Sleep disorder: Delaying school start times key to teen students’ attention span, output
For African Americans, markedly higher rates of sleep apnea sabotage slumber, says Girardin Jean-Louis, a sleep researcher at New York University. One reason for this difference is that non-Hispanic Blacks are 1.3 times as likely to be overweight or obese as non-Hispanic whites, federal data show, and this excess weight...
Murderer of Black American George Floyd handed 22 years in prison
Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd, will serve 22 and a half years in prison, closing a chapter on a case that sparked global outrage and protests. Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill said the sentence was not based on...
Collapsing Miami building in US kills one after explosion, 99 missing
Rescuers are desperately searching for any survivors trapped in the rubble of a collapsed 12-storey residential building north of Miami. At least one person has been killed and 99 are still missing, officials say. As families desperately wait for news, search teams have been working around the clock and have...
‘Just America’ is a narrative of young and educated citizens that continually misreads Blacks, Latinos
There are too many things that Just America can’t talk about for the narrative to get at the hardest problems. It can’t talk about the complex causes of poverty. Structural racism – ongoing disadvantages that Black people suffer as a result of policies and institutions over the centuries – is...
Venus: Scientists renew interest in Earth’s evil twin to solve planet’s biggest mysteries
After years of waiting, an armada of spacecraft are headed to Venus. US scientists were thrilled earlier this month when NASA approved not one, but two new missions to our closest planetary neighbour. Now, Europe has followed suit and approved its own mission. The explorations raise the prospect that major...
Fractured dream: From Real America to Free America, Just America then Smart America
In 2014, American character changed. A large and influential generation came of age in the shadow of accumulating failures by the ruling class – especially by business and foreign-policy elites. This new generation had little faith in ideas that previous ones were raised on: All men are created equal. Work...
Making of Trump: He’d reptilian genius for intuiting the emotions of Real America
When Donald Trump ran for president, the party of Free America collapsed into its own hollowness. The mass of Republicans were not free-traders who wanted corporate taxes zeroed out. They wanted government to do things that benefited them – not the undeserving classes below and above them. Party elites were...
Real America’s attitude toward the rest of the world is isolationist, hostile to humanitarianism
From its beginnings, Real America has also been religious and in a particular way: evangelical and fundamentalist, hostile to modern ideas and intellectual authority. The truth will enter every simple heart and it doesn’t come in shades of grey. “If we have to give up either religion or education, we...
Espionage: The AN0M fake secure chat app may have been too clever for its own good
In April 1943, Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was killed when the US Air Force shot down the plane carrying him to Balalae Airfield in the Solomon Islands. The attack was made possible by the USA cracking Japanese codes and decrypting a message that revealed Yamamoto’s flight plan would just take...
National loyalty: Real America has always been a country of white people
As a national narrative, Smart America has a tenuous sense of the nation. Smart America doesn’t hate America, which has been so good to the meritocrats. Smart Americans believe in institutions and they support American leadership of military alliances and international organisations. But Smart Americans are uneasy with patriotism. It’s...
