Ohio

Kari LeVan was 22-years-old when she packed her belongings into a friend's car and drove from LaCrosse, Wisconsin, to the Twin Cities. She was fleeing a violent relationship with her ex-husband and a small town that offered little economic opportunity. She had $40 in cash and a six-month old daughter, Marina.

In Minneapolis, LeVan tried to pursue her dream of becoming a singer, taking every gig she could find—including one with an '80s cover band—and attending classes at Music Tech, now known as the McNally Smith College of Music. But she was living in a dangerous neighborhood, and trying to juggle work, school, and an energetic baby. She felt utterly overwhelmed. "I needed more emotional support," LeVan says now. She found that support when she was accepted to the Jeremiah Program.

LeVan was one of the first participants in the Jeremiah Program, which was founded in 1998 on the philosophy that helping mothers succeed can lift entire families out of poverty. The nonprofit based in Minnesota's Twin Cities provides low-income single mothers and their young children with subsidized housing, on-site child care, and empowerment classes.

"Jeremiah Program is really creating community," says Gloria Perez, president and CEO of the organization. If the program has a key insight, it's that social services on their own aren't enough—they need to be paired with social support.

Families with children under age 18 headed by a single mother are four times as likely to live in poverty as families headed by married parents, according to federal census data. Bearing a child too young can trap low-income women in a vicious cycle: The need to support a family prevents them from finishing high school or attending college, and a lack of education can keep them stuck in low-wage jobs.

The program has two established campuses—a 39-apartment development in Minneapolis and a 38-apartment site in St Paul—and recently launched a pilot program in Austin, Texas. The organization aims to open a new campus in Fargo, North Dakota, next year. To apply, women have to be age 18 and up, enrolled in a higher-education program, and have children age 5 or younger. Participants typically stay in the program for two years, until they finish their degrees. Applicants must complete 16 weeks of personal-empowerment training before they move onto campus. As residents, they're expected to work part-time and to contribute a third of their income as rent.

An independent study from Wilder Research of St. Paul found that every dollar invested in Jeremiah Program families can return up to $7 to society at large, both by reducing the family's dependence on public assistance and by increasing the economic prospects of both mother and child. Sixty percent of the program's 2011 graduates were unemployed when they entered the program, and the rest were earning an average of $9.46 per hour. Upon graduation, the women started earning an average wage of $19.35 per hour. Graduates leave with better parenting skills, and their children get the benefit of high-quality early-childhood care.

Fifteen years after graduation, LeVan still draws on the life skills she developed at Jeremiah. She left the program with mental "toolkit," she says, that has guided her through her decision to pursue a career in nonprofit work and through the beginning and end of her second marriage. She now works as a development assistant at the Jeremiah Program, and Marina is a creative 16-year-old who wants to travel the world before heading to college.

Maintaining a close-knit, residential environment isn't cheap. Program expenses exceeded $3 million in 2011, mostly financed by donations, grants, and fundraising events. The cost per family is about $40,000 per year, although some of that is covered by government subsidies and the money mothers contribute in rent.

About one-fifth of Jeremiah children have fathers who remain involved with the family, Perez says. But many fathers have a history of incarceration, drug abuse, or violence, and many mothers choose to distance themselves from men who are poor role models for their children.

Directing resources toward single mothers can be politically controversial, but the Jeremiah Program has—as its expansion plans prove—been embraced in both liberal and conservative cities. In 2006, a Christian organization in Dayton, Ohio, launched a campus modeled on Jeremiah Program called the Glen at St. Joseph, which includes spiritual guidance in its programming.

"Everybody seems to acknowledge, across all political lines, that the mother tends to be the primary educator of the child and role model for the child," Perez says. Jeremiah women are expected to take responsibility for their family's future, and to build inner strength that can sustain them once they leave their Jeremiah sisters.

Top image: sippakorn/Shutterstock

The next time you're trying to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, try offering the officer a handful of fuzzy, dawdling ducklings. Police have a big soft spot for baby ducks, sometimes dropping everything just to assist them in crossing the road.

