, the Las Malvinas gas plant sits along the Urubamba River, extracting and processing 1.6 billion cubic feet of gas every day. 

Visitors to the site are greeted with a list of “don’ts” mandated by Pluspetrol

, the Argentine firm which runs this plant (which is Peru’s largest energy source). Among those commandments: workers must avoid making contact with the indigenous residents of the forest that surrounds the drill sites.

Many activists claim that Pluspetrol is threatening the very survival of these protected tribes. Block 88, the prime area for drilling, is housed mostly within the Kugapakori-Nahua-Nanti reserve established by the government in 1990 to preserve the land of indigenous Amerindians.

Advocates like Peruvian NGO leader Vanessa Cueto believe that “there is a serious risk to people in initial contact,” especially since the government has lowered conservation standards. Pluspetrol now has government approval to build six new wells and conduct routine seismic tests on this untouched land.

For both developers and conservationists, Camisea is a test case to see whether the extraction of oil and gas can coexist with the fragile balance of nature. The livelihood of indigenous people proves even more fragile: illegal loggers began using an access road built by Shell in the 1980s to exploit the isolated Nahua Indians — more than 300 of whom died from diseases due to lack of immunity.

Since that tragedy, the Inter-American Development Bank has made loans to Camisea contingent on meeting rigorous environmental standards. In Block 88, drilling sites are accessible only by helicopter and constructed to allow horizontal drilling (thus disrupting as little surface area as possible). Maximizing the land area for mature forests, the company asserts that they have never came into contact with any indigenous peoples.

To aid Camisea, an NGO employs a small team of Machiguenga Indians to monitor the environment. According to Cristóbal Rivas, the non-profit's president, they have carried out investigations into small leaks of diesel (though there is scant evidence of any incidents that will meaningfully damage the forest). At the same time, the Peruvian government has grown increasingly aware of the challenges faced by indigenous peoples, and has responded by (among other actions) banning seismic testing in the northwest corner of the block and placing limits on night working to avoid interference with tribal hunting practices.

In spite of all these investments, relatively little is known about the actual day-to-day realities of life in Block 88’s indigenous world. Claims about the relative well-being of the indigenous peoples of Peru rely on “out of date and incomplete studies,” says James Anaya, special rapporteur of the UN on indigenous rights. Similarly, Anaya notes that claims about the impact of the Camisea expansion are “speculative and imprecise.” He urges further exploration of native communities, and even a consultation with those in contact with Pluspetrol.

Among those who do favor the Camisea expansion? Chief Dispupidiwa Waxi of 470 Nahua Indians is a vocal booster for expansion and the jobs it would create in his area. He has traveled as far as Washington, DC to testify against NGOs that are in favor of quelling expansion. The Nahua intend to use the compensation to fund better classrooms and a community nurse.

Conversely, other indigenous rights advocates strongly oppose expansion: Mary Luz Trigoso, a Machiguenga environmental monitor, believes that the positive aspects Chief Waxi identifies may be true, yet they do not come without powerful consequences. Local and regional governments have pocketed half of the Camisea royalties. As a result, the improvements in secondary school remain unfinished.

How will indigenous rights impact Peru’s future? As long as the benefits of cheaper gas continue to drive Peru’s economy, native communities will unlikely be able to live life according to their traditions. These communities “can’t go back, like it or not. History has taken its path and the people too,” notes Patricia Balbuena, deputy minister with responsibility for indigenous peoples. Clearly, any expansions in Peru’s gas industry must be accompanied by respect and tolerance for the dignity of the indigenous inhabitants so vital to Peruvian culture.

 “Energy and the Amazon: Drilling in the Wilderness” in 

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For both developers and conservationists, Peru's example is a test of whether oil drilling can coexist with the fragile balance of nature. The livelihood of indigenous people proves even more fragile.

How the Amazon’s Indigenous Population is Coping with Oil Drilling

In 2013, President Obama placed the issue of nationwide pre-kindergarten programs formally on the agenda when he proposed to fund them through a new cigarette tax. While the plan fell short due to lack of support, New York’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio, revived his plan.

New York’s focus on early education is a step in the right direction, 

writes Jeff Madrick, an expert with the Century Foundation

. However, current research suggests educational disparities based on socio-economic status begin even earlier in a child’s development. 

