Zoom Public Meetings Haven’t Saved Democracy

You know how the same handful of ranting cranks monopolize government and community outreach meetings? Moving meetings online was supposed to broaden the base of citizen participation.

Didn’t happen. New research found that moving housing hearings online in Massachusetts ‘did not remedy systemic skews in participation.’

“Relative to all voters in the community, online participants in local hearings in Massachusetts during the pandemic were whiter (by a 13 percent margin), older (22 percent likelier to be over the age of 50) and more likely to be homeowners than renters (a 25 percent gap). These gaps are roughly the same as … co-authors observed with in-person housing meetings pre-pandemic. The only difference is that partisanship went up on Zoom….”

— “Thought Zoom Would Save Local Democracy? It Hasn’t.” Michael Hendrix, Governing

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Image (“Public Meeting on Zoom”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Mask-Wearing Cuts Covid by 53%

Florence Nightingale, masked, after H. M. Bonham-Carter

A global research study published in BMJ shows that wearing facemasks is the most effective non-pharmaceutical measure reducing COVID-19 incidence and fatalities:

“Mask-wearing is the single most effective public health measure at tackling Covid, reducing incidence by 53%, the first global study of its kind shows.

Vaccines … do not confer 100% protection, most countries have not vaccinated everyone, and it is not yet known if jabs will prevent future transmission of emerging coronavirus variants.”

“Results from more than 30 studies from around the world were analysed in detail, showing a statistically significant 53% reduction in the incidence of Covid with mask wearing and a 25% reduction with physical distancing.”

— “Mask-wearing cuts Covid incidence by 53%, says global study,” Andrew Gregory, The Guardian

Related:

“As GOP Fights Mask and Vaccine Mandates, Florida Takes the Lead,” Patricia Mazzei, New York Times, via Yahoo News

“Mixed feelings as D.C. lifts mask mandate,” Chelsea Cirruzzo, Paige Hopkins, Cuneyt Dil, Axios

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Image (“Florence Nightingale masked, after a lithograph by H. M. Bonham-Carter”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Speed Reading

German researchers show that, with a few adjustments, we all can be better, faster readers. A Quartz video.

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(Bare) Majority of Americans Believe in Evolution

According to a University of Michigan study, the percentage of American adults who believe in evolution is now 54%. In all, 32% of religious fundamentalists, 34% of conservative Republicans, and 83% of liberal Democrats accept evolution as fact. Science marches on!

More:

“Study: Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans,” Morgan Sherburne, Michigan News

 

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Image: Anti-Evolution League at the Scopes Trial, Dayton Tennessee, from Literary Digest, July 25, 1925

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Fire Country Homeowners Think They’re Prepared. Nope.

University of Colorado researchers surveyed residents of a mountain country housing subdivision about wildfire risk to their homes. Professionals rated 61 percent of households as high fire risks, while 22 percent of residents did. 70 percent of residents said their houses were at low or moderate wildfire risk, while experts said only 19 percent of housewere. 50 percent said they had 100 feet of defensible space around their homes, but only 17 percent did.

Hope springs eternal, but wildfire does, too.

More:

“Mountain residents underestimate wildfire risk, overestimate preparedness,” Kelsey Simpkins, CU Boulder Today

Related:

“Burn. Build. Repeat: Why Our Wildfire Policy Is So Deadly.” Jeffrey Ball, Mother Jones

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Top image (“Smokey Says ‘Let It Burn’”) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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MAGA Motivation: White Fear of Losing Out Fomented Insurgency

DC Bus shelter, 8 blocks from the Capitol, January 16, 2021

“When the political scientist Robert Pape began studying the issues that motivated the 380 or so people arrested in connection with the attack against the Capitol on Jan. 6, he expected to find that the rioters were driven to violence by the lingering effects of the 2008 Great Recession.

But instead he found something very different: Most of the people who took part in the assault came from places, his polling and demographic data showed, that were awash in fears that the rights of minorities and immigrants were crowding out the rights of white people in American politics and culture.”

— “Fears of White People Losing Out Permeate Capitol Rioters’ Towns, Study Finds,” Alan Feuer, New York Times

More:

“What an analysis of 377 Americans arrested or charged in the Capitol insurrection tells us,” Robert A. Pape, Washington Post

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The Moon Is Awash In Water

Two new studies indocate that there are “cold traps” on the moon full of water. NASA spied on Luna from a high-flying jet named SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) and found the unique signature of water all over the place on sunlit portions of the moon. A secord study finds that frozen water could be hiding in lunar shadows on 15,444 square miles of the moon’s real estate. Astronauts are probably planning lakeside chateaus as you read this.

CDC Funds First Gun Violence Research in 24 Years

In 2019, there were over 39,000 gun deaths in the US, including 24,000 suicides and 400 mass shootings. That’s a health crisis, but a craven Congress blocked medical research into gun violence. Until now:

“Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the recipients of nearly $8 million in funding to 16 research groups across the US to study firearm injury prevention. Their objectives over the next few years are to find ways to enhance safety and lower gun deaths and crime, either by evaluating current strategies in practice or proposing new ones. Research grants on the same topic awarded by the US National Institutes of Health are still under consideration.”

— “Researchers begin the first wave of US-funded gun injury prevention work in decades,” Katherine Ellen Foley, Quartz

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What Men Think About

“By means of a golf tally counter, 283 college students kept track of their thoughts pertaining to food, sleep, or sex for one week. Males reported significantly more need-based cognitions overall, but there was no significant interaction between sex of participant and type of cognition recorded. Therefore, although these young men did think more about sex than did young women, they also thought more about food and sleep.”

— “Sex on the brain?: an examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability,” Fisher, Moore, Pittenger,  Journal of Sex Research 2012, via NCBI

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Wildfire Strategy: Let It Burn

Every year since the dawn of time, the Santa Ana winds lash Southern California’s dry autumn brushlands into explosive, blazing infernos. Every year since the dawn of the last century, Southern Californians express surprise as they are engulfed in a sea of flame. With climate change, things won’t get better.

“We will never be able to control wildfire,” explains Tania Schoennagel of the Institute for Alpine and Arctic Research, “We have to learn to live with it and adapt, just like we do with droughts and flooding. Our current wildfire policies can’t protect people and homes.”

More:

“The Future of Fighting Wildfires in the Era of Climate Change,” Bob Berwyn, Pacific Standard

“Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes,” Tania Schoennagela, Jennifer K. Balcha, Hannah Brenkert-Smith et al., PNAS

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Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com.

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