The latest instance of heroic cop-duck action comes from Portland, Oregon, a city known for its everything-bird obsessiveness. This Mother's Day, Officer Mark James clocked a speeder doing 52 mph in a 35 zone and zoomed off in pursuit. He must've been an eagle-eyed fighter pilot before picking up a badge, because somehow he noticed on the gloomy asphalt ahead a fluffy, ankle-high movement. Duuuucks!

"It was pretty good vision on his part to even see them in the road, with the gray weather we had that day," says Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau.

Officer James stopped his cruiser right there on Northwest Bridge Avenue and guided the ducks – a mother and her waddling progeny – onto the grassy shoulder. He did so despite there being "no regulation about stopping for ducks," says Simpson, and also risking a chewing-out from the Chief. Which wouldn't happen, actually, because he seems to love ducks, too.

"I think the chief would definitely side with officer," says the spokesman. "While traffic enforcement is important to save lives, running over a mama duck and her ducklings is not going to fare well for the agency."

Would this story have turned out differently if the officer was motoring down upon a family of smelly skunks? Or, say, a frothing-rabid possum?

Nope. "It wouldn't be all right to drive over animals," says Simpson. "We would discourage the intentional ramming of any fauna in the neighborhoods."

As it happens, this isn't the first time Portland's finest have interrupted their normal duties to pluck a hapless animal from doom's snapping maw. When a juvenile red-tailed hawk fell from its building perch in 2011, an officer was there to scoop it from the sidewalk and take it to the animal clinic. And this May, cops rescued a three-foot-long snake slithering around downtown that "looked scared."

Sometimes this animal love can cause problems. Last year, the Audubon Society of Portland reported getting "way too many" ducks "dumped at their door," according to this TV news spot. If you skip ahead to 0:35, you'll find yet another cop going beyond the call of duty to save ducks, this time in Ohio:

Top photo courtesy of thieury on Shutterstock

 

The next time you're trying to talk your way out of a speeding ticket, try offering the officer a handful of fuzzy, dawdling ducklings. Police have a big soft spot for baby ducks, sometimes dropping everything just to assist them in crossing the road.

The latest instance of heroic cop-duck action comes from Portland, Oregon, a city known for its everything-bird obsessiveness. This Mother's Day, Officer Mark James clocked a speeder doing 52 mph in a 35 zone and zoomed off in pursuit. He must've been an eagle-eyed fighter pilot before picking up a badge, because somehow he noticed on the gloomy asphalt ahead a fluffy, ankle-high movement. Duuuucks!

"It was pretty good vision on his part to even see them in the road, with the gray weather we had that day," says Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau.

Officer James stopped his cruiser right there on Northwest Bridge Avenue and guided the ducks – a mother and her waddling progeny – onto the grassy shoulder. He did so despite there being "no regulation about stopping for ducks," says Simpson, and also risking a chewing-out from the Chief. Which wouldn't happen, actually, because he seems to love ducks, too.

"I think the chief would definitely side with officer," says the spokesman. "While traffic enforcement is important to save lives, running over a mama duck and her ducklings is not going to fare well for the agency."

Would this story have turned out differently if the officer was motoring down upon a family of smelly skunks? Or, say, a frothing-rabid possum?

Nope. "It wouldn't be all right to drive over animals," says Simpson. "We would discourage the intentional ramming of any fauna in the neighborhoods."

As it happens, this isn't the first time Portland's finest have interrupted their normal duties to pluck a hapless animal from doom's snapping maw. When a juvenile red-tailed hawk fell from its building perch in 2011, an officer was there to scoop it from the sidewalk and take it to the animal clinic. And this May, cops rescued a three-foot-long snake slithering around downtown that "looked scared."

Sometimes this animal love can cause problems. Last year, the Audubon Society of Portland reported getting "way too many" ducks "dumped at their door," according to this TV news spot. If you skip ahead to 0:35, you'll find yet another cop going beyond the call of duty to save ducks, this time in Ohio:

Top photo courtesy of thieury on Shutterstock

 

California and Texas might be leading the nation’s rollout of solar and wind power, respectively, but Washington, where hydroelectric dams provide over 60 percent of the state’s energy, was the country’s biggest user of renewable power in 2011, according to new statistics released last week by the federal Energy Information Administration.

