Catching Up

I got home a little bit less than a week ago, and haven't read the news until today. Here's some awesome articles that I'm reading in my grand game of catch-up.

Occupiers Take the Farm - A group of community members took over a patch of little-used agricultural land owned by UC Berkley and turned it into a farm. Chaos ensued. Professors and scientists felt the farm was an attack on academic freedom since they use the land for agricultural research, even though much of it was being parceled out to build a Whole Foods and other buildings and not being used for research at all. The occupiers, who had been asking the university for use of the land for years, felt it was finally being put to some good use. All a very interesting story, I'm sorry it turned into arrests and legal mess before that conversation really got to happen.

Carbon taxing to fix Europe's budget problems? - I tend to think carbon taxing is a good idea, but this suggests starting with household emissions, and I can just imagine how that would go over in Ireland, where household taxes are already a subject of endless angry posters. Not gonna happen. But maybe there are other ways to do it?


Men moving into "pink-collar" jobs - Interesting article in the New York Times about how more men are taking jobs in fields dominated by women, like nursing and primary education. Includes lots of fond memories from Women's Studies 101 about the Glass Escalator phenomenon.

Facts are Cool - A great response to a great article explaining privilege in video game terms that was published a few weeks ago. Read both. Now.

What else have I missed while I've been gone? Let me know!