The World's Disappearing Wilderness - The Importance Of Long Term Thinking

A news item about the disappearance of wilderness in the world caught my attention the other day.  Since I live in state that still has some wilderness left, I thought it worthy of discussion.

From PRI:

"The result showed that about 20 percent of the world's land area is currently wilderness or about 11.6 million square miles.
Most of that wilderness is in Australia, North America, North Asia and North Africa.
Comparing the old map to the new one showed that an estimated 1.3 million square miles — almost 10 percent of the wilderness area — have been lost in the past two decades.
The amount lost is equal to twice the land mass of Alaska, or about half the entire Amazon.
The study did not delve into reasons why, but Watson said it comes down to increased development by the planet's growing human population."

Given that airplanes fly over just about every part of the world and that pollution travels by air and sea to every part of the world, I'd guess there isn't really any wilderness left, but here's the study's definition:

"For the study, researchers defined 'wilderness' as 'biologically and ecologically intact landscapes free of any significant human disturbance.'"

Let's put this in context.

WILDERNESS LEFT	TOTAL SQUARE MILES/km2/acres	% OF TOTAL LAND
in the world	11.6 million sq mi / 7.4 billion acres	20%
in the USA	170.5K sq mi / 109,129,657 acres	5%
in Lower 48	82.1 K sq mi / 52,553,809 acres	2.7%
in Alaska	88.4K sq mi/ 56,575,848 acres	13.3%
Alaska total size	663,268 sq mi / 424,491,520 acres	100%
Wilderness size from NWPS ;   Alaska total size from Wikipedia

Wilderness disappears as people make short term decisions; about survival for some, about profit for many.  Long term collective decisions, like the creation of the National Park Service by Teddy Roosevelt and the idea of setting aside natural areas for conservation, are what keep the small amount of wilderness we have left in the world.

As Alaskans debate where they can drill for oil,  log for timber, mine for coal and gold and other minerals, I'd suggest some longer term thinking.  Thinking that recognizes that what is rare is valuable.  Wilderness is becoming rarer and rarer.  Alaska's wilderness will become more and more valuable in the future.  Rather than destroy it for meager short term profit, let's save it for longer term, more valuable benefit.

I haven't addressed why we need wilderness.   I've written about before is described by Edward O. Wilson who talks about how the trillions of dollars worth of ecosystem services provided by nature -  recycling and purifying water, cleaning the air, enriching the soil, etc.

For those who doubt the need, here are a few more resources.


National Geographic: What is Wilderness, Why Preserve It?

Nash Roderick:  The Value of Wilderness (1978)

Why did US citizens feel the need to legally protect wilderness?

List of largest wilderness areas in the US

Four Years Later, Becky's Back From Mexico

Anchorage Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV) had a BBQ Thursday evening.  I vaguely knew that the Anchorage Assembly now has TWO RPCVs on it, but I hadn't really thought about it, but there they both were.  (I'll let Anchorage readers guess who they are.)

Had a good time sharing thoughts with volunteers from places like Nepal and the Philippines.

And then there was Becky, who is technically still a volunteer, into her fourth year in Mexico.  Yes, that is a long time.  The normal assignment is two years.  Well, she's finishing up, maybe this month.

What makes Becky particularly relevant to this blog is that I met her four years ago here in Anchorage just as she was about to first leave for her assignment.  It was send off dinner for new volunteers.   Here's the link to that post.   And a picture of her in May 2012 before she left for Mexico.

And this was Thursday evening.  I should have checked the picture after I took it.  It's the only one I have.  We were talking quickly at the end of the BBQ and someone suggested she get in front of the Peace Corps emblem for the picture.

Four years ago she only knew the general area she was going into - Environmental Education.

Her town was just outside El Chico National Park and some of her recent projects were connected with the park.  Like developing an activity book for primary school kids that helps to introduce them to the National Park.  She helped set up an environmental book section in the local library.  She's also been doing community based workshops on a variety of topics including organic pesticides and bio-fertilizers.  There was also the book published by the kids in the community using their drawings and photos showing a kids' eye view of the community and the environment.   You can see the whole book here.

This was just a quickie overview of things she was working on recently.  But it seemed like a good idea to do a follow up of the four year old post.

Putting The Putin Puzzle Pieces Together

Original image (pre-puzzle) from Esquire

The way I see it, Putin is on a roll.

He's kept Asad in Syria.  He's helped send half the population out of Syria, many as refugees to Europe, where the sheer number of them is straining Europe's capacity to handle them.  And it's straining Europe's ability to work together.  His machinations probably helped the Brexit vote.

And all that means that Europe's attention is on refugees and [not on] their ability to monitor and respond to his interference in former Soviet nations.

I have little doubt that the Russian government is doing what it can to help recruit young men in Europe and the US to commit terrorist acts.  He's probably not directly supporting ISIS, since Russia's had its own issues and terrorists out of Chechnya, but he surely benefits, in the short term anyway, from a European population that is more focused on internal threats than Russian threats.

His fingerprints are reported to be on the hacked emails of the Democratic National Headquarters and we don't know how else he's working to get the Republican nominee for president elected.

And there is always the very real possibility of someone electronically stealing votes.  I've been assured that our Alaska machines aren't internet connected, so it's unlikely the Russian's will mess with our election.  And we do have hard copies of all ballots to compare the results against, but that only happens when there's a challenge, and the challengers have to pay for the hand count.  But any system that's connected to the internet is very vulnerable.  Here's more on these topics.


Back in December, Putin praised Trump:

"He is a bright and talented person without any doubt," Putin said, adding that Trump is "an outstanding and talented personality."

And in an interview Trump seemed to eat it up:

BRZEZINSKI: Do you like Vladimir Putin's comments about you?
TRUMP: Sure. When people call you brilliant it's always good, especially when the person heads up Russia.

[Note:  Putin said 'bright and talented' but Trump heard 'brilliant.']

Remember back what George W. Bush said about Putin? (From ABC News)

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue," Bush said according a BBC account. "I was able to get a sense of his soul.

I suspect Bush's ability to assess someone's character is better than Trump's, yet his assessment was totally off.

