Tom Williams

We’ll address issues in Higher Education on Tuesday’s Access Utah.  How did Utah’s colleges and universities fare at the Utah legislature? How best to plan for the change in age requirements for LDS missionaries? What does the future of higher education look like? Will we see more online classes, video conferencing and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs?) Will these new methods of teaching and learning displace traditional face-to-face classrooms? Should they?

Mark Lynas, author of “The God Species: Saving the Planet in the Age of Humans” joined us for the hour on Wednesday.   He says we need to embrace Nuclear Power and Genetically Modified Organisms as parts of any successful portfolio of solutions to Climate Change.  Many fellow environmentalists disagree. 

Mark Lynas is the author of a number of books, including The God Species, and is Tom Williams guest for the hour. We discuss Lynas' idea that we must master human technology, like nuclear power, to save the world from ourselves. 

When USA Today invited their readers to send in questions about fracking for Duke University professor Robert Jackson, readers responded with such questions as: “What happens to the chemicals that are left behind after the fracking process? What is the risk to well water? It’s my understanding that fracking uses massive amounts of water? Does fracking cause earthquakes?”  

According to www.domesticviolencestatistics.org every 9 seconds in the U. S. a woman is assaulted or beaten; domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined; and nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a breakup. 

What should government’s role be in promoting our health? New York City’s mandated downsizing of sodas was recently blocked by judge.  In Utah, HCR2, which urges the state to address obesity, overwhelmingly passed the 2013 legislature. Some governments are adding fatty foods and violent video games to the traditional list of goods, like tobacco and alcohol, subject to “sin taxes.”

Governor Gary Herbert will join us on Thursday’s Access Utah.  We’ll ask him about Medicaid expansion, guns, the possible prison move, air quality, the economy, and anything else you’d like us to talk about.  We’ll also ask the governor if there are any bills he may veto.  Later in the program Sen. Todd Weiler R-Woods Cross joins us to talk about his proposal that we look at changing Attorney General from an elected to an appointed office. Finally, we’ll get a Democratic reaction to the recently-concluded legislative session from Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck D-Salt Lake City.

The book by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein: “It’s Even Worse than It Looks--How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism” caused quite a stir when it was published last year. Mann and Ornstein said that the dysfunction in our government is the result of a mismatch between increasingly parliamentary-style parties and our constitutional separation of powers.  They pinned more of the blame for increasing polarization on Republicans.  Their proposed solutions were provocative as well, including mandatory attendance at the polls, changing the political culture through restoring public shame, and restoration of full disclosure to campaign financing. 

Norman Adler is University Professor of Psychology at Yeshiva University in New York City. He will give two lectures at USU on Wednesday for the USU Religious Studies Program and the USU College of Humanities & Social Sciences titled: “Are We Wired to Believe: A Bio-psychologist Looks at God & the Brain, Religion & Science?” and “What Happens if ‘Big Questions’ & College Collide: Faith & Reason on the American College campus today—What are the Challenges?”   

Our guest for the hour today is Emil Kerenji, an applied research scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.