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Show Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013 Views&Opi11i011 Page 13 WAGE: Standards Dimmer lights make cities safer of living stagnant ►From page 12 imum wage, Congress and the administration should confront the problem of declining real wages in more far-reaching ways. The recession and the long, slow recovery have had a uniquely adverse effect on wage earners, especially the working poor. Average hourly compensation has fallen in inflation- adjusted terms since the economy hit bottom in mid-2009, something that has never happened in any recovery on record, going back to 1947. Pay has declined even as workers have boosted output per hour by about 6 percent. The causes of this trend aren't clear, but the consequences are indisputable: rising inequality and stagnant or falling living standards for most Americans. Faster growth must be part of the answer. As Obama has emphasized, the U.S. needs to make its workforce more employable by raising the performance of its high schools. It must pay fresh attention to vocational training for students who won't go on to four-year colleges and for workers switching jobs. It must get a grip on health-care costs — one of the forces driving the wedge between rising productivity and sluggish wages. All this needs attending to and will take years. The problem of the working poor is too pressing to wait. Obama's plan for the minimum wage will help at little or no cost. We support it. MEXICO: Ruling may influence US ►From page 12 unenforceable. If the executive branch of some other state tries to continue enforcing the law, it will be quickly struck down by a district court judge citing the Supreme Court decision, and the higher courts refuse to hear the case again. In Mexico, however, it is not that simple. When their Supreme Court interprets the constitution in a certain way, striking down some state law, that interpretation does not automatically become standard. The case does not gain broad applicability — applicability beyond the specific state and law being considered — until the principle has been utilized with regards to five different Mexican states. Thus, the Mexican Supreme Court eloquently cited U.S. case history, made a passionate plea for LGBT marriage equality, established it as requisite based on Mexico's equal protection clause and actively used that interpretation to strike down a state law prohibiting gay marriage, setting the groundwork for full nationwide marriage equality in the coming years. Yet marriage equality has yet to truly become a part of Mexico's constitutional equal protection clause. Of course, the most interesting piece of this story is not what will happen in Mexico. It is what will happen in the United States because of this that truly interests me. The Mexican Supreme Court arrived at its decision by considering Opinions on this page come from the reasoning used a wide variety of members of the in Loving vs. Virginia, campus community who have strong opinions, just like you do/ the landmark U.S. This is your page, too. Contact: Supreme Court case, statesman@aggiemail.usu.edu which established anti-misogyny laws violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying the right of marriage to interracial couples. It follows then that denying marriage to individuals solely because of their gender also violates the equal protection clause. The U.S. Supreme Court has a long history of ignoring the rulings of international tribunals, yet the Mexican Supreme Court's opinion has to count for at least as much as an amicus curiae brief from the Republican Governors' Association. It will be interesting to see how the high court takes this. At the very least, proponents of marriage equality now have a truly significant neutral outside actor siding with them. © c)'=-Free Speech The City of Light dimmed? It's true. Thanks to a new law, not only Paris but all of France will see its lighting level reduced, beginning this July. Window lighting in commercial buildings and the lights on building facades will be turned off after 1 a.m., and interior lighting in office buildings will be off an hour after the last employee departs. The new law promises to reduce carbon emissions and save energy — the annual equivalent of 750,000 households' worth. Most significant is its potential to turn the tide against light pollution by changing attitudes about our unnecessary overuse of light at night. In almost every U.S. city, suburb and town, the streets, parking lots, gas stations, and commercial and public buildings are lit through the night. Over recent decades, the growth of this pollution has been STAND. SPEAK. we should reduce the light we use, and that too much brightness at night actually reduces our safety and security. Bright lights may make us feel safer. Alone, however, they don't actually make us safer. The research bears this out. In 2008, PG&E Corp., the San Francisco-based energy company, reviewed the research and found "either that there is no link between lighting and crime, or that any link is too subtle or complex to have been evident in the data." Others are even more to the point. Australian astronomer Barry Clark went so far as to conclude that "advocating lighting for crime prevention is like advocating use of a flammable liquid to try to put out a fire." Our own eyes tell the same story. Too much light at night actually blinds us with "disability glare" — something middle-aged and elderly drivers know all too well — and bright, unshielded lights make it impossible to see past them to where criminals might hide. (The next time you face a bright streetlight, block it with your hand and notice how much better you can see the area beneath and beyond the light.) Numerous villages, towns and cities in Europe and the U.S. have initiated programs to shut off streetlights for at least part of the night. European cities such as Berlin and Copenhagen already have much lower levels of light than their U.S. counterparts, and even some major American cities, such as Tucson, Ariz., have strict lighting ordinances that require a level of light that most Americans would consider dim. None of these towns and cities has reported related increases in crime. The new French law is to be applauded, not only for what it may do to save energy and reduce carbon emissions, but also for what it may help us to understand: True safety and security at night comes from making smart decisions, being aware of our surroundings and using lighting wisely. If the City of Light can do it, why shouldn't we? - Paul Bogard, who teaches creative nonfiction at James Madison University in Virginia, is the author of "The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light," to be published this July, and the editor of "Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark." — "WIPE Whey coma o datidg pit daerve ‘he Free Infertility Educational Seminar Join Reproductive Endocrinologist Russell A. Foulk, MD Wed, February 27 6:30-8:30 PM Logan City Library Bonneville Rm. 55 N. Main, Logan 41 Zone - Peter Daines is a senior in the political science department. He has been involved in the leadership of multicultural and diversity clubs such as the Latino Student Union and Love is for Everyone. Send comments and questions to pdaines33@ gmail.com . relentless, yet slow enough that most of us haven't noticed. Parking lots and gas stations, for example, are now often 10 times brighter than they were just 20 years ago, and light pollution continues to grow at 6 percent every year. The cost of all this light, monetary and otherwise, is high. The connections to sleep disorders, cancer, diabetes and other disease are serious enough that the American Medical Association has declared its support for light-pollution control efforts. Every ecosystem on Earth is both nocturnal as well as diurnal, and light destroys habitat just as easily as any bulldozer can. And when eight out of 10 children born in the United States today will never see the Milky Way, we have even lost the stars. The usual justification for these costs is that we need all this light for safety and security. This simply isn't true. No one doubts that artificial light can reduce the risks of being out at night, and no one is saying that we ought to exist in the dark. 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