From the Science Creative Quarterly -
A DIALOGUE WITH SARAH, AGED 3: IN WHICH IT IS SHOWN THAT IF YOUR DAD IS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR, ASKING “WHY” CAN BE DANGEROUS
by W. Stephen McNeil
http://www.scq.ubc.ca/quarterly011/0101mcneil.html?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vox%20Sentences%206/13/16&utm_term=Vox%20Newsletter%20All
Monday, June 13, 2016
Stamp Collecting
An excerpt from Atlas Obscura -
“The stamp collecting community basically is synonymous with old white guys,” says Don Neal, the newsletter Editor in Chief at ESPER (Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections). ESPER, founded in 1988 and named after its creator, Esper G. Hayes, set out to change that limiting definition. Hayes, a stamp collector, met the black Olympian Jesse Owens a stamp show in the ‘70s, where she waited in line for his autograph. They were the only two black people at that show. After a solemn handshake, she pledged to Owens that she would do something to help African-Americans in the philatelic community.
In reaction to Owen’s death in 1980, Hayes made good on that promise: ESPER’s global society is now 28 years old and 300 members strong. It hosts booths at stamp conventions around the country, supports youth organizations, convenes social events and provides a network for African Americans in philately.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/want-to-make-america-more-inclusive-start-with-stamps
“The stamp collecting community basically is synonymous with old white guys,” says Don Neal, the newsletter Editor in Chief at ESPER (Ebony Society of Philatelic Events and Reflections). ESPER, founded in 1988 and named after its creator, Esper G. Hayes, set out to change that limiting definition. Hayes, a stamp collector, met the black Olympian Jesse Owens a stamp show in the ‘70s, where she waited in line for his autograph. They were the only two black people at that show. After a solemn handshake, she pledged to Owens that she would do something to help African-Americans in the philatelic community.
 | ||
| ESPER members at a 25th anniversary event in 2013. (Photo courtesy of Don Neal) |
In reaction to Owen’s death in 1980, Hayes made good on that promise: ESPER’s global society is now 28 years old and 300 members strong. It hosts booths at stamp conventions around the country, supports youth organizations, convenes social events and provides a network for African Americans in philately.
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/want-to-make-america-more-inclusive-start-with-stamps
Summer Camps
An excerpt from The Root -
10 STEM Summer Camps for Students of Color
Summer camps across the country are boasting access to science, technology, engineering and math for students of color. BY:
1. Black Girls Code Summer Camp
About the curriculum and experience: Day camps provide 10 days of hands-on, project-based instruction in which girls engage in tech instruction. The camps run for six hours a day and include lunch, breaks, community building, field trips and, of course, coding. No prior coding experience is required.
Camps offer a space where girls of color can learn computer science and coding principles in the company of other girls like themselves, along with mentorship from women they can see themselves becoming.
Age requirement: 11 to 14 years
Locations and dates (to register, click the links below):
- Washington, D.C.: June 27-July 12
- Los Angeles: July 18-29
- Chicago: July 18-22
- Boston: July 25-Aug. 5
- San Francisco Bay Area: Aug. 1-12
- New York City: Aug. 15-26
Registration for other cities to be shared soon and available here.
Cost: $300 for two-week camps in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York City, Boston and Washington, D.C., and $150 for one-week camp in Chicago. For all camps, a limited number of need-based scholarships will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis.
http://www.theroot.com/articles/lists/2016/06/10-stem-summer-camps-for-students-of-color/?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26
When You Love a Sport That Doesn't Love You
From RadioLab -
At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, so far as we know, no one else had ever done in all of human history.
Surya Bonaly was not your typical figure skater. She was black. She was athletic. And she didn’t seem to care about artistry. Her performances – punctuated by triple-triple jumps and other power moves – thrilled audiences around the world. Yet, commentators claimed she couldn’t skate, and judges never gave her the high marks she felt she deserved. But Surya didn’t accept that criticism. Unlike her competitors – ice princesses who hid behind demure smiles – Surya made her feelings known. And, at her final Olympic performance, she attempted one jump that flew in the face of the establishment, and marked her for life as a rebel.
This week, we lace up our skates and tell a story about loving a sport that doesn’t love you back, and being judged in front of the world according to rules you don’t understand.
http://latifnasser.com
 |
| Surya Bonaly (Photo Credit: Getty Images/Getty) |
At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one athlete pulled a move that, so far as we know, no one else had ever done in all of human history.
