5 Inspiring News Stories That Prove The World's Not Ending

Although it's probably shocking, it's not exactly news. Since crime peaked in the early 1990s, it's been dropping year after year. From 1993 to 2017, for example, violent crime dropped 49%, according to the FBI numbers -- 74% according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Property crime has also dropped -- 50% according to the FBI and 69% (nice) according to the BJS. If it seems like those guys should be talking to each other a little more, the reason for the discrepancy is that crimes often don't get reported to the police (the source of the FBI numbers), but people are more likely to fess up to being a victim when the BJS calls.

So how can politicians go on TV and claim that the U.S. has become a free-for-all of criminal depravity? Well, we don't mean to blow your mind here, but often they're lying. Other times they're cherry-picking data, pointing to small, short-term upticks that are outliers in the long term. They do that because they know that scared people vote harder than relaxed people, and there's no better way to get votes from scared people than by promising to make the big bad monsters go away.

Never mind the fact that it doesn't appear to matter who's in charge; crime rates have kept going down regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans were in power at the time. The strategy works because people don't know that we're living in arguably the safest period of history ever, which is why poll after poll after poll shows that American fear of crime has stayed the same or even risen as actual crime plummets. Legally, we can't advise you to go unlock all your doors and put a "Come at me, burglars" sign on your front lawn, but we can't stop you either.

But some countries have started to devise solutions. Who do you think spearheaded the movement to provide free menstrual products to impoverished students? The U.S.? The UK? Shame on you again. It was actually Uganda, where 61% of menstruating students miss at least one day of school every year, thanks to insufficient uterine upholstery. They built a whole factory that has produced 2.8 million cheap and reusable menstrual pads for their students so far.

Most countries that have followed in their footsteps haven't had to go that far, because they suddenly found money to throw at the problem. In 2018, New York passed a law requiring all schools from sixth grade up to provide free tampons and pads to their students, and Scotland, Wales, England, and British Columbia all dedicated millions of dollars to do the same. Even Seoul has launched a program to install machines that dispense free menstrual products in public buildings, and that's really saying something. In many Asian countries, period talk is almost as taboo as it is here.

Sea turtles first appeared on the endangered species list in 1978, after the human hunger for turtle meat nearly drove them to extinction. That's not a joke. There are people -- not anyone we know -- who can't get enough of turtle burgers. Whatever the case, by 2002, an expedition to track sea turtle population growth found more than 3,400 turtles over about 4,500 miles. If you don't feel like doing the math, that's a buttload of turtles. In more remote areas around the uninhabited islands of Hawaii, they found an average of 3.62 green sea turtles per kilometer. Absolutely lousy with turtles.

Valverde, Holzwart/Springer PublishingAnd you know what that means: loggerhead po' boys are back on the menu! Or we can enjoy these majestic animals. Whatevs.

Meanwhale, scientists at the University of California Santa Cruz recently analyzed population growth in humpback whales over a period of several years, and found evidence of some serious humpbacking. On average, the team found 50% of the female whales off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula to be pregnant. At its peak, 70% of the female whales were pregnant. Researchers documented similar trends in Australia.

What did we do? Send down some Marvin Gaye and cinnamon lube? Not exactly (and this is where it stops being entirely good news). Conservation efforts and bans on hunting these animals have helped boost their populations, but so has climate change. Because winter has gotten shorter in their environments, they get an extra month or two per year to gather food, giving them the time and energy to enjoy each other's company a little more. That might not be great overall, but at least "global whale infestation" is one of the more wholesome potential apocalypses.

As for the sharks, a change to the definition of "finning" and a ban that includes removing their fins on both land and sea have greatly contributed to the reduction of the disturbing practice. The sharks probably wouldn't feel great about us having to create a specific law against chopping off parts of their bodies, but we can't apologize, since they don't speak human. Hopefully, they appreciate the gesture.

If this article put a smile on your face, you can do the same for Mike Bedard by following him on Twitter. Jack R. Loun has a lame little writing blog if you want to check it out, for some reason. Be sure to check out some of Michael Battaglino's other work if you enjoyed this article.

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