailly and other scientists to explain their findings in detail. But public health officials there still struggle, after 16 years, with what dietary advice to give.
Last year, Nunavik leaders initiated an experiment in three communities that gives women free Arctic char, a fish high in fatty acids, but low in PCBs, to encourage them to eat less beluga blubber, the main source of contaminants there. Most Inuit have not altered their diet in response to contamination. In Arctic cultures, people rely on the traditional knowledge of hunters and elders, and with no visible sign of pollution, many are skeptical that the chemicals exist. Some even suspect talk about the chemicals is a ploy to strip them of their traditions.
Moreover, health officials point out that the risks of contamination are greatly outweighed by other societal problems, including smoking, suicide, domestic violence, and binge drinking, which have severe and immediate impact on life and death in the Arctic. For example, more than half the pregnant women in Greenland smoke cigarettes. Those who are aware of the dangers of toxic chemicals say that their meats are too nutritious and important to give up.
Anthropologists warn that efforts to alter Inuit diets can unwittingly cause irreversible cultural change. If hunting is discouraged, people quickly would lose their traditional knowledge about the environment and their hunting skills. Their art, their spirituality, their celebrations, their storytelling, even their language would suffer. Inuit dialects are steeped in the nuances of nature that their national languages (English, French, and Danish) ignore.
The most important damage would be to Inuit values and attitudes. In the Arctic’s subsistence economy, people share prey among neighbors and relatives. The best hunters are leaders in the village and they are generous with their wealth. If the Inuit switch to a cash society, the communal generosity would disappear. It is more than the food you are changing. It’s the actual catching and hunting of it that really generates the cultural characteristics. Even skipping one generation would impair hunting skills and once they are lost they may never come back.
Survival of the Fittest
Like everyone else in Qaanaaq, the Kristiansens remain mostly oblivious to the scientists and political leaders fretting about how many parts per billion of toxic chemicals are in their bodies. They simply don’t have the luxury to worry about dangers so imperceptible, so intangible. Instead, hunters worry about things they can see and hear: thinning ice conditions and where their next meal will come from. Anxiety about chemicals is left to those who live in distant lands, those who generated the compounds, those whose bodies contain far less.
About 850 miles from the North Pole, Qaanaaq, an isolated village of about 600, is the closest on Earth to the archetype of traditional polar life. Every Spring, when the midnight sun returns, the Arctic’s treasures, long locked in the ice, are within reach again. On a freezing-cold June afternoon, Gedion and Mamarut head out on their sleds, their dogs racing 35 miles across the glacier, toward the Kristiansen’s ancestral hunting grounds.
A little over a century ago, the people of Qaanaaq had little contact with the outside world. Today they can buy salami, dental floss, and Danish porn magazines in their local small market. They watch “A Nightmare on Elm Street” in their living rooms on the one TV station that beams into Qaanaaq. The people have learned about the contaminants from listening to the radio, but they will not change their diet.
Discussion Questions
1. How did the article make you feel?
2. How does geography play into their high levels of contamination (discuss multiple reasons)?
3. How do the Inuit’s culture, food customs, and environment play a role in the pollution levels in their bodies?
4. What can be done or recommended, if anything, to protect the Inuit culture?
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Single Story Speech / Anti-Semitism
I hope you find what you are about to hear interesting and educational.
I am half German half Scottish. My paternal side being German and my maternal side being Scottish. My paternal grandfather was in the German army, a tank commander and my maternal grandfather was a tail gunner in the royal air force. In fact, they fought against each other in the same battle.
The danger of my single story is the belief that ALL Germans are anti-semitic. This is mostly due to the holocaust during WWII. This is a situation where an entire country is held accountable for crimes against humanity. While there is some truth to this belief, the story is incomplete. There is another part of the story that proves that this stereotype is unjustified. That is the story of my family.
The misinformation I have noticed is the preconception that during the war, it was the German people who designed and supported the holocaust, and were all in alignment with the government. Therefore, they should all be judged. The first thing that comes to mind when most adults here the word German is Hitler.
People are receiving this message in history class, as well as from “Jewish Material Claims Against Germany” conferences and the “WeRemember” campaign.
The notions that lead to these stereotypes are not incorrect, but incomplete. For example, during WWII:
Most Germans despised Hitler. They only played along to avoid getting shot or imprisoned by the SS.
My grandfather, who served in the German army, stated that the majority of German soldiers despised Hitler, and that the evil actually followed close behind them, in the form of SS soldiers.
Only a small minority of Germans were part of the SS.
A good number of Germans gave their lives to protect the Jews.
I am a member of Christians United for Israel.
I support peace in the middle east.
I respect the Jewish people as much as any other ethnic group.
Finally, my father is a proud veteran Marine Corps officer that served our country in Viet Nam and dislikes having detailed conversations about Germany during WWII, as he was a child having to live under an oppressive regime.
Let us not create stereotypes based on incomplete information.
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When does the seven years for negative criminal-history information begin?
