Category Archives: Autobiographical

BERKELEY — University of California, Berkeley, researchers have shown for the first time that the brains of low-income children function differently from the brains of high-income kids.

In a study recently accepted for publication by the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, scientists at UC Berkeley’s Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute and the School of Public Health report that normal 9- and 10-year-olds differing only in socioeconomic status have detectable differences in the response of their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that is critical for problem solving and creativity.

Robert Sanders, Media Relations |02 December 2008

When I lived in the Philippines I quickly discovered that poverty had more subtle effects than I had imagined. Like most Americans, I had seen the television images of crumbling houses and starving kids with their swollen bellies. I am not sure if that is exactly what I expected to see in my little town of Conception, Tarlac, but it is pretty close. And there were certainly lots of crumbling houses and ill fed children. The house next door to mine was a single room, about 12 feet by 12 feet (perhaps 4 meters by 4 meters), occupied by an extended family that often included a dozen people.

That’s the least of it, of course. Maybe even more importantly, poverty had to do with infrastructure. There were the ongoing ‘brown outs’ and ‘black outs’ and minimal indoor plumbing. There were lots of bad roads and poorly running buses; there were no dentists in the rural areas, and no optometrists. People went blind with cataracts from the dust and lost their teeth from eating sugar cane raw. There were also families who had brand new cars; my district was the home district of the Aquino family so we had some good new roads, too. After a while, you noticed that many of the kids at school had small wounds that never quite healed.

They certainly had a lot of energy but these wounds were evidence of chronic, low-level malnutrition. As it turns out, you can be half or one-third or one-fourth starved to death. What happens, often enough, is that your body stops working very well. If you’re a kid, and like all kids, you are constantly scratching your knees or something, these tiny cuts never quite heal. Eventually, we also learned that this low-level malnutrition has cognitive effects as well. Among other things, kids don’t concentrate well when they are poorly fed. I wasn’t surprised, then, to find out that poverty also shapes so-called higher cognitive functions, too, such as creativity.

Today, at least 55,805,197 Americans are concerned for the future of our nation’s great tradition of liberty. Some 63,007,791 Americans have been lulled, under the aegis of “hope and change,” into a state of what is best described as “cult worship” and all its attendant deception.

One of our editors, a Marine now working in the private sector, summed up our circumstances with this situation report. It aptly captured the sentiments around our office: “It’s been tough, fellow Patriots; tough to stomach the idea that more than half of my fellow citizens who vote, have booted a genuine American hero to the curb for a rudderless charlatan. What a sad indictment on our citizenry that some are so eager to overlook his myriad flaws — his radical roots, his extreme liberalism, his utter lack of experience or achievement. Barack Obama is the antithesis of King’s dream: He’s a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character. If it’s God’s will that Barack Obama is our next president, then so be it. We Patriots will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and wade back to the war front, intent on liberty or death.”

This battle is lost, but the war is not. Let’s roll.

Mark Alexander, Publisher, “The Patriot Post.”

Especially in recent weeks I’ve felt like I am constantly arguing with my relatives about politics. That’s not really the right word, though, because they seem to be caught up in a kind of horror story narrative that has little to do with politics as I understand it. I’m sure this comes from right-wing radio and from newsletters and blogs like the Patriot Post.

It’s a strange but seemingly effective strategy. Turn everything upside down and then repeat it over and over again until it starts to sounds true. Senator Obama did everything right by all of the old standards. He worked hard, got good grades, contributed to his community; by all accounts he’s a great dad and husband. He’s a poster child for traditional values.

Yet listen to the Patriot Post: “Obama is the antithesis of King’s dream: He’s a man judged by the color of his skin rather than the content of his character.” There’s a kind of doubled cowardice here. First, is the way the writer puts these words into a no-doubt fictional Marine. Just as importantly, is the bad faith of the poor looser: if my team didn’t win, it’s becuase your team cheated.