College student in South Bay LA studying English. Most of my posts relate to Los Angeles, college, literature, veganism, and feminism. I’m head of publicity and VP of my College’s English club as well as moderate their tumblog: Page Turners.
-Michelle
Email: michelleavitia@gmail.com Twitter:@michi90504
Working as the NPR Arts Desk intern: “On average, we receive a dozen or so new books from publishers every day – working here is the bibliophile’s version of a kid in a candy shop.”
Yeah, I wouldn’t mind working for NPR. First I’ll have to get my Masters in English and be hundreds (thousands? yikes) of dollars in debt. Can’t wait!
The Obama administration says it will continue to deny health care benefits to the same-sex legal spouse of a federal court employee despite the fact that it has abandoned its court arguments in support of the Defense of Marriage Act.
Known as DOMA, the 1996 law bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage. On Monday, the administration took the latest in a series of convoluted actions relating to the statute.
Last week, the administration stirred up a tempest in the legal community when it notified Congress that it would no longer defend DOMA as constitutional.
It was the first time the administration has notified Congress of a refusal to defend a statute in court. The administration’s approach differed markedly from the way it dealt with the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law, which the administration did defend in court, but persuaded Congress to repeal. Dealing with DOMA, the administration did the opposite. It has abandoned the law in court, but has not asked Congress to repeal it.
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Current Obsession.
My next couple posts will be centered around this book so be warned! Here is an excerpt from the NPR article:
“As enrollment rates in colleges have continued to increase, a new book questions whether the historic number of young people attending college will actually learn all that much once they get to campus. In Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, two authors present a study that followed 2,300 students at 24 universities over the course of four years. The study measured both the amount that students improved in terms of critical thinking and writing skills, in addition to how much they studied and how many papers they wrote for their courses.”
Earth’s population stands at nearly 7 billion, and demographers project we may reach 9 billion by the middle of this century.
In the past 50 years, population has grown at a rate never before seen in human history. Pastures have become towns, cities have sprawled across the landscape, and humans now live in places once considered remote. The change is so dramatic that some scientists now refer to this as “the age of man.”
But as humanity’s reach expands, forests are vanishing, glaciers are melting and almost 1 billion people go hungry each day.
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