While browsing my Facebook mini-feed on a typical day, I stumbled upon an article titled, “Foods that will fight the Fukushima Radiation.” I asked myself, what radiation am I supposed to be fighting?

Clicking on the link, I was reminded of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown in Japan in 2011. But this was old news, wasn’t it? Unsure, I decided to investigate.

Apparently, the situation is ongoing.

As recently as Oct. 5, the New York Times reported that Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority openly scolded the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) in a public hearing for its failure in the cleanup process. This week alone, TEPCO announced that 114 gallons of contaminated water spilled from an overflowing tank of radioactive material. Unfortunately these mistakes aren’t uncommon, as “one of the biggest recent spills came in August, when TEPCO discovered that 80,000 gallons of water laced with radioactive strontium and cesium had leaked out of one of the huge tanks, with some reaching the Pacific,” according to the Times. The meltdown occurred two years ago, and containment is still an issue.

So should we panic?

Officially, our government says no. In the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) September 2013 update on the Fukushima radiation, they’ve announced, “To date, FDA has no evidence that radionuclides from the Fukushima incident are present in the U.S. food supply at levels that would pose a public health concern.”

But somehow, this doesn’t seem satisfying. Why isn’t our government worried?

For instance, South Korea is concerned. It has banned all fish imports from Japan’s northeastern coast due to the lack of information surrounding the radiation’s effects. Fox News reports that scientists already believe that the ocean has been exposed to hazardous material, from increasing levels of radioactive cesium found in deep water fish.

So if radiation is clearly in our ocean, should we be concerned?

Thankfully, many experts say there is no need to freak out. In an article by Alicia Chang for the Huffington Post, she writes that we eat radioactive food all the time. Low levels of naturally occurring radiation are a part of many popular foods, like bananas, red meat and beer.

“Once you understand that we swim in this low-level sea of radiation, then it’s just a numbers game,” said Mike Payne, of UC Davis’ Western Institute for Food Safety and Security, in an interview with Chang.

Also, agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and FDA frequently test radiation levels. OK, it is true that milk in California and Washington state were found to have traces of radioactive iodine. Indeed, Fukushima radiation has reached California soil. Luckily, “the amount detected was 5,000 times below the federal recommended limit for exposure.”

Chang also quotes Christine Bruhn, a food safety student of UC Davis, as saying that “people shouldn’t be afraid to continue eating dairy products, vegetables, fish and other nutritious foods.”

On one hand, it’s fantastic that there is little need to fear radiation poisoning. On the other hand, it’s disconcerting that radioactive waters are still finding their way into the ocean.

In this sense, it drives home the fact that national decisions truly affect the entire world. Nation states hold powerful and dangerous technologies; a radiated ocean would certainly cause catastrophe for all humanity. Thus, ongoing leakage is a global concern.

So what should we do now? How many more Chernobyls and Fukushimas should happen before the international community decides that an individual’s decision to play with fire isn’t worth burning us all?

In the words of documentary filmmaker Sam Hyde, “We are all world citizens.” It is up to us, as world citizens, to be aware of these universally important issues. We only have one planet, and we have to keep each other in check.

To prepare for other apocalyptic crises, you can contact DANIEL HERMAN at dsherman@ucdavis.edu.

In 1996, Congress passed the “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act,” which forbid a state to confer a benefit to an individual who was not in the United States legally, unless the state acted to affirmatively do so. In other words, Congress told individual states that they had to pass their own laws in order to allow unauthorized immigrants benefits, such as in-state college tuition, state-funded scholarship opportunities and the issuance of licenses of all sorts.

About a decade ago, California started to do just that, starting with AB 540. This landmark legislation is where we first started to recognize that it is irrational and counterproductive to penalize young students who were often brought here as small children, who had worked hard and simply wanted the opportunity to attend our public universities.

We began to know these kids as “Dreamers:” brave, dedicated young people who simply wanted to normalize their existence in the only country they had ever known as home.  Smartly, our state and federal government both began to confer additional opportunities to Dreamers, including the opportunity for financial aid, deferred action from deportation, work visas and drivers’ licenses.