While I was looking for that quote, I also found this one from Joe Biden in the same article:

Biden recalled visiting Putin at the Kremlin in 2011: "I had an interpreter, and when he was showing me his office I said, 'It's amazing what capitalism will do, won't it? A magnificent office!' And he laughed. As I turned, I was this close to him." Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. "I said, 'Mr. Prime Minister, I'm looking into your eyes, and I don't think you have a soul.' " 

"You said that?" I asked. It sounded like a movie line. 

"Absolutely, positively," Biden said, and continued, "And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, 'We understand one another.' " Biden sat back, and said, "This is who this guy is!"

I'm guessing this is a joke off of Bush's encounter rather than an serious account of the Biden-Putin exchange.

But there are people who have studied Putin.  Several years ago, a friend lent me  a Putin biography  called "THE MAN WITHOUT A FACE:  The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin" by Masha Gessen, a journalist who holds both US and Russian passports.  From a Washington Post book review:

"Most prominent politicians had abandoned Yeltsin, and the remaining prospects were “all plain men in gray suits.” Boris Berezovsky, the wealthy oligarch and ambitious power broker who was close to Yeltsin’s team, personally recruited the largely unknown Putin, thinking he would be pliable. “Possibly the most bizarre fact about Putin’s ascent to power,” Gessen says, “is that the people who lifted him to the throne knew little more about him than you do. . . . Everyone could invest this gray, ordinary man with what they wanted to see in him.”

What Gessen sees in Putin is a troubled childhood brawler who became a paper-pushing KGB man and, by improbable twists and turns, rose to the top in Russia. He grew up fighting in the courtyards of St. Petersburg apartments. He became “a consistently rash, physically violent man with a barely containable temper.” When studying at a KGB academy, he once got into a fight on a subway when someone picked on him. On the day of his inauguration in 2000, Putin’s stiff gait was “the manner of a person who executes all his public acts mechanically and reluctantly, projecting both extreme guard and extreme aggression with every step.” Putin, she concludes, is a “hoodlum turned iron-handed ruler.”

So far I'm just looking at puzzle pieces.  Some seem to fit together, but many don't yet, and others are missing.  So this is conjecture, but it's starting to feel chillingly probable.  Putin's destabilizing much of the world, including the US.  Trump may see Putin as just another narcissistic entrepreneur, but he's much, much more than that.  Russians play chess and he's half a dozen moves ahead of Trump.

[UPDATE July 26, 2016, 8:19pm:  Minutes after posting this, I opened Twitter and the first was a tweet linking to this article by Masha Gessen, responding to others comparing Trump to Putin or saying Trump was Putin's plant.  She doesn't agree.  And I want to be clear about what I was trying to say.  Not that Trump was, as someone wrote, 'the Siberian Candidate', or that he is a lot like Putin.  I was just saying that Trump would be more in Putin's interest (Gessen says Putin hates Clinton more than liking Trump).  And yes, there are similarities between Trump and Putin, but there are dissimilarities as well.]

The American Revolution As An Exit From The British Empire

In response to a comment on a post about Brexit a couple of weeks ago , I noted that the North American colonies'  break from England was also a contentious exit:

"I know the British establishment felt the same way when the North American colonies voted for independence. Our US history books paint it as a singularly good thing, but there was just as much angst in the colonies over it. Perhaps this vote gives us a new perspective on 1776. Or not. At least the EU is not sending troops to prevent this."

So it seemed appropriate to write with this view in mind for the 240th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

In the meantime, it became clear that others had made the same mental leap when I saw a tweet that mentioned "Amerexit."

"Happy #Amerexit my ex colonial chums

— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru) July 4, 2016"

I don't want to belabor the point, but merely remind those who celebrate the Fourth of July this year, that at the time of the Declaration of Independence, there was much opposition and the conflict was bitter.

Here's an excerpt of a letter the former Massachusetts governor, Thomas Hutchinson wrote in response to the Declaration of Independence:

"I should therefore be impertinent if I attempted to show in what case a whole people may be justified in rising up in opposition to the powers of government, altering or abolishing them and substituting, in whole or in part, new powers in their stead; or in what sense all men are created equal; or how far life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness may be said to be unalienable. Only I could ask the delegates of Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas how their constituents justify the depriving more than an hundred thousand Africans of their rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and in some degree to their lives, if these rights are so absolutely unalienable. . . 

From a disposition to receive willingly complaints against rulers, facts misrepresented have passed without examining. Discerning men have concealed their sentiments, because under the present government in America, no man may, by writing or speaking, contradict any part of this Declaration without being deemed an enemy to his country, and exposed to the rage and fury of the populace.”  [emphasis added]

Pennsylvanian John Dickinson, who had enjoyed great popularity when he led the opposition to the Stamp Act, could not bring himself to sign the Declaration.  From the History Net:

Yet on July 1, 1776, as his colleagues in the Continental Congress prepared to declare independence from Britain, Dickinson offered a resounding dissent. Deathly pale and thin as a rail, the celebrated Pennsylvania Farmer chided his fellow delegates for daring to “brave the storm in a skiff made of paper.” He argued that France and Spain might be tempted to attack rather than support an independent American nation. He also noted that many differences among the colonies had yet to be resolved and could lead to civil war. When Congress adopted a nearly unanimous resolution the next day to sever ties with Britain, Dickinson abstained from the vote, knowing full well that he had delivered “the finishing Blow to my once too great, and my Integrity considered, now too diminish’d Popularity.” 

"Indeed, following his refusal to support and sign the Declaration of Independence, Dickinson fell into political eclipse. And 234 years later, the key role he played in American resistance as the leader of a bloc of moderates who favored reconciliation rather than confrontation with Britain well into 1776 is largely forgotten or misunderstood. 

To be a moderate on the eve of the American Revolution did not mean simply occupying some midpoint on a political line, while extremists on either side railed against each other in frenzied passion. Moderation for Dickinson and other members of the founding generation was an attitude in its own right, a way of thinking coolly and analytically about difficult political choices. The key decision that moderates ultimately faced was whether the dangers of going to war against Britain outweighed all the real benefits they understood colonists would still enjoy should they remain the king’s loyal subjects. 