Accessibility of America's early-education services pales in comparison to most of Europe, where universal pre-kindergarten programs are commonplace. “Head Start, the main federal program, provides preschool funding for 

only about two-fifths of poor children” in the three- and four-year-old age group

, Madrick writes. The United States has the second-highest rate of child poverty of all 35 countries 

measured by the United Nations Children’s Fund

. Twenty-three percent of American children under age five live in deep poverty. The racial disparities of child poverty are egregious, with black and Latino children much more likely to live in poverty.

The U.S. has the 2nd highest rate of childhood poverty of all 35 countries measured by the UN Children’s Fund

A childhood below the poverty line does not bode well for the future: impoverished children are more likely to suffer from asthma, attention deficit disorder, and low academic performance. Teenage pregnancy exacerbates the challenges of struggling girls; few end up graduating from high school.

While others have attributed such outcomes to cultural or genetic factors, 

Dr. David Keller, president of the Academic Pediatric Association, proposes a new, more intractable cause

: a highly stressful environment for young children can actually affect the architecture of the brain, “changing the actual neurological functioning and the quality of brain matter.” Despite evidence from literally hundreds of studies agreeing with Dr. Keller’s assertions, little national attention has been paid to the study of childhood brain functioning.

It should then come as little surprise that pre-K is not enough to remedy childhood development deficits. Madrick 

 which found that poor children nurtured adequately usually have normally developed brain tissue, while those with less nurturing, more stressful environments show less white and grey matter and smaller control centers (such as the hippocampus).

Constant stress due to malnutrition, domestic violence, and parental drug abuse bombard the child’s developing brain, causing excessive hormonal activity of adrenaline and cortisol. This “toxic stress” damages “neural connections, undermines immune responses, and changes the parts of the brain that directly affect memory, learning, and emotional control,” according to 

, who runs Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child.

Sociological research complements the findings of neurological research: 

 indicates family instability and parental worry over providing adequate nutrition for children. While some mothers may be irresponsible or under the influence of drugs, the Children’s Defense Fund notes that the majority of poor mothers care just as much about their children as higher-income parents. Rather, many of these issues stem from economic realities: women in poverty have less freedom to set working hours when they are employed, can’t afford childcare, and must balance long working hours with the demands of parental life.

The quality of prenatal care and the mother’s health also alter the brain’s architecture; a woman with depression or drug addiction may deliver a child with stunted neurological growth. Children in poverty can benefit from medical interventions and parental counseling: even small changes, like reading to a toddler before language skill development, can improve cognitive functioning.

What policies can best help a child’s developing brain? Madrick calls attention to the slow progress of legislators to recognize the connection between poverty, nurturing, and development. When it comes to early education, why should American children lag so far behind their European counterparts? Madrick supports a “substantial financial stimulus” to increase employment, especially among low-income workers, in addition to improvement of social programs so crucial to Europe’s progress. “In other words, the War on Poverty begun in the 1960s worked,” Madrick claims. These Great Society-era social net programs remain an essential lifeline for many Americans. According to 

research by Robert Greenstein of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

, programs like Food Stamps, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit, protected 41 million Americans — including 9 million children — from poverty in 2012.

Madrick is disturbed by the high poverty rate in the under-five age group, exacerbated by the recession and unchanged by the recent recovery. If asked how to solve the problem, he would “begin a new war on child poverty by developing a federal system of cash allowance to poor families with children, as so much of the world now does.” Such policies would likely be stalled in a partisan Congress (Madrick notes that some congressmen even support reducing food stamp allowances). America’s children are slated for a life of poverty if policymakers believe children can just “study harder and find jobs when they grow up.”

Inequality begins at birth. Policymakers must consider the unambiguous findings of 21st century neuroscience and pay attention to the 25 percent of young children living around the poverty line. America must prioritize a fair and just educational system, regardless of race or ethnicity, for its tiniest future constituents.

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If poverty literally changes the structure of the brain, how can impoverished kids ever catch up to their peers?

How poverty stunts a growing brain

Adriaan Vlok, the South African apartheid government’s most notorious police minister, has come into his old workplace to wash the feet of a black man he once tried to kill.

The 68-year-old police chief once viewed apartheid laws as “the apotheosis of good governance and moral power,” 

, and now struggles to move past his involvement in an era characterized by “dark, cloak-and-dagger tactics” of drugging and murdering anti-apartheid insurgents, burning their bodies in a barbecue pit.

During his attempts to crush the resistance, Vlok plotted to murder 

, the head of an interdenominational Christian group. The government believed Chikane was harboring anti-apartheid militants in Johannesburg. Policemen working for Vlok broke into Chikane’s suitcase at an airport in 1989. They laced Rev. Chikane's underwear with the toxic insecticide paraoxon, causing him to become violently ill. Chikane flew to the United States for treatment, and returned to his country after apartheid fell. He would eventually serve as chief of staff to Thabo Mbeki, South Africa’s second black president.

