Whole Earth Festival successfully completed its 43rd year this past weekend, once again allowing the people of Davis and our visitors to shamelessly glisten with sweat as we danced barefoot on the grass (glass-free) and freely exchanged cash for goods we could take home without making yet another contribution to the demise of a free society.

Yet, the best benefit Whole Earth bestows upon our campus and the greater Davis community is a glimpse of sustainability at a seemingly unattainable standard fully realized in all its re-usable, re-cyclable and re-plicable glory.

Whole Earth Festival shows us that zero-waste can be a reality, and we hope that the City of Davis will take this message and run with it to the compost bins and the recycling facilities.

Despite our earthy and green reputation given to us by our knack for bicycling and farmers markets, and supported by the University’s commitment to sustainability, there is a lot the city could do yet to actually live up to it.

Let’s start with the basics. No business should still be distributing Styrofoam anymore. Ever. Businesses still using plastic to-go boxes should switch to the paper boxes more and more downtown restaurants have already begun to utilize. Businesses that do use recyclable materials but cannot or do not recycle them should find a way to do so immediately.

More easy steps: Plastic bags need to be phased out. The best way to do that is for everyone to have reusable bags, and if you forget them (it happens) ask for paper instead. There is also no reason for anyone to buy plastic water bottles anymore. You’re wasting your money, and most of the time you’re drinking tap water anyway. You can even combine environmental sustainability and literacy by purchasing a $5 reusable bottle from the Shields Library.

And if businesses or individuals want to go the extra mile, they should look into composting. They can learn more about compost from campus’s Project Compost, whose members offer workshops and voluntarily devote their time to picking up trash around campus and take it to be composted on the Student Farms. Thanks, guys!

Campus is ahead of the city, minimizing the use of plastic bags in the Bookstore and participating in composting in the ASUCD Coffee House. Though there is still a long way to go, campus is already on the track to being waste-free by 2020.

At the rate the City of Davis is going, it will lag far behind campus in achieving the same goal. If Davis businesses need some incentive to catch up, let’s give them some. Encourage those businesses that currently do not use recyclable materials to start, and support those that already do.

It’s time the City of Davis puts their money where their mouth is, and customers should be doing the same.

Last week, I wrote about how Obama’s coalition is not so slowly unraveling. Through broken promises and perennial letdowns, he has managed to anger the very constituencies that helped him win election in 2008. These groups include minorities, LGBT and the young.

Without their support, Obama is not going to win this November. Period. In fact, things could be dicey for team O even with their support. Because the economy is still in the dumper, the president is going to lose plenty of votes with those tired of being unable to find a job, or who have to work jobs below their skills set and training. So he’s going to need every Hispanic, same-sex and college-aged vote he can possibly get.

Well, he just might get those votes yet — or, at least, the LGBT votes. The president’s endorsement of same-sex marriage has been a long time coming for many in the LGBT community, but that does not diminish the significance any. Any time a president has come out publicly on the side of civil rights, laws have eventually followed. It might take years for the dream to become a reality in certain parts of the country, but the LGBT community has history on their side.

Obama’s motivations, at least to some degree, quite simply comes down to politics. Obama was apparently saving his declaration of support for same-sex marriage for closer to the Democratic National Convention. This convention is where he will publicly accept the nomination to be the small-d Democratic candidate for the fall election. It’s also a moment where millions of American households are tuned in to watch the big speech that the candidate always delivers.

It would have been a prime moment to drop the same-sex marriage bombshell. There would have been screaming, crying, pandemonium and gnashing of teeth. It would have also led to a surge in excitement among Democratic constituencies and a flood of contributions.

Now, this is probably happening today, at least to a certain degree. But it would have been more dramatic in the context of an arena with thousands of screaming fans. The political bang-for-your-buck would have been greater. Hence, the irritation on the part of Obama’s political advisers.

I have to wonder, however, if his advisors have this all wrong, and that, regardless of the timing, Obama’s support for equal rights to marriage could backfire. What if, despite firing up part of his base of support, Obama’s public support for same-sex marriage riles up the opposition even more? After all, this issue is an anathema to the religious right. And it is the religious voters who form the backbone of the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney’s campaign had never received glowing reviews from this section of the Republican Party, and for good reason. Romney was essentially a Democrat 20 years ago — a conservative Democrat, it is true, but still certainly not a radical right-winger. He risked not getting much support from conservative Republicans in the election before Obama’s public coming-out, but now things are different. For them, the war is on.

They are not wasting any time, either. Down in Bakersfield, where I am from originally, Romney’s campaign is already robo-calling households, warning people about Obama’s same-sex marriage agenda and asking for their support in the fight. And I’m willing to bet that there will be plenty of individuals willing to answer the call.

In the end, every vote that Obama’s same-sex marriage stance might garner could be canceled out (and then some) by the righteous anger of religious conservatives. Personally, I have to wonder if Obama is beginning to realize that there is a good chance he might lose the election in November and is taking stock of what he can get accomplished before he is booted out of the White House. This issue is one that he quite possibly felt like he could make a difference and that he needed to do so soon, before time ran out.

The election will probably still come down to the economy, but issues like same-sex marriage could affect outcomes made at the margins. This election is going to be a close one — razor close. Whoever wins this culture battle could be the next president. Get ready for things to get bloody.

Contact JONATHAN NELSON at jdnelson@ucdavis.edu and tell him your thoughts and feelings about Obama’s support for same-sex marriage.

College is full of opportunities for students to learn and do new things. The goal is to prepare you for a future career, so how can you get the most out of your time here at UC Davis? Participating in internships is one of the best ways to explore career options and gain the valuable skills and experience that employers are looking for.

