Immigration reform may be a politically charged subject, but ultimately, says the head of America's Unitarian churches, it should be seen as a moral issue.

Peter Morales was elected to a four year term as president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations in 2009, but he had been speaking out in support of immigrant rights well before that. So it was not exactly a surprise when he joined in a huge protest against Arizona's harsh anti-immigration law, SB 1070, and wound up getting arrested.

The reason he was in Arizona at that time, Morales explains, was to gauge whether to proceed with the Unitarians' plan to hold their annual conference in Phoenix next summer, or to join in the boycott of the state in economic protest against SB 1070.

In the meantime, Morales continues to advocate for a humane and comprehensive resolution of this country's immigration issues.

Brien Seely has a vision for the future of personal aviation, and it doesn't include gasoline. Iit has been getting tested in Santa Rosa this week.

The Green Flight Challenge initially attracted 14 teams, says Brien Seely, president of the CAFE Foundation, but through a series of hurdles and performance standards they each were required to meet, the field was narrowed considerably.

Only one of the final four contestants is powered by conventional fossil fuels. But Seely explains that its unconventional design enables an impressive fuel economy.

In order to meet and exceed the dual benchmarks set for the competition, Seely observes that the competing aircraft have been developed using a wide variety of new technologies.

 It wasn't just the islands of the Caribbean that felt the effects of Christopher Columbus's arrival. The consequences of his "discovery" were felt down through the decades in Europe, China and Africa, as well as the Americas.

 Charles C. Mann's previous book, 1491, New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, summarized nearly 40 years of research and studies into the native societies that had flourished here for centuries before the first European contact. That impressive, and highly acclaimed volume, published in 2005, was initially intended to be the introductory chapters to his new volume, now released as a sort of sequel. 1493, Uncovering the New World that Columbus Created, looks far beyond the popular, incomplete stories of infectious diseases that decimated native populations and exotic plants (coffee, tobacco) that were embraced by Europe's elites. In tracing the intermingling of human populations between the continents, he notes that for decades, Africans far outnumbered Europeans in the Americas.

Even when examining the role of disease in this history, Mann reports that one of the most devastating imports to the New World was an insect that arrived along with the African slaves

Cortez and other Spanish explorers scoured the Americas in search of gold. But it was the silver they found that accelerated the changing course of international commerce.

An estimated 60,000 men and women in our armed forces have been directly affected by the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. But that may be just the beginning.

By the time that Congress finally took action to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, they were playing catch-up with public opinion across America, says Steve Estes, an SSU history professor who has studied and written about gays in the military

The percentage of gays and lesbians in the armed forces is generally thought to match their representation in the population at large, but Estes says that does not mean they are evenly distributed between the four service branches.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell was a legacy of the early years of the Clinton administration. But Estes observes that even the president soon came to see it as one of his biggest failures.

President Truman famously integrated the American military with the stroke of a pen, signing an executive order in 1948. That, says Estes, was a far bolder and more sweeping change than the repeal of discrimination against homosexuals last week.