Twenty-five years later, Vlok and Chikane meet in calm politeness. Even though the thought disgusts him at first, Vlok asks to wash Chikane’s feet as a sign of respect and redemption. Chikane obliges, and soon, both men are in tears.

Open confessions and repentance remain controversial in South Africa. After the abolition of apartheid, 

the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) 

was founded as a restorative justice measure; victims of Apartheid-era violence could recount the human rights abuses they suffered, while the perpetrators of those injustices could confess and seek out amnesty from prosecution (with the exception of a few notorious pro-apartheid killers).

Despite strides in favor of political equality, stark economic inequalities remain between South Africa's blacks and whites. Some members of the white minority feel embittered by affirmative action policies and take to the streets, while others establish “civil rights organizations” to rebrand Afrikaners as “endangered stateless minorities.” Amidst the rising racial tensions, some Afrikaners view Vlok’s apology as “ridiculous,” even branding him a traitor to the Afrikaner cause. Accepting the immorality and bigotry of the past is ‘psychologically difficult,’ Fairbanks writes; many Afrikaners grasp the 

 of treating blacks well (or well enough, as the case may be) — it’s the 

 of treating them as equals that proves challenging.

Fairbanks and Vlok sit down for cappuccinos and conversation about Vlok’s past. He tells stories of his first civil service position, where he was in charge of standardizing racial apartheid. He worked his way up to police chief through diligence and an unwavering commitment to order. Even as the anti-apartheid movement grew in the 1980s, Vlok maintained “the conviction that we were fighting a just cause.”

His change of heart came piece by piece, the sum total of a number of life-altering moments: Vlok’s wife committed suicide; he travelled to Asia, where he saw the economic and cultural successes of people he considered to be from inferior races; he faced tremendous anxiety about publicly testifying in front of the TRC and airing his crimes to the public; and he was exposed to the Bible by evangelists with Gideon’s International. Adriaan Vlok was born again. The former police chief retells 

a favorite passage from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount

: “if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your sacrifice … go and be reconciled to that person. Only then come and offer your sacrifice to God.”

Fairbanks joins Vlok on a mission to deliver much-needed food supplies to preschools in a predominantly black section of a neighboring town. Giving away free custard pie, Vlok loses his “deep-seated sense of inner superiority,” writes Fairbanks: “The former defender of brutal white hegemony turned savior of little black children, flinging candy from bags as they mass, squealing, around his pant legs.”

Vlok appears remorseful, yet still denies that he gave any direct orders to use explosives on anti-apartheid buildings or to harm Chikane. His interest in washing Chikane’s feet stems not from personal responsibility, but, says Fairbanks, from “a nebulous desire to repent to black people.”

And so it goes: Vlok sidesteps accusations, and blame shifts to underlings “too innocent to beg for forgiveness” for obeying the orders of their superiors. Visiting a former assassin in prison, Vlok loses his cool: “Eugene! Did I ever tell you to kill somebody?” he demands, incredulous. “No,” the assassin replies, “but you gave me a medal when I killed them.”

Despite his denials, Vlok shares a sinner’s guilt like many before him. Fairbanks reads Vlok a passage from the Book of Matthew about murderers being subject to judgement. Vlok is confident of Christ’s forgiveness: “If anyone accuses me, He will say: ‘But I already paid the price.’”

While some black South Africans applaud Vlok’s efforts to redeem himself, others remain skeptical. T.O. Molefe, a Cape Town-based political essayist, notes that “it’s not entirely of symbolic coincidence that, when he washed his victims’ feet, he washed his own hands, too.”

"I Have Sinned Against the Lord and Against You! Will You Forgive Me?"

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A notorious South African police leader wants to wash the feet of a black man he once tried to kill. Is he trying to wash his hands in the process?

A guilty man pleads for redemption after Apartheid. Is he sincere?

Any American politician who calls America “the Saudi Arabia of coal” is likely aware of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves. Even President Obama has christened America “the Saudi Arabia of natural gas” after hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” increased from 1.3 trillion to 8 trillion cubic feet in 2011. No doubt the U.S. is considering alternatives to avoid being taken hostage by the fixed prices of OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in the Middle East with vast oil reserves.

