Good Dads Are Across Species
Father’s Day is a day to honor dads — human dads, that is. But there are dads of other species who deserve credit too.
In our household, Alfie the Great helped rear kittens Bear, Popsicle, Ms. Z and Count Catcula. Alfie protected the kittens, and as they followed him around in the course of his daily routine, they learned the ropes.
For too long, too many American medical school graduates have been sidelined in their careers. Students first enter a highly competitive process to be accepted into medical school. Then they commit years to studying to become doctors. Most students also take out significant student loan debt — $250,000 on average — for their education. After all that, thousands of U.S. doctors are stopped in their career tracks when they can’t obtain taxpayer-funded medical residencies. Without a residency at a teaching hospital, a doctor cannot be licensed and thus cannot practice medicine.
During the Bush (“W”) regime, my husband and I attended an event at the UCLA campus with featured speaker Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist. That we committed the time to attend the speaking engagement was an indicator of the value we thought Krugman brought to the discussion on the state of the world post the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. The coordinated terrorism perpetrated against the U.S. by 19 terrorists from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Egypt, who commandeered four passenger jets and turned them into weapons of mass destruction, killing 3,000 people…
Children love learning, and it’s undeniable that great ideas and principles shared at a young age can impact the path of a child for a lifetime. A coloring book I had as a child about America’s national parks instilled a desire to visit all of our country’s parks — a goal still in process — and was the seed for a commitment to keeping wild things wild.
There’s my anecdotal story, and there’s the science. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine states, “Early childhood is a time when developmental changes are happening that can have profound and lasting…
At a Trump rally in Muskegon, Mich., last month, Ted Nugent gave an impressive musical performance, what was described as a “face-melting cover” of the National Anthem. He wrapped up his rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner with a message of making America, and Michigan, great again, and a call for Michigan to have a great hunting season and “kill lots of s _ _ _.”
The 71-year-old native Michigander is a loud advocate for hunting.
A much younger Nugent also was irreverent. Nugent stopped in at a record store in Norman, Okla., where I worked during college and offered to…
World Population Day, created by the United Nations “to focus attention on the urgency and importance of population issues,” came and passed on Saturday. The top news results in a quick Google search on the day were all from India. And as the weekend passed, there was barely any acknowledgement in the United States of World Population Day, even as our human numbers ramp up each day.
Earth is home now to nearly 8 billion people, and we add about 81 million people to our only home each year, down from a peak of about 90 million annually in the…
Endangered Species Day is a day to acknowledge the numerous species we share our planet with, to celebrate them and to learn and discuss how we can protect and keep them safe in perpetuity.
While it’s best to filter out as much of the madness as possible in California where I live, it was impossible to ignore this week’s headline from Northern California, “New California bill would require gender neutral sections in retail stores,” which led me to research California Assemblyman Evan Low.
When visiting the website of Evan Low (Luó Dálún), the first thing one may notice is that Chinese characters complement the English presentation. One might interpret bilingual presentation as homage to Low’s Chinese heritage, a nod to globalism or something else — it may fall in line with the idea that…
TODAY IS WORLD RANGER DAY
Bill & Ted time travel to a battle-ripped Iraq, early 21st century, and meet Australian mercenary Damien Mander. “Dude, you’re going to become a conservationist and start a group and save all these amazing wild animals,” they tell Mander. “No way, dudes!” Mander replies.
While that’s not in the script for the next Bill & Ted adventure (but could be!), Mander in real life will tell you his early self wouldn’t have imagined him founding a conservation organization that would work to hold the Thin Green Line between survival and extinction for wild animals.
Leading up to Mother’s Day, two gut-wrenching stories were reported of babies abandoned to die. In Chicago, a forsaken baby was found atop a garbage can in an alley, and in Florida another was found in a plastic bag with household trash and coffee grinds in a dumpster. Both babies survived, thanks to the efforts of concerned citizens and fast-acting medical teams.
What anguish, desperation and mental illness were connected with these heinous acts committed by the women who birthed the babies can only be imagined, but these two tragedies show how much help some mothers may need. The African…
Maria K. Fotopoulos
Maria writes about the link between biodiversity loss & overpopulation, and other topics when she gets annoyed. Twitter @TurboDog50 | FB BetheChangeforAnimals