Dickinson and his moderate cohorts were prudent men of property, rather than creatures of politics and ideology. Unlike the strong-willed distant cousins who were leaders of the patriot resistance in Massachusetts—John and Samuel Adams—moderates were not inclined to suspect that the British government was in the hands of liberty-abhorring conspirators. Instead, they held out hope well into 1776 that their brethren across the Atlantic would come to their senses and realize that any effort to rule the colonies by force, or to deny colonists their due rights of self-government, was doomed to failure. They were also the kind of men British officials believed would choose the benefits of empire over sympathy for suffering Massachusetts, the colony that King George III, his chief minister, Lord North, and a docile Parliament set out to punish after the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. Just as the British expected the Coercive Acts that Parliament directed against Massachusetts in 1774 would teach the other colonies the costs of defying the empire, so they assumed that sober men of property, with a lot at stake, would never endorse the hot-headed proceedings of the mob in Boston. Yet in practice, exactly the opposite happened. Dickinson and other moderates ultimately proved they were true patriots intent on vindicating American rights."

Dickinson's letter opposing the Declaration can be read here.

There are a lot of differences between the situation in 1776 and the one today.  I'm not suggesting the Brexit decision was a good one or that the Declaration was a bad one.  I'm merely saying that in both instances there was great uncertainty, a lot of emotional attachments to both sides, and a great deal of conflict.

The colonies were breaking away from the country that owned them.  Great Britain is backing out of an agreement they choose to enter.  In both situations there are people who see the rules coming from 'outside' are restricting the freedom of the nation and its citizens.  And in both cases the consequences of making a split were uncertain.   And those who signed the Declaration faced hanging if the British caught them.  Those who pushed for Brexit merely face the scorn and ridicule of the world's media.

For Americans, it's important to remember that what we take for granted as a great moment in world history was hotly contested and the outcome was not at all certain.

Happy Independence Day.

Putin's Syrian Strategy Seems To Be Working As Brits Poised To Vote On Their EU Membership

I've been assuming for a while now that one of Putin's strategies in Syria is to increase the number of refugees flooding into Europe.  This helps to raise tension and conflict in the EU countries and ultimately to break down cooperation across Europe, not only in economics, but in military strength and commitment along Russia's borders.  Less unity means it's harder for Europeans to stand united against Russia.

The influx of refugees has done all of this and more.  On World Refugee Day (today), we're only a few days away from the British vote on whether to stay in the EU or not.  [UPDATE June 25, 2016:  they voted to leave the EU.]

Forbes seems to think that the refugees themselves will eventually make Europe more anti-Russian than it is today. That may be, but in the meantime, European unity is being severely tested. And the lives of millions of refugees are being being uprooted.




As the son of refugees who survived Nazi Germany because they were able to get out, my heart is with all refugees.

Using ISIS as Cover

Watch the media patterns after mass shootings and other disasters.  They start by broadcasting whatever tidbits they can find and filling in with lots of 'woe is us,'  'pray for the families,' and trying to figure which current narratives explain what happened.  Was he homophobic?  Was he Muslim?  Was he a terrorist?  An Immigrant?  Oh, he pledged his allegiance to ISIS and he's Afghan (did I forget that he was born in the US?), presto, this is a radical Muslim terrorist attack.

And, did you notice that the only facts they were sure of at the beginning weren't always right.  "50 killed"  "That number will surely grow." Now we're being told it's 49 killed and so far the rest are still alive - six in critical condition.

We all have narratives in our heads - stories that help us organize 'facts' into a coherent explanation of the world.  And it looks like politicians, and maybe eve the shooters themselves, these days might be manipulating our narratives to hide their personal conflicts and demons.  Or to divert our attention from the weapons used.

We don't know anything for certain, but one thought I had from early on, is being supported by some evidence.  NOTE:  This is a thought experiment - exploration of possible explanations.  It's NOT truth, it's thinking outlaid 


ISIS as cover. Number 1.

A few LGBT folks in the area are saying that they've seen the shooter at the Pulse, frequently.  That he's got a profile on a gay hookup app. Suggesting that perhaps this young man was a somewhat-closeted gay man.  This narrative suggests he couldn't come out to his family and was terribly conflicted and frustrated.  His internalized homophobia turned against himself and other gays who lived a life he couldn't.

What better proof of his straight masculinity than massacring gays and then using the banner of self-proclaimed Muslim saviors to cover your own personal problems?

[UPDATE June 17, 2016:  Here's some support of this idea from a Slate article:

"Orlando may be another variant, then, of what the French scholar of Islam Olivier Roy has called the “Islamicization of radicalism.” Islam is used by an individual already on the edge of violence to justify his actions and give him status to at least one audience, as indeed has already happened to Mateen. Details on Mateen’s background are still trickling in, but his ex-wife claimed he was abusive in their marriage and not particularly zealous in his faith."]

ISIS as cover. Number 2:

From The Hill:

"Instead of focusing on the weapon that was used, there should be a focus on radical Islam. The focus should not be on the weapon, it should be on the individual’s heart and the cowardly acts that he performed."

This narrative says it's all about the shooter; the guns he had are irrelevant.

Really?!  For the survivors, in the long run, it really doesn't matter if he was a self hating gay, if he was treated badly because he looks suspicious in the dominant American world view.  It doesn't matter what any of the shooter's issues were in terms of getting past the carnage.  Yes, it would help if Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian pulpits spoke to their congregations about love instead of attacking women and the lgbt community.

But if disturbed people - whatever the cause of the issues, whether it's biological or sociological - didn't have such easy access to automatic weapons, there'd be people still alive in Sandy Hook, Columbine, Roseburg, and San Bernadino, and Orlando.

Instead we hear each time about mental health and terrorists, and strong denials by politicians supported by the gun industry controlled NRA.  First it was Al Qaeda, now it's ISIS.    ISIS is the distraction that keeps us from talking about the first steps that we can do to cut down on the slaughter taking place across the United States.  And that's because of the Congress members who hear NRA money pouring into their campaigns.


This is not about logic, it's about power.  It's about courage. Or rather lack of courage.  It's about electing politicians who care more about the people they represent than about their own egos and power.  Politicians who are willing to risk their jobs for what's right.   And we're moving to a situation where anyone who opposes the gun lobby runs the risk, not only of losing their office, but even losing their lives.  Ask Gaby Giffords what she's doing about this.


ISIS as cover.  Number 3:

But bigger than the guns, is that we're living in a society that produces way too many alienated and angry men.  Again, there are lots of narratives explaining this.  Some argue we've turned our backs on God or there are too many immigrants.