Those who imagine a future where natural gas has freed America from the yoke of OPEC are wagering on the wrong fuel source; “The effects of the boom … will be neither as great nor as lasting as might be expected,” 

asserts Robert Zubrin, a contributing editor for 

First of all, the United States consumes energy prodigiously: in 2012, over 18 million barrels of oil are used daily, compared to about 10 million by China, the world’s second-leading consumer. America’s status as the world’s largest oil importer isn’t likely to change any time soon, and given that shale natural gas production is expected to plateau starting as soon as 2020, relying on a neverending supply of natural gas fields isn’t feasible. Just because domestic oil production rises doesn’t mean prices will fall: “the power of OPEC to distort the oil market is unequaled, with grave consequences for the global economy.”

Zubrin’s solution? Fueling cars with Methanol. It’s cleaner for the environment, safer and less combustible, cheaper than gasoline, and easily used in flex-fuel vehicles by spending just fifty cents to install a methane-impervious seal for fuel systems. What stands in the way of an energy revolution and economic boost is Wall Street and the EPA: EPA regulations prohibit altering fuel systems of cars and charge a hefty fine to individuals and manufacturers who attempt to switch to methanol without obtaining a license.

It’s a daunting task — Sisyphean, perhaps — to develop a methanol market by adding filling stations and educating the public, but Zubrin claims to be up for the challenge. He purports to have spent just 50 cents on converting his Chevy Cobalt to methanol (thanks largely to built-in “flex-fuel” capacity available in many consumer cars), and believes that other Americans would follow suit if they simply had the knowledge available to them. The solution to America’s OPEC woes “lies in a relatively simple policy proposal,” Zubrin concludes. “Auto manufacturers should be required by law to have a true flex-fuel capability” in new cars sold.

But perhaps we shouldn’t put on those rose-colored glasses just yet. 

 for readers who believe methanol can be easily introduced into the market. Echoin

g the arguments of John Floren, CEO of Vancouver-based Methanex Corporati

on, he points out that the U.S., at the most basic level, lacks the production capacity for all this new methanol, and without the influential backing of America’s corn-growers (who themselves hold significant sway in Iowa’s presidential caucuses), domestic ethanol producers out-lobby methanol makers by a 50 to 1 rate. Patrick Davis, 

director of the Energy Department’s Vehicle Technologies Office, identifies another hurdle in the distrib

ution process: “a lack of infrastructure to produce and deliver methanol to fueling stations” that are sparsely located.

Zubrin brushes aside such skeptics’ predictions, focusing on a legislative solution instead of a market solution. He calls for 

the passage of the Open Fuel Standard Act

, which would require alternative fueling options (e.g. flex-fuel capabilities) in at least 30 percent of automakers’ fleets by model year 2016, and 50 percent from 2017 onward. The mandate, imagines Zubrin, would “lead foreign auto manufacturers also to offer more flex-fuel cars” and increase “the downpour of additional supply drowning OPEC.”

Faced with alternative fuel sources, Zubrin believes the U.S. could put OPEC in a chokehold instead of the other way around. OPEC would have to concede its price-fixing advantages and conform to market prices or else risk a sharp decline in oil demand: “it is reasonable to estimate that, in this scenario, oil and gasoline would be selling at about half of their current prices,” claims Zubrin.

“Why and How We Should Break OPEC Now”

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It's cleaner, safer, cheaper, and easily used in flex-fuel vehicles.

Can methanol fuel OPEC's demise?

Unbeknownst to American Facebook users, many of them became part of a civic-engineering experiment during the 2010 congressional mid-term elections. The result? Otherwise apathetic people decided to vote.

On November 2, 2010, Facebook graphics became voter-friendly for the congressional midterm elections. Political scientists teamed up with Facebook to produce a graphic containing a link for looking up polling places, as well as social incentives to vote: buttons to announce a user had just voted and profile pictures of at most six Facebook friends who also followed suit.

in what Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and computer science at Harvard, calls

 “an awesome feat of data-crunching,” these political scientists have compared the names of the targeted Facebook users with voting records from precincts nationwide.

How much did the voting prompt increase turnout? Users notified of their friends’ voting became .39 percent more likely to cast a ballot. “The researchers concluded that their Facebook graphic directly mobilized 60,000 voters, and, thanks to the ripple effect, ultimately caused an additional 340,000 votes to be cast that day,” Zittrain writes. “As they point out, George W. Bush won Florida, and thus the presidency, by 537 votes — fewer than 0.01 percent of the votes cast in that state.”

