HSU IT Department

I thought today I'd share two news stories that made me really happy in the past couple of weeks.

First, an eleven-year-old Masai boy from Kenya named Richard Turere. He's invented a cheap low-tech lion repellent -- a way to keep lions from chowing down on his family's herd of cattle. Lion predation on livestock is the number one reason locals kill them (Kenya's lion population has dropped from 15,000 ten years ago to about 2,000 today), so anything that keep them away is good for the cattle, good for the humans, and really good for the lions, though they may not know it. He wired up a bunch of LEDs to an old car battery powered by a solar panel, and the moving lights make it look like somebody is out roaming around and the lions stay away. Is that brilliant or what?? Many other villages are now installing these things, and it's working like gangbusters. He's now 13, and the Kenya Land Conservation Trust has gotten him a scholarship to go to school and study engineering. Yay!!

Second, the men of Phi Alpha Tau at Emerson College in Boston. They fund-raised on IndieGogo to help one of their brothers pay for his gender change from female to male, when his insurance company declined to cover the surgery. A fraternity, can you believe it?? They raised $16K; the extra is being donated to the Jim Collins Foundation, which helps fund sex change surgery (they call it "gender-confirming surgery" -- new phrase? never heard it before) for those who can't afford it. You guys rock, man. Best fraternity ever.

It's things like this that give me hope :)

The town of Corigliano d'Otranto has gone all brainy. They've put up ceramic plaques around town with quotes from the likes of Augustine, hand out conversation-starter postcards with questions like "Why were you born?" and even hired a Municipal Philosopher.

Does this not astonish you, in this age of tweets and sound bites, knee-jerk ideologues and their blind followers? It does me..

Graziella Lupo, the first person to hold the position, actually trained as a philosophical consultant at the Ca' Foscari University in Venice. I didn't even know such a degree existed!! Had I known, I might have made different choices as an undergrad ;)

So, the Philosopher is available for consultation on Friday afternoons to help you clarify your thoughts and puzzle over Deep Junk. Is this not a wonderful creative fascinating thing? Are not amazed at the intellectual fire of this tiny (pop. 5900) town?? Of course it is and you are! (I wish MY town had a Municipal Philosopher.)

But guess who thinks it isn't? The local branch of the psychologists' professional organization. They say that the use of a consulting philosopher is "not only misleading and confusing, but utterly perilous" and state that they will take "all the most appropriate actions to combat any offence that may be identified".

Well, thinking has always been a little perilous (all those highly volatile IDEAS, you know?). But somebody whose job is helping people's minds work better objects to...somebody whose job is helping people's minds work better? (This bit of course is not surprising at all. Rather depressing, but not surprising.) It's almost enough to make you question their dedication.

Perhaps I shall institute the habit of starting each day with a little Marcus Aurelius or Socrates :)

Am enormously pleased that Doonesbury is tackling Virginia's ultrasound law. As usual, some papers have gotten queasy and are shifting it to the editorial page or even not running it at all (COWARDS!!). If your paper's running it, you can thank them here; if not, you can shame them here. And of course you can read the strips here.

More good news: the New York Times reports (surprise, surprise) that centrist women are fleeing the GOP. Full article is here but in short:

In Iowa, one of the crucial battlegrounds in the coming presidential election, and in other states, dozens of interviews in recent weeks have found that moderate Republican and independent women — one of the most important electoral swing groups — are disenchanted by the Republican focus on social issues like contraception and abortion in an election that, until recently, had been mostly dominated by the economy.

And in what appears to be an abrupt shift, some Republican-leaning women...said they might switch sides and vote for Mr. Obama — if they turn out to vote at all.

Music to my ears :)

All I can say is happy, happy, joy, joy. And the fact that the news was first posted on Fox is just icing on the cake. Thank you, Mississippi, for demonstrating beyond a doubt that you are not the knee-jerk evangelical fundamentalists that many people would paint you as. Thank you for recognizing the right of a woman to control of her body. Thank you, in short, for clearly stating that the United States is not, and should never be, a theocracy.