Boy Scouts’ leader says ban on gay adults not sustainable →

The president of the Boy Scouts of America, Robert Gates, said Thursday that the organization’s longstanding ban on participation by openly gay adults is no longer sustainable and called for change in order to prevent “the end of us as a national movement.”
In a speech in Atlanta to the Scouts’ national annual meeting, Gates referred to recent moves by Scout councils in New York City and elsewhere to defy the ban.
“The status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained,” he said.
Gates said no change in the policy would be made at the national meeting. But he raised the possibility of revising the policy at some point soon so that local Scout organizations could decide on their own whether to allow gays as adult volunteers and paid staff.

The doomsday vault: the seeds that could save a post-apocalyptic world →

Since 2008, the Svalbard seed vault and its guardians have been entrusted by the world’s governments with the safekeeping of the most prized varieties of crops on which human civilisation was raised. That morning, it contained the seeds of nearly 4,000 plant species – more than 720,000 individual plastic-sheathed samples. The site was built to be disaster-proof: 130 metres up the mountain in case of sea-level rise, earthquake resistant, and with a natural insulation of permafrost to ensure the contents were kept frozen for decades to come.
About 60% of Svalbard is glacial. There exist no signs that it was settled by humans before whalers and hunters built small communities along the coast, and coal was found. Nothing grows there apart from wildflowers and grass. But in the early 1980s, Nordic countries began using an abandoned mine shaft, down the hill from the vault, as a safe house for seeds. At a time when industrial-scale farming was perceived as a threat to crop diversity, it was the first experiment in using the permafrost as cold storage for seeds.
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Seed banks are vulnerable to near-misses and mishaps. That was the whole point of locating a disaster-proof back-up vault at Svalbard. But what if there was a bigger glitch – one that could not be fixed by borrowing a part from the local shop? There is now a growing body of opinion that the world’s faith, in Svalbard and the Crop Trust’s broader mission to create seed banks, is misplaced. Those who have worked with farmers in the field, especially in developing countries, which contain by far the greatest variety of plants, say that diversity cannot be boxed up and saved in a single container – no matter how secure it may be. Crops are always changing, pests and diseases are always adapting, and global warming will bring additional challenges that remain as yet unforeseen. In a perfect world, the solution would be as diverse and dynamic as plant life itself.

Why Are So Many Republicans With No Chance Running for President? →

No one will blame you if you can’t keep track of the Republican presidential field. It’s huge. If you count declared candidates, prospectives, and announced aspirants, you have 18 people from across the Republican ideological spectrum: Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rick Santorum, Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Bobby Jindal, Gov. John Kasich, Gov. Rick Snyder, Gov. Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Rick Perry, Ben Carson, Donald Trump, and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. The field is so large that news networks have put limits on who can join the debates. Fox News, for example, will invite only candidates who placed in the top 10 of an average of national polls. Likewise, CNN will hold two debates: one for top-tier candidates, and one for the bottom tier. (One possible effect of this? Underdog candidates will pull every stunt they can to get onstage.)
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Beyond “you only live once,” there are other reasons for these candidates—and others like them—to enter the ring. If they perform well enough, they have a chance at joining the ticket as vice president; they could make their way into the administration as a top official (this is my hunch for Graham); or, if they build a genuine following, they could turn their presidential campaign into national leadership.
And then there are the vanity candidates (Trump, Cain, and Gingrich in 2012; Carson, Fiorina, and Trump again for 2016) who are running to build their visibility in the conservative ecosystem. With their campaigns, they can build new audiences and find new venues—a Fox News show or customers for a new book. It’s unseemly, but it’s a part of the process like any other.

Illinois House Passes Bill to Stop BDS Campaign Against Israel →

How is this not a clear violation of free speech rights, especially if "corporations are people, my friend"?

...But what this current bill does, and it passed with 102 votes in favor, no votes against and no abstentions. So you know, unanimity in the Illinois General Assembly. What it does is it forces the state pension fund to investigate companies that are suspected of supporting boycott or divestment from Israel or from companies that are aiding and abetting Israeli occupation and human rights abuses, and to divest state funds from those companies.

 

As Ethiopia votes, what’s ‘free and fair’ got to do with it? →

Good read for anyone interested in learning how democratic and authoritarian elements coexist in some countries.

Under Secretary of State Sherman characterized Ethiopia’s elections in terms of “free, fair, and credible” but that obscures the nature of the regime and mischaracterizes the functions of elections under authoritarianism. A Washington Post editorial recently criticized Sherman and argued: “If the election is not judged by independent observers to live up to Ms. Sherman’s billing, the administration should swallow her words — and change its approach.” But the results in Ethiopia and other authoritarian regimes holding elections are largely settled months if not years in advance, as powerful ruling parties restrict political opposition, civil society, and independent media in ways that virtually eliminate competition. The voting that will take place on May 24 will not provide citizens a meaningful role in selecting their next government. Such elections, however, are not pointless. As in other authoritarian states, elections play a key role in providing the setting for the ruling party to demonstrate its domination.

On #WacoThugs, Biker Gangs, and White-on-White Crime →

The tweets on the #WacoThugs hashtag may flatten the details of the situation that occurred, but the larger point is that the details in many violent encounters that involve police get flattened and twisted to serve an agenda. Whether the details are flattened to justify a week-long curfew, mass arrests, and the presence of riot police or to make a point about how a calm police presence is notable when the perpetrators of violence are white, the result is that we’re not really talking about the specific situation at all—we’re using it to make a point about how the facts get distorted.
That’s something else that’s in sharp relief in Waco right now. When, for example, the shooting in Garland occurred earlier this month, CNNinterviewed leaders at mosques for reactions; after the funeral for Freddie Gray in Baltimore, the media sought statements from Martin Luther King’s surviving family to assess what his reaction might be to the protests. When violence is committed by people who aren’t white, their actions are treated as representative of their entire communities. That’s something that anybody with a 101-level understanding of race and media in America understands, but it’s also something that the shoot-out at the Twin Peaks in Waco perfectly encapsulates. There is no question about what the incident in Waco says about white people, or whether white leaders need to be more vocal in urging white people away from violence. No one questions whether white culture is partly to blame, or whether white leaders of the past would be disappointed in the situation.
Those sentiments are fairly absurd to express, in fact. Nothing ever says anything about “white people,” and “white culture” is a ridiculous concept to attempt to articulate; how Ronald Reagan or John Lennon might feel about the shoot-out in Waco is an utter non-sequitur. 
All of which makes the media reaction to Waco a fascinating mirror to hold up to the media reactions in other situations. Positing hypotheticals is rarely particularly useful, but it’s nonetheless difficult to imagine that if a shoot-out involving dozens of young black men that ended with nearly thirty casualties had happened in a strip mall in Waco, it would be perceived as an isolated incident involving only the people who drew their guns—or that police would be chatting and friendly with people in the area in gang attire afterward. 
In other words, the details captured in the tweets about the #WacoThugs or about the need to #StopWhiteOnWhiteCrime may miss the nuance of the situation—indeed, they may not be all that pertinent to the situation in Waco at all—but that’s far from a flaw. It’s kind of the whole point.