Blogaround

1. My Body, Their Baby: Grace Y. Kao on the Christian Ethics of Surrogacy (August 21) "So, in terms of the progressive Christian values that I hold, I want to say if you truly affirm marriage equality—and many mainline Protestant denominations do, as do progressive Catholics—and you also affirm the traditional idea that children are a good of marriage, not a requirement (because I also believe parenthood is a vocation to which not everyone is called), then there needs to be a pathway for two men to become parents. And unless you’re going to hold the position that their pathway is adoption and everyone else’s pathway is natural birth, then I think surrogacy is the next step, especially since a lot of these progressive or mainline Protestant denominations have also officially affirmed the conscientious use of IVF for infertile, married, heterosexual couples."

2. See moment India becomes 4th country to land on the moon (August 23) Cool! And it's the first spacecraft to land near the south pole of the moon.

3. The one-child policy is gone, but many of its old trappings remain (August 22) "In the end, the mother and her three kids had to buy five tickets, raising questions about the logic of the situation." 

China's one-child policy ended in 2016, and now the government is trying to create new policies to incentivize people to have more kids ("more" means like 2 or 3, Chinese people can barely imagine having more than 3), but it's not going that well. The one-child policy was in effect for 30ish years, so the entire society has adapted to this norm of families only having 1 kid. In particular, everything related to children's education/extracurriculars is SO EXPENSIVE, like the intention is you spend all your money on the one kid- so then how on earth can you have a second kid? 

And this article which I've linked is about a parent on a flight with 3 children, and the airline said she can't bring 3 children, so she needs to buy an "unaccompanied minor" ticket (???). A lot of things in Chinese society are set up with the expectation that families have 1 child, or maybe, in rare cases, 2. 

For example, when you take kids to fun places like parks, children's play areas, etc, usually the options for ticket pricing are like, 1 adult, 1 adult + 1 child, 2 adults + 1 child. Like they don't expect there would be a group that's 1 adult + 2 children.

(Also very funny how the header image on that article on "large families" seems to be 2 adults and 2 children.)

4. Responding to this bit of an AJC article on aces in fiction (August 23) The Ace Journal Club discussed an article on ace romance novels, which claimed that "Crafting a credible path to HEA [happily ever after] is less challenging for authors writing demisexual or gray-asexual characters since these orientations experience sexual attraction under certain circumstances." Coyote disagrees with this.

5. Federal District Court Refuses to Halt Florida’s Discriminatory Housing Law (August 17) "Under SB 264, people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and whose 'domicile,' or permanent home, is in China, are prohibited from purchasing property, including homes, in Florida." Wow not cool.

6. Let's Read A Paper: The Miracle of Microfinance? Evidence From A Randomized Evaluation (August 18) "For many people, microcredit actually ends up functioning like a bank account. The global poor save too little money for it to be worthwhile for large banks to offer them interest-bearing savings accounts, so they typically save by paying someone in the neighborhood to keep an eye on the money. Most microcredit organizations allow participants to take out larger loans if they successfully pay off smaller loans. If you pay off your loan and then immediately take out another one, mathematically this is equivalent to a savings account you have to pay for: in the long run it doesn’t matter if you got the money at the beginning or the end of your first month. Microcredit organizations may charge lower fees than local money guards. They also have better security and are less likely to flee in the night with the money. The loan officer will show up at your door and complain if you miss your payment, so there’s an incentive to save."

7. Fukushima wastewater released into the ocean, China bans all Japanese seafood (August 25) and The science behind the Fukushima waste water release (August 27) So, Japan has started dumping wastewater from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster into the ocean. I don't know what to think about this... the levels of radioactivity are very low, scientists are saying it's probably safe, but it still seems like we don't really know what the effects could be. And China has now banned all seafood imported from Japan- that kind of feels more politically-motivated, in my opinion, rather than strictly based on science. 

8. Bob Barker, Longtime Host of ‘The Price Is Right,’ Dies at 99 (August 26)

9. i wish that i could wear hats (2022) lollll