Surya Bonaly was not your typical figure skater. She was black. She was athletic. And she didn’t seem to care about artistry. Her performances – punctuated by triple-triple jumps and other power moves – thrilled audiences around the world. Yet, commentators claimed she couldn’t skate, and judges never gave her the high marks she felt she deserved. But Surya didn’t accept that criticism. Unlike her competitors – ice princesses who hid behind demure smiles – Surya made her feelings known. And, at her final Olympic performance, she attempted one jump that flew in the face of the establishment, and marked her for life as a rebel.
This week, we lace up our skates and tell a story about loving a sport that doesn’t love you back, and being judged in front of the world according to rules you don’t understand.
http://latifnasser.com
Sunday, June 12, 2016
A Father's Tribute to His Daughter
An excerpt from Essence 2009 -
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Veteran Journalist Ed Gordon: Daddy's Little Girl
I always wanted a child. But, like many men, when I dreamed of becoming a father I dreamed of having a boy, a "little man" to follow in my footsteps. I wanted a son who would make me the proudest father in the gym after he hit the game-winning basket and then gave me a wink as he took the arm of the finest girl in the school. Yes, I fell victim to this all-too-common male fantasy. It never occurred to me that I might have a little girl.
When I found out that my wife, Karen, was pregnant, I was elated and ready to take on the task of fatherhood. There was one snag: The ultrasound showed that the blessing would be delivered in pink, not blue. I told my brother, who was already a father to a daughter, that another girl was on the way. He said, "You're about to experience a love that is unmatched, a special unconditional love." He assured me I'd get over my macho desire for a boy. I took his assurance, but I couldn't help wondering why I had never dreamed of having a daughter.
Certainly I've always thought little girls are just as important as boys. I abhorred the practice in some societies of selling or killing infant girls because they weren't considered to be as valuable as boys, who might grow up to help support their families. But I started to wonder if, unknowingly, I might have absorbed the idea of girls as second-class citizens. Well, if I did, I was about to get an education.
Taylor Nicole Gordon, now 12, has brought an immeasurable joy to my life, and no little hardheaded boy could ever take her place. Since the day she was born, I have not once lamented the fact that I didn't have the next Michael Jordan or Colin Powell. In fact, I've embraced the idea that I may have the next Serena Williams or Condoleezza Rice.
I admit I might be more interested in taking a boy to football practice than I am in dropping Taylor off at her dance class. But I am just as sure that I couldn't have been more pleased the day she nailed a dance routine she'd been having trouble with. Just hours before her recital, we'd been in the basement as she tried, frustratingly, to master the routine, and I guaranteed her she could climb this mountain. That night my pride swelled as I watched my daughter onstage hit every move. I knew that my chest wouldn't have been any higher if she had just run an 80-yard touchdown.
http://www.essence.com/2009/03/24/veteran-journalist-ed-gordon-daddys-litt
http://www.essence.com/2016/06/06/ed-gordon-essay-daddys-still-got-you?xid=20160612
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Veteran Journalist Ed Gordon: Daddy's Little Girl
I always wanted a child. But, like many men, when I dreamed of becoming a father I dreamed of having a boy, a "little man" to follow in my footsteps. I wanted a son who would make me the proudest father in the gym after he hit the game-winning basket and then gave me a wink as he took the arm of the finest girl in the school. Yes, I fell victim to this all-too-common male fantasy. It never occurred to me that I might have a little girl.
When I found out that my wife, Karen, was pregnant, I was elated and ready to take on the task of fatherhood. There was one snag: The ultrasound showed that the blessing would be delivered in pink, not blue. I told my brother, who was already a father to a daughter, that another girl was on the way. He said, "You're about to experience a love that is unmatched, a special unconditional love." He assured me I'd get over my macho desire for a boy. I took his assurance, but I couldn't help wondering why I had never dreamed of having a daughter.
Certainly I've always thought little girls are just as important as boys. I abhorred the practice in some societies of selling or killing infant girls because they weren't considered to be as valuable as boys, who might grow up to help support their families. But I started to wonder if, unknowingly, I might have absorbed the idea of girls as second-class citizens. Well, if I did, I was about to get an education.
Taylor Nicole Gordon, now 12, has brought an immeasurable joy to my life, and no little hardheaded boy could ever take her place. Since the day she was born, I have not once lamented the fact that I didn't have the next Michael Jordan or Colin Powell. In fact, I've embraced the idea that I may have the next Serena Williams or Condoleezza Rice.
