Open Microphone....

Meanwhile, Natasha Alexenko has founded Natasha's Justice Project, raising money to end the backlog of rape kits in America. While a minority of law enforcement jurisdictions in the United States -- among them, New York City, Los Angeles, and the state of Illinois -- require that every rape kit booked into police evidence is sent to a crime laboratory and tested for DNA, the vast majority do not. According to the website endthebacklog.org, "Experts in the federal government estimate that there are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits in police and crime lab storage facilities throughout the United States."

The unexpected visibility and assertiveness of women in the revolutions unfolding across the Arab world – in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, and elsewhere – has helped propel what has become variously known as the “Arab awakening” or “Arab Spring.” Major changes have occurred in the minds and lives of women, helping them to break through the shackles of the past, and to demand their freedom and dignity. Since January 2011, images of millions of women demonstrating alongside men have been beamed around the world by television journalists, posted on YouTube, and splashed on the front pages of newspapers. One saw women from all walks of life marching in hope of a better future, for themselves and for their countries.

The contrast between this dynamic space for open protest and Saudi Arabia could hardly be starker.

A new study by the Stockholm Environment Institute finds that reducing black carbon could save two and a half million lives a year. And while we’re doing that, we could save more lives in the future, because the stuff is also an agent for global warming: As it lingers in the atmosphere, it makes the earth darker, thus making it absorb more energy from the sun. The study found that even though black carbon doesn’t stick around for ages like CO2, cutting it could help preserve glaciers and reduce warming in the Arctic by two-thirds.

Fortunately, there are simple, relatively inexpensive solutions -- better wood-burning cookstoves (which can be had for just a few dollars), cleaner-burning two-stroke engines in the world's countless small motorized vehicles, and the like.

Did you know that... the American public supports increased funding for public transportation. Even as the economy slowed, 77 percent of all transit-related ballot initiatives passed throughout the country in 2010.

Click "like" and "share" to help spread the word! (and Happy Father's Day!)

Aramaic is the lingua franca of the ancient Middle East, the linguistic root of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.

"Once you understand Aramaic," says Karen Stern, "you can read anything. You can read Hebrew, you can read Phoenician. I always call it the little black dress of Semitic languages."

Her passion is the tomb graffiti of the ancient Jews in what was then Roman Palestine. Graffiti has been "published, but sort of disregarded," she says. "Whereas I think it is intimate, vocal and spontaneous, and adds to the historical record."