courtesy of washingtonpost.com

There’s no question that the Russian invasion of Crimea has been an extreme turn of events.

But how would you say it compares to Hitler’s aggressive expansions in 1930s Europe?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and early frontrunner for the 2016 Democratic nomination for president, thinks the comparison is valid. Speaking in Los Angeles Tuesday night, Clinton said:

Now if this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 30s. All the… ethnic Germans, the Germans by ancestry who were in places like Czechoslovakia and Romania and other places, Hitler kept saying they’re not being treated right. I must go and protect my people and that’s what’s gotten everybody so nervous.

Regardless of the appropriateness of the comparison between Putin and Hitler, it seems to come from a long tradition of American leaders comparing foreign rivals to Nazi Germany, as the Washington Post documented.

President Johnson on Vietnam:

Nor would surrender in Vietnam bring peace, because we learned from Hitler at Munich that success only feeds the appetite of aggression. The battle would be renewed in one country and then another country, bringing with it perhaps even larger and crueler conflict, as we have learned from the lessons of history.

President Clinton on Yugoslavia:

What if someone had listened to Winston Churchill and stood up to Adolf Hitler earlier? How many people’s lives might have been saved?

Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld on Iraq:

Think of the prelude to World War II. Think of all the countries that said, ‘Well, we don’t have enough evidence.’ Mein Kampf’ has been written. Hitler had indicated what he intended to do. Maybe he won’t attack. Maybe he won’t do this or that. There were millions of people dead because of the miscalculations.

President Obama on Syria:

I’m not drawing an analogy to World War II, other than to say when London was getting bombed, it was profoundly unpopular, both in Congress and around the country, to help the British. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing to do.

Do you think the current situation is reminiscent of the 1930s? Or are we suffering from a nauseating number of Nazi comparisons?

A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

The Indian Sanitary Pad Revolutionary
This story of an Indian man’s obsessive quest to develop a less expensive sanitary napkin must be read to be believed.
—Linda Lowenthal, copy chief

Critical Social Justice scoffs in the face of snow delays — we are unstoppable. Two of the CSJ events that were postponed on Monday have been rescheduled for next Monday, March 10th. Read on for more details and we hope to see everyone there to continue engaging with these important social justice issues!

Critical Social Justice 101 – 4-5:30pm in UC Ballroom Lounge – What is critical social justice? What challenges and possibilities exist for social justice activism? And what does that mean within an academic setting? Find out more at this roundtable led by Dr. Kate Drabinski (Gender + Women’s Studies), Lisa Gray (the Mosaic Center), student and activist Crystal Ogar, and Dr. Joby Taylor (Shriver Center). (Event sponsored by: Critical Social Justice) Facebook myUMBC 

Just Kids: The Automatic Prosecution of Youth as Adults in Maryland – 7-9pm in UC 310 – Following a screening of the new documentary The Truth About Our Youth, Just Kids Youth Leaders Kevin J. and Richard R. and Assistant Youth Organizer Jabriera H. will share their personal stories to bring statistics to life and dispel misconceptions about youth who are charged as adults. Learn more about this important issue here. (Event sponsored by: The Just Kids Partnership, a collaboration between Community Law in Action and the Public Justice Center) Facebook myUMBC

Every year the President of the United States of America creates presidential proclamation to officially announce March as Irish-American Heritage Month. In the proclamation the President calls upon Americans to "observe this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities and programs." On February 28, 2014, President Barack Obama released the presidential proclamation for Irish-American Month, 2014. In it, he touched on the shared heritage and ideals of Ireland and America shown through the "many threads of green woven into red, white and blue." Irish-American Heritage month coincides with the well-known Irish national holiday, St. Patrick's Day, which is on March 17. 

Image source: http://deannelson.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Irish_Flag12-300x225.jpg

Karan Odom and Kevin Omland, biological sciences, recently made headlines around the world with a Nature Communications article that challenges the assumption that bird song is an exclusively male trait resulting from sexual selection.

Odom, a Ph.D. student in Omland’s lab, led a team of researchers from UMBC, the University of Melbourne in Australia, Leiden University in the Netherlands and the Australian National University in this groundbreaking work. The researchers completed an extensive global study of songbirds and found that 71% of songbirds surveyed had female song. They also mapped the traits of female song onto an evolutionary tree, which revealed that the common ancestor of modern songbirds also had female song.

These findings raise questions about Darwin’s understanding of bird song. Mike Webster, director of the Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, explains, “The standard thinking is that competition for mates has led to the evolution of bright colors and loud songs in males, whereas selection for avoidance of predators has led to females that are cryptically colored and relatively quiet. This study by Odom et al. stands this view on its head by showing that singing females are actually quite widespread, and also that females sang in the ancestor of all modern songbirds.”

Odom says this research opens the door for exploring alternative evolutionary scenarios and processes that Darwin might not have considered with regard to the evolution of bird song.

Coverage of the study has already appeared in outlets from the BBC World Service Newshour [jump to 48:20], to Germany’s Der Spiegel, to Australia’s ABC Radio National. Additional news links are included below, and we will continue adding links as new coverage appears.

Additional Coverage:
Female Song Birds Turn Darwin’s Theory Upside Down (WYPR)
Not Just Males: Common Ancestor Of Modern Songbirds Had Female Song (Science 2.0)
Sing a song of bird phylogeny (ScienceNews)
Prominence of Female Birdsong Challenges Evolutionary Theory (Nature World News)
Bird song – it’s not just a male gig (Phys.org)
Birdsong is not all about sexual selection: Female birds sing much more often than previously thought (Science Daily)
Female Song Birds Do Sing And Charles Darwin Got It Wrong (Business Insider)
Delightful duets prove Darwin slightly off-key over birdsong (Canberra Times)
Female birds sing songs as sweetly (Australian Life Scientist)
According to the study of ANU: Female birds song is different from males (Periscope Post)
Darwin wrong about the birds and bees (The Times)
Female birds rival males in bird song: ANU study (Xinhua)
Vogelgesang ist keine Männerdomäne (Die Welt and Berliner Morgenpost)
Bird Song Almost as Common in Female Birds as in Males: Study (Newspoint Africa)
Female birds sing songs: Was Charles Darwin wrong? (Zee News)
Bird song not exclusively male trait, reports say (The Hindu)
Evolution: Female songbirds make themselves heard (Nature Asia)
Keine “Männerdomäne” – Auch Vogelweibchen singen (Schweizerbauer)
Ganz Was Neues: Vogel Weibchen Können Singen (Taz.de)
Viele Vogelweibchen singen (Weser Kurier)
Emanzipierte Vogelweibchen (Achtung, Wolf!)
Vogel tjilpt om gebied te verdedigen (en dus niet om vrouwtjes te lokken) (Volkskrant)
Auch die Weibchen singen (Wiener Zeitung)
A tojók is rendszeresen énekelnek (Index)
Veel vrouwtjesvogels zingen ook (NRC)
Vrouwelijke zangvogels hebben veel meer noten op hun zang dan gedacht (Scientias)
Vrouwelijke zangvogel zingt vaker dan gedacht (NU)
Vrouwtjesvogels zingen veel vaker dan gedacht (University of Leiden)
Vrouwtjesvogels blijken toch te zingen (Wetenschap 24)
Weibchen trällern meist so schön wie Männchen (Deutschlandfunk)