The bigger, overarching context for the alienation, in my view, is our competitive society that is structured to enrich a relative few and impoverish many.  Until the system is recalibrated that alienation will continue.  We need recover some of the economic security that has been destroyed.  People need to feel economically ready to have a family.  Then they need the time to love their children and teach them to love themselves.

We also have to learn how to focus on what's important instead of the increasing number of distractions the internet offers us all.  Including this blog.  We need to take care of our selves, our families.   The people around the world both envy our material wealth and personal freedom and they fear what it will do to their own societies as the world begins to look more and more the same. As we lose the rich diversity of cultures that offers us many possible ways of living.   And that's why organizations - if we can even call it that - like ISIS become symbols of defiance.  Why guns become symbols of manhood.  Why Trumps become symbols of rebellion.  People are desperate for meaning in their lives, for something to believe in, for hope.

I remember years ago when someone in China first gave me a copy of China's Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States.  Of course, it's a response to American reports on human rights violations in China, but still it is sobering to review it.  To see what we look like in others' eyes.  We need to think carefully of the two gods that Americans rely on - the one in the bible and the invisible hand of the market.  Because those are the solutions we're given when confronted by the ISIS cover - pray to God and let the market take care of things.

It ain't working in my eyes.

What Do All These Countries Have In Common? UPDATED

Poland Latvia Argentina Britain Liberia Austria Brazil South Korea Finland Nepal Mauritius Namibia Norway  Grenada South Africa The Bahamas

Germany China Bolivia San Marino Guinea-Bissau Philippines Haiti East Germany Nicaragua Ireland Burundi Sri Lanka Ecuador Guyana Croatia Namibia Malta

Bangladesh Chile Panama Indonesia Georgia Pakistan Liberia Chile Gabon Israel Lithuania Kyrgyzstan Costa Rica Kosovo Serbia Central African Republic

Don't you even want to think about it before getting the answer?
I'll check the comments.  I suspect lots of folks will find this easy to figure out.

[UPDATE June 10, 2016:  They all have or have had a woman as head of state.  For more details see:

http://www.theglobalist.com/women-on-top-of-the-political-world/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elected_and_appointed_female_heads_of_state

http://www.guide2womenleaders.com/Current-Women-Leaders.htm   ]

Watching The Pieces On The Chess Board: Climate Change, Ukraine, Oil Prices, Putin Support of Asad, Greek Debt, Refugee Crisis

Let's start with this LA Times headline Tuesday:

"A crisis of unity exposed in EU" 

In the last couple of weeks I've been thinking about how Europe's influx of refugees is causing great disruption in Europe not to mention the horrors that are causing the refugees to leave their homes.  But there's one clear winner - Russia, of course.  A united Europe is not good for Putin's ambitions.

As I see this, we get news about the world in fragments, and often that's how they stay in our brain - fragmented.  But everything is related to everything.  So this post is a way for me to try to connect in my own head a lot of these fragments.    And I'm sure I'm missing a lot, but let's look at some of the moves on the chess board.


1.  Russia's march into the Crimea made for daily headlines such as this back in spring 2014.

2.  Western reaction was strong and included sanctions.   

3.  Sanctions against Russia caused Putin to retaliate including threats to Europe's natural gas supply.

4.   EU stands firm on sanctions.

5.  And don't forget Russia's offer to help Greece with its debt to the rest of the EU.

6.  Meanwhile, the Syrian civil war expands as ISIS comes in.  And Russia continues its support of Syria's Asad.


7.  The Saudis, unhappy with Russia's support of Asad,  have increased oil production, which led to lower oil prices.  Since oil is critical to Russia's economy, the Saudis were hoping the economic impact would lead Russia to drop support of Asad, according to the New York Times.









 8. Back to the  Los Angeles Times headline  that I began with:

A crisis of unity exposed in EU

Some of the 28-nation bloc’s key initiatives are in jeopardy amid deep discord over the influx of refugees.

BY HENRY CHU

   LONDON — Just three years ago, the European Union basked in the glory of a Nobel Peace Prize and boasted of being a tight-knit community bound by “European values” of democracy, diversity and dignity.    By its own measure, the 28-nation club is now looking decidedly less European and even less a union these days as it grapples with the continent’s biggest refugee crisis since World War II.. .

So, if millions of Syrian (and other) refugees flood into Europe, critical parts of the European unity get tested.  Schengen - the agreement that eliminated stops at border crossings between most European countries - has been one of the most important symbols of the EU's unity.  And now Hungary's building of a border wall to block the refugees, raises question about Schengen.  Croatia has only applied to be a Schengen member so it isn't a breach of Schengen yet. But now Austria is talking about closing its borders with Hungary, which would be a breach. 

Another symbol of that unity is the Euro which came into crisis with the Greek debt showdown.  And the Russians offered to support Greece against the rest of Europe.

If, in fact, the refugees help break down the European Union, then Russia's European opposition is much weaker economically and militarily and Putin would have much more freedom to treat his people and neighbors as he pleases.   


Abdul Jalil Al-Marhoun  argues that Russia's key goal in Syria is access to the Mediterranean Sea.  While a port in Syria would be a useful base, he argues, it's not essential.  A weaker Europe would make securing this route much easier.  Especially through the narrow strait by Istanbul.

Click to enlarge and focus - map from Wikipedia

The map shows the Black Sea geography.  Russia has a major naval base in Sevastopol which it leased from the Ukraine for, according to a state sponsored  Russia Today article: 

"$526.5 million for the base, as well as writing off $97.75 million of Kiev’s debt."  

After the takeover, that agreement was voided by the Duma.  That's over half a billion savings for Russia and loss for Ukraine.  A Center for Strategic and International Studies article describes the strategic benefits to Russia of this naval base.


Life is much simpler when the news anchors just say "the good guys" and "the bad guys" and that's all you have to know.   And when news is made up of discrete unrelated incidents of video violence.  News is merely entertainment - real life examples of action movies.  But it doesn't help us understand how and why things are happening.  For that you have to think like a chess player - each move is about the position of all the pieces and where they will be three or four or five moves hence.   Certainly Putin, head of a nation of chess players, has in mind strategy such as this offered by the United States Chess Federation:

"When you are considering a move, ask yourself these questions:

• Will the piece I'm moving go to a better square than the one it's on now? 
• Can I improve my position even more by increasing the effectiveness of a different piece? 
• Will the piece I move be safe on its new square?  
• If it's a pawn, consider: Can I keep it protected from attack? 
• If it's another piece, consider: Can the enemy drive it away, thus making me lose valuable time?

