The Pursuit of Happiness

Recently there has been a flurry of activity in regards to gay marriage. New Hampshire and Maine passed legislation legalizing it, leaving New York and as the only states that still have nothing on the books to defend this right. New York is struggling to get it passed, and even Democrats are wary of supporting a bill unless it is likely to pass. We're still not certain if it does or not.
In Russia, a lesbian couple applied for a marriage liscence, and though they were denied within an hour (it usually takes ten business days for a couple to recieve a ruling), it was declared illegal for them to be denied the opportunity to apply. After being denied, they went to Canada, where marriages are performed regardless of nationality. They're hoping that since Russia doesn't have any laws directly stating that out-of-the-country marriage is invalid, their Canadian license will be recognized.
Last but not least, as Rachele has already mentioned, there's the problem of Miss California, who stated her opinion that marriage is for heterosexual couples only. While this comment was preceeded by the statement that she's proud to live in a country where everyone shares equal freedom, the most vocal people in support of gay marriage are tearing into her. That's bad news, something we can't ignore even when good things are happening. Attacking a girl who was stating a personal opinion could bring the movement to a grinding halt.
We're getting somewhere. Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont, Maine, Conneticut, and New Hampshire have legalized gay marriage, three of them quite recently. That's more than ten percent now. We have to be careful not to take things too personally and be grateful we're moving forward. Things can change, especially in the twenty-first century.

Trippy fish out of its habitat

This week, off the coast of Britain, a fisherman caught a fish called sarpa salpa. Though it is easily identifiable by those who know about it, the fisherman had no idea what it was. That's because it's native to the coast of Africa, and this particular fish was far out of its normal range. It could have simply been caught up in another shoal of fish, but it's also possible that it is one of many that are expanding north as water heats up due to climate change. The sarpa salpa in particular is a risk to uninformed Brits, because eating certain parts of it (the head in particular) causes svere halluncinations. People have been hospitalized with auditory hallucinations and dramatic nightmares as a result of eating unhealthy parts of the sarpa salpa.
As for the fisherman who caught this specimen, he says if he'd known what it was, he'd have taken it to a club and sold it.

"Hyperlocal" News Sites

In this current economic crisis, many people have stopped buying newspapers. The news industry is in decline, suffering cuts just as severe as any other market's. Many people, short on cash, are turning to the internet for their information because it's usually free. Now, a trend in this on-line media has surfaced: the obsession with local news. These "hyperlocal" news sites are concerned with only a limited area, disregarding even national news that affects the local, like swine flu, in favor of a block-by-block investigation of one town or county. Most of these news sites are manned by volunteers, and so the information is questionable. Trained journalists are changing that, though, starting their own hyperlocal news sites, then recruiting and training area volunteers on the proper way to investigate, find facts, and present controversial topics without bias. These local newsmen then go into the community and report on topics that would never be noticed by a larger paper. One newspaper volunteer was able to uncover a case of police brutality in their small town which had gone uninvestigated by any other source.
While the news industry is struggling, the operators of these hyperlocal papers are more optimistic. They believe that the culture of media is changing, and they are adapting well and coming up with new ideas about how to fund newspapers and decide what to present (one paper allows its readers to choose which stories they want to pay for, thus tayloring the paper to the local demand). The world may be ending like all the large papers say, these locals believe, but there's more to it than that, and there will always be a news source to report on it all.

Young Iranian Voters Know Their candidates.

Iran is a democracy on the surface. In truth, it is controlled by an Islamic regime. The people elect the president and his parliment, but candidates are selected and approved by the Ayatollah. Also, the people are often uninformed voters due to the lack of information about the presidential and parlimentary candidates which is presented to them by the government. But many young Iranians have found a way around this information gap: facebook. The revolution in Iran took place before most Iranians who know how to operate facebook were born, and they are more likely to encounter a wide range of views through their exposure to the internet. Many democratic nations are hoping that these well-informed voters will realise that their vote doesn't count as much as it could, and will mount some kind of rebellion against the theocratic state. Maybe it'll work. If any change does come to Iran, that should be the way it happens.

Food Shortages

How important is food? We take it for granted, but many a government has been brought down by people rioting for want of bread. Now, some scientists fear that the combined forces of population growth and global warming will decrease the already insufficient food supply and wreak havoc on poor nations.
Population growth stresses the water supply. In order to provide more water, deeper wells must be produced. This uses energy, and since fossil fuels are the cheapest and most readily aviable, sources of energy, these are most likely the ones which will be uses. This will spur clilmate change. Climate change will lead to droughts and floods, and these will lead to the loss of topsoil because of wiind and water. Also, the heat will kill many crops which are grown. Population growth is linked to loss of topsoil and rising temperatures along with being a food problem in itself, making it the leading cause of food shortages. But loss of topsoil is also caused by clearcutting and other man-made disruptions of the environment, and the countries which use the highest levels of fossil fuels also tend to be the countries with the lowest population growth rates.
If poor countries suffer from food shortages, chaos will soon follow. And poor nations, especially the wildly unstable ones, are more likely to spread diseases (like AIDS), and the sale of drugs and weapons tends to increase. Also, unstable nations are more likely to accept extremist govenments and leaders, leading to extreme conflicts.
There are several basic, if not simple solutions to this problem. Planting trees would reduce the loss of topsoil and the amount of CO2 in the air (and growing fruit or nut trees would help directly, at least to some extent). Creating cheap, sustainable energy will help slow climate change. Increased water management, including conservation and recycling, would ease the strain on the water supply. And healthcare, at least on a basic level, combined with a reasonable sex education and family planning program, would ease the burden on large and poor populations.

Migrant Worker's Song

As the world's population moves from the country to the city, many people worry that rural culture will be lost. However, there is a culture in China which is forming around this transition. Migrant workers who come into Chinese cities often leave homes that have been kept by their families for generations. They leave a more natural land and work they know well to find opportunity. To commemorate their loss, they write songs. This sort of tradition is seen all over the world. Now, Chinese migrant workers have begun to record it. They've created a new strain of folk song, and it appeals to Chinese city-dwellers, particularly youth (perhaps because of the feeling of wandering and alienation that is the feature of many of the songs). Even audiences outside of China are taking notice, and while they can't understand the lyrics, they can hear the emotion. We know these people and what they feel, and their culture is being preserved by the progress which has caused them to lose their way of life.

Lost in space

The space program fascinates people. Rocket science is almost incomprehensible. The shuttles are a sublime depiction of the power of controlled physics. But sometimes I wonder what it has contributed to us, and so do a lot of others. I asked someone what the space program had given us, and they replied, "Velcro." There was tremendous resentment when the space program began, because the taxes of the poor were being spent on programs that didn't really benefit them, while very little was being done to improve their standard of living (see "Whitey on the Moon," for example).
When you dig into it a bit, the space program has some benefits. Solar panels were developed by NASA. Also, the lens used for the Hubble telescope was converted into an imaging technology for breast biopsy that can examine a tumor so closely it can determine whether it is malignant or not without surgery. Also, there are a tremendous amount of jobs generated by the space programs and the companies that produce the supplies it uses. I don't think NASA will solve world hunger (although they might come up with something through their plant research), but there are benefits, no matter how little-known they are.