Hydro continued to be the overwhelmingly dominant source of renewable power consumed nationwide, accounting for 67 percent of the total, followed by wind with 25 percent, geothermal with 4.5 percent, and solar with 3.5 percent. The new EIA data is the latest official snapshot of how states nationwide make use of renewable power, from industrial-scale generation to rooftop solar panels, and reveals an incredible gulf between leaders like Washington, California, and Oregon, and states like Rhode Island and Mississippi that use hardly any.

The gap is partly explained by the relative size of states’ energy markets, but not entirely: Washington uses less power overall than New York, for example, but far outstrips it on renewables (the exact proportions won’t be available until EIA releases total state consumption figures later this month). Still, the actual availability of resources—how much sun shines or wind blows—is far less important than the marching orders passed down from statehouses to electric utilities, says Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

“Without some carrot or stick, there’s little reason to pick [renewables] up” in many states, he says; even given the quickly falling price of clean energy technology, natural gas made cheap by fracking is still an attractive option for many utilities.

More than half of the 29 states that require utilities to purchase renewable power are currently considering legislation to pare back those mandates, in many cases pushed by (surprise, suprise) the American Legislative Exchange Council. "We’re opposed to these mandates, and 2013 will be the most active year ever in terms of efforts to repeal them," ALEC energy task force director Todd Wynn recently told Bloomberg.

But so far the tide seems to be turning against that campaign: This week the Minnesota legislature will consider two versions of a bill passed by the House and Senate that would require utilities to get 1-4 percent of their power from solar by 2025 (solar made up less than one percent of Minnesota’s renewable power in 2011); last month North Carolina, the same state that outlawed talking about sea level rise, surprised green energy advocates by voting down a proposal to ax the state’s renewable mandates, followed a few days later by a vote in Colorado to increase rural communities’ access to renewables. But challenges remain ahead in some of the very states that already rank relatively low for renewables consumption, including Connecticut, Missouri, and Ohio.

Karin Wadsack, director of a Northern Arizona University-based project to monitor these legislative battles, says the time is now for states to start mixing in more clean energy.

"If you have all these utilities sticking with gas, coal, and nuclear, then you create a situation where 20 years from now they aren’t prepared to deal with the increased climate risk," she says. "Electricity is a huge piece of the climate puzzle, so [utilities] need to be learning what to do with renewables."

There’s always the option that Congress could set a renewables standard on the national level—a group of senators took a failed stab at one in 2010 only a few months after Republicans killed the infamous cap-and-trade bill. But don’t hold your breath, Wadsack says: “I don’t know that I would call it a pipe dream. But I wouldn’t see it happening in our current set of national priorities.”

California and Texas might be leading the nation’s rollout of solar and wind power, respectively, but Washington, where hydroelectric dams provide over 60 percent of the state’s energy, was the country’s biggest user of renewable power in 2011, according to new statistics released last week by the federal Energy Information Administration.

Hydro continued to be the overwhelmingly dominant source of renewable power consumed nationwide, accounting for 67 percent of the total, followed by wind with 25 percent, geothermal with 4.5 percent, and solar with 3.5 percent. The new EIA data is the latest official snapshot of how states nationwide make use of renewable power, from industrial-scale generation to rooftop solar panels, and reveals an incredible gulf between leaders like Washington, California, and Oregon, and states like Rhode Island and Mississippi that use hardly any.

The gap is partly explained by the relative size of states’ energy markets, but not entirely: Washington uses less power overall than New York, for example, but far outstrips it on renewables (the exact proportions won’t be available until EIA releases total state consumption figures later this month). Still, the actual availability of resources—how much sun shines or wind blows—is far less important than the marching orders passed down from statehouses to electric utilities, says Rhone Resch, head of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

“Without some carrot or stick, there’s little reason to pick [renewables] up” in many states, he says; even given the quickly falling price of clean energy technology, natural gas made cheap by fracking is still an attractive option for many utilities.

More than half of the 29 states that require utilities to purchase renewable power are currently considering legislation to pare back those mandates, in many cases pushed by (surprise, suprise) the American Legislative Exchange Council. "We’re opposed to these mandates, and 2013 will be the most active year ever in terms of efforts to repeal them," ALEC energy task force director Todd Wynn recently told Bloomberg.

