5 Things I learned this summer by(finally) watching the news

During the school year, I think most people would agree that except for HUGE news stories, we live in a kind of news bubble at Wellesley. This isn't because we're indifferent to what's going on in the world right now, it's just that we don't usually have time to do much else other than concentrate on our studies and maybe an extracurricular or two. Yes, I usually have to peruse PubMed for the latest articles but the newest discovered bacteria has little to do with everyday life. But for this Wellesley student at least, this is the summer to change that.

I'd always been intimidated by the news because I never thought I had the background to understand what was really going on. It's hard to think about the implications of an event on the future if you don't know the history but the history usually spans hundreds of year so why bother? Over the course of this summer though, I've started watching TheYoungTurks and following the BBC and NPR again to finally start understanding what's going on outside of the Bubble and boy is there a lot.

1) What are drone strikes?: Drone strikes are bombings authorized by the US government(most predominantly in Pakistan but I think they happen all over the Middle East) using unarmed aircrafts. Drone strikes were started during the Bush administration but the numbers have only increased under the Obama administration. These incidents usually involve a lot of civilian deaths, possibly as many as 3500 since 2004.

2) Massachusetts uses the Stand-Your-Ground law too(kind of): The Stand-Your-Ground Law is a self-defense law that allows people to use whatever force necessary if they feel that they are in a position where their life is at risk. The law gained a lot of attention as it was one of the factors that contributed to the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin investigation. States that currently have some form of the law include(Links in the citation section): Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming....and Massachusetts. Massachusetts law states the following:

Massachusetts General Law, Chapter 278, Section 8(a): In the prosecution of a person who is an occupant of a dwelling charged with killing or injuring one who was unlawfully in said dwelling, it shall be a defense that the occupant was in his dwelling at the time of the offense and that he acted in the reasonable belief that the person unlawfully in said dwelling was about to inflict great bodily injury or death upon said occupant or upon another person lawfully in said dwelling, and that said occupant used reasonable means to defend himself or such other person lawfully in said dwelling. There shall be no duty on said occupant to retreat from such person unlawfully in said dwelling.

Basically, within your own home you are permitted to use a more expanded means of violence in self defense. However, this only applies in the case where you're actually in serious danger-you can't just shoot people breaking into your house, they need to be acting violently against you first.

3) Bees are important: Since 2006, higher percentages of bee colonies have been dying after the winter, an example of Colony Collapse Disorder where there is no discernible source for the deaths, the bees just vanish. There is a lot of speculation for this decline of bee populations from the Varroa Mite to the combination of insecticides to climate change. In addition to the obvious decline in the amount of honey that will be making it onto supermarket shelves, this has disturbing implications for agriculture because plants that cannot be pollinated cannot reproduce. This means that the price of food will go up but more than that, if bees are mysteriously dying everywhere, what if we're next?

4) Don't lick anyone else's eyeballs: But really, just don't do it. Eyeball licking(known colloquially as worming) is a fairly recent fad in Japan that ranks somewhere between the first and second romantic bases. Apart from being slightly weird, it turns out that there are some serious consequences of doing this. The tears in your eyes are considered part of the surface barriers component of your immune system. This is the first line of defense against pathogens because they contain lytic enzymes but also help to lubricate your eye. Normally they are pretty good an insuring that your eyes are protected. However, the human mouth is actually a nasty place. After the gut, it is the most microbial rich part of the body. Your saliva is well equipped to deal with this normally but your eye doesn't usually see this type of bacterial action which is why many cases of eyeball licking result in conjunctivitis(pink-eye) which is just unpleasant. In more extreme cases though, if the cornea of the eye is scratched, there can be more dire consequences, the most extreme cases leading to blindness.

5) The United States is kind of behind on gay marriage: As of the writing of this article, gay marriage is legal nationwide in the following countries: Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Uruguay and most recently in the United Kingdom.  The current states that perform same sex marriage are California, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. Thirty-seven more states would have to legalize same-sex marriage for the United States to join that list. But there's some hope especially after the Supreme Court overturned the passage of DOMA.

Although some of you probably knew all of this prior to this summer, but for someone who is usually uninformed, it's been really fun to read through the headlines and to see something other than the news about celebrity scandals. I hope you learned something here because I did, let me know if you want me to do more of these and thanks for reading.