Hasta La Gadget!

In an article published in the September issue of GQ, Kanye West recounted a comparison he’d made during his 45 minute wedding toast between the current plight of celebrities with those of African-Americans during the Civil Rights Era: “And what I talked about in [the toast]” he said, “was the idea of celebrity, and celebrities being treated like blacks were in the ’60s, having no rights…”

Celebrities having no rights? Please allow that to wash over you like the freezing cold waters of the ice bucket challenge. Now I was going to dedicate this piece to joking about how breathlessly tone deaf and ignorant of a statement that is. How West equates celebs being hounded by paparazzi, stalkers, and autograph-seekers (which is harrowing to be sure) to the agony and trauma of the African-American experience during the ’60s makes dams burst in my head. It’s outlandish, deluded, and just plain wrong — a false comparison made by someone deeply enrapt in navel gaze, chip squarely on shoulder. In short, a therapist’s wet dream. That’s not me joking. That’s a cold assessment of West’s words. West famously never graduated from college and quotes like the one above are a great argument for him finishing. But the better part of my judgement stops me there because before I had time to properly roast this quote, West put the kibosh on such things.

During this year’s VMA telecast comedian and excellent mimic Jay Pharoah did funny impressions of both Kanye West and Jay-Z. Carrying off a flawless Jay-Z impression, Pharoah quipped that Jay-Z’s new line of cough syrup “Jova-tussin” is available at pharmacies and nightclubs alike, and while impersonating Kanye, he argued that the only artist to watch in music is Kanye — a dig at the artist’s famously economy-sized ego. For his part, Jay Z said nothing publicly about Pharoah’s dead on impression (the man is cooler than the other side of the pillow, after all), but Kanye West was less than amused. At a recent concert, West told the crowd that following the MTV Awards he called Pharoah personally and told him “We ain’t gonna have no black comedians going up on stage spoofing the people that’s working hard to open doors… for black people.” And there it was. By edict Kanye West declared that no black comedian can make fun of Blacks Kanye West feels are opening doors for other Black people. Or, in other words, West has in effect, put restrictions on Black comedians, starting with one of the top comedians in the country. Though from West’s words, I take it comedians of any other race are more than are free to make fun of whoever they please. According to West there’s a different set of rules that dictate what Black comedians are allowed to do. Therefore, as a Black comedian, I cannot laugh or mock West’s aforementioned assertion about how the African-American experience and the celebrity experience in 2014 mirror one another. Nope. Off limits.

But maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. By policing my very behavior as a Black comedian maybe Kanye West is doing me a favor. I now know what’s inbounds! So I guess thanks are in order? If I can’t jokingly disagree with West’s notions on race and celebrity I guess my only option is to agree whole cloth. Blacks involved in the turbulent Civil Rights struggle have everything in common with the likes of James Franco, Scarlett Johansen, Ryan Seacrest, and Macklemore — everything. I mean, when I watch Eyes on The Prize and see stock footage of water cannons turned on Black protesters in the Deep South, I have to be told I’m not watching the Golden Globes. Or remember how the Freedom Riders’ bus was burned with the Freedom Riders still inside? Today we see the same raw terror and emotion on the red carpet at the I Heart Radio Awards — same, same guys. Or what about drama and chaos surrounding the Watts Riots of 1965? The tragedy of The Mississippi 3? The assassinations of MLK, Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers? I mean, who doesn’t get as worked up about these events as do about the events covered in the pages of US Weekly or Star?! Kanye West has opened my eyes and there is no going back. The two experiences are exactly, exactly the same. In Hollywood you have gifting sweets, million dollar deals, access, social capital, hedonism, wealth and more — AKA the same thing Blacks dealt with in the ’60s. Agreed, Mr. West! Agreed! I mean, for years Black people didn’t have the right to vote and during the Academy Awards only members of the Academy get to vote. Same diff, y’all! One day celebrities will throw off the shackles of their oppressively lucrative endorsement deals and movie franchise money and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual “Free At Last! Free At Last! Thank God Almighty! I’m Free At Last!”

A NEW study by the linguist and tech entrepreneur Kieran Snyder, done forFortune.com, found two differences between workplace performance reviews given to men and women. Across 248 reviews from 28 companies, managers, whether male or female, gave female employees more negative feedback than they gave male employees. Second, 76 percent of the negative feedback given to women included some kind of personality criticism, such as comments that the woman was “abrasive,” “judgmental” or “strident.” Only 2 percent of men’s critical reviews included negative personality comments.