But so far the tide seems to be turning against that campaign: This week the Minnesota legislature will consider two versions of a bill passed by the House and Senate that would require utilities to get 1-4 percent of their power from solar by 2025 (solar made up less than one percent of Minnesota’s renewable power in 2011); last month North Carolina, the same state that outlawed talking about sea level rise, surprised green energy advocates by voting down a proposal to ax the state’s renewable mandates, followed a few days later by a vote in Colorado to increase rural communities’ access to renewables. But challenges remain ahead in some of the very states that already rank relatively low for renewables consumption, including Connecticut, Missouri, and Ohio.

Karin Wadsack, director of a Northern Arizona University-based project to monitor these legislative battles, says the time is now for states to start mixing in more clean energy.

"If you have all these utilities sticking with gas, coal, and nuclear, then you create a situation where 20 years from now they aren’t prepared to deal with the increased climate risk," she says. "Electricity is a huge piece of the climate puzzle, so [utilities] need to be learning what to do with renewables."

There’s always the option that Congress could set a renewables standard on the national level—a group of senators took a failed stab at one in 2010 only a few months after Republicans killed the infamous cap-and-trade bill. But don’t hold your breath, Wadsack says: “I don’t know that I would call it a pipe dream. But I wouldn’t see it happening in our current set of national priorities.”

Next week is National Dog Bite Prevention Week, America's seven-day celebration of not being bitten by dogs. Even when you consider we have an estimated 70 million pet dogs in the U.S., the fact that 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually is a staggering figure -- that's roughly the combined populations (within city limits) of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas.

Needless to say, no one knows quite as much about dog attacks as the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service.

Nearly 6,000 postal workers were attacked by dogs last year, and in the most hazardous city for such events, Los Angeles, punitive measures have been put in place. "If our letter carriers deem your loose dog to be a threat," Ken Snavely, acting postmaster for L.A., says in a USPS press release, "You'll be asked to pick up your mail at the Post Office until it's safe to deliver."

Without further ado, we present: the Fiscal Year 2012 U.S. Postal Service Dog Attack City Ranking:

Ranking	City	Attacks
1	Los Angeles, CA	69
2	San Antonio, TX	42
	Seattle, WA	42
4	Chicago, IL	41
5	San Francisco, CA	38
6	Detroit, MI	33
7	St. Louis, MO	32
8	Baltimore, MD	29
	Sacramento, CA	29
10	Houston, TX / Minneapolis, MN	27

 

Keep in mind that this list does not account for population differences. Actually, postal workers in Dayton are about 10 times more likely to be attacked by a dog than their colleagues in L.A.: the Ohio city reported 26 incidents, one for every 5,467 residents. St. Louis, Tacoma, and Buffalo also had high rates of dog attacks per capita.

Top image: Anton Brand/Shutterstock.com

Next week is National Dog Bite Prevention Week, America's seven-day celebration of not being bitten by dogs. Even when you consider we have an estimated 70 million pet dogs in the U.S., the fact that 4.5 million Americans are bitten by dogs annually is a staggering figure -- that's roughly the combined populations (within city limits) of Chicago, Philadelphia, and Dallas.

Needless to say, no one knows quite as much about dog attacks as the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service.

Nearly 6,000 postal workers were attacked by dogs last year, and in the most hazardous city for such events, Los Angeles, punitive measures have been put in place. "If our letter carriers deem your loose dog to be a threat," Ken Snavely, acting postmaster for L.A., says in a USPS press release, "You'll be asked to pick up your mail at the Post Office until it's safe to deliver."

Without further ado, we present: the Fiscal Year 2012 U.S. Postal Service Dog Attack City Ranking:

Ranking	City	Attacks
1	Los Angeles, CA	69
2	San Antonio, TX	42
	Seattle, WA	42
4	Chicago, IL	41
5	San Francisco, CA	38
6	Detroit, MI	33
7	St. Louis, MO	32
8	Baltimore, MD	29
	Sacramento, CA	29
10	Houston, TX / Minneapolis, MN	27

 

Keep in mind that this list does not account for population differences. Actually, postal workers in Dayton are about 10 times more likely to be attacked by a dog than their colleagues in L.A.: the Ohio city reported 26 incidents, one for every 5,467 residents. St. Louis, Tacoma, and Buffalo also had high rates of dog attacks per capita.

