Talking to the nurse in the doctor’s office she shared she had a long commute, “it’s only 32 miles” she said, “but it takes 2 hours because of traffic.” She didn’t like four hours of her day spent driving, she did however like her job, and felt lucky since she had to work. Other nurses in that same office shared similar stories of 2 hours commute to work. Of course living in Southern California where things are so spread out, such stories are not unusual. Yet when the NYT published an article about what it called extreme commutes, and did it the very same day I had had that conversation with the nurse, I had to pay attention. Decades ago, commuting is (more…)
July 2017
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Child Marriage and Economic Development
Child marriage has normally been seen as a human right issue. But a new study by the World Banks and the Center for Research on Women (CRW) suggest that child marriage is also an issue of economic development. While child marriage does occur even in countries like the US, the greatest proportion occurs in poor countries. In Niger for example 77% of women between the ages of 18 to 22 were married before the age of 18. Sometimes the poorer the country, the more child marriage is likely to occur. Often there are laws banning child marriage, yet it still occurs. Laws have been on the books in Bangladesh for example since a surprising 1929, but have been (more…)
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Going To Jail as a Civic Duty
I was struck by an op-ed in the L.A. Times by novelist Jesse Ball in which he suggests that serving on jury duty may not be enough to fulfill our civic duty. His idea is that every 10 years we would be called to serve time at a prison. Just like most prisoners today we would not know which prison or for how long. He says anywhere from 3 to 90 days. Our lives would be disrupted just as that of those being incarcerated. We would be subject to all the prison’s regulations and to the way guards treat inmates. In short for that indeterminate period of time we would be just as any other (more…)