The study speaks to the impossible tightrope women must walk to do their jobs competently and to make tough decisions while simultaneously coming across as nice to everyone, all the time. But the findings also point to something else: If a woman wants to do substantive work of any kind, she’s going to be criticized — with comments not just about her work but also about herself. She must develop a way of experiencing criticism that allows her to persevere in the face of it.

I’ve had the privilege of doing research in places that are seldom seen by humans: remote, nearly pristine reefs in the Phoenix Islands; seamounts near Cocos Island; and the waters of Indonesia and Palau. But Antarctica was the locale that took my breath away. It is the biggest, wildest, strangest and most remote place on Earth. There the air is so clear and its beauty so stunning, you wonder if you have just learned to see.

Today, the Ocean Health Index released its first assessment of the health of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean. The results show that distance, fierce winds, bitter cold, the raging seas and plenty of ice have managed to diminish the human impact on the inaccessible Southern Ocean. But despite its geographic isolation, it has not been enough.

Antarctica’s Delicate Balance
Over the past century, whalers and sealers nearly extirpated blue whales from the region, and so heavily damaged other species that the International Whaling Commission (IWC) declared a moratorium on commercial hunting beginning in 1985. Twenty years ago, it designated the entire Southern Ocean as a sanctuary for whales.
More recently, fishing has put several species at risk of overexploitation. Climate change and ocean acidification threaten the region’s food web — a serious threat, because it could take millennia to repair the damage.

Keeping people away isn’t the right strategy for Antarctica. I and fellow conservationists at CI, The Nature Conservancy, WWF and other partner organizations have learned that removing people from nature is not a successful formula for conservation. Encouraging responsible and sustainable use of resources with the designation of strategically planned no-take reserves works better. When people recognize the link between a resource and their own survival, they are much more likely to protect it.

This has to be done carefully in Antarctica, as its majestic size and fearsome reputation mask what is actually a very delicate system.

Evolution has provided the animals that inhabit the Antarctic with remarkable adaptations to its rigorous climate, even including “antifreeze” in some species of icefish. A temperature change of only one degree can mean the difference between success and failure for some species.

Habitats are challenged in other ways too. Such cold locations take a long time to recover from damage caused by oil spills, trawling or other disturbances.
The bottom line is we need to treat Antarctica gently, even if it does not always return the favor to those who visit or work there.

The Results Are In
Antarctic tourism, fisheries and research can be beneficial to people, but only if managed sustainably and strategically. How can we know if those conditions prevail? This is where the Ocean Health Index, a collaborative effort to assess regional and global threats to ocean health, becomes an invaluable tool.

The Index posits that “a healthy ocean sustainably delivers a range of benefits to people now and in the future.” In the Antarctic, it evaluated how well the region is delivering the maximum sustainable amounts of desired benefits.

The Antarctic region scored 72 out of 100, based on how well it provided food, natural products, tourism, livelihoods and economies, clean waters, coastal protection, biodiversity and sense of place.

Dr. Catherine Longo, one of my colleagues and a project scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara’s National Center for Ecosystem Analysis and Synthesis, led the Antarctica assessment. She saw a mix of good and bad news.

On the positive side, the distance from human population centers, industries and agriculture protects Antarctica’s clean waters. Protected whales and fur seals are also recovering from overexploitation.

On the other hand, 38 of the assessed species are decreasing. Those include some iconic species such as southern bluefin tuna, basking sharks, porbeagle sharks, gentoo penguins and five species of albatrosses, one of which is critically endangered and two others that are endangered. Dr. Longo was concerned that the population trends are unknown for 40% of the species that have been assessed, let alone the many species for which no monitoring at all has been done.

Two other issues were particularly worrisome for us: illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing (IUU) and climate change. Both are difficult to control, and both can wreak havoc on species populations and conservation efforts.

Protecting Our Shared Continent
We have to tread cautiously in this forbidding but fragile region. The IWC and the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) have made progress. The latter has successfully overseen the recovery of a number of species, initiated a fisheries observer program and mandated gear modifications that reduced the number of albatrosses killed by longline fisheries. There is, however, more to be done.

