Posts Tagged ‘diversity’
Gay couple’s wedding in Argentina – victory over prejudice! UPDATED
The Beruti register office in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires will never have witnessed a marriage like it. On Tuesday, Alex Freyre and José María Di Bello, who met three years ago at a conference on HIV, will make history and divide a continent as they become Latin America’s first gay married couple.
The ceremony will be a tribute to their determination as well as their love for each other, after a bitter three-year campaign which has divided a city, outraged Argentina’s powerful Roman Catholic church and overturned the constitution…
Not surprisingly, the marriage is already being hailed by equality activists as a significant triumph against the odds in a traditionally macho society. Argentina – and Latin America in general – is not known for a tolerance of sexual diversity, and violence against gays is an everyday occurrence.
“This marriage is bigger than José María and I,” Freyre told the Observer. “It is a victory for all who face prejudice and discrimination across Latin America and the Caribbean. It is proof that at last the grip of the Catholic church is slipping across Latin America, the system that has kept gay communities silent and fearful is crumbling. What is happening on Tuesday is a strike against those attitudes that have repressed sexual rights across this continent for too long.”
Well said. RTFA.
I’m “almost” inclined to predict that once Latin America gets a few dozen ordinary marriages accomplished, the populace will set aside one more outdated edict from the Catholic Church and let people go about living ordinary lives.
“Almost”, but not quite.
UPDATE: A judge is trying to postpone the marriage. The couple will show up at the registry office, anyway, Tuesday morning.
UPDATE: Well, it took another month; but, this young couple finally got married. There are judges everywhere in the world who must think they are Republicans. Hateful bastards who get some pleasure from delaying someone else’s rights – even if it’s just for weeks – trying to hold back civi rights for all.
Caffeine-free coffee, world’s longest insect on list of new species
A pea-sized seahorse, the world’s longest insect, a “ghost slug” and the world’s smallest snake were among the top 10 species discovered in 2008. These unusual critters were among thousands of species found last year, many in remote or tropical regions of the planet, that hint at the breadth of the Earth’s undiscovered biodiversity.
“Most people do not realize just how incomplete our knowledge of Earth’s species is,” said Quentin Wheeler, director of the International Institute for Species Exploration at Arizona State University, which announced the top 10 new species list.
“We are surrounded by such an exuberance of species diversity that we too often take it for granted,” Wheeler added.
The ASU institute and an international committee of taxonomists — scientists devoted to species exploration and classification — compile the top 10 list of new species each year.
Also on the 2008 list are a caffeine-free coffee plant, a snail whose shell twists around four axes, a palm that flowers itself to death and microscopic bacteria that live in hairspray.
Commercial chicken factories take a toll on genetic diversity
To the connoisseur of fine food, chicken may seem depressingly monotonous no matter how it’s prepared. But scientists worry about a more basic degree of sameness — a lack of genetic diversity in the birds that are raised for meat and eggs.
An analysis of commercial chicken populations around the world by William M. Muir of Purdue University and colleagues has revealed the extent of the problem. Fifty percent or more of the diversity of ancestral breeds has been lost, they report in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That could make chicken production more susceptible to disease outbreaks for which resistant genes have disappeared.
Their findings indicate that most of the diversity was lost with the advent of wide-scale commercial production in the 1950s. Only a handful of hundreds of breeds have been crossed to produce broilers and layers.
Dr. Muir said restoring some diversity was not simple a matter of crossing with more breeds — producers would lose the improvements they have made in existing lines. Instead, one approach would be to use genetic markers to aid in cross-breeding, “to select for the parts that are good,” he said.
In fact, this reminds me of one aspect of cloning and genetic modification of anything that’s rarely if ever discussed. Diversity.
The article relates a common failure of hybridizing – especially for commercial developers. Quick and easy. Narrow and profitable. The short-term mindset that characterizes Wall Street traders.
Science and scientists have a responsibility to oversee – including retrospective analysis like this – healthy, long-term prospects for a species. Including us, eh?