The implications of social media get-out-the-vote efforts are huge: What if Mark Zuckerberg favors one candidate over another? Facebook dwellers with similar political views could be bombarded with subtle messages urging them to the polls. After all, Facebook “likes” can indicate political affiliation (either explicitly or implicitly stated). Those with opposing views, meanwhile, might not receive an indication via Facebook that it was Election Day.

Social engineering could change the outcome of the next election. “Digital gerrymandering” can filter out political appeals to unsympathetic users to ensure the right eyes see them. The deception lies in the user’s inability to distinguish an advertiser-sponsored link from regular advertising. By personalizing the advertising content its users see, Facebook and other social networking sites can “leverage their awesome platforms to influence policy.”

And it’s all legal. The company's disclosure policies clearly reserve the right “to season their newsfeeds and search results however they like.” Furthermore, efforts to sway Facebook users require no disclosure, since they could be construed as covered under the policy.

Zittrain believes it would be “ill-advised” to pass a law prohibiting digital gerrymandering. Content producers have free speech rights, too: They can tailor results as they see fit. It’s a slippery slope argument to censor names from search results or content algorithms, because doing so limits information for all users.

Instead, Zittrain proposes a better solution: entice web companies storing personal data to act as “information fiduciaries,” similar to how a doctor or lawyer handles sensitive information. “Shouldn’t we treat certain online businesses, because of their importance to people’s lives, and the degree of trust and confidence that people inevitably must place in these businesses, in the same way?” asks Jack Balkin of Yale Law School.

Information safeguards should go beyond following a privacy policy, says Zittrain. He proposes that web companies be required to keep “audit trails reflecting when the personal data of their users is shared with another company, or is used in a new way.” This option allows users to filter search data and omit targeted ads. The information fiduciary would be compelled not to put its own interests before that of its users, much like a financial adviser’s relationship to a client.

Zittrain would support tax breaks and certain legal immunities for web companies that elect to enhance their accountability to users. If companies allow users to “opt in” to receiving tailored content instead of “opting out” of this commonplace practice, users become less susceptible to the covert coercion involved in the 2010 get-out-the-vote experiment.

Zittrain notes that this sort of thing has happened before. In 1974, 

the Federal Communications Commission strictly forbade

 airing subliminal messages over TV advertisements in response to public panic. Why shouldn’t the same user protection be afforded to today’s most popular medium? Zittrain strongly supports the idea of a “happy medium” — one that which does not restrict First Amendment free speech protections, yet safeguards web users from covert attempts to sway their political views.

“Facebook Could Decide an Election Without Anyone Ever Finding Out”

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‘Digital gerrymandering’ at its finest.

Can Facebook Peer Pressure Get People to Vote?

In 2009, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers listed 

 — population 345 — as a “priority action community.” The ground beneath the village is quickly slipping into the sea: Within just two years, some houses may be underwater. Thanks to climate change, residents are seeing storm surges intensify and permafrost thaw.

The ravages of climate change have forced the indigenous Yup’ik people to relocate to the vulnerable 

, an area that once served as a Yup’ik summer hunting ground. Adding to this situation, these once-nomadic people now depend on the Delta for King Salmon as their main source of food – even as the local salmon population as plummeted.

In 2012, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, alarmed by the decline in salmon populations, gathered a panel of fishery ecologists to determine the cause of the decline. Again, the culprit is climate change. Melting rivers send vulnerable juvenile salmon into the open ocean, while changing ocean currents spread diseases and alter the food chain. To protect the salmon from fishing, in addition to the harmful warming waters, state officials placed a ban on Delta fishing.

But fishing is central to the Yup’ik way of life. Believing the government threatened their way of life, Yupii fishermen pledged to defy this ban. They were quickly caught and found themselves in a crowded courtroom in Bethel, Alaska, where 

Adam Weymouth, a London-based freelance writer, catches up with them for 

In the courtroom, where a traditional Yup’ik mask stands next to the American flag, fisherman Felix Flynn takes the stand, guided by 

Attorney Jim Davis of the Northern Justice Project

. “To start with, all I see is ocean,” Flynn told the court. “Then after a while there’s glassy water, and there’s other water that’s not glassy. And that means the herring are here. That’s what I learnt from my father. I'm subsistence. I was born and raised an Eskimo. It’s in my blood. It’s in my family blood.”

Flynn later explains his testimony about being “subsistence” refers to his life of living off the land. When prompted by his attorney about how it felt to not catch enough salmon, Flynn bursts into tears: “I have a grandchild, 2 years old [who kept asking] ‘when we gonna go check the net?’”