I admit I might be more interested in taking a boy to football practice than I am in dropping Taylor off at her dance class. But I am just as sure that I couldn't have been more pleased the day she nailed a dance routine she'd been having trouble with. Just hours before her recital, we'd been in the basement as she tried, frustratingly, to master the routine, and I guaranteed her she could climb this mountain. That night my pride swelled as I watched my daughter onstage hit every move. I knew that my chest wouldn't have been any higher if she had just run an 80-yard touchdown.
http://www.essence.com/2009/03/24/veteran-journalist-ed-gordon-daddys-litt
http://www.essence.com/2016/06/06/ed-gordon-essay-daddys-still-got-you?xid=20160612
A House Divided
Excerpts from the Huffington Post -
‘A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand’: Ken Burns’ Stanford Commencement Address
A mentor of mine, the journalist Tom Brokaw, recently said to me, “What we learn is more important than what we set out to do.” It’s tough out there, but so beautiful, too. And history—memory—can prepare you.
I have a searing memory of the summer of 1962, when I was almost nine, joining our family dinner on a hot, sweltering day in a tract house in a development in Newark, Delaware, and seeing my mother crying. She had just learned, and my brother and I had just been told, that she would be dead of cancer within six months. But that’s not what was causing her tears. Our inadequate health insurance had practically bankrupted us, and our neighbors—equally struggling working people—had taken up a collection and presented my parents with six crisp twenty dollar bills—$120 in total—enough to keep us solvent for more than a month. In that moment, I understood something about community and courage, about constant struggle and little victories. That hot June evening was a victory. And I have spent my entire professional life trying to resurrect small moments within the larger sweep of American history, trying to find our better angels in the most difficult of circumstances, trying to wake the dead, to hear their stories.
~~~~~~~~~~
You know, it is terribly fashionable these days to criticize the United States government, the institution Lincoln was trying to save, to blame it for all the ills known to humankind, and, my goodness, ladies and gentlemen, it has made more than its fair share of catastrophic mistakes. But you would be hard pressed to find—in all of human history—a greater force for good. From our Declaration of Independence to our Constitution and Bill of Rights; from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments to the Land Grant College and Homestead Acts; from the transcontinental railroad and our national parks to child labor laws, Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act; from the GI Bill and the interstate highway system to putting a man on the moon and the Affordable Care Act, the United States government has been the author of many of the best aspects of our public and personal lives. But if you tune in to politics, if you listen to the rhetoric of this election cycle, you are made painfully aware that everything is going to hell in a handbasket and the chief culprit is our evil government.
~~~~~~~~~~
For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn’t seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn’t seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and—they feel—powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that—as often happens on TV—a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can’t. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ken-burns/ken-burnss-commencement_b_10430204.html
Online Legal Aid
An excerpt from the Huffington Post -
Legal Aid With a Digital Twist
Matthew Stubenberg was a law student at the University of Maryland in 2010 when he spent part of a day doing expungements. It was a standard law school clinic where students learn by helping clients — in this case, he helped them to fill out and file petitions to erase parts of their criminal records. (Last week I wrote about the lifelong effects of these records, even if there is no conviction, and the expungement process that makes them go away.)
Although Maryland has a public database called Case Search, using that data to fill out the forms was tedious. “We spent all this time moving data from Case Search onto our forms,” Stubenberg said. “We spent maybe 30 seconds on the legal piece. Why could this not be easier? This was a problem that could be fixed by a computer.”
Stubenberg knew how to code. After law school, he set out to build software that automatically did that tedious work. By September 2014 he had a prototype for MDExpungement, which went live in January 2015. (The website is not pretty — Stubenberg is a programmer, not a designer.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/legal-aid-with-a-digital-twist.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ffixes&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0
Legal Aid With a Digital Twist
by Tina Rosenburg
Matthew Stubenberg was a law student at the University of Maryland in 2010 when he spent part of a day doing expungements. It was a standard law school clinic where students learn by helping clients — in this case, he helped them to fill out and file petitions to erase parts of their criminal records. (Last week I wrote about the lifelong effects of these records, even if there is no conviction, and the expungement process that makes them go away.)
Although Maryland has a public database called Case Search, using that data to fill out the forms was tedious. “We spent all this time moving data from Case Search onto our forms,” Stubenberg said. “We spent maybe 30 seconds on the legal piece. Why could this not be easier? This was a problem that could be fixed by a computer.”