Top image: Anton Brand/Shutterstock.com

This article by Rachel Wang originally appeared on Tea Leaf Nation on May 13, 2013 and is republished as part of a content sharing agreement [Format adapted to facilitate translation].

Last week, a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama on the value of engaged citizenship made waves in Chinese social media.

Influential Sina Weibo user @假装在纽约, or “pretending to be in New York,” a widely followed provocateur who frequently tweets about the U.S. and whose account has more than 470,000 followers recommended [zh] the speech to Chinese youths:

奥巴马昨天在俄亥俄州立大学的毕业典礼上演讲，演讲的核心是“公民意识”。我把他的演讲稿匆匆翻译了下来，就是觉得，中国的年轻人，也许更应该接受这样在中国的课堂里接受不到的教育。

The core of Obama’s speech yesterday at the Ohio State University Commencement is ‘a sense of citizenship, I roughly translated his speech, because I feel that Chinese youth may perhaps be even more in need of this kind of education, which they do not receive in Chinese classrooms.

In his commencement speech on May 5, President Obama said, ”We are not a collection of strangers…we are bound to one another by a set of ideals and laws and commitments.” ”Pretending to be in New York’s” post, together with his translation of the speech, attracted over 30,000 retweets and nearly 6,000 comments in about two days.

Though this is not the first time that Chinese netizens have compared the circumstances of China and the U.S., the concept of “citizenship” has stirred yet another round of discussion about the rights and responsibilities of the Chinese people, as well as criticism of the government. Yin Hong (@尹鸿), executive dean of the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication, commented [zh]:

虽然不算是一篇最好的讲演，但公民意识表述很清楚：每一个人都拥有天赋人权，所以每一个人也都具有天赋义务。这就是公民。没有人权，就就不能有义务。权力和义务是相对对等的。

Though this is not the best speech, ‘citizenship awareness’ has been described very clearly: everyone has natural rights, so everyone also has natural responsibilities. This is citizenship. Without human rights, there should be no responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

Another Weibo user, “Once very fat” (@曾经的胖胖胖胖), wrote:

为什么中国人缺少公民意识，因为他们不觉得这个政府跟他们有关系，而且事实上这个政府也的确不是来自选票……

Why do the Chinese lack a sense of citizenship? Because they don’t feel that this government has anything to do with them, and truthfully, the government is not an elected body.

“Dragon Ash” (@龙团一灰) commented [original Chinese post deleted],

[Being in] a socialist country, we cannot think about such things; the more you think about them, the worse you will feel. As for rights, whatever the civil servants say goes.

The sentiments apparent in the comments on Pres Obama’s speech went beyond envy, jealous and pity. They also included discussions about the struggles, difficulties, and bitterness that Chinese youth face today. Weibo user “Big Guy Moving Like Dragon and Tiger” (@大背头龙行虎步 wrote [original Chinese post deleted]:

The youth all start out hoping for a sense of citizenship, but after hitting the wall over and over again in society, they turn towards nepotism. This is ‘soy-sauce vat’ China, where everything ends up black [corrupt] regardless of how it started out. One generation after another, this is our traditional culture: dictatorship, authoritarianism, and intolerance of opposition. The burdens of tradition are way too heavy; democracy might be another century away.

User “Hula Baopei” (@呼啦啦啦宝宝_佩) mused:

当国内大学生一毕业便面临高房价、物价而不得不屈服于现实失去梦想时，美国青年却可以以祖国未来为己任，被赋予强大的公民意识，坚定不移的实现自己的梦想、承担国家发展之重任，我在想中国的未来在哪里？下一代的未来在哪里？

While Chinese college graduates succumb to reality and lose their dreams in the face of high prices and unaffordable housing right after college, American youth can make the future of their country their personal mission; they’ve been endowed with a strong sense of citizenship, they hold fast to their dreams, and they take the responsibility for the nation’s development. I am wondering, where is China’s future? Where is the future of the next generation?

