PESTICIDES AND CHILD HEALTH: EVIDENCE FROM HISPANIC CHILDREN IN THE U.S.

This paper examines whether there is an externality of parental occupational exposure to pesticides on children's health, and whether some children are more severely affected by the externality than others. Using the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination survey, we find children of exposed parents are more likely to develop chronic conditions and less likely to attain good health than children of unexposed parents, after controlling for a large set of child and family characteristics. Furthermore, children from low socioeconomic status are most vulnerable to health shocks resulting from pesticides and other related environmental toxins. Our analysis suggests that terminating the pathway of parental occupational exposure would be cost effective to correct the externality. Taken together with earlier findings that poor childhood health is associated with lower adult earnings, our results suggest more attention to be paid to the health shocks from environmental toxins for the poor as a potential mechanism through which the increasing poverty across generations at the very poor takes place: poverty makes individuals more susceptible to health shocks at childhood, which is associated with worse poverty for their children.Health Economics and Policy,

Book Review: Shooting from the Hip

Review of Arms: The Culture and Credo of the Gun by A.J. Somerset (Biblioasis, 2015)

How Do Emotions Influence Saving Behavior

Employers have moved away from traditional defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans such as 401(k)s. As a result, many individuals are now required to make their own retirement saving and investment decisions, which has raised concerns about their ability and desire to handle these decisions. Since investment choices have major implications for future financial welfare, it is important to understand how individuals make these decisions and to identify potential ways to improve the decision-making process. Researchers have explored various factors affecting retirement saving, such as income, age, job tenure, self-control failure, financial literacy and trust. No prior research, however, has looked at the effects of emotions on retirement savings. This Issue in Brief examines how two different emotions – hope and hopefulness – affect 401(k) participation and asset allocation. The first section defines the terms. The second section describes the structure of a recent field experiment. The third section summarizes the results, which reveal that having high hope (i.e. yearning) – for a secure retirement leads to different investment behaviors than having high hopefulness (i.e. perceived likelihood). Furthermore, threats to hope and threats to hopefulness are found to have different effects on 401(k) participation and investment decisions. The final section concludes.

Fostering Cultural Inclusivity in our Church Music

Openness to hearing, engaging, and loving other cultures is not a musical issue; it is a heart issue. Posting about ­­­­­­­­musical variety in corporate worship from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation. https://inallthings.org/fostering-cultural-inclusivity-in-our-church-music

Book Review: Singing the Congregation: How Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community

The desire of concert attendees for an authentic spiritual experience maps onto the search for other authentic experiences by consumers today. Posting about ­­­­­­­­the book Singing the Congregation from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation. https://inallthings.org/book-review-singing-the-congregation-how-contemporary-worship-music-forms-evangelical-community

A Medium for Meeting God : C.S. Lewis and Music (Especially Wagner)

This essay will survey Lewis’s writings and outline the development of his aesthetic ideas in relation to music, emphasizing his enjoyment of Wagner and explaining nuanced references to Wagner throughout Lewis’s works. Moreover, this essay will describe how Lewis’s ideas about God advanced in counterpoint to his ideas about music and how Lewis came to eventually conclude that music is a medium for meeting God. To conclude, I share ways in which Lewis’s ideas have influenced and strengthened my own teaching of Wagner in Music History and Literature classes

The Harmony of All Things : Music, Soul, and Cosmos in the Writings of John Scottus Eriugena

In his prodigious philosophical work Periphyseon, the foremost intellectual of the ninth century, John Scottus Eriugena (ca. 800–877 CE), defined musica broadly and in a way that solicits interdisciplinary applications: “Music is the discipline discerning by the light of reason the harmony of all things in natural proportions which are either in motion or at rest.” In this dissertation, I trace resonances of the ars musica in Eriugena’s writings using selections from his three greatest works: Periphyseon, his glosses on Martianus Capella’s textbook De Nuptiis, and his commentary over Pseudo-Dionysius’s treatise on the Celestial Hierarchy of Angels. Beginning with his comments on Capella, I present ways in which Eriugena’s reflections on music as a liberal art intersect with his discussions of the cosmos and the human soul. For Eriugena and earlier Neoplatonists, the consideration of quantity related to quantity in ratio was the proper province of musica, and this natural ordering corresponded to the overall coherence observed throughout the cosmos. That is, the “natural proportions” in Eriugena’s definition of music included all things that can be studied, visible or invisible. Although some previous musicological considerations of Eriugena’s writings have sought insights on performance practices of the ninth century (e.g., the organicum melos question), most have dealt almost exclusively with his description of the harmony of the spheres; this project extends these discussions and explores a fundamental element in Platonic thought neglected in previous studies, i.e., music related to the spheres and the human soul. Eriugena’s writings provide a perfect opportunity for such a study. Using my own translation of Eriugena’s glosses on Martianus Capella’s De Nuptiis, I demonstrate how Eriugena’s short treatise on the harmony of the spheres incorporates a discussion on the motions of human souls superimposed upon the planetary system. Furthermore, ix the ordering of the celestial hierarchy of angels emanating from God is itself proportionally organized, in terms of the nature of each angelic hierarchy and how they interact while relaying the divine oracles. In the end, I demonstrate that a unifying theme in Eriugena’s philosophical writings is the need for central, proportionally defined mediators, whether the sun, which modulates the celestial spheres, the mese in the Immutable System of tetrachords, or even specific ranks within the hierarchy of angels

7 Lies Creative People Believe

If every human has been given some measure of imagination and creativeness, what keeps some people from living creatively? Posting about roadblocks that prevent people from using their gifts from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world. http://inallthings.org/7-lies-creative-people-believe

Playing Before the Lord: The Life and Work of Joseph Haydn (Book Review)

Reviewed Title: Stapert, Calvin. Playing Before the Lord: The Life and Work of Joseph Haydn. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014. 304 pages. ISBN 978-0802868527