Even if your intended move has good points, it may not be the best move at that moment. Emanuel Lasker, a former world champion, said: "When you see a good move, wait---look for a better one!" Following this advice is bound to improve your chess." 

Maybe American schools should start teaching chess so American students can learn to think about the long term implications of their actions.


Oh yes, climate change.  How does that fit in here?  From Scientific American:

"Drying and drought in Syria from 2006 to 2011—the worst on record there—destroyed agriculture, causing many farm families to migrate to cities. The influx added to social stresses already created by refugees pouring in from the war in Iraq, explains Richard Seager, a climate scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who co-authored the study. The drought also pushed up food prices, aggravating poverty. “We’re not saying the drought caused the war,” Seager said. 'We’re saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.'”

Beatrice Does Leather - Your Imagination Is The Limit

As we pushed the stroller to the park yesterday we passed lots of little shops, but one particularly caught my eye.  It had stunning purses on beautiful stands.  Not many.  But exquisite.  I thought, "How much must each one cost to have a store here in San Francisco with just a small selection?"  So I went in to check.

A woman came out from the back, and I noticed there were people back there working.  They actually made the items (there was more than purses) right here.  We started talking about the shop and the process of making these purses.  (The description below is from both our talk and her brochure.)


Beatrice (or Bea) Amblard is from Paris.  She got an apprenticeship at Hermes after finishing a course at the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Paris.  Hermes sent her to their new San Francisco boutique in 1987.  After 14 years at Hermes, she went on her own and started April In Paris.




She's also added a school to pass on the centuries old traditions of leather work that she has learned. I understood that she has students who have some difficulties (such as dyslexia) in regular school.  That makes perfect sense to me, because I believe we force everyone into an academic track even though some, perhaps many, would be much better off in some other track, where they use other than academic skills.

Each work is unique.  She said she interviews customers to find out about their lifestyle and how they would use the item that will be made.  Each item should fit perfectly into the customers' lives.  Bea was passionate about her art and what she does.




This doesn't come cheap, of course.  There are lots of hours put into each item.  And she uses only the best materials.  The red alligator purse I pointed to (in the photo above) was the most expensive (of course that was the one I picked) at $15,000.  A bit out of my range.  But San Francisco has lots of people with plenty of discretionary income.  (And lots with none as well.)  And there are customers coming from the April In Paris website as well:  And she sees these as pieces of art, not disposable consumer items.

Her trademark is a play on her name Bea.  And it's on all the pieces. 


I enjoyed talking to her and I only thought to pull out the video late in the process and the rest of my party had gone off to the park so I felt I needed to go.  But here's the short video I made.  While I'm a little amused by most of the cutesy, high end coffee shops and other pretension stores, I felt that this was the real thing.  This was someone maintaining an old craft, maintaining it at the level of an art form and was able to make a living doing it.


Do go visit the website.  There are lots of examples of the work.

And also visit the website for the school.  When she talked about passing on what she has learned to the next generation and preserving the art form that has survived centuries, I thought about the school in the temple in Luang Prabang where monks were taught the skills  [bottom of the post] that would allow them to maintain the art in the many temples in that ancient Lao capital.




'Your imagination is the limit . .'

So is your pocket book, which for most of us won't be made by Bea and her team. But it's ok.  People who buy these things are preserving an old art form. 

Why Wasn't I Surprised That The Guy Who Killed Cecil The Lion Was A Dentist?

It's been a while since I noticed the DDS on the ends of the names of people who have trophy bears in the Anchorage Airport. 

These are only two bears representing two dentists over a 40 year period so let's not jump to conclusions about dentists. Yet.  .  .
Not all the stuffed bears at the airport had their shooters identified, but a couple that did were hunting or fishing guides.


Dr. Walter Palmer of Minnesota, is reported to have said of the death of Cecil:

“I hired several professional guides, and they secured all proper permits,” read a statement from Palmer to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “To my knowledge, everything about this trip was legal and properly handled and conducted.”
He added: “I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt. I relied on the expertise of my local professional guides to ensure a legal hunt. I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion."

Let's remember that most of us know almost nothing about Dr. Palmer and we're filling in the details to fit our own belief systems.  I think we all have a tendency to believe what we want to believe - those of us reading the stories and Dr. Palmer himself..  He wanted a lion and the guys he contacted said they'd get him one.  How carefully did he look into their credentials?  How would an American hunter even check Zimbabwean credentials?  As for the rest of us, many are blasting some version of the evil hunter killing innocent animals.   Others are praising the good hunters and singling Palmer out as the bad apple that gives all hunters a bad rep.

While I'm not likely to let this guy off easily, the real issue to me is: what is it that causes grown men, with a good education to want to go out and kill animals, not for food, but for trophies?  (And a follow up question that I won't explore here, is how this sort of killing connected to killing human beings?)   My representative in Congress is known for his wall full of animal heads and hides. He even missed a key subcommittee vote because he was on safari in South Africa.  I had a student once who explained how hunting was a bonding experience between him and his dad.  I get that, and I'm glad my dad and I bonded over other things, like hiking, books, art, baseball, and movies, rather than killing animals.

Some defend hunting as part of their cultural tradition and point out how hunters help protect the environment where animals live.  I think there's merit to those arguments, up to a point.  There are lots of traditions that modern societies no longer openly practice - like slavery, like beating kids as punishment, like cock and dog fighting,  like burning witches, like exorcising demons, or child labor and child marriage.

I look at that picture of Dr. Eberle and wonder what he was thinking at the time.  I too like to shoot animals, but with my camera rather than a gun.  That allows me a connection with the animal, but allows the animal to go on living and for others to enjoy seeing them too.   What causes grown men to want to kill big animals and display them?  Is it some sort of feelings of inadequacy, of lack of power?  Is it part of the DNA  they inherited from ancestors who hunted for survival?

A New Zealand study, done to help a government agency prepare to manage hunting on public estates, looked at lots of previous studies to try to determine motivations and satisfactions of hunters. 

Decker and Connelly (1989) proposed three categories of motivations; achievement oriented, affiliation oriented, and appreciation oriented.

• -Achievement oriented hunters are motivated by the attainment of a particular goal,  which may be harvesting an animal for meat, a trophy or a display of skill.