If you’re like many students, you may be uncertain about what career you want to go into or what specific area of a career you would like to work in. Doing an internship is extremely helpful in deciding what career would be right for you, because you get to spend time in a real-world work environment. Kelly, a former UC Davis student, knew she wanted to go into business, but wasn’t sure exactly what area. She found a business management internship with the Davis Cemetery District, which allowed her to explore many different aspects of business management, including accounting, finance, HR and sales. “It was a good way to get my foot in the door because I’d never done any type of internship before,” she says.  She also discovered that there were some areas she did not like.  For example, she says, “I quickly realized that I didn’t want to do accounting.” Learning early on what you don’t like is valuable because it prevents you from wasting time working toward a career that isn’t a good fit for you. Kelly found that she liked working in finance, so she pursued an internship in finance with Intel. It even led to a job offer once her internship was finished!

As Lisa Sanders, program coordinator at the Internship and Career Center (ICC), points out, internships are also very important for “developing the professional skills that are needed in any job: professionalism, communication skills, organization skills, writing skills, the core competencies that all employers are looking for.” In addition to these important general skills, you can improve skills specific to your career. Janelle, a landscape architecture intern with the Davis Cemetery District, explained that she is learning a lot from “seeing how to do it and actually doing it [my]self, so it’s different from a classroom.” Learning from a knowledgeable professional and getting real-world practice with your skills are valuable internship experiences because employers like to hire people who have experience and really know what they are doing.

So, how can you find an internship for yourself?  Checking out the Aggie Job Link, searching the internet for internships in your area of interest and speaking with Lisa Sanders at the ICC are all great places to start. According to Lisa, “There’s a consistent flow of incoming recruitment requests from employers for internships.” The ICC also tries to find areas where more internships are needed and reaches out to employers in the community to create new internships, so that there are always internship opportunities available for any student who wants to look for one.

Many of the interns I spoke with had some great advice for internship seekers. Hanna, an intern in Sacramento, urges students to start doing internships as soon as possible so you can get many different experiences. Kelly suggests that students should “be active and start looking for internships — it’s not going to fall into your lap.”  Also, don’t be afraid to try something new or different because you never know when an experience might be valuable. Lisa Sanders adds that figuring out what is expected of you and what you should expect from an internship helps lay down some guidelines to help you have a successful internship experience.

Spotify users are on the wrong side of history. If only those poor souls knew of my dear Rdio (ar-dee-oh), then perhaps they would realize. Rdio can’t seem to pick up subscribers in the way its music subscription rival Spotify can, despite the fact that Rdio’s beauty and craftsmanship are far superior.

This column was initially intended as a rallying cry/desperate plea convincing music lovers to come to Rdio. But after I came to understand how subscription sites work, I realized that it wasn’t just the Spotified who may be on the wrong side of history. It may be us all.

It is we, the subscribers — both paying and un-paying — of sites like Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark, etc., who may be most guilty of contributing to a vicious cycle that rewards mainstream artists at big labels to the detriment of up-and-coming musicians at smaller labels. But it all depends on which definition of success we’re looking at.

If survival in the industry means record sales then, yes, music streaming services does not look sustainable. Artists earn about 9 cents from a 99 cent iTunes download. This may not seem like much, but compared to the fraction of a penny they earn from streaming royalties, it’s a world of difference. On Spotify, that rate is .004 cents per stream. In other words, an artist only earns $4,000 after their song has been listened to one million times. That’s nothing. No wonder why the streaming model infuriates the music industry.

Pirated music, however, merits a musician even less. Music subscription services at least provide some income, however minimal. Per-unit sales are not as important, they claim, as listening exposure. Because more exposure builds a fan base who buys merchandise and tickets to shows, the proceeds of which go right into the artist’s pockets.

In this age of big-budget worldwide tours and music festivals, the significance of such alternative revenue is clear. Across the country, music lovers flock to Coachella, Electronic Daisy Carnival, Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza, Vans Warped Tour, Sasquatch, South by Southwest … and the list goes on. Money isn’t being spent on records, that’s for sure, but it is being spent on festivals. At several hundred dollars a ticket, it seems as though music fans will only spend serious amounts of cash for the one thing they can’t steal from the internet — live performance.

The question is, what kinds of artists are getting these gigs? I suspect mostly established artists with lots of representation — artists from major labels.

Artists from smaller labels rely on the power of music discovery to establish themselves, which is not at all about selling records. In the post-Napster era, independent artists have made it big by offering their music online, for free. MySpace may not work in the social space anymore, but its music network is responsible for the thriving careers of many bands (like the Arctic Monkeys). Self-reliant musicians can indeed make it by way of the web.

Online streaming services allow subscribers to access huge libraries of music — millions and millions of songs — for about the cost of one album per month. These services put listeners in touch with music at the fringes of their libraries by offering suggestions of related artists, or curating playlists for specific audiences. Subscription sites can increase exposure and music consumption overall — and that, I think, is a good thing for the music industry in general.

Sites like Rdio and Spotify are the best economic choice for people who listen to a lot of music, which is why it will define the role of the internet in the ever changing domain of digital music. Music subscription sites offer a happy medium between the instant gratification of music available online without the iTunes pricetag, and the unlimited access of torrents without the criminality. It is a gain for both consumer and industry.

If music executives embrace this technology, the industry, in the words of “Game of Thrones’” Tyrion Lannister, “may survive us yet.”

NICOLE NGUYEN also thinks anti-gay marriage proponents are on the wrong side of history. Reasons why at niknguyen@ucdavis.edu.