Many Dreamers have absolutely thrived in the face of extreme challenges — they’ve graduated from high school, fought for our country, attended college, even graduated law school and passed the bar. Then in early September, we learned by way of oral arguments in front of the California Supreme Court, that unless the state Legislature acted, those Dreamers would not have the opportunity to actually practice law. In the case of Sergio Garcia, we met a Dreamer who was brought here at 17 months old and had been approved, but was waiting, for a green card for over 14 years. He worked his way through college and law school, passed the bar on the first attempt and was found to be morally fit to practice law. He was actually sworn in as an attorney before the state realized it had to rescind the license a few weeks later.

Assembly Bill 1024 seeks to fix this problem by allowing the State of California the ability to grant these Dreamers — who have graduated from law school, passed the moral character inspection and passed the bar exam — a license to practice law. The bill passed the Legislature in the final week of session with broad, bipartisan support, and now sits on the Governor’s desk.

Many of us would prefer Congress to act on Comprehensive Immigration Reform with a realistic path to citizenship for the 11 million-plus immigrants in this country. But that just doesn’t seem to be happening on the near horizon, and we have already been waiting too long for these hard-working young people, who just desperately want to pursue a career in their field of study so that they can earn a living and pay taxes.

For me, this is also personal. My father came to this country as a farmworker. But, for the grace of God, I was born in San Diego County, just a few dozen miles north of the US-Mexico border.  As a result, when I graduated from UCLA School of Law and passed the bar, I never once had to consider that the state would deny me a license to practice. I am not a better person and am no more deserving than Sergio Garcia and the other Dreamers in his position.

Without the federal government’s help in fixing a terribly broken immigration system, there are actions we can take in California to make life more equitable for folks who are caught in between. That’s why I hope you will join me in asking Governor Brown to sign AB 1024.

Lorena Gonzalez serves in the California State Assembly as the representative for the 80th District, which includes Chula Vista, San Diego and National City.

On move-in weekend, I found myself at Target just like every other frazzled freshman. Even though I really had nothing much to buy, it was refreshing not to be drenched from the rain that gave us such a warm welcoming transition into our new lives. With no focus, I sauntered around the store and I happened on the beauty aisle.

If you know me, I naturally gravitate towards that area of Target (mostly for the pretty colors from the nail polish display). On my typical adventure in department store land, I noticed two sets of racks with shaving products, one for men and one for women.

You could tell because most of the cream and razors on the women’s side was some shade of pink, and everything on the the men’s side was navy blue or black. But if that didn’t make it obvious enough, one had a poster with a woman on it, and the other, a man.

I went on to notice that the side with the woman on the poster had the title “Body Care” next to it, while the poster with the man on it said “Grooming.” When I think of body care, I think of eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away; when I think of grooming, I think of a day at the spa.

These are two very different things: one is something that is essential to your health, the other sounds like something you choose to do to pamper yourself. But if I don’t shave am I not taking good care of my body’s health? I know men shave too but has any guy ever gotten the stink-eye for having a little fuzz on his armpit?

This wild pursuit of physical perfection has been around since Shakespearian times, where the trait most valued in a woman was sprezzatura: “effortless grace.” It’s kind of sad that we haven’t progressed much since the Medieval ages, where cleanliness and body care really meant having the “decency” to never be caught off guard at our most human moments.

We still have to be insanely beautiful without ever revealing the amount of effort we put into it. It’s absurd that even our natural body functions are socialized to be hidden, such as satirized in the viral YouTube commercial “Hot Girls Don’t Poop.”

I feel like our fixation on beauty in this culture has made it impossible for us to take ourselves and our real feminine issues seriously. How many people watched that “Dove Real Beauty Sketches” video and thought it was beautiful and profound?

In the video, a few women are asked to describe themselves to a forensic artist, who draws two pictures: one based on the women’s self-perception, and the second based on descriptions made by a sample group of friendly strangers.

The faces in the first set of pictures were noticeably less attractive (by conventional standards) than the second set of pictures. I was surprised that so many people thought this was an enlightening study, because personally I was distressed with the whole premise of it.

One of the women in the study remarked, “I should be more grateful of my natural beauty. It impacts the choices and friends that we make, the jobs we apply for, how we treat our children. It impacts everything. It couldn’t be more critical to your happiness.”

Although, I fully support embracing your natural beauty I can’t help but disagree that our impression of our own beauty is the most powerful force behind every single decision we make in our lives. It’s disturbing to think that our quality of life depends on how beautiful society deems us to be; what’s more troubling is that a lot women are fully convinced that our beauty is the most important element of our identity.

I’m tired of girls tearing themselves apart over this. I’m tired of my friends saying they refuse to be in a picture because they are going to look ugly in it. I want more women to embrace their valuable personality traits such as being smart, funny and compassionate.

At the same time, I want woman to not feel ashamed for their interests in fashion and makeup and Seventeen magazine. The same society that forces us to obsess over our appearance shouldn’t shame us if we take a genuine interest in it.

If you’re sexy and you know it, and want to talk about it, email MONA SUNDARA at msundarav@ucdavis.edu

Barack Obama is a socialist. Let that sink in for a minute.

Whether you agree or disagree, you have to admit that this is a pretty loaded phrase. Levying such harsh accusations against an individual has become a scathing insult of the worst kind, akin to calling someone the spawn of Satan. It has reached the point where people can hardly differentiate between socialism and communism. “That socialist Obama just wants to take my money and give it to the freeloaders,” some say, as if taxes on the wealthy were a sin worthy of the ninth circle of Hell.

What often logically follows this is some groundless but stirring claim that he wants to take our “freedom” away. After all, America was founded on the principles of liberty, was it not? How dare anyone take our rights like that! That’s just un-American!

Freedom, like socialism, is another loaded word that will always elicit a response even if it has little factual basis. It sounds nice in theory, yet freedom, like most things, must be kept in check. Look at it this way: if America were a totally free country, should I be allowed to murder whomever I please with no ramifications?

The answer is no, and that is why we have a legal system in the first place: to govern people insofar as it is necessary to do so. In order to live in a stable society, I have to compromise my right to kill people.

To be clear, I’m not against freedom as an idea. I believe in freedom of expression as most people do. What I do not believe in is the type of freedom that allows billionaires to store money in offshore tax havens.

Next time you hear someone campaigning on a platform of “liberty,” be wary. The same liberty that affords you your freedom of speech one day may allow a corporation to scam you out of your hard-earned money the next.

So I’ll repeat: Barack Obama is a socialist. You know who else was a socialist? One of the most beloved presidents in history, Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower. Marginal tax rates on the top bracket hit their all time high of 92 percent under Eisenhower, and he undertook perhaps the most ambitious social spending program in history. Yet no one ever refers to him as a socialist, because using such an epithet in reference to him is practically blasphemy.

This rhetoric is a double-edged sword. Let me play devil’s advocate for a minute. Many zealots on my own side of the political spectrum throw out the word “capitalism” as if it were Nazism. I’ve been in conversations where a single drop of the C-bomb could silence the room.

As a progressive, I firmly believe well-regulated capitalism is the most efficient economic structure mankind has ever devised, and it makes me cringe when people assume capitalism is terrible without having studied basic economics. The fact is that we live in a mixed economy; that is, capitalism and socialism coexist. So few people realize this, however, that they continue to tear apart these economic systems — even when these systems are working successfully right under their noses.

Buzzwords have made their way into other realms of politics, too. Perhaps the most notable example is the ongoing “pro-life” vs. “pro-choice” debate. Those against abortion artfully word their stance in a way that implies their opponents are anti-life, and those in favor of abortion suggest that their opponents are anti-choice.

Of course, neither of these accusations is true, but the phrasing is so powerful that it instantly demonizes the other side. If you believe a fetus is a human being, then great. That does not entitle you to call your opponents baby-killers. Conversely, if you believe in a woman’s right to an abortion, that’s awesome. That still doesn’t mean you can refer to your opponents as woman-haters.

America has enjoyed success for hundreds of years because of the ideals upon which it was founded: life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom to choose, general welfare of the people, you name it.

Republicans and Democrats alike believe in these principles, we just happen to interpret them differently. So, next time you want to use what seems like a harsh word against a political opponent, remember: we live in a free, well-governed, capitalist, socialist, pro-life, pro-choice, country. And a great country it is.

If you still think ZACH MOORE is dirty communist scum, you can tell him so at zcmoore@ucdavis.edu.