The sails are red, but the sailboat is named Golden Rule. And the peace sign is not just decoration, it represents the boat's mission. Veterans For Peace uses the boat to press the case for the end of nuclear weapons. The boat itself is a recreation of a boat that sank nearly ten years ago, and its creation is the subject of the documentary film "The Rebirth of the Golden Rule," showing soon in the Rogue Valley.

Working to protect land, and the creatures that live upon it, can be hard in the best of circumstances. Those do not exist in war-torn Afghanistan, but the conservation work goes on anyway. Biologist Alex Dehgan took a team there to help protect the environment, and they went in unarmed. Dehgan tells the story in his book The Snow Leopard Project: And Other Adventures in Warzone Conservation .

A city slogan can tell you a little about a city. Like Albany, Oregon, "the grass seed capital of the world." Or Chico's "where everything grows." Even Yuba City's "prune capital." But what else you got? As the Redding Chamber of Commerce insists, cities need more than slogans and logos. So the Chamber and partners embarked on the City Identity Project , to help Redding and its people define what it is that makes Redding, Redding.

Anyone familiar with the Westboro Baptist Church and its protests will immediately recognize the title of a new play about a fictional similar church. "God Hates You" is the play by Emily Dendinger. It concerns a young member of the church who realizes, through social media, that her view of the world is not the only one. The play gets a reading in Ashland tonight (January 25th), sponsored by the Ashland New Plays Festival .

Both the Britt Festival and the Siskiyou Music Project are dedicated to music and music education. So it's only natural they join forces to bring some notable musical acts to town. The Bohemian Trio visited high schools in the region and played a concert on piano, cello, and saxophone. And we get to visit with the trio in the studio as the members finish up their residency.

If the state spends more on public goods, are the people who live there happier? Yes, in short . Political scientist Patrick Flavin at Baylor University studies 40 years of public data and happiness surveys, and they match pretty well: more spending by the state on public goods like parks and roads parallels people reporting satisfaction in those states. But there's a lot of ground to explore in what does and does not constitute a public good.

Maybe it's just a better term than "lecture." Whatever the key to success, TED talks have caught on all over the world. We even have a "TED Radio Hour" on our weekend schedule. The smaller, more local TEDx talks are also popular, and will soon include a Southern Oregon version, TEDx Ashland . The talks will fill half a day on May 20th, but speaker proposals are due by Valentine's Day, February 14th.

Whether you think the term is fairly applied or not, the term "illegal alien" certainly chafes some of the recipients. Beyond the term is the reality of why people risk legal action and occasionally life and limb to remain in a country where they have no official status. Here's where immigration lawyer J.J. Mullen Sepúlveda steps in. He works at the Immigration Law Clinic at the University of California-Davis, and he has many stories to tell. His first book is No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney on

One in eight students in an Oregon survey reported being pressured into unwanted sexual activity . But the incidents are not evenly distributed across the landscape. For example, Douglas County shows a higher rate of sexual coercion than Jackson and Josephine Counties. A new set of maps from the Oregon Health Authority and the Oregon Department of Education show the information graphically. The Sexual Violence Prevention Resource Map is meant to assist in lowering the rates of sexual coercion.

California state government has gone big into energy-efficiency programs and is resolved to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The City of Arcata is going a step or two further. Arcata recently enacted new energy standards for buildings that are more stringent than the state requirements, at least for now.