Good News Friday

This week has been exhausting. It’s been hard without Cleo, I still think about her every day. I’ve been busy with some incredibly taxing classwork; yes, I’m working toward a certification that will hopefully put me on a different career trajectory that I’m actually really super excited about. And finally, Punxsutawney Phil can bite me. We’re supposed to get snow flurries today, it’s cold and grim, and I just want spring to arrive, already.

Here’s some good news collected from around the interwebs. Hope it’s spring where you are.

• Gen. Lloyd Austin became the first African American to lead the United States Central Command.

• Wind energy production in China increased more than coal power production for the first time in 2012. Wind also surpasses China’s nuclear power production. Coal still provides 79% of China’s power but that is slowly waning as green energy comes on line.

• Here in the U.S. wind projects are also coming on line, thanks to the renewal of the wind energy tax credit.

• Advances in LED technology means cheaper, more energy-efficient LED light bulbs are now available.

• The Senate narrowly defeated an amendment to the government funding bill which would have killed the Defense Department’s biofuels program.

• Los Angeles will be coal-free by 2025, two years ahead of a state-imposed deadline.

• Colorado’s tightened gun laws are now reality.

• The word “whom” is dying. Good riddance.

• The European Space Agency has released a map of the oldest light in the sky, and says it shows the universe is 50 million years older than scientists had previously thought.

• A Michigan American Indian tribe approved same-sex marriage, and let a gay couple who had been together for 30 years marry.

• Hillary Clinton has also endorsed same-sex marriage.

• Based on an opinion from the city attorney’s office, the mayor of Santa Fe, New Mexico, says same-sex marriage is legal in the state and wants city clerks to begin issuing marriage licenses.

• You know, I’m going to have to start limiting my same-sex marriage news. It’s not even good news anymore it’s just … news. First we have a North Carolina church refusing to perform straight marriages until GLBT people have the same right, then we have the house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church getting a rainbow pride paint job, in keeping with its new role as a pro-equality center. The American Academy of Pediatrics is now supporting same sex marriage, saying the children of same sex parents are just fine, thank you.

I’d say the culture war is over and the gays have won. Show us how you did it, please. We pro-choicers could use some tips.

• BP, the world’s fourth-largest company, has pulled its ads from Rush Limbaugh’s show.

• Thank you, science! Fourteen adults have been cured of HIV.

• British doctors have developed a machine that keeps a human liver alive outside the body, a huge step for transplant science.

• Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State George Schultz visited Capitol Hill to call for an end to oil subsidies and the implementation of a carbon tax.

• Doctors can now detect heart attack risk through a non-invasive test which measures blood flow to the fingers.

Good News, Tennessee Edition:

• The Davidson County Election Commission dropped its month-old decision to treat all naturalized citizen voters as liars by checking their citizenship status. The plan was proposed by a Republican commissioner who told supporters,

… that his plan was given to him by God and could “save America” …

Sigh. You people are just wearing me out.

• Private donors will save “Sex Week” at the University of Tennessee after state legislators got all icky about it because, y’know, sex! It’s a week of seminars discussing issues like rape awareness, birth control and STDs. *GASP* The horror.

• A reformed racist is speaking out against the KKK, which is planning to rally in Memphis at the end of the month.

• The Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum got some really positive national attention when the New York Times profiled its solid financial footing.

This week’s cool video: Watch Mee Moua, executive director of the Asian American Justice Center, light a match to Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ straw man argument regarding immigration: