New Administration = More Freedom for Women ?

The title of this feminist blog is “ Reproductive Freedom 100 days into the Obama Administration.” We all know by now that Obama has been in office for over 100 days now and counting. The author of this blog clearly attributes many new freedoms given to women to the Obama administration. I feel that is somewhat unfair to the Bush administration. The author’s evaluation concludes that more reproductive freedoms have been given to women by the new administration so far than from all eight years of the previous administration. So what exactly are these reproductive freedoms she is talking about?

In his first week in office, President Obama voided the Global Gag Rule. As a result, U.S funding will be provided to international organizations that promote safe and legal means of abortion for women. These women will now have access to contraceptives and become more informed about things like family planning. Obama has provided more adequate funding for the United Nations Population Fund which will help educate more people worldwide on family planning. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is also raising awareness abroad.The "freedoms" the author cites also include many domestic victories. About a month ago, President Obama signed the FY 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act. Assuming all provisions are enacted, an affordable means of birth control will now be available to the less fortunate. In addition, women can not be denied access to birth control pills or information by anyone or any institution. More recently, a pro choice Secretary of Health and Human Services was confirmed to the Senate.
There is even a more surprising court ruling that I recently found out about that the author does not mention. Just last week, a federal judge has ordered the FDA to make the sale of the morning after pill to 17-year old girls legal. No parental notification or consent is required. I personally think this last "freedom" has the potential to cause greater harm than good. There will most likely be many angry parents as a result.
I feel there is some unfair misrepresentation going on here by attributing all these "freedoms" to the current administration and criticizing the past one. Any other Republican president in the place of George Bush with similar ideologies would have adopted similar policies towards women. At the same time, if another Democratic candidate had been elected to office 100 days ago, hardly anything would be different today in terms of this type of legislation Nevertheless ,I feel the evidence presented by the author is concrete enough to make her point clear. Women in the United States and abroad in developing countries have made substantial gains. The legislation also provides a morale boost here in the United States and sets the stage for future gains in womens' rights.

Fox News & CNN

As a consumer of media through news broadcasts, I must admit that each broadcasting station could very well present the identical story two different ways. The U.S. media interprets news and events; to do this, media frames the stories, provides opinions and even tells us what to think. CNN and Fox News are almost exclusively my two personal sources of television news. It is not unusual to be flipping through the channels and watch a segment of each. There is a strong chance that both stations are reporting similar news. In fact, I watched both Fox and CNN a couple days ago and the majority of each stations' news was concurrent with the others'. What sets them apart is their style of coverage and how they apply politics to the stories.
News stations do not own themselves. Fox is owned by News Corp and CNN is owned by Time Warner. A factor such as different ownership can be responsible for the type of interpretation news is given. Another key difference is audience. CNN knows it has a very large audience all around the world. The same can not be said about Fox News. Even if you have not been a viewer of either station for years like myself, after one viewing of both, you will agree that Fox falls on the conservative end of the scale and CNN falls on the liberal side. As for their coverage of major events, I know what to expect.
With major events, you can expect CNN to linger over them and really over exaggerate the events. Take the supposed Swine Flu breakout as an example. CNN devoted a great deal of time to cover it compared to Fox News who gave much less hype. Fox News covered the Swine Flu relatively early in the broadcast but quickly moved on to other local events. CNN seemed to have struck gold with this. I have to agree that such coverage is exactly what an international audience wants. Personally, I would prefer Fox News for coverage of a non political event. CNN would be my choice if I was seeking a concentrated political analysis of an event. If I had to choose between partisan coverage or objective coverage, I would choose partisan coverage. Partisan coverage is not such a nuisance if you share the same political ideologies as the party. It is also less likely to distort news than objective coverage. With partisan coverage, I can recognize the frame that has been placed on the news relatively easier.

Op Ed - 21st Century Military

This Op Ed was published in the New York Times today. The piece lays out a plan by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to "modernize" the military. The move focuses on adapting the military to warfare in the 21st century. Our idea of war today is no longer two countries confronting each other with fighter jets and tanks. The enemy has changed so the tactics must change too. Gates suggests there is no longer a need for the Air Force. The Army Navy and Marines all have there own aircraft. The Air Force hardly participated in the Iraq war compared to the other branches.

