Whitney Houston Tragedy and Thoughts About the War on Drugs
Whitney Houston’s Death Is A Reminder of the Failure of the War On Drugs.
To be clear, we do not yet know whether the tragic death of Whitney Houston is directly related to drugs, alcohol, or something else. What we know is rather little: that she was found underwater in a bathtub, not breathing, and no one who made the attempt was able to resuscitate her.
But whether she was or wasn’t high, the fact remains that upon the announcement of her death, the great gob of people we call “Society” leapt to the conclusion that she had overdosed, drawing attention once again to her troubled life and long battle against drug addiction, which by all accounts began after her marriage to Bobby Brown. While we won’t know, probably for several weeks pending toxicology tests, how Ms. Houston died, we do know this much: that her life and career were dramatically altered, marred and possibly shortened by her experience with illegal drugs. It’d be tempting at this point to take the stance that this tragedy is a prime example of why drugs should be illegal, but given that they are and have been illegal for decades yet were utterly impotent to prevent this and other similar tragedies, perhaps it’s more useful to start thinking a little differently: specifically, about how and why we should bring the “War On Drugs” to an END.
No English? No problem!
If you’d like to show someone who doesn’t read English some of the amazing accomplishments of the Heroic Women we highlight here, have we got an update for you. If you look to the right of this post (go ahead–I’ll wait) you’ll find a little box in the sidebar, with the heading “Translate!” Guess what it does? That’s right, it translates the whole darn site, using the pretty-darn-good tools offered for free by Google’s Translation API. It’s not perfect, but hey, sometimes you just need to get a little closer to a native tongue, and this might make the difference you need! Let us know if it helps you!
Site News: Performance, Facebook & Disqus!
We’re happy to announce that we’ve made some substantial changes to the “back end” of Eve is My Hero today, resulting in some substantial performance improvements. You’ve probably noticed the sluggishness of the site recently, and today I finally had time to do something about it.
Additionally, I’ve also performed the upgrade to our Facebook page. I hope you’ll join us over there, Like us and begin to share the word about the site as we drive forward with our mission to highlight the many courageous and heroic women who make positive changes to the world we live in and overcome gender stereotypes to do so.
Last but not least, we’ve added support for the worldwide standard Disqus commenting system to the site. That’s right, if you’ve got Disqus account, you can just sign in to the commenting system with that and comment away on Eve Is My Hero, no need to register a local account!
Registration is Now Open!
Good news! We’ve progressed to the point of being able to now allow open registrations. If you have something to say or want to comment on something we say here, please feel free to join the fray! If you’re interested in blogging on this site, please also register an account and let us know!
And We’re Live
Welcome to the official awakening of Eve is My Hero. Starting today we’ll begin producing a series of articles highlighting the many women (and yes, men where appropriate too, we’re equal opportunity admirers of courage here) who have made efforts to do great things in the world. Some of these will be women who labor in the great cause of human liberty. Some will be thinkers in other areas–science, medicine, technology, art–all of which provide great examples of just how great women can be and how highly they can achieve, showing the world once and for all that yes, women are every bit equal to men, and should be recognized as such.
Onward, then!
Under Construction!
If you’ve stumbled onto Eve is My Hero, congratulations, you’re among the first! We’ll soon begin operation and will have more information for you when we officially launch. Until then, please bookmark us and check back in a week or so!
Overheard