Such concerns might just be timely, with graduation right around the corner for many in China. Perhaps for most recent college graduates, the most pressing issue facing them is not how to change the nation, but how to survive in a gloomy economy. In fact, 2013 is believed to be the most difficult job hunting season modern China has ever faced. While almost seven million college graduates are entering the job market, only nine million new jobs have been created, and college graduates must compete with returning students from abroad, as well as high school graduates and trade school graduates. The ratio of college graduates to jobs is believed to be the lowest in Chinese history [zh].

A sense of citizenship may mean more than thinking independently and forming opinions that differ from the propaganda of the Chinese government. More importantly, it represents an ability to be balanced and independent when facing authority, an ability that flows from the feeling of being an influential part of the country, however small the individual may be. As Ren Zhiqiang (@任志强), a real estate tycoon with more than 14 million followers on Weibo, opined [zh],

总统的讲话从来不是必须学习的圣旨。而是一种常识。

The president’s speeches have never been edicts that all are required to study, but simply common sense.

Written by Tea Leaf Nation · comments (1)
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This article by Rachel Wang originally appeared on Tea Leaf Nation on May 13, 2013 and is republished as part of a content sharing agreement [Format adapted to facilitate translation].

Last week, a speech by U.S. President Barack Obama on the value of engaged citizenship made waves in Chinese social media.

Influential Sina Weibo user @假装在纽约, or “pretending to be in New York,” a widely followed provocateur who frequently tweets about the U.S. and whose account has more than 470,000 followers recommended [zh] the speech to Chinese youths:

奥巴马昨天在俄亥俄州立大学的毕业典礼上演讲，演讲的核心是“公民意识”。我把他的演讲稿匆匆翻译了下来，就是觉得，中国的年轻人，也许更应该接受这样在中国的课堂里接受不到的教育。

The core of Obama’s speech yesterday at the Ohio State University Commencement is ‘a sense of citizenship, I roughly translated his speech, because I feel that Chinese youth may perhaps be even more in need of this kind of education, which they do not receive in Chinese classrooms.

In his commencement speech on May 5, President Obama said, ”We are not a collection of strangers…we are bound to one another by a set of ideals and laws and commitments.” ”Pretending to be in New York’s” post, together with his translation of the speech, attracted over 30,000 retweets and nearly 6,000 comments in about two days.

Though this is not the first time that Chinese netizens have compared the circumstances of China and the U.S., the concept of “citizenship” has stirred yet another round of discussion about the rights and responsibilities of the Chinese people, as well as criticism of the government. Yin Hong (@尹鸿), executive dean of the Tsinghua School of Journalism and Communication, commented [zh]:

虽然不算是一篇最好的讲演，但公民意识表述很清楚：每一个人都拥有天赋人权，所以每一个人也都具有天赋义务。这就是公民。没有人权，就就不能有义务。权力和义务是相对对等的。

Though this is not the best speech, ‘citizenship awareness’ has been described very clearly: everyone has natural rights, so everyone also has natural responsibilities. This is citizenship. Without human rights, there should be no responsibilities. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand.

Another Weibo user, “Once very fat” (@曾经的胖胖胖胖), wrote:

为什么中国人缺少公民意识，因为他们不觉得这个政府跟他们有关系，而且事实上这个政府也的确不是来自选票……

Why do the Chinese lack a sense of citizenship? Because they don’t feel that this government has anything to do with them, and truthfully, the government is not an elected body.

“Dragon Ash” (@龙团一灰) commented [original Chinese post deleted],

[Being in] a socialist country, we cannot think about such things; the more you think about them, the worse you will feel. As for rights, whatever the civil servants say goes.

The sentiments apparent in the comments on Pres Obama’s speech went beyond envy, jealous and pity. They also included discussions about the struggles, difficulties, and bitterness that Chinese youth face today. Weibo user “Big Guy Moving Like Dragon and Tiger” (@大背头龙行虎步 wrote [original Chinese post deleted]:

The youth all start out hoping for a sense of citizenship, but after hitting the wall over and over again in society, they turn towards nepotism. This is ‘soy-sauce vat’ China, where everything ends up black [corrupt] regardless of how it started out. One generation after another, this is our traditional culture: dictatorship, authoritarianism, and intolerance of opposition. The burdens of tradition are way too heavy; democracy might be another century away.