Gates feels the advancement policies also cause good soldiers to leave the military. If an enlisted soldier fails to move up the ranks he/she is forced out of service. This should be changed so the military keeps the valuable soldiers who have experienced combat. The selection process should be open to a wider variety of applicants. He suggests that everyone be required to serve and those who show talent and performance be offered a spot. At the same time he feels the move will make politicians more knowledgeable about the military and give many a personal connection whether they or a son or daughter have been in the military.

I agree that Gates is looking in the right direction with this plan. However, it is not a given that warfare will remain this way. It would probably be a bad idea to eliminate something as important as the airforce which has been around since planes were invented. He also makes a valid point saying that forcing out experienced soldiers who are not able to move up is bad for the military. After going through training and gaining experience, that soldier becomes a valuable asset.

Progress in the case of the vanishing bees

In recent environmental news, honey bees across the country have been vanishing without a trace. Whatever was behind it could quickly wipe out the bees from existence. Experts had a few guesses like pesticides or cell phones but were not sure. A few days ago, scientists' search for their suspect which had apparently been causing bees to vanish did not come up empty handed. Before they had made the connection between disappearing bees and nosema ceranae scientists knew something was wrong but tried in vain to pinpoint it. The pathogen nosema ceranae was infecting bees and most likely played a major role in their disappearance. A blogger on Treehugger published a post on this new discovery. The treatment for such a pathogen is fumagillin. Scientists plan to treat surviving colonies with it and use it to protect healthy bees.

There is no doubt that finding out the cause behind the disappearing bees before it was too late is outstanding. The second part of the solution here is to find a way to cure the problem using the new information. The next task of locating infected colonies all across the country is going to be difficult. The bright side is that we found the cause before it was too late and fixing the problem is well within our reach. Hopefully these scientists recieve proper funding from the government to tackle this.

Third world stoves contribute to global warming

On today's front page of the New York Times was an interesting article on how stoves used in the third world impact the climate. Environmentalists claim that although carbon dioxide is not the culprit here, the actual culprit,soot, can be equally devastating. In chemistry class, I learned that a complete combustion releases heat and has a byproduct of water. So where does soot come from and what can it do to our environment? The poor farmers of these third world villages use whatever they can gather to fuel a fire. In a country like India with a population of nearly one billion, little things can really add up. The soot eventually makes its way into the atmosphere and precipitates down onto glaciers. The soot attracts heat from the sun causing the glacier to melt.

Environmental experts in the United States and India seem to have been caught off guard with this one. In the U.S, laws were passed to regulate particulate emissions (like soot) in order to protect air quality and the health of the public. No one imagined that soot would contribute to global warming. What is more surprising than its global effects is where the soot is coming from. When you have a number of people greater than the population of the United States burning this stuff every day, it does not seem so far fetched anymore.

Clearly, global warming is a serious concern for all and now that we know such a thing, we can get to work on eliminating it. Would a realistic solution be going village to village handing out new stoves? Even if that was an option, who is going to write the check ? The matter will likely require international cooperation and contributions before this will ever go away.

Whether or not you have an interest in skydiving, watching this video will give you a greater appreciation for YouTube. I have to agree that YouTube is an asset to all of us and as for its reputation of containing nonsense I disagree. If you plan to go on your first skydive ever and want to gain some valuable information this is your lucky break! Where else can you find such a useful resource that is otherwise incredibly difficult to find?

The case I am arguing here involves the informative side of YouTube. This video is only one of several videos that offer step by step instruction on skydiving. The person who posted it wanted to make it a resource to whomever may need it. Unfortunately YouTube attracts negative feedback because of its tendency to contain useless videos of people doing pointless and/or stupid things. If you are still not convinced I suggest viewing a few videos on something that interests you and see how much more information others put out there.

YouTube > Nonsense or simply amazing?