• -Affiliation oriented hunters participate in hunting with the primary purpose of fostering personal relationships with friends, family or hunting companions.

• -Appreciation oriented hunters are motivated by a desire to be outdoors, escape everyday stress or to relax.

The study goes on to list a much wider range of specifics, that tend to fall into these categories.  It doesn't seem to get into deeper psychological reasons such as the need to demonstrate power (maybe getting a trophy is the proxy for this) or where these needs come from.  Why some people (mostly men) have such a need to kill animals and others do not.  There's lots to ponder here. 

I'd also note that the Alaska Dental Association strongly opposed the use of dental aides to perform basic dental work in rural Alaska.  Most, I'm sure, believed that dentists would give better care and that aides lacked the extensive training necessary to make critical decisions.  They didn't seem to weigh the benefits of many, many more kids and adults getting very simple basic dental care and education that local aides could provide in an area where few dentists lived.    I think their belief was genuine, but colored by their own conscious or unconscious self interests.  As are most all of our beliefs. One such interest was simply the same as all professional licensing - limiting the amount of competition.  Also dentists could fly out to rural Alaska and see patients and also go hunting and fishing on the side.  That is true of many urban, non-Native Alaskans who provide professional services in rural Alaska.  And my saying it shouldn't cause people to question the motives of people who do such work.  But we should be aware of how such side benefits might bias one's beliefs about what's right and wrong, good and bad.

When it comes to endangered species, there are bigger issues  - like resource extraction that destroys habitat, like overpopulation that impinges on wild habitat for housing and food.  And climate change which is changing the landscape world wide.  We should be concerned with individual abuses such as luring a well known collared lion out of a refuge to be shot.  But the bigger environmental trends are much more impactful and threatening to all living things, including humans.  These are the least immediately visible and seemingly the hardest to fight.  But there are ways and many people are pursuing them.  One just has to look, and the internet makes that easy. 

Anchro-Pop Closes Out Diversity Celebration In Anchorage Today

Henna painting at the Somali table.

















The Hmong table had embroidered history lessons, as well as a book on the role of Laos and the Hmong in the Vietnam War. 








The Norwegian table.

The politicians who worked with the community to set the festival up.  Elvi Gray-Jackson (black dress), Assembly member Anchorage, Geran Tarr, state representative from this district, and Ethan Berkowitz, mayor elect.  The pastor was presiding over a vigil in memory of the Charleston church shooting victims.  The recent Supreme Court decisions had also been lauded.

Yu'pik (I think) dancers. 






















And this young man got his face painted with what looks like an old Yu'pik mask design. 












And the title of this post?  Well, it's what I thought of as I listened to Gambian born Anchorage singer, Ousman Jarju (OJ), and the Rebel Clef.   It's Afro-pop with an Anchorage flavor. He transformed a mall parking lot on a gray day into the place to be.



The Rebel Clef  FB page lists the band members.

"Johnnie wright III-Keyboardist /Music director Elivis Crenshaw- Base player Kiah Ward- Drums Ousman Jarju- lead singer Benjamin Blunt- Percussionist Freddie Stokes- saxophone player Angel Wright- Manager ."

 I've posted before about Anchorage having the most diverse census tracts and high school in the nation.  Chad Farrel, the sociologist who's written about this, explains this part of Anchorage, unlike more racially segregated cities, Anchorage has districts with whites as well as a full flavor of ethnic origins.  A follow-up post covers Professor Farrel's presentation at the Alaska Press Club 2014.  I've only highlighted a few that were out this afternoon.  

So, it seems to me, this music is something we can start calling Anchro-pop.  Enjoy the video - I decided to leave the footage as I got it, giving you a sense of being there, and getting it up today. 

No Limits On Human Imagination

Look at how these amazing Filipino artists - El Gamma Penumbra - use their bodies to convey beauty and an important message.  They've taken a traditional form or artistry in SE Asian cultures from Indonesia to Thailand - shadow puppets - and turned it into something entirely new.  Plus they had to work incredibly hard to make their artistry so precise. 




Here's part of Wikipedia's entry on El Gamma Penumbra:

Early career

El Gamma Penumbra was first founded in 2003 as a hip-hop boy group, competing in dance contests in their hometown. Before joining Pilipinas Got Talent, however, they changed their act thinking that there will be lesser chance of winning due to too many hip-hop dancers in the Philippines. Upon deciding to do shadow play, believing it is new and unique, they started practicing in a basketball court near their hometown using a tarpaulin and a halogen light as an improvisation.^[3]
They decided to produce an all-male group members, meaning females are not included, due to the "extreme body movements and contact required of their routines."^[4]

Thanks for the tip B.

How Plastics Saved The Elephant

I ran across a Scientific American article on the history of plastic.  It reminded me how much history has to teach us and how much of it we don't know. 

Thai work elephants 1967-8

"elephants, the paper warned in 1867, were in grave danger of being "numbered with extinct species" because of humans' insatiable demand for the ivory in their tusks. Ivory, at the time, was used for all manner of things, from buttonhooks to boxes, piano keys to combs. But one of the biggest uses was for billiard balls. Billiards had come to captivate upper-crust society in the United States as well as in Europe. Every estate, every mansion had a billiards table, and by the mid-1800s, there was growing concern that there would soon be no more elephants left to keep the game tables stocked with balls. The situation was most dire in Ceylon, source of the ivory that made the best billiard balls. There, in the northern part of the island, the Times reported, "upon the reward of a few shillings per head being offered by the authorities, 3,500 pachyderms were dispatched in less than three years by the natives." All told, at least one million pounds of ivory were consumed each year, sparking fears of an ivory shortage. "Long before the elephants are no more and the mammoths used up," the Times hoped, 'an adequate substitute may [be] found.'"

 Plastics.  It's mind boggling to know that humans nearly wiped out elephants 150 years ago, just so they could play billiards!

The savior of the elephants?

Plastics freed us from the confines of the natural world, from the material constraints and limited supplies that had long bounded human activity. That new elasticity unfixed social boundaries as well. The arrival of these malleable and versatile materials gave producers the ability to create a treasure trove of new products while expanding opportunities for people of modest means to become consumers. Plastics held out the promise of a new material and cultural democracy. The comb, that most ancient of personal accessories, enabled anyone to keep that promise close.