It’s not hard to see the connection between the fish and the indigenous belief system. In a court filing, Davis explained the beliefs of the Yup’ik: “If Yup’ik people do not fish for King Salmon, the King Salmon spirit will be offended and it will not return to the river.”

In court, the Yup’ik’s right to practice their ancestral traditions has been heralded as a First Amendment right. “Completely barring [them] from the salmon fishery thwarts the practice of a real religious belief,” an amicus brief by the American Civil Liberties Union states. “This cycle of interplay between humans and animals helped perpetuate the seasons; without the maintaining of that balance, a new year will not follow the old one.”

There might not be much time left as the Yup’ik way of life quickly melts: the 

 already fell into the river, forcing the community to gather their ancestors’ remains and construct a new grave.

“Nobody here knows how many fish will come. Only the creator,” testifies fisherman Noah Okoviak. Despite his sincere beliefs and those of the Yup-ik, the judge ruled that the state had a significant reason to impose the fishing ban and that the fisherman had violated it. Most fishermen were required to pay $250 each over the course of a year or two.

Yet the fishermen continue their plea to practice their religion. Their case has been sent to the Alaskan Court of Appeals, who will hear their oral arguments this summer, Weymouth reports. They grasp for hope in previous court cases: A powerful precedent stands from the reversal of an indigenous hunter’s 

 for illegally transporting a newly slain moose needed for a religious ceremony.

Over the next decade, the Yup’ik people will continue to face the reality of relocation. But they seem poised to continue to fight to ensure their religious traditions do not erode as fast as their land. 

Photo courtesy of the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Reserve/

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The village of Akiak already fell into the river, forcing the locals to gather their ancestors’ remains and construct a new grave.

How climate change is destroying a Native Alaskan religion

Liturgical designers Lawrence Hoy and Robert Rambusch stroll slowly through New York City’s 

 as they revisit an interior they created together in the post-Vatican II reformed liturgical style. Hoy, 58, finally reunites with his 90-year-old mentor as they study a tabernacle enclosure reminiscent of the 

“How about adding the 12 apostles, six on each side?” proposes a tourist, offering a suggestion to fill the bare wall alongside a towering statue of the Risen Christ. Both designers bristle at her suggestion: Hoy prefers a minimalist approach. Many parishioners offer unsolicited advice, yet the task of the designer is to bridge the awe of the eternal with the reverence for specific religious traditions.

50 years ago, the Vatican II council substantially changed the Catholic Church, altering not only the language used in worship (

 to the congregation’s local tongue), but by actively constructing the Church in something of a more populist manner. 

 of some of the most tangible changes: clergy were encouraged to seek and support participation of the laity, and new churches would would do away with the long runway of a center aisle flanked by row after row of worshippers—the distant, gothic feel replaced instead by a more accessible design somewhat akin to a church “in the round.”

, a Port Chester, New York-based firm specializing in liturgical architecture. The two designers’ work includes such high-profile projects as the renovation of the altar for the 1996 Central Park Mass by Pope John Paul II, and the fashioning of the papal throne for Pope Benedict XVI at Ground Zero, Yankee Stadium, and St. Joseph’s Seminary. Good design, says Hoy, “really transforms the space into something that’s so much more than a ‘Sunday only’ worship service.”

Fresh out of college, Hoy became an assistant to Robert Rambusch, a top liturgical designer unafraid to embrace minimalism while designing cathedrals. After branching out on his own, Hoy founded Renovata, mixing his love for architecture and his fascination with Catholicism. He gained a name for himself — exquisite designs, never over-budget, scrupulously avoiding tacky faux stonework. Clients such as Cardinal 

 rave over Hoy’s attention to transformative design and his reverence for historic preservation. Even so, he says he’s not going to practice Catholicism “just because that’s how I’m making my money.”

Hoy is most consulted by Catholic Churches seeking to repair peeling paint or leaking baptismal fonts. Yet some major renovations come out of routine repairs: for 

, Monsignor Jon Tosi awarded Hoy artistic license to “enhance the liturgical space.”

Dufresne relates how Hoy makes it look easy: he blends the ornate grandeur of centuries long ago with the newness of post-modernism. Hoy is “creative, yet he has an appreciation for what’s already there,” praises Monsignor Tosi. “He can honor history while bringing it up-to-date with the times.”

