Month: July 2012

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Social Justice in Dramatic Action

Gay students graduate openly at military academies

Gay students at America’s military service academies wrapped up the first year when they no longer had to hide their sexual orientation, benefiting from the end of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy that used to bar them from seemingly ordinary activities like taking their partners openly to graduation events.

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An Upgrade in the Fight for Social Justice

One of the biggest companies on the planet makes a formal commitment to help decriminalize homosexuality and eliminate homophobia throughout the world.

At Google, we encourage people to bring their whole selves to work. In our more than 70 offices around the world, we’re committed to cultivating a work environment where Googlers can be themselves and thrive. Legalise Love is our drive to ensure that all of our employees have the same inclusive experience outside of the office as they do at work.

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You’ve Got to Dig to Find the Good News, but There’s a Lot of It

U.S. Teen Pregnancy Rates Dramatically Decline, Hit Lowest Level in 30 Years

The news comes from a report released by the United States National Center for Health Statistics. The report collected data on pregnancy in America from 1990 until 2008, the last year that data was available. Teen pregnancy rates are at the lowest since 1976 while pregnancy rates for women aged 30 and over have increased. The reason for these trends could be due to better contraception use as well as more women choosing to pursue careers, holding off pregnancy until later in life.

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Gambling on a Positive Future

Germany has decided to pursue ambitious greenhouse-gas reductions — while closing down its nuclear plants. Can a heavily industrialized country power its economy with wind turbines and solar panels?

What’s coming next won’t be so easy. In 2010, the German government declared that it would undertake what has popularly come to be called an Energiewende—an energy turn, or energy revolution. This switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy is the most ambitious ever attempted by a heavily industrialized country: it aims to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 percent by midcentury.

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Scientific Evidence That Cynicism Is a Faith-Based Delusion

Biological research increasingly debunks the view of humanity as competitive, aggressive and brutish.

Until just 12 years ago, the common view among scientists was that humans were “nasty” at the core but had developed a veneer of morality — albeit a thin one, de Waal told scientists and journalists from some 50 countries.

But human children — and most higher animals — are “moral” in a scientific sense, because they need to cooperate with each other to reproduce and pass on their genes, he said.