There was even a contest to find a substitute for ivory so they could keep making billiard balls when the supply of ivory was gone.

The need for natural material to make combs almost wiped out the hawkbill turtle.  In fact plastics - first made from plant material and then from oil - saved a lot of creaturers.

Celluloid could be rendered with the rich creamy hues and striations of the finest tusks from Ceylon, a faux material marketed as French Ivory. It could be mottled in browns and ambers to emulate tortoiseshell; traced with veining to look like marble; infused with the bright colors of coral, lapis lazuli, or carnelian to resemble those and other semiprecious stones; or blackened to look like ebony or jet. Celluloid made it possible to produce counterfeits so exact that they deceived "even the eye of the expert," as Hyatt's company boasted in one pamphlet. "As petroleum came to the relief of the whale," the pamphlet stated, so "has celluloid given the elephant, the tortoise, and the coral insect a respite in their native haunts; and it will no longer be necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit of substances which are constantly growing scarcer."

 As the human population increases, we make heavier use of critical materials, up to the point that we may use them all up - and in the case of animal based materials, cause extinction.  If we are lucky, we find a substitute to give relief to those natural sources. 

But then we get dependent on the new material to the point of endangering the natural world again.   And the local humans who live in that now destroyed natural environment.

Our petroleum use, which saved the whale a hundred years ago, is now causing climate change.  Today petroleum based sports enthusiasts, like the billiard players, continue their dangerous games.  But the rest of us are guilty too.  We can't get free of our addiction to fossil fuel powered cars and airplanes and electricity.   Some, though, are rushing to create alternative sources of energy and finding ways to wean humans from oil. Meanwhile those companies that have gotten rich off of fossil fuels, are fighting any curtailment of the source of their wealth and we continue to buy their products to fuel our lifestyles which we can't imagine without fossil fuels.

And our search for other natural resources as well as our growing human population's encroachment into forests continues to make the survival of non-human species like the elephant and the tiger and millions of smaller, non-iconic species iffy. 

The whole article is fascinating and has lots more details.

"For the tomatoes, the clock is ticking" And Other Inspiring Stories From Fledge

Fledge is an accelerator for startups that not only hope to make money, but also to make the world a better place.  I need to say right at the beginning, that I'm related to the creator of Fledge through marriage.  But I think if you look at these videos, you can see for yourself what a great concept it is and how well it's being executed.

A few startups are chosen for each session.  They're given $20,000 and six weeks of extensive training on how to make their business work.  All aspects from financing to marketing to production to human resources.  The fledgelings get mentors and get to meet with investors.  At the end of the six [10] weeks, they have Fledge Demo Day, which was last week in Seattle.  The videos are from Demo Day. I got to go to the first Fledge Demo day about 18 months ago.  It was an exciting event. 

This round's fledgelings are all international - from Africa and Argentina.  I'm particularly impressed by this group because the entrepreneurs are all local folks, not foreigners, who have already started businesses and they'll return to grow those companies.  Several of them talk about how they came to see the problems they're solving as children, watching their moms and grandmothers getting sick from the charcoal fires they cooked on every day.  Or, in another case, how Mom could only cultivate two of her ten acres because she couldn't afford to plant the rest of the land. 



Tom Osborn  Kenya Green Char

Tom is concerned about the health and financial costs of charcoal stoves in Kenya.  And charcoal requires the cutting of 125,000 acres of trees per year.  His answer is to make charcoal from sugar cane waste.  The charcoal is the traditional cooking heating material in his country.  His sugar cane charcoal has no smoke, is cheaper than traditional charcoal, burns longer, and provides jobs for women who act as distributors.  It also, of course, recycles the sugar cane wastes and leaves all those trees standing.




Sebastian Sajoux - Argentina, ArqLite  (the links go to the Youtube vidoes - or you can just let each one take you to the next)

Has a process to turn non-recyclable plastic into little rocks that can be used make concrete.  It produces a cement that is lighter, better thermal insulation, and quieter than traditional cement and also gets rid of the plastic that would go to landfills. 


Paul Nyambe - Zambia - Zamgoat

Buying goats from villagers and getting them to market where there is a big demand for goat meat.  This gives remote villagers extra money for something they already do and meets a demand for goat meat.


Femi Oye - Nigeria  SME Funds, Go Solar Africa, Green Energy Bio Fuel and Cooking Stove

Femi has several companies to bring cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable energy to Nigeria.  There's the alcohol based cooking fuel made of agricultural wastes and the solar panels.

David Opio - Uganda - Ensibuuko 'Germinate'

This is a financial tool - Mobis - that helps SACCO's (cooperative banking groups in Uganda) be more accountable and gives customers access to their accounts on their cell phones.

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu   Nigeria Cold Hubs

Nnaemeka tells the story "For the tomatoes, the clock is ticking."  He traces the path of the tomatoes from Chibueze's farm, to Eugene's truck, to Alex's stand at the market.  He shows how many tomatoes - about 40% - have to be thrown away because they spoil in the Nigerian heat.  His solution is a solar powered refrigerator.

The market can be the solution to a lot of problems.  An entrepreneur who doesn't pay attention to the needs of the customers won't succeed.  But the market model doesn't require business owners to  pay attention to the needs of the community, or to people's health,  or to the environment's health.  These companies do that. 

The Will Of The Irish

The size of the majority of the vote on same-sex marriage in Ireland yesterday says this was not about luck, but about will.  

A regular reader here who lives much closer to Ireland sent me links to two different articles on the election, one from the Irish Times,  "Ireland has left ‘tolerance’ far behind" and the other from The Guardian, "Ireland is a kinder, fairer place after voting for same-sex marriage."

The Irish Times article says near the beginning:

"It looks like a victory for tolerance. But it’s actually an end to mere toleration.

Tolerance is what “we” extend, in our gracious goodness, to 'them'. It’s about saying 'You do your own thing over there and we won’t bother you so long as you don’t bother us'."

The word 'tolerance' as a goal has always bothered me.  Tolerance is the lowest level of acceptance.  Tolerating is  putting up with something that you don't agree with.  Tolerance is not a word I imagine that Jesus Christ would have used or approved of.  He said to 'love' one's neighbors, even one's enemies.  Not 'tolerate' them. 