Tosi’s church — half-1898 brick English Gothic, half-20th century “Country Gothic” — is a nightmare for architects hell-bent on authenticity. Not so for Hoy: he copied Gothic moldings to remedy this “stylistic dissonance.” His additional renovations brought the sanctuary closer to the middle of the church. Afterwards, Hoy moved the tabernacle — a fixed storage for the Communion — to its former place in the semicircular vault called the apse. In doing so, Hoy brought parishioners closer to the altar and closer to God.

Dufresne notes that Vatican II encouraged better sightlines in church to make parishioners feel included. Architects agree that a church should honor God while connecting congregations in its accessibility, but liturgical designers disagree over the best way to achieve that result. Though Rambusch embraces openness, critics including 

, professor of architecture at University of Notre Dame, have a different approach. “Sometimes the simple became simplistic,” Stroik contends, comparing modernist churches with bland functionality to high school gymnasiums. He decries the reduction of human figures, especially in Catholic Churches where the body of Christ is essential.

Both Stroik and Hoy believe a church should not remind people of Disney’s Epcot. Recently, newer Southern Catholic Churches have embraced traditional décor, yet such a trend need not be gauche. Hoy incorporates some contemporary architecture with tradition, helping clients ‘find themselves’ in their church.

In light of the clash between traditional and modern, Hoy isn’t afraid to challenge the Vatican II conception of architecture to bring about the best result for his clients. He jokes that many practically “lie down before the scaffolding equipment” to avoid changes to their church. Once he redesigns the church, however, clients are stunned: “now your design is the one that they’re going to lie down in front of the bulldozers for.”

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Just because you can pick your altar out of a catalog doesn't mean that you should.

Liturgical designers’ challenge: balancing tradition with creativity

For Satchin Panda, childhood brings back memories filled with natural light: catching fish, lounging in a hammock, picking ripe mangoes. Now, as a molecular biology professor in La Jolla, California, his fluorescent lifestyle differs markedly from his sunlit youth in Chandipur, India.

Unfortunately for Panda (and millions of others who spend much of their waking life indoors), this lack of natural light comes with a cost, 

. A growing body of research illuminates a simple truth: getting too little daylight may also do long-term damage to our health.

With a simple flick of the switch, we’ve changed how and when the day ends — defined not by the solar cycle, but instead by the amount of artificial light we choose to keep the night away. “When we override the light-dark cycle of the natural world,” says Blau, “we are disrupting the internal workings of the human body.”

Take, for instance, sleep loss. From the flickering oil lamps of the 1880s to the lingering glare of tablet LED screens, Americans now sleep 20 percent less than a century ago, 

according to the National Sleep Foundation

. Without adequate sleep, our immune system pays the price; sleep loss makes us “not only liable to catch a cold, but more susceptible to 

.” In addition to irritability, chronic sleep loss causes excessive hyperactivity in children misdiagnosed with ADHD.

the scientific community widely acknowledges

, little attention has been paid to the benefits of natural light on the sleep cycle. As such, the study of sunlight’s positive effects is still in its infancy — as is the research into the long-term adverse effects of a life spent languishing in dim or artificially-lit rooms.

researchers explore the tangible benefits of natural light

 — not only as relates to sleep, but in our emotional and mental wellbeing. 

In one recent study, workers at a Sacramento call center

 were stationed in windowless rooms and tested against their sunlit counterparts; those employees with access to a window processed calls 6-12 percent faster than those subject to fluorescent light only. Similarly, a hospital-based study in Canada found that 

female heart attack patients recovered more quickly if exposed to abundant natural light

, a finding that could alter the way hospitals are built and patients are treated.

Our internal clocks control the sleep-wake cycle, but do so while “also respond[ing] to the environment, especially light and dark,” Blau explains. The presence of blue light, for instance, helps to sync our bodies’ clocks to “external cues of day and night.” Our natural sleeping and waking rhythms become distorted because artificial light does not produce the same wavelengths as natural light.

What’s so special about blue light? The answer may be related to Panda’s recent discovery of melanopsin, a specific photoreceptor in the eye sensitive to blue light. Through experimentation, he was able to deduce that every animal has melanopsin, “even the blind catfish,” which “registers the blue light and helps to reset and synchronize the biological clock on a daily basis.” In a test, blind mice with melanopsin were compared to blind mice without the photoreceptor; the mice without melanopsin had wildly more irregular sleeping and waking patterns than their counterparts.

What does this mean for humans? Blau asks Kazuo Tsubota, professor of ophthalmology at Japan’s Keio University School of Medicine. Tsubota’s secret to happiness? Not laughter, not wealth, but a good night’s sleep. Motivated by 

 (‘a life filled with happiness’), he advises his cataract patients to follow his example: spending more time in daylight, limiting intake of “radiant, illuminous screens,” and, in turn, sleeping soundly.

