Photographer Captures Bizarre Reality Of Toy Production In 'Real Toy Story' Dig into your old toy chest and you're bound to find an adorable bounty of baby dolls, teddy bears and the occasional rubber ducky. So, if you don't want to forever taint your memories of these darling childhood mementos, we recommend you look away now. Photographer Michael Wolf's series "Real Toy Story" delves inside Hong Kong's toy making factories, exposing the mass production and consumption embedded in the lives of your cuddliest childhood companions. Wolf, a German-born artist who has long called Hong Kong his home, examines the bizarre production sites that manufacture, in massive quantities, the cute creatures that children around the globe grow to love. There is something extremely unsettling about the overflowing boxes of baby heads or Barbie limbs in all their pastel-colored glory, recalling the kind of nightmares that crept into our elementary school consciousness. "Real Toy Story" is currently on view at Shanghai's K11 Art Space until February 10, 2014.
Does Discrimination Lead to Substance Abuse? People who are discriminated against cope with that discrimination in various ways. Although some cope adaptively and use strategies that are constructive and empowering when they are faced with adversity, others turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms. One such mechanism is the use and abuse of alcohol and drugs. Racial discrimination has been shown to be related to increased drug and alcohol use, but has not been proven to be the cause of the increase. So why is it that some people use alcohol and drugs to cope while others do not? Meg Gerrard of the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire wanted to explore this question further. Gerrard conducted three separate studies designed to elicit feelings of discrimination among a sample of African-American adolescents. The findings from this study were gathered only from African-American participants. Reference: Gerrard, Meg, Michelle L. © Copyright 2012 GoodTherapy.org. Please confirm that you are human.
How Poverty Taxes the Brain - Emily Badger Human mental bandwidth is finite. You’ve probably experienced this before (though maybe not in those terms): When you’re lost in concentration trying to solve a problem like a broken computer, you’re more likely to neglect other tasks, things like remembering to take the dog for a walk, or picking your kid up from school. This is why people who use cell phones behind the wheel actually perform worse as drivers. We only have so much cognitive capacity to spread around. This understanding of the brain’s bandwidth could fundamentally change the way we think about poverty. In a series of experiments run by researchers at Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Warwick, low-income people who were primed to think about financial problems performed poorly on a series of cognition tests, saddled with a mental load that was the equivalent of losing an entire night’s sleep. This explains, for example, why poor people who aren’t good with money might also struggle to be good parents.
Top 10 Subtler Forms of Discrimination While society has not completely discarded racism, sexism and homophobia, at least there’s some public awareness of those issues; other forms of discrimination occur every day and are recognized only by the victims. While we praise our open-mindedness on the ‘big’ issues, could we still be harboring unfair—and perhaps unconscious—prejudices against friends and neighbors? Submitted for your approval are 10 Subtler Forms of Discrimination, and it might open your eyes a bit. NOTE: I’m not the subtlest of human beings. Bias against bald people started early. The 20th century’s youth-obsessed culture viewed baldness as old age incarnate, and fueled a billion dollar hair care and restoration industry. But, there is hope. So bald men can be sexy now. We could be going faster, but we’re headed (groan) in the right direction. <a href=" src=" Think again. That’s not happening. Maybe not.
Poverty, Unemployment, Enriching the Few: The 2008 Economic Crisis and the Restructuring of Class Relations in America The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis released a report Friday showing that, after adjusting for inflation, the average US household has recovered only 45 percent of the wealth it lost during the 2008 crash. This undermines claims that the US is experiencing an “economic recovery,” and points to the vast effects of the collapse in home values, falling wages, and mass unemployment. After noting that 62 percent of the increase in aggregate wealth since 2009 has come from increasing share values—which are overwhelmingly owned by the rich—the report notes with understatement, “Considering the uneven recovery of wealth across households, a conclusion that the financial damage of the crisis and recession largely has been repaired is not justified.” A principal factor in the collapse of household wealth beginning in 2007 was the collapse of the housing market bubble. Even the St. Now, the ruling class has turned to cutting social services that keep millions out of poverty.
US poverty to hit highest level since 1965 Poverty in the US is projected to spread at record levels unseen since the 1960s, affecting many groups including underemployed workers, suburban families and the poorest of America's poor. As unemployment aid dwindles and workers grow increasingly discouraged, poverty is reaching every corner of the US. In 2010, a family of four with a pre-tax income of $22,314 was considered below the poverty line, while an individual with a pre-tax income of $11,139 would have the same status. The Associated Press surveyed economists, think tanks and nonpartisan academics to estimate the rapidly escalating poverty rate. 2010's poverty rate of 15.1 per cent would only need to increase by 0.1 per cent to surpass what Americans faced in 1965 – but this year, the poverty level is estimated to grow to 15.7 percent.US poverty reached 22.4 per cent in the late 1950s, and steadily declined throughout the 1960’s. You can share this story on social media:
Ohio Bank Forecloses On Wrong Home, Sells Owner Katie Barnett's Belongings Katie Barnett only wants her stuff back. She says all her possessions in Vinton County, Ohio, disappeared when Wellston First National Bank confused her home with the house across the street, foreclosed on it, changed the locks, and then sold or trashed everything -- all while she was out of town for two weeks. “They repossessed my house on accident, thinking it was the house across the street,” Barnett explained to Ohio's 10TV. “They told me that the GPS led them to my house. My grass hadn't been mowed and they just assumed.” Worse still, Barnett says an itemized list requesting the bank pay her $18,000 so she can replace everything has only been met with ridicule from the bank's president. The bank has not responded to a request for comment from The Huffington Post but told 10TV it was working to resolve the situation. Sadly, stories like this are all too common. UPDATE: Monday, July 29 -- In a statement published on the First National Bank of Wellston's website, Anthony S.
The High Cost of Care For the first time in our history, we are devoting the entire feature section of the magazine to a single story by one writer: a powerful examination of America's health care costs. The 24,105-word story, reported and written by Steve Brill, inverts the standard question of who should pay for health care and asks instead, Why are we paying so much? Why do we spend nearly 20% of our gross domestic product on health care, twice as much as most other developed countries, which get the same or better health outcomes? Why, Brill asks, does America spend more on health care than the next 10 highest-spending countries combined? One answer is that health care is a seller's market and we're all buyers--buyers with little knowledge and no ability to negotiate. Brill, the founder of Court TV and American Lawyer and the CEO of Journalism Online, is one of America's premier--and most dogged--journalists. Richard Stengel, MANAGING EDITOR