Court helps clarify
Posted June 14, 2019
The federal Fair Credit Reporting act (FCRA) prohibits the reporting of adverse information for more than seven years. When does that seven years begin? Does it begin when the charge is filed, or any time before the charge is settled? The Ninth Circuit weighs in.
Case in point
While the case behind this decision involves a background check related to housing, the same law applies to background checks when employers use a third party.
In February 2010, Gabriel, the individual in the case, applied for housing, and at the property owner’s request, a third party prepared a tenant screening report — a background check. The report disclosed four criminal matters in Gabriel’s background, one from May 16, 2000, which was dismissed in 2004, two June 2006 charges dismissed that same month, and a June 2006 conviction.
After reviewing the report, the property owner denied Gabriel’s rental application.
Fast forward to 2012, when Gabriel sued the third party, arguing that the 2000 charge that was dismissed in 2004 should not have been included in the report. The lower court granted the owner’s request for dismissal of the claim that it violated the FCRA by including Gabriel’s 2000 charge, holding that the seven-year reporting period for a criminal charge begins on the date of disposition, rather than the date of entry.
Unhappy with this outcome, Gabriel appealed, and basically won. The appeals court found that, because more than seven years had passed since the date the charge was entered (May 2000), it should not have been included in the report. The law indicates that the seven-year window is directly connected to the adverse event itself, meaning the onset of the issue, not the resulting conclusion.
Therefore, the FCRA permits consumer reporting of a criminal charge for only seven years following the date of entry of the charge, rather than the date of disposition. Further, the dismissal of a charge does not constitute an adverse item and may not be reported after the reporting window for the charge has ended.
If your organization performs criminal background checks using a third party, make sure the seven-year window being used is one that begins when the charge is entered, and not when it is finally settled. While this may seem like a detail, often, cases are ruled based on such details.
Moran v. The Screening Pros, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, №12–57246, May 14, 2019.
This article was written by Darlene M. Clabault, SHRM-CP, PHR, CLMS, of J. J. Keller & Associates, Inc.
California has a few unique laws that place those who have kept their nose clean on a more even playing field after seven years. This is most commonly referred to as the Seven Year Rule. All states are subject to FCRA, or the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
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The Horse Races
My grandfather, Ken Macdonell was a private eye. He had his own business. Like many men of his stature, he was a member of the Turf Clubs at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar. Me, being at a military academy during high school would always look forward to going to the track on the weekends away from the academy. I met several famous people, such as Michael Biehn (Aliens), Rod Stewart, Mickey Rooney and various others. The food was always good, the money was always rolling in and I would get to see Samantha Siegel, my biggest high school crush. Her family was and still is a big name in horse racing under Jay Em Ess Stables. I was not sure if she even saw the 16 year old guy in a military uniform checking her out when we passed each other. I was too shy and was not in her “circle”, not in her “class” so I never really said anything to her, so we just stared at each other.
I never had to fork out any money to bet. My grandfather would always place the bets for me, so it was pure profit. I would just handicap the horses and tell him what to bet.
I noticed the same people at the track every weekend. Always sitting in the same spots, ordering the same drinks, having the same conversations over and over again. There was always someone in the group that passed away recently. To these men and women, the track had become their home. It was like a nursing home for rich people. What amazed me was that they seemed to always lose their money on bets. I never had to experience that, so it never concerned me. I was living in a fantasy world that children of the rich and famous experience. Even Samantha was just a fantasy. This started to annoy me and I started to despise going to the track. It made me sick.
The Turf Clubs of the past are now long gone, and so are most of the lifeless souls that made it their home, but the memories still haunt me.
I guess the point is that gambling cannot buy you happiness, only loneliness and sorrow. Horse racing can be a fun weekend activity, but don’t make it your life. Except, if you’re Samantha.
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The Trial
#Vimeo#zerodarkthirty#guantanamo#campjustice#guantanamobay#ammaral-baluchi#humanrights#waronterror#trump#trumpadministration
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Record High ACA Enrollment At 31 Million Americans
Record High ACA Enrollment At 31 Million Americans
“Record High ACA Enrollment At 31 Million Americans, ” Health Affairs Blog, June 7, 2021.DOI: 10.1377/hblog20210607.367870
On June 5, 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new data on enrollment in coverage options under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Using enrollment data from 2020 and 2021, a new report from the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)…
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Hill Democrats Ask for Input On Public Option As CO, NV Consider Adoption
Hill Democrats Ask for Input On Public Option As CO, NV Consider Adoption
“Hill Democrats Ask for Input On Public Option As CO, NV Consider Adoption, ” Health Affairs Blog, May 27, 2021.DOI: 10.1377/hblog20210526.48539
On May 26, 2021, Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) and Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ)—chairs of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions and House Committee on Energy and Commerce, respectively—released a letter asking for input on a…
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This story and photoset was made by wohlandderek on Commaful, a site where people write short stories, poems, jokes, blog posts and more in a beautiful visual format.
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