Don’t shut off that iPad just yet, says Mariana Figueiro of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Figueiro (who studies how shift workers function at different light levels) agrees that “we need more light to synchronize the circadian system than we do to see,” but unlike Tsubota, she sees illuminated screens as a potential salve — with iPads acting, in Blau’s words, “as light therapy by day to help invigorate us and reset our clock.”

While daylight is not intrinsically better than electric light, Figueiro believes getting artificial light to do the same job “is more expensive, uses more energy, and is more difficult to get right.” But this investment — even on a small scale — can make a substantial difference; since the elderly have declining abilities to absorb blue light, Figueiro installed bright lamps to TV screens at an assisted-living facility to improve their circadian rhythms. Sure enough, these residents slept more soundly.

Blau proposes solutions to mitigate the sunlight deficiency plaguing America: programming electronics to limit blue light, buying brighter desk lamps, and manipulating LED lights in lightbulbs to “mirror the natural world” — all ideas that stem from a question Satchin Panda asked Blau: “what if you can change a lightbulb and change your life?”

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Can changing a lightbulb change your life? Perhaps.

Illuminating the many benefits of natural light

Ari Fleischer recently suggested in a Wall Street Journal op-ed

 that “‘marriage inequality’ should be at the center of any discussion of why some Americans prosper and others don’t,” buttressing his position with stats showing the differences in earning power between married and unmarried women.

As one might imagine, some begged to differ. “When you say to women, to get out of poverty you should get married, my question to them is how many men you have to marry," Barbara Ehrenreich, author of 

, said at an event earlier this year. “Marrying a 10-dollar-an-hour man gets you nowhere, so you'd really have to marry three or four."

Ehrenreich’s “sharp-tongued dismissal” of Fleischer’s idea might compel Americans to reconsider their reasons to marry, 

. Self-described feminists “question the merits of marriage and urge their fellow women to remain independent if they choose,” but Green says opposing the power imbalance between men and women in society is much easier if a woman happens to have an education.

It is not as easy for her low-income counterparts. “For a poor woman, deciding whether to get married or not will be a big part of shaping her economic future,” Green writes. “For a wealthier woman, deciding whether to get married is a choice about independence, lifestyle, and, at times, ‘fighting the patriarchy.’ There's a cognitive dissonance in Ehrenreich's straight-up dismissal of the economic benefits of marriage, because the statistics tell an awkward truth: financially, married women tend to fare much better than unmarried women.”

Unlike Fleischer, Green maintains that marriage is not “the silver-bullet to solving income inequality.” Yet the feminist aim to resist the patriarchy must meet the cold reality that only some women have the economic luxury of refusing marriage.

Even Beyoncé is getting involved, speaking out against society pushing marriage on women. 

a TED talk from artist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

, who asks: “[W]hy do we teach girls to aspire to marriage and we don’t teach boys the same?

Green thinks it’s an important question, right up there with, “If I choose not to marry, what will be the economic consequences?”

And, at the same time, women who are economically comfortable in their rejection of marriage must begin to consider the fact that ‘all the single ladies’ might not be able to follow the example.

“Wealthy Women Can Afford to Reject Marriage, But Poor Women Can’t”

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Why do we teach girls to aspire to marriage? And why don’t we teach boys the same?

For women, what are the economic consequences of not getting married?

For Many Westerners, the acceptance of LGBT citizens is a simple matter of equality. But while many in the West (rightly) look with horror 

as African nations (including Uganda, Nigeria, and Ethiopia) enact draconian anti-gay laws

, the beliefs animating those laws may be more complicated than simple, ugly homophobia.

, Frederick Nzwili talks with Bishop Arthur Gitonga of the Kenyan Redeemed Church, who believes “homosexuality is equivalent to colonialism and slavery.” His congregants agree. “We feel like [homosexuality] is a weapon of mass destruction,” says one. “It is not biblical and cannot bring blessing to Christians,” chimes another.

Gitonga is among a powerful group of Kenyan clerics who share the ultimate goal of criminalizing homosexuality in Kenya. Together, they launched “Zuia Sodom Kabisa” (“Stop Sodom Completely” in Kiswahili), a petition campaign with the goal of pressuring legislatures to declare harsh penalties for LGBT Kenyans.

Scholars balk at Gitonga’s comparison of LGBT acceptance and colonialism. “The differences are cultural,” remarks 

Erin Amato