Stubenberg knew how to code. After law school, he set out to build software that automatically did that tedious work. By September 2014 he had a prototype for MDExpungement, which went live in January 2015. (The website is not pretty — Stubenberg is a programmer, not a designer.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/01/opinion/legal-aid-with-a-digital-twist.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Ffixes&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection&_r=0
Possible Solution
An excerpt from Good -
An Unexpected Solution To Our Organ Donor Crisis
by Alicia Kennedy
There are currently more than 120,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, and every day, another 22 will die before they receive one. Procuring organ donations is a notoriously complicated and unpredictable business (for starters, something tragic usually needs to happen to a donor first), and can’t come close to meeting demand.
Researchers have been hard at work seeking a safer, more reliable way to increase the organ supply. For awhile, one method in particular seemed to be gaining traction: Figure out how to grow a human organ in an animal, then harvest it as needed. However, late last year, the government revoked all funding for this type of research in what the Mercury News called “a startling reversal of policy, reminiscent of the Bush administration's 2001 ban on embryonic stem cell funding.”
To many, the idea of human-animal hybrids (a.k.a. chimeras) provokes an unease straight out of our darkest sci-fi landscapes. But at UC-Davis, one reproductive biologist Pablo Ross persists in his exploration of the field despite a lack of funding. For now, Ross does something called “gene editing.” The process is more than a little reminiscent of Frankenstein: First, he takes a pig embryo and deactivates the gene necessary for developing a pig pancreas. Then, a few days later, he adds in human stem cells to grow a human pancreas instead.
https://www.good.is/articles/pigs-as-organ-factories
An Unexpected Solution To Our Organ Donor Crisis
by Alicia Kennedy
There are currently more than 120,000 Americans waiting for a life-saving organ transplant, and every day, another 22 will die before they receive one. Procuring organ donations is a notoriously complicated and unpredictable business (for starters, something tragic usually needs to happen to a donor first), and can’t come close to meeting demand.
Researchers have been hard at work seeking a safer, more reliable way to increase the organ supply. For awhile, one method in particular seemed to be gaining traction: Figure out how to grow a human organ in an animal, then harvest it as needed. However, late last year, the government revoked all funding for this type of research in what the Mercury News called “a startling reversal of policy, reminiscent of the Bush administration's 2001 ban on embryonic stem cell funding.”
To many, the idea of human-animal hybrids (a.k.a. chimeras) provokes an unease straight out of our darkest sci-fi landscapes. But at UC-Davis, one reproductive biologist Pablo Ross persists in his exploration of the field despite a lack of funding. For now, Ross does something called “gene editing.” The process is more than a little reminiscent of Frankenstein: First, he takes a pig embryo and deactivates the gene necessary for developing a pig pancreas. Then, a few days later, he adds in human stem cells to grow a human pancreas instead.
https://www.good.is/articles/pigs-as-organ-factories
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Sherman for President
An excerpt from the Huffington Post -
Richard Sherman Wants Billionaires To Pay For Their Own Damn Stadiums
Sherman said that’d be a top priority if he ever gets a desk in the Oval Office.
By Juliet Spies-Gans
Thinking on his feet and improvising what he’d want his campaign slogan to be — he settled on “Make America the place you want to raise your kids” — Sherman put forth what he deemed to be a “pretty ingenious plan for our economy”: make the rich pay for their own toys.
“I’d get us out of this deficit,” he told Clayton. “I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums pay for them. That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-sherman-billionaires-stadium_us_57597ff6e4b0e39a28acb20f?ir=Black+Voices§ion=us_black-voices&utm_hp_ref=black-voices
Richard Sherman Wants Billionaires To Pay For Their Own Damn Stadiums
Sherman said that’d be a top priority if he ever gets a desk in the Oval Office.
By Juliet Spies-Gans
Thinking on his feet and improvising what he’d want his campaign slogan to be — he settled on “Make America the place you want to raise your kids” — Sherman put forth what he deemed to be a “pretty ingenious plan for our economy”: make the rich pay for their own toys.
“I’d get us out of this deficit,” he told Clayton. “I’d stop spending billions of taxpayer dollars on stadiums and probably get us out of debt and maybe make the billionaires who actually benefit from the stadiums pay for them. That kind of seems like a system that would work for me.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/richard-sherman-billionaires-stadium_us_57597ff6e4b0e39a28acb20f?ir=Black+Voices§ion=us_black-voices&utm_hp_ref=black-voices
A Hot Box
From The Huffington Post -
This Container Brings Internet To People In Need, Refugees In Remote Areas
So outside of the box.