User “Hula Baopei” (@呼啦啦啦宝宝_佩) mused:

当国内大学生一毕业便面临高房价、物价而不得不屈服于现实失去梦想时，美国青年却可以以祖国未来为己任，被赋予强大的公民意识，坚定不移的实现自己的梦想、承担国家发展之重任，我在想中国的未来在哪里？下一代的未来在哪里？

While Chinese college graduates succumb to reality and lose their dreams in the face of high prices and unaffordable housing right after college, American youth can make the future of their country their personal mission; they’ve been endowed with a strong sense of citizenship, they hold fast to their dreams, and they take the responsibility for the nation’s development. I am wondering, where is China’s future? Where is the future of the next generation?

Such concerns might just be timely, with graduation right around the corner for many in China. Perhaps for most recent college graduates, the most pressing issue facing them is not how to change the nation, but how to survive in a gloomy economy. In fact, 2013 is believed to be the most difficult job hunting season modern China has ever faced. While almost seven million college graduates are entering the job market, only nine million new jobs have been created, and college graduates must compete with returning students from abroad, as well as high school graduates and trade school graduates. The ratio of college graduates to jobs is believed to be the lowest in Chinese history [zh].

A sense of citizenship may mean more than thinking independently and forming opinions that differ from the propaganda of the Chinese government. More importantly, it represents an ability to be balanced and independent when facing authority, an ability that flows from the feeling of being an influential part of the country, however small the individual may be. As Ren Zhiqiang (@任志强), a real estate tycoon with more than 14 million followers on Weibo, opined [zh],

总统的讲话从来不是必须学习的圣旨。而是一种常识。

The president’s speeches have never been edicts that all are required to study, but simply common sense.

Written by Tea Leaf Nation · comments (1)
Share: Donate · facebook · twitter · reddit · StumbleUpon · delicious · Instapaper

The red-eyed chittering horde that is 2013's Brood II cicada swarm has been busy since we last checked in on them at the start of May.

Back then, the first bugs had mostly been spotted along the I-95 corridor, as if they were headed into the office in the world's grossest commute. Look at the insectoid explosion that's occurred in just the past few days, as visualized by the Magicicada Mapping Project:

Each virtual critter on this map marks a place where somebody's spotted a nymph or adult cicada or the skin that the bugs throw off like divas jettisoning threadbare robes. There are cicadas waving stumpy antennae as far south as Tampa, cicadas thrumming tymbals way out west in Omaha and Austin, and cicadas absolutely crawling over the face of the East Coast. Check out this blown-up view of New York and its surroundings:

And here's the even buggier lands around Washington, D.C.:

The six-legged horde will only spread more and grow larger as ground temperatures coax it from stasis. The soil in eastern America is reaching prime warmth for cicada-birthing, as shown in this temperature map from New York Public Radio:

If you own a dog in infested burbs, chances are it's eaten at least three cicadas right before it last licked you. (Just my scientific guess.) In New Jersey, where the creatures are just now beginning to emerge, the ground is squirmy with boisterous young cicadas crawling from their subterranean dens:

Imagine trying to sleep through this wall of noise in Columbia, Maryland. Some TV journos have likened the sound to a "zombie apocalypse," showing once again the media's woeful ignorance of the sound flesheaters make (it's RAAAWWGGH, for the record):

What should you do when these things come out in your neighborhood? Probably not whisk bunches of them into muddy water to make a delicious "soup," as I did with childhood play-pals. (Kids can be so evil.) It's best to let them go about their business, which boils down to having sex and dying soon after. You might even grab one of the harmless bugs to verify a Fun Cicada Fact: Between their bulging crimson eyes – which give them a goofy, Buscemi-esque expression – there are actually three more eyes, called ocelli, arranged in a trigon:

(Martin Hauser/Wikipedia)

And if you're the kind of person who refuses to go outside during cicada season for fear that one might fly into your hair, please satisfy any curiosity you have about these insects with this lovely montage from Cicada Mania. (It depicts a 2008 swarm in Ohio.) Warning: video contains grody footage of bugs missing body parts you'd assume are critical to life:

Top photo courtesy of Reuters/Nancy Hinkle/University of Georgia