Sunday, April 10, 2022
LETTING YOUR ATTENTION SPAN WAIVER
We're all human that's for sure, attracted by whatever catches our eyes: distractions
Kim and Pete, or Vladimir and Volodymyr?
WASHINGTON — Please, Kim Kardashian, don’t elope with Pete Davidson.
We’re already distracted by the wonder of Ketanji Brown Jackson and the blunder of Will Smith, the arrival of dreamy spring days and the return of dreaded mask rules.
If we get one more shiny object to contemplate, I fear our support for Ukraine might waver. Do we have the attention span to stay focused on the Russian descent into pure evil?
With brutal methods perfected in other conflicts, the Russians are committing ever more brazen atrocities; they are raping and killing civilians. On Friday, they struck fleeing civilians in a train station in eastern Ukraine, where a missile psychopathically labeled “For our children” killed at least 50 people and wounded nearly 100.
“Why do they need to hit civilians with missiles? Why this cruelty?” Volodymyr Zelensky asked the Finnish Parliament on Friday, adding, “Sometimes, you think whether they are human at all.”
He pleaded, “Hatred has to lose.”
But are we moving on? Moving on, after all, is the favorite American activity. And technology has exacerbated our twitchy consciousness and sensationalist culture. We now live in a world of nothing but distractions, with a blizzard of stimuli.
We have a way of turning everything into trends. Once, there were causes. Now, there are trends. “You’re trending” is the highest compliment you can pay someone — or the biggest alarm you can sound. If something is trending, no matter what, it commands the highest commercial respect.
But trends are transient, by definition. American attention goes from transient to transient to transient. A lifetime of ephemera. We used to have thought leaders; now we have influencers.
It’s a cognitive challenge, but can we find ways to keep our attention on things that require our attention? Do we have any mental discipline at all?
READ MORE >>
IN IT FOR THE MONEY: Nothing Matters More In A Capitalist Democracy
Introduction: O yeah Media Matters! Money might be one thing, but so is using television for a steppingstone onto a platform to gain higher political office
Money and morals. Psaki is just the latest to swap White House for cable TV
Summer switch to cable news likely to sharpen perception in America that both sides are just really in it for the money
The routine trafficking of political personnel in America to the nation’s television networks hit a road bump last week after staffers at NBC News complained about White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s rumor-as-fact plans to join the liberal news outlet MSNBC when she leaves her West Wing post this summer.
The clumsily handled move, previewed in a leak to Axios, triggered anger among journalists who said they feared Psaki’s hiring would “taint” the NBC brand and reinforce the impression, already well-established in opinion polls, that the news business in the US works hand-in-glove with political factions.
The Psaki saga is hardly new. If the deal goes through, Psaki will join a long line of White House staff who have moved to media roles. In January, Symone Sanders, a former adviser and senior spokesperson for Kamala Harris, signed a deal with MSNBC to host a show.
But the deals are unexceptional to either side of the political divide. Trump press secretary Kayleigh McEnany joined Fox News last year; Sean Spicer has his own show on Newsmax; and CBS News hired Mick Mulvaney as a paid on-air contributor – also triggering an internal revolt that even prompted late-night host Stephen Colbert to condemn it on his show.
The anger is easy to explain. The pipeline between politics and lucrative gigs in the media in America is one that appears to sully the public view of both professions, creating a feeling that both sides are really in it for the money. It also encourages a sense that politics in the US is seen by the media in the same veins as sports – where hiring ex-players as commentators is common – where winning races is everything and actual policy means very little. . ."
READ MORE >> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/10/jen-psaki-white-house-tv-msnbc-news-politics
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RESERVE
Insert copy provided:
Watch “He Is Risen,” A Sacred Easter Celebration, on April 10
Program features The Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra at Temple Square, Bells at Temple Square and the Gabriel Trumpet Ensemble
"For Easter 2022, The Tabernacle Choir has prepared a one-hour sacred Easter celebration for families and individuals of all ages. It features The Tabernacle Choir, Orchestra at Temple Square, Bells at Temple Square, the Gabriel Trumpet Ensemble, and inspiring video imagery.