By Elyse Wanshel
Here is an idea that really delivers.
ZubaBox is a shipping container converted into a solar-powered internet café or classroom for people in need living in remote areas — including refugee camps.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/solar-powered-zubabox-internet-shipping-container-rural-areas-refugee-camps_us_5757155ce4b0b60682df2435
This Container Brings Internet To People In Need, Refugees In Remote Areas
So outside of the box.
By Elyse Wanshel
 |
| A Zubabox dubbed the”Dell Solar Learning Lab” in Cazuca, a suburb of Bogota, Colombia. |
ZubaBox is a shipping container converted into a solar-powered internet café or classroom for people in need living in remote areas — including refugee camps.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/solar-powered-zubabox-internet-shipping-container-rural-areas-refugee-camps_us_5757155ce4b0b60682df2435
Friday, June 10, 2016
Locked Up
An excerpt from Medium -
MI LIBRO by Pablo Guzman
CHAPTER ONE: MAY 30, 1973
“You are to begin your sentence of two years on each count immediately. To be served concurrently.” And yes, Federal Judge Charles Metzner brought down the gavel. My hands were cuffed behind my back.
I turned to say goodbye to my family and friends. It was Wednesday, May 30th 1973. I was 22. The courtroom at Foley Square was packed. It was like looking out on an audience. Different though than the audiences I had looked at speaking in colleges or street rallies. Those always made me a bit nervous, even though people said I was good; I always got nervous. Now, I was more than nervous; I was scared. But, had to put up a front. Big time. Could not show fear. My parents, though divorced, were there together for me. My cousin Gil. Reporters I had dealt with the past four years. And about 150 colleagues and supporters. No time to be a punk.
At the railing I leaned forward. But two court officers grabbed me, one by the throat, and twisted me backwards. Though my Dad was not yet fifty-five, he was in good shape and took the railing, punching out first one officer and then a second. Amateur boxer. He came out of Spanish Harlem, and you did not fuck with those cats. As more officers swarmed, my father’s action was almost a signal to the many Young Lords in the gallery. After all, this is what we did for a living. In seconds the melee in court resembled one of the brawls in Errol Flynn’s Gentleman Jim, a favorite of my Dad and me. “The Corbetts are at it again!” Officers dragged me out of there and threw me in a holding cell. It’s true: when that cell door clangs shut, there’s no other sound quite like it. It fuckin’ rings in your head.
https://medium.com/@yoruba69/mi-libro-f895f07f7cdb#.agdfxbmrq
MI LIBRO by Pablo Guzman
CHAPTER ONE: MAY 30, 1973
“You are to begin your sentence of two years on each count immediately. To be served concurrently.” And yes, Federal Judge Charles Metzner brought down the gavel. My hands were cuffed behind my back.
I turned to say goodbye to my family and friends. It was Wednesday, May 30th 1973. I was 22. The courtroom at Foley Square was packed. It was like looking out on an audience. Different though than the audiences I had looked at speaking in colleges or street rallies. Those always made me a bit nervous, even though people said I was good; I always got nervous. Now, I was more than nervous; I was scared. But, had to put up a front. Big time. Could not show fear. My parents, though divorced, were there together for me. My cousin Gil. Reporters I had dealt with the past four years. And about 150 colleagues and supporters. No time to be a punk.
At the railing I leaned forward. But two court officers grabbed me, one by the throat, and twisted me backwards. Though my Dad was not yet fifty-five, he was in good shape and took the railing, punching out first one officer and then a second. Amateur boxer. He came out of Spanish Harlem, and you did not fuck with those cats. As more officers swarmed, my father’s action was almost a signal to the many Young Lords in the gallery. After all, this is what we did for a living. In seconds the melee in court resembled one of the brawls in Errol Flynn’s Gentleman Jim, a favorite of my Dad and me. “The Corbetts are at it again!” Officers dragged me out of there and threw me in a holding cell. It’s true: when that cell door clangs shut, there’s no other sound quite like it. It fuckin’ rings in your head.
https://medium.com/@yoruba69/mi-libro-f895f07f7cdb#.agdfxbmrq
I Would Rather . . .
An excerpt from McSweeney's -
I WOULD RATHER DO ANYTHING ELSE THAN GRADE YOUR FINAL PAPERS.
BY ROBIN LEE MOZER
Dear Students Who Have Just Completed My Class,
I would rather do anything else than grade your Final Papers.
