According to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation, almost 80% of Americans currently live in a municipality that bans smoking in the workplace, local bars, restaurants, and other public and private spaces. The smoking ban campaign aims to address health concerns associated with cigarettes by achieving cleaner indoor air. Some cities, like Belmont, California, have even [...]

Headlines in late August 2011 were quick to announce the results of a UN Report declaring a 20% decrease in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the Asia and Pacific Region. While the decrease is no doubt a wonderful feat, it is difficult to diagnose it as a direct result of international medical programs (rather than [...]

On a tourist trip to Iran in the summer of 2010 I decided to visit the famous “Big Bazaar” in Southern Tehran. On my way, I found myself in a men’s compartment of the metro. In Iran, the last two compartments of each metro tram are women-only sections, and the rest of the compartments are [...]

While discussions of the budget deficit have been common in US politics for the last 20 years, the 2010 midterm elections and emergence of the Tea Party have drawn unprecedented attention to demands that the US government dramatically reducing spending and shrink the federal debt. Unusually, these calls for reducing government spending have reached the [...]

Our culture is oversaturated with hypersexualized images of women. If you should know anything about Wonder Woman, it is that she was raised with the Amazonians - a society populated by immortal super-women that had once been victims of male abuse– thus, no men were allowed on their island. But if Wonder Woman grew up without the unrestricted [...]

In an August interview with the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta, a top official of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) expressed his desire to work with American Evangelicals to combat same-sex marriage. Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev of Volokolamsk, the head of the department of external church relations (DECR) of the Russian Orthodox Church (also known as the [...]

A sigh of relief was breathed around the world with the announcement of Osama bin Laden’s death on May 2, 2011. His killing prompted many other questions as well: Would the war in Afghanistan finally come to an end? Might the discrimination against Muslims-Americans and Islamaphobia finally begin to fade into history? This September will [...]

The Center for a New American Dream recently posted a beautifully done video outlining their vision for what a post-consumer economy could look like. They assert that we can reduce the scale of our consumer economy, negative social impacts, and environmental footprint without compromising quality of life. In fact citizens of the new “Plentitude Economy” [...]

Three dedicated women in the West Bank are hoping to break the Guinness World Record for the biggest straw tray ever constructed in history. The project, which the women have been working on for over two years, was begun by Rose Hamad, a resident of a small village near the city of Ramallah. The straw [...]

If you chose to have a child, and could have just one, what gender would you prefer? If we lived in an egalitarian and gender positive society, we would expect the answers to this question to be generally equal, with maybe 50% of respondents choosing a boy and the other 50% choosing a girl. But [...]