Category: issues

Australian novelist Peter Carey: “All this is complicated by PEN’s seeming blindness to the cultural arrogance of the French nation, which does not recognize its moral obligation to a large and disempowered segment of their population.”

“Of the 60 items released on the Marvel and Disney websites on Monday, only three featured the female superhero. Unlike her male counterparts, Thor, The Hulk, Captain America and Iron Man, there are no Black Widow costumes, dolls or clothing. She only appears with the other Avengers on a tote bag, in one of the six lego sets and on a men’s T-shirt.”

“Scholastic has now removed the ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ sections on its online Book Wizard which had previously limited questions about sport to boys and those about animals to girls. It has pledged to no longer publish books that declare they are for a particular gender in the title.”

“The Arts@CERN program as well as other recent projects, like the 2014 Particle Fever documentary, are essential in making the intimidating scale of the scientific experiments at CERN approachable, along with fostering the long collaboration between art and science.”

“Old words that used to mean something—ideals, meaning, character, self, soul—have come to seem mere floating signifiers, counters in a game played by commencement speakers and college catalogs.”

“Lawyers for the Roar singer had applied to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to have the design registered to prevