culture-society-history

Parades and Second-Line Shootings

May 13, 2013
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This Mother’s Day weekend, we attended our first Art Car Parade since moving to Houston. It is a once-a-year welcome addition of color, music and a carnival-like atmosphere to the otherwise sterile streets of this city. Tame as the parade was parade watchers’ reaction to a pretty funky spectacle was compared with the level of [...]

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6000-Year-Old Texas

January 22, 2013

Alas, the horrible creationist Louisiana Science & Education Act (SB70) wasn’t repealed, but the Orleans Parish School Board doesn’t want anything to do with it. On December 18, 2012, the board voted unanimously  to prohibit the use of any textbooks that include revisionist history (as in Texas) or creationism, including intelligent design (ID). They also [...]

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Revisiting Rand A Year After Michael Hart’s Passing

September 6, 2012
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One year ago today, Michael Hart died. This weekend, at his home in Urbana, Benjamin Stone and Nadja Robot will sell all of his books. A beautiful personal library of thousands upon thousands of books, that were once pieces of others’ collections and those before them, comes apart but will be absorbed by so many. [...]

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Ask “Why?” Not “What?”

August 26, 2012

Citizen Philosophers: Teaching Justice In Brazil The official rationale for the 2008 [Brazilian] law is that philosophy “is necessary for the exercise of citizenship.” The law—the world’s largest-scale attempt to bring philosophy into the public sphere—thus represents an experiment in democracy. Among teachers at least, many share Ribeiro’s hope that philosophy will provide a path [...]

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Acadian 1

May 30, 2012

“A mountain-building event that affected an area from present-day New York to Newfoundland during the Devonian Period (416 to 359.2 million years ago).” – Encyclopedia Britannica *** “The son of Hermes and a nymph, Pan was half goat, half man who lived in the forests of Arcadia [in Peloponnese) surrounded by satyrs and maenads." - [...]

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No News Is Not Always Good News

May 24, 2012

A conversation I find myself in more often of late. Me: “What is the purpose of this institution?” Answer: “To collect data / publish an independent, daily newspaper / offer the best in healthcare.” Me: “So, why were all the necessary data for analysis not collected / was a profitable Pulitzer-winning and much-needed city newspaper [...]

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Of Booth Babes and Female (Geo)scientists

May 4, 2012

For posterity and your convenience, I’ve storified the recent discussion a bunch of us geoscientists on Twitter had that started with conference “booth babes” and inevitably led to the advances of and roadblocks for female (geo)scientists. Use at will. (Oh, has anyone figured out how to edit a Storify? Can you?) Tweet

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The Chicks Are Angry, Part 1

April 17, 2012
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As an (over-)analytical, career, married and childless woman progressing in a mostly desirable career path, I feel compelled to dissect some of the legislation coming out of the escalating Republican War on Women. First, we frame. Is the goal here marginalizing women because God said Men First!, increasing what is believed to be a dwindling [...]

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