I did actually google  Jesus and the word tolerance, and I got an article entitled "Bible Verses About Tolerance: 21 Scripture Quotes."  None of the 21 quotes actually has the word tolerance in them.  Someone merely found passages that seemed to cover the idea they had of tolerance.   Quotes like:

"Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It is before his own master that he stands or falls. And he will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make him stand."

How people 'know' things and by extension, how the come to change what they 'know' is an underlying theme of this blog.  I'm convinced that 'knowing' is something we do non-rationally.  It's somehow linked in our brains to our fight or flight response - is this a danger to me?   And the less we know about something, the more likely we are to put it into the danger category.  It's why some people fear flying, but think nothing of driving, even though statistically one's odds are much better flying.  But it's easy to viscerally understand that if cars crash, they are, at least, already on the ground, and relatively few of us truly understand what keeps a plane up in the air.  We may have read an explanation, even be able to recite the explanation.  But unless we 'get it' in the sense that we 'feel' its correctness, we don't really 'know' it.  

We can 'know' a lot of things that are incorrect.  Things that 'make sense', that feel natural.  But are wrong.  And the more being 'right' threatens our way of life, the longer we believe what's wrong.  Find me a climate change denier today, and I'll find you some strong connection they have to the fossil fuel industry. 

So how do we people change what they know?  How can we help that process along?

When I taught about values in my graduate classes, I had one section where everyone had to bring some food that would help us understand who they were.  They also had to talk about a value they believed in strongly and explain what happened in their lives to cause that to be an important value.  For instance, for me, siding with immigrants fleeing from a dangerous homeland has always been important.  My parents were immigrants who fled Nazi Germany, so I come to this value in a very personal way.  Sure, there are people who take advantage of the system, but it's better, in my mind,  to let in a few fakers, than turn away genuine refugees fleeing from terrible deprivation and death.  

I recall one night in class where one student showed us photos of her cats, dogs, and a bunny, I believe.  She was a member of PETA and a strong animal rights advocate.  She talked about how important pets had always been in her life.   About 30 minutes later, another student showed us a photograph of himself and his dad with the first time caribou he'd ever shot.  This was an important father and son bonding activity.  

These class sessions profoundly changed how students interacted in the rest of the class.  The PETA member didn't necessarily agree with the hunter (or vice versa) but at least they understood how the other got to that value.  It made a visceral sense. 

Watching the rapid (for significant social change) acceptance of gay marriage over the last 30 years (and if you were gay and of marrying age 30 years ago, I'm sure it didn't seem rapid),  I think a lot of it came about because people came to know lgbt people as the same as themselves, with this one minor difference.  I say minor, because when J and I were first married, our closest neighbors were a lesbian couple.  The better we got to know them over the years, the more their daily lives seemed to be wrapped around the same kinds of issues as ours: working, paying the bills, preparing food, keeping the garden nice, washing dishes, going to the movies,  getting the car fixed, and on and on.  They had good days as a couple and bad days.  The fact that they were both women really was a very minor difference.  Sure, it meant they weren't going to have children, but we had hetero friends who weren't going to have children either. 

When I was a kid growing up, I can think of one gay person that I knew of.  He was the brother of a friend of our parents.  He played the piano professionally and when we were at Seders at their house, I remember him always smoking a lot.  But so did his sister.  I don't even know when I came to know that he was, in those days, homosexual.  Probably when I was about 15 or 16 it slipped out from one of my parents' lips.  It was like saying he had cancer.   He was sort of a shadowy person and I don't recall ever even having any sort of conversation with him beyond hello and please pass the peas.    

In those days few people were open about their homosexuality.  There were men or women who never got married, and I guess adults may have wondered, but people didn't publicly openly identify themselves as gay.  There was no publicly visible gay community that I knew about.  Kids might call someone a faggot or queer at school, but it wasn't until my 10th or 15th high school reunion that I learned about classmates who were gay - because, by then, they had died of AIDS.  No, that's not quite true.  One came out in college and my step-father saved me a newspaper article about him being head of a gay student group at Berkeley. Randy had been a close friend in high school, but I never had a clue.   Later, he became the first openly gay judge in Los Angeles.  

I give all this history, because I think that once LGBT folks began to come out and thus force the rest of the world to acknowledge their existence, things began to change.  Until then, parents could pretend their daughter was living with her good friend because it made economic sense to share an apartment or house.  They could ignore the fact that not only was their 40 year old son unmarried, but he never seemed to talk about dating any women.  He was just too busy at work or something.   They might suspect, but they never talked about it.  Everyone could just pretend everything was 'normal.'

But once people started to come out to their parents, the parents had to come to terms with what they 'knew' about homosexuals and what they knew about their gay or lesbian (often adult) children.  Some disowned their children.  Others disowned what they knew about homosexuals.  

And once parents began accepting their children, aunts and uncles and grandparents were forced to make the same sorts of choices between throwing out the kids or throwing out their false knowledge.  And then it spread to friends of the parents, to people at work, and on and on.  The more people came to know they actually did know gay folks, people they had thought were good, normal people until they had come out, the more people had to reassess what they 'knew' about gays.  

Television and movies mirrored this by adding gay characters as 'real' people.  

Just as in my class exercise on values, people had to match what they knew about real individuals against their stereotypes.  

I suspect this evolution might have happened faster than for other outsider groups in society because gays were embedded, so to speak, in every racial and ethnic group, in every religious group, and in every economic and social group.   Protestant Irish probably have been more likely to have a gay dinner guest as part of a family holiday, than to have a Catholic.  (OK, that's a gross speculation on my part, but the point is, they've been less likely to have a family member of the 'other' religion than a gay family member.  You have to have someone convert or marry into the other religion, but a son or daughter or nephew or niece, is someone you've known all their lives.  

So I'm probably asking here whether we can learn to be first tolerant and then embracing of other 'others' the way Ireland has.  (And I'm assuming that everyone has heard that Ireland is the first country to actually vote for same-sex marriage, not have it imposed by a court or law, and that they did so with a very strong yes vote.)  Or whether there is something about the distribution of lgbt folks in society that gives them access to every part of society, that other outside groups don't have.  

In any case, the world is a better place today than it was a week ago, because of this vote.  While some will disagree with that assessment, mine is based on the assumption that the more people accept each other as fellow, equal human beings, the better off the world is. 

As one person is quoted in the Irish Times article, before the election, wrote: 

“I have two adult children. One is allowed to marry, the other is not. How can this be right?”