Category: Values

The Names of Both Parents

It is now a norm that women either keep their own names when they marry or hyphenate their own names with that of their spouse. And yet this norm does not yet apply to the children. But  the Constitutional  court in Italy is changing that. It just overturned the tradition that a child is only given the father’s name and ruled that they should be given that of both parents. It said that the current practice was detrimental to the identity of the child. In its statement however the court said that both parents need to make the decision. They can decide the order in which the names appear or even decide on only one name. The court’s decision though is only a beginning.  Parliament now needs to take it up and legislation needs to be passed in order to implement  it. But the Family minister is taking up the issue and said that it should be a high priority and an urgent tasks for politicians to be involved.

Italy’s constitutional court’s decision is a first. No one else has so openly decreed that a child ought to have both his parents surnames. While it does look like the parliament will indeed take it up, in a way it no longer matters what happens. It’s like putting toothpaste back in a tube. It’s surprising that it took so long for the issue to be officially raised and be declared a part of a child’s identity. It’s so logical. I don’t know which country will take it up next, but I do know that many parents have begun to give their children both surnames, or some combinations that acknowledges both sides. It may be that whether or not it is ever made into law anywhere will be secondary if not superfluous.

Saving Birds and Porpoises

If you love animals, and most of us do, you have to feel sad for the way human activity affects them. That’s why when I read about new ways to help counteract what we do, it makes me smile. The first instance I’ve recently came across is about birds. We are glad for wind power and the way it can help us with climate change.  There is a downside to wind power, however: birds, including eagles, and bats run into the blades and die. But now there’s a camera with special sensors that can sense the birds coming and turn itself off. It’s called Identiflight and it can detect bird flights more than 5 times better than human observers and with a 94% accuracy. The system is able to calculate the birds flight speed and trajectory and if there is a conflict, it shuts  the blades down.

The other innovation is with fishing nets. They kill thousands of porpoises,  cetaceans and other aquatic mammals including whales. The simple insertion of plastic beads in the nets makes a crucial difference. These animals use echolocation to orient themselves and find their prey. They cannot sense the nets, but the insertion of beads alters the whole equation, because the beads can be sensed by the acoustic signals of the animals. They are made of  acrylic glass with  the same density as water and do not add weight to the nets.  What’s even more important is that they can also be adapted to the different frequencies of different species.  Daniel Stepputtis a marine biologist in Rostock Germany, is the innovator behind the beads, and for that we thank him.

Neither system is foolproof, particularly the beaded nets, but they are saving animal lives, and their existence makes us, me at least, look forward to other such innovations to help other animals affected by humans—Bees perhaps?

Trust in Science

We’ve all had to make so many adjustments to  Covid, not all of them to our liking. And yet Covid has brought out a few good things, the change in the 8 hours work day for one. Another is our trust in science.  The Wellcome Trust, a charitable organization based in London,  commissioned an international  survey of how people viewed science and scientists. One of their areas of interest is public health, one reason being that public health policy and programs  which usually come from governments cannot succeed without the public’s trust in science. What was surprising to many in view of some of the reactions to Covid  was that as a whole  trust in science has increased.  The report that was issued showed that 80% of people from 113 countries trusted science either a lot or some. Roughly the same, about three fourth of the people surveyed  (119,000), said they trusted scientists also either a lot or some. The percentage of people who said they trusted science a lot rose about 10% in East Asia, including China, Latin America, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. In the United States, as one would expect,  the picture is more complex. 54% of people said they trusted scientists a lot, an increase of 9% over the previous Wellcome Trust poll in 2018. While to no one’s surprise, trust in science follows party line, an important factor here is that more people trust science and scientists than trust government and what government say or ask.  While that finding has big implications for policy makers, and I hope they will pay attention,  the point is that trust in science is making small inroads despite our polarization.

That’s why I wanted to share this with you, because it’s easy to look at our divisions and not see the cracks where the light gets in—if I may borrow a Leonard Cohen’s lyric.

The Right to Repair

The European Commission is presenting a set of rules that rightly applied are meant to make the movement called “the Right To Repair” come alive. As we all know there tends to be a built-in obsolescence to the electronics and other products we buy. These rules are meant to combat this by making products easier to repair. So often glue is used when screws could make the repair doable. We all have the experience of problems with printers, computers, phones, and the like and it is cheaper to buy a new one rather than have the old fixed. But so much waste is not good for the environment nor for the use of the earth’s resources. The European Commission is mainly concerned with the European Union, but manufacturers will not be making products for the EU alone, so despite Brexit  the regulations will have to also apply to products bought in the UK. Indeed the BBC reports many repair workshops springing up in several UK cities. While the repair movement may not be as visible in the US, it is gaining momentum since the same logic applies, manufacturers will not be making one product for the EU and one for the US. The regulations go further than certain guidelines for manufacturing products, they include packaging in a more environmentally friendly way and  in one that can also eliminate waste. And to all this we can all say Yeah!!