For the past decade I’ve followed the discussions in CCAMLR as they considered proposals to create two huge marine protected areas where fishing would be prohibited. Together, these protected areas would cover an area larger than Argentina.

At the 2013 annual meeting, CCAMLR delegates from 24 nations and the European Union failed to reach agreement to establish those reserves. This failure illustrates a central weakness of Antarctic governance. A region that should be humanity’s common heritage has been compromised by territorial claims on the continental shelves made by several nations eyeing future exploitation.

Antarctica may be remote, but it isn’t necessarily safe from harm, whether that comes in the form of excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, illegal fishing or future exploitation of oil or minerals.

Whether or not you have ever eaten a piece of Antarctic fish or a krill oil dietary supplement, this spectacular place is meaningful to your life. The stark beauty of its land and sea matter to us, as do the lives of the iconic animals that call it home.

In recent years, the worldwide threats to coral reefs have made them a symbol of the need to protect biodiversity and its extraordinary economic benefits. Antarctica is their icy equivalent, and the new Ocean Health Index will help us protect it while safeguarding its most important gifts.

It may seem odd that the Ocean Health Index could score its “sense of place” goal for a place where no one lives, but Antarctica is one of the few places on Earth that should belong to everyone from every nation. We all have a stake in its proper stewardship.

This was originally published on Conservation International’s Human Nature Blog. Greg Stone is chief scientist and executive vice president of CI’s Moore Center for Science and Oceans.

It’s time to accept the fact that there is little stigma to single parenthood. “Born out of wedlock” is a phrase seldom heard today. More than 40 percent of new mothers are unmarried. Seventy-two percent of African-American children live in single parent families.

The growing trend of having children outside of marriage is not likely to be reversed, writes Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution, who has been studying childhood poverty for years. She has reached the conclusion that it’s time to face up to that fact and help all parents become good parents. The second lesson is that parenting skills must be taught early.

There are many reasons for the single parent trend: women increasingly don’t think the men in their lives are dependable, many men are too poor to accept the responsibility of marriage, and social norms have changed.

Marriage is one answer to child poverty simply because two incomes are better than one. And so are two loving parents. But no one has figured out how to promote marriage, neither conservatives nor liberals. In the meantime, let’s stop decrying family structure and begin focusing on good parenting. The earlier we begin, even before pregnancy, the better for the child. Lets focus on good prenatal care and avoiding smoking, drinking and drugs that harm the fetus.

The mother’s health, and possibly the father’s as well, determine whether a baby is well at birth or is disadvantaged from the start.

We also know that 60 percent of pregnancies by single mothers are unplanned (compared to 50 percent for all pregnancies) and 40 percent are terminated by abortion.

What can we do with his information?

Home health visits for every expectant mother should become the national standard and should be continued until a toddler attends pre-school. Most mothers want to be good mothers, but they do not always know how. The basics seem simple, but many single mothers did not experience good parenting themselves and need to be taught.

It stands to reason that babies who are wanted fare better than those who arrive unwanted. With the battle raging over access to contraception, we have lost sight of the value–both economic and emotional of family planning. According to Sawhill, every dollar invested in birth control saves taxpayers roughly five dollars in Medicaid and social welfare payments.

But it’s not just about the money. It’s about stemming the child poverty rate in America–which is the highest in the developed world. It’s time to be realistic. I have long advocated for more affordable, quality childcare, paid family and medical leave and paid sick days–all programs that help working families. But we cannot stop there. We have to help all families–regardless of their structure– to be good parents and raise healthy, happy and wanted children. The world will be a better place, when we succeed.

Southern voters will go to the polls in November 150 years, almost to the day, after Gen. Sherman commenced his March to the Sea, breaking the back of the Confederacy and leaving a burnt scar across the South. The wound never fully healed. Humiliation and resentment would smolder for generations. A sense of persecution has always mingled with the rebellious independence and proud notions of the South’s latent power, the promise that it “will rise again!” Congressman Paul Broun Jr., whose Georgia district spans nearly half of Sherman’s calamitous path to Savannah, evoked the “Great War of Yankee Aggression” in a metaphor to decry the Affordable Care Act on the House floor in 2010. The war, in Broun’s formulation, was not a righteous rebellion so much as a foreign invasion whose force still acts upon the South and its ideological diaspora that increasingly forms the foundation of conservatism.