Logic vs. Amendment 1
Today, North Carolina voters approved Constitutional Amendment 1, “to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” This effectively bans same-sex marriage, and all forms of civil or domestic unions or partnerships (including heterosexual ones).
I’m not going to get angry, because that won’t do any good. Instead, I’m going to show you why every reason I could find for opposing same-sex marriage doesn’t stand up to logic. Because that’s what this argument needs: logic.
The logic of Amendment 1 is ultimately that same-sex couples cannot procreate. By this logic, all marriages should legally terminate at menopause, sterile people should be denied marriage licenses, and all forms of birth control should be illegal.
Perhaps that’s the world you want, 60% of North Carolina voters, but me? I want to be able to marry whomever I want, regardless of their gender, their ability to produce children, and whether or not we choose to use protection.
What Makes You Tick? (From Jumbo Days 2011)
Last year, I was asked to answer the question that every applicant to Tufts was asked: "What makes you tick?" Simple enough, right? Food, water, umm... well... ok, maybe not so simple. Especially when you're representing the Tufts freshman class at Jumbo Days (when it was still called April Open House... oh, so long ago...). Well, it's that time of year again, so I thought I'd post my speech to give you a taste of what you'll be hearing from this year's awesome speakers!
Before I can say what makes me tick, I have to ask the question: what is my tick? This isn't such a simple question to answer – humans are complicated, and we don't produce a single sound or motion, like a clock. We do have components, though: we have brains, organs, and we have hands – just a different kind.
My tick, my output, is the whole range of ideas, connections, concepts, and actions that I can produce, as Evan Moulson, as a human being, and as a member of the Tufts community.
That's getting kind of complicated. Let's condense it. If you were a clock, what would your tick look like? In my case, my “tick” happens to be a near-constant stream of economic policy debates, Princess Bride quotes, and Star Warstrivia.
TICK! Eliminating capital gains tax is a terrible idea because it only lowers effective tax rates for the rich. TICK! “I see you are using Bonetti's Defense against me.” “I thought it fitting, considering the rough terrain.” TICK! The Millennium Falcon made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs – which is a measure of distance – because it used spacetime to its advantage and flew close to the Maw cluster of black holes.
That's actually pretty typical of a Tufts student's version of “tick-tock.”
Evan’s Reasons to Love Tufts #3: The Department of Admitted Students
All colleges have an admissions department. Heck, the high school on whose property I'm staying over spring break has an admissions department that I walked by this morning.
But only Tufts has an (unofficial) “Department of Admitted Students” within the “Department of Admissions.”
Huh?
Yeah.
At some schools, the admissions officers admit you and move on to the next class; at Tufts, they admit you, then email you blog posts, Facebook friend you, and check up on you – all the way to graduation. They even tell you when especially awesome new first years are being accepted (here’s a secret: we’re a lot more excited to meet you than you are to meet us, we just act “cool” because we’re afraid you won’t like us).
Plus, because the admissions officers are always travelling (here’s a sample tweet from Dan Grayson: “I'm a little obsessed with the Thai school system, so I spend as much time as I can visiting the schools.”) they have great stories about all the different corners of the globe...
Evan solves the Falkland Islands controversy!
Because everyone reading this is a well-read and jet-setting internationalist, you all know everything about the Falkland Islands controversy already. On the off chance that you’ve stumbled upon this blog (hello!) and don’t know about it, or even where the Falkland Islands are (it’s OK – residents of London can’t even find it on a map) well, I’ll be glad to talk to you about it. …through screens and text and… well, you get the point.
The Falkland Islands are a pair of tiny islands of the southeastern tip of South America and have been under British influence and sovereignty (with a short interruption, which I’ll get to) since 1833. Argentina also claims them, however, going so far as to make the declaration of ownership of Las Malvinas (the Argentine name for the Falklands) part of their constitution in 1994.
The islands have no military value (the comedian Eddie Izzard joked that Britain keeps them for “strategic sheep purposes”), are economically self-sustaining through ecotourism...
Stand Down, Captain America
Captain Social Democracy to the Rescue!
Let’s begin at the beginning. With the iPhone.
Five years ago, as now, it was cheaper, faster, and more technically efficient to produce iPhones in China than in the United States: when Steve Jobs said, two weeks before the iPhone’s launch, “I want a glass screen; the iPhone can’t have a plastic screen,” workers could be roused from their dormitories, handed a cup of tea and a biscuit, and glass screens could be on the assembly lines within hours. Additionally, nearly all of the iPhone’s other components are produced in China, and the final product is assembled in Shenzhen, so Apple saves an enormous amount of money in transportation costs by keeping the manufacturing process within a small geographic area.
Even with Apple’s potentially anticompetitive practices, this can hardly be considered to foretell “The End of Democratic Capitalism.” Well, not until you get to this buried chunk: ...