The program, titled “He Is Risen,” will stream on Palm Sunday, Sunday, April 10, at 10 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time on:
Musical selections include Easter hymns and beloved anthems, including “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today,” “How Great the Wisdom and the Love,” “Unfold, Ye Portals” from Gounod’s The Redemption, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling” and “Worthy Is the Lamb” from Handel’s Messiah. Viewers can join the audience in singing “He Is Risen.”
The program will then be archived on the Choir’s YouTube channel for re-airing at convenient times throughout Easter week and beyond. The program will be streamed from Europe Area Facebook pages and YouTube channels and is available for other areas and missions to stream and post on their pages. The program will air on the BYUtv cable channel on Sunday, April 17, at noon (MDT).
The English presentation will be subtitled or overdubbed in 23 additional languages, including Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Macedonian, Maltese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbian, Spanish, Slovak, Slovenian and Swedish."
RELIEF IS ON THE WAY: Fixing Menstruation Periods
Will we soon be able to ‘fix’ periods?
For many, menstruation involves pain, fatigue, mood swings and worse, yet there have been no new treatments for 30 years. Now science promises breakthroughs
It always happens at the worst possible moment. In a work meeting or at dinner with your partner’s parents. Panicked, you excuse yourself, lock the bathroom door and furiously try to wash the blood off the crotch of your trousers. Inevitably you think: how did we build a space station before fixing this?
Even for those not diagnosed with disorders like endometriosis or adenomyosis, menstruation can make everyday life stressful, if not unbearable. Up to 70% of menstruating under-25s experience pain, fatigue and mood swings, while nearly 30% across age groups report bleeding heavily. This puts them at risk of iron deficiency anaemia, a “global” and “totally under-recognised” problem, says Hilary Critchley, a gynaecologist and academic at the University of Edinburgh.
Cultural taboos, and the well documented dismissal of women’s pain, have hidden the scale of the problem, but it is also bigger than it used to be. Previous generations spent more time pregnant and undernourished, so they had fewer cycles.
Biologically, menstruation is odd. The vast majority of animals don’t do it
Besides womb surgery – which 30,000 undergo as treatment for heavy bleeding every year in England and Wales – and painkillers, treatment consists of blood clotting agents and hormonal contraceptives. While some use them successfully to lighten or even stop their periods, they don’t work well for everyone and may have unacceptable side-effects. “Almost everyone is bothered by this at some point,” says gynaecological surgeon Dharani Hapangama from the University of Liverpool, “so there should be easy, manageable treatments.” But according to Critchley, there has been “no new class of medical treatments for heavy menstrual bleeding for over 30 years”.
Chronic underfunding hasn’t helped. “You could theorise that there is a bias against women-related research,” says Günter Wagner from Yale University, who studies the evolution of menstruation . . "
Temple-Smith believes that the spiny mouse is overall the best model of human menstruation. “It’s getting harder and harder to justify work on primates, and the cost is phenomenal,” he says. Instead researchers use the induced mouse model, where a regular mouse has its ovaries removed, and is subjected to hormones that make it bleed from the womb. “I think if you’re honest about it, you need to have a natural model that works without the need to pump [it] up with progesterone and oestrogen.”
Some, like Hapangama, are sceptical that the similarity to humans is strong enough, and some things do differ: spiny mice don’t seem to naturally get endometriosis, for example. But for Wagner’s studies of evolution, there is little competition. He has just started his own colony. “To have a rodent is a huge opportunity,” he says. “It’s just such a chance.”
In one respect, spiny mice are so like humans that it complicates matters. . ."
READ MORE >> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/apr/10/will-we-soon-be-able-to-fix-periods
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Flash News: Ukraine Intercepts Russian Kh-59 Cruise Missile Using US VAMPIRE Air Defense System Mounted on Boat. Ukrainian forces have made ...