I would rather base jump off of the parking garage next to the student activity center or eat that entire sketchy tray of taco meat leftover from last week’s student achievement luncheon that’s sitting in the department refrigerator or walk all the way from my house to the airport on my hands than grade your Final Papers.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-would-rather-do-anything-else-than-grade-your-final-papers
I WOULD RATHER DO ANYTHING ELSE THAN GRADE YOUR FINAL PAPERS.
BY ROBIN LEE MOZER
Dear Students Who Have Just Completed My Class,
I would rather do anything else than grade your Final Papers.
I would rather base jump off of the parking garage next to the student activity center or eat that entire sketchy tray of taco meat leftover from last week’s student achievement luncheon that’s sitting in the department refrigerator or walk all the way from my house to the airport on my hands than grade your Final Papers.
http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-would-rather-do-anything-else-than-grade-your-final-papers
Watching Over Us
Just like we experienced terrorism long before 9/11, so too have we experienced surveillance long before it's widespread use today.
An excerpt from Political Research -
TRACKING BLACKNESS: A Q&A WITH DARK MATTERS AUTHOR SIMONE BROWNE
By Lindsay Beyerstein
We tend to think of mass surveillance as a relatively new phenomenon, a byproduct of the digital revolution. Examples of high-tech surveillance spring readily to mind, including the NSA scooping up our emails, Samsung televisions picking up living room chitchat along with your voice commands, and Oral Roberts University collecting data on its entire student body via Fitbit activity trackers. But, as it turns out, our high-tech surveillance society had lower-tech precursors.
Simone Browne, an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, describes her new book, Dark Matters: On The Surveillance of Blackness, as a conversation between Black Studies and Surveillance Studies—the latter a young discipline devoted to investigating the technological and social dimensions of surveillance. Browne’s research shows that surveillance was an essential part of transatlantic slavery, a system that held millions of people against their will and tracked them as property. And she argues that slavery created an ongoing demand for technologies to monitor Black bodies. The day-to-day enforcement of slavery raised familiar-sounding questions: Is this person who they say they are? Are they allowed to be here? How do we know? Dramas of surveillance and counter-surveillance played out constantly.
If surveillance is the state watching the individual, sousveillance is the individual looking back at the state. The history of slavery is full of examples of both kinds of watching. Slave catchers hunted down runaway slaves for money. The catchers were themselves carefully watched, and the news of a slave catcher’s whereabouts could also spread rapidly through the Black community. Abolitionists also circulated handbills warning free Blacks and their allies to be on guard against slave catchers.
- See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/06/07/tracking-blackness-a-qa-with-dark-matters-author-simone-browne/#sthash.Q72kGxUr.4M31FFEi.dpuf
An excerpt from Political Research -
TRACKING BLACKNESS: A Q&A WITH DARK MATTERS AUTHOR SIMONE BROWNE
By Lindsay Beyerstein
We tend to think of mass surveillance as a relatively new phenomenon, a byproduct of the digital revolution. Examples of high-tech surveillance spring readily to mind, including the NSA scooping up our emails, Samsung televisions picking up living room chitchat along with your voice commands, and Oral Roberts University collecting data on its entire student body via Fitbit activity trackers. But, as it turns out, our high-tech surveillance society had lower-tech precursors.
Simone Browne, an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, describes her new book, Dark Matters: On The Surveillance of Blackness, as a conversation between Black Studies and Surveillance Studies—the latter a young discipline devoted to investigating the technological and social dimensions of surveillance. Browne’s research shows that surveillance was an essential part of transatlantic slavery, a system that held millions of people against their will and tracked them as property. And she argues that slavery created an ongoing demand for technologies to monitor Black bodies. The day-to-day enforcement of slavery raised familiar-sounding questions: Is this person who they say they are? Are they allowed to be here? How do we know? Dramas of surveillance and counter-surveillance played out constantly.
If surveillance is the state watching the individual, sousveillance is the individual looking back at the state. The history of slavery is full of examples of both kinds of watching. Slave catchers hunted down runaway slaves for money. The catchers were themselves carefully watched, and the news of a slave catcher’s whereabouts could also spread rapidly through the Black community. Abolitionists also circulated handbills warning free Blacks and their allies to be on guard against slave catchers.
- See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/06/07/tracking-blackness-a-qa-with-dark-matters-author-simone-browne/#sthash.Q72kGxUr.4M31FFEi.dpuf
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