Welcome to the start of another week, friends! It may feel dismal to be back at work yet again, but at least we’ve got some interesting reads for you to escape into during your lunch hour. (We would never, of course, condone messing around on the internet while on the clock.) As always, we’re also interested in what you’re thinking and reading — drop us a line in the comments and join the conversation! And if you have more to say, email editor at globalcomment dot com with a pitch.
‘Walking While Black‘ (In These Times)
This thoughtful meditation on Blackness in the United States and the experience of being an ordinary civilian thrust into extraordinary circumstances thanks to racism is a superb read. It’s also an excerpt of a longer essay, so if you find yourself wanting to read more, you can!
I had taught myself a set of rules: No running, especially at night; no sudden movements; no hoodies; no objects—especially shiny ones—in hand; no waiting for friends on street corners, lest I be mistaken for a drug dealer; no standing near a corner on the cell phone (same reason). As comfort set in, inevitably I began to break some of those rules, until a night encounter sent me zealously back to them, having learned that anything less than vigilance was carelessness.
‘Tragedy and Destruction: Italian Quake Is a Test for Goverment in Rome‘ (Spiegel)
You can’t prevent earthquakes, but can you better prepare for them? That’s a question haunting Italians this week as they prepare to recover from a devastating quake that perhaps didn’t need to be quite as awful as it was.
Neither the devastating earthquake in L’Aquila in 2009 nor the one this week came anything close to the magnitude of previous tremblors, and yet they still could have been even more devastating had they occurred in more populous areas. “We geologists have been stressing for years that Italy is far from being a country with a culture of prevention,” says Francesco Peduto, president of the Italy’s National Council of Geologists.
‘Americans love genetically modified mosquitoes much more than other GMOs‘ (Grist)
Distaste for GMOs is widespread across the United States, where multiple states have attempted to pass labeling laws and some regions have even banned the cultivation and/or sale of GMOs. But in Florida, the entrenched fear of GMOs is being tested, and by a surprising source.
A poll out this week found that 60 percent of Florida residents support tweaking mosquitoes’ genes to fight diseases, while 30 percent opposed. This isn’t statistical noise: Polls are consistently finding that big majorities of Americans support the idea. Conventional wisdom has been flipped on its head. Disdain has morphed into support.
‘The Military as Re-Alignment Test Case‘ (Pacific Standard)
The military can be a bellwether for larger society in the US, and the culture surrounding the latest election is highlighting that trend. Should we be looking to the military to understand the larger political forces at work this year?
With particular attention to the Trump phenomenon, it is easy to see the phenomenon cross-cutting through the military community as a voting bloc, as the competing visions of retired Generals John Allen and Michael Flynn perhaps exemplify. Different factions with the military may also have differing views on Trump’s positions. To give the most powerful example, while there may be groups to whom “nuke them all” displays remarkable simplicity, it is deeply disturbing to those who actually work in the nuclear force.
‘Why Must One House Burn While Another Is Spared?‘ (Guernica)
Wildfires scorch more than the landscape. One survivor writes about the indelible effects they create for our lives, too, and what it’s like to live in the aftermath of destruction.
Fire melts copper piping and shatters concrete foundations so that as our neighbors sift the ash for pieces of jewelry they find themselves digging into dirt. Above the shattered foundations a few objects remain, stripped to their brick or metal skeletons: exercise bikes, washer-dryer sets, chimneys, flagpoles. Bob and Rosemary buy a new flag and hang it at half mast.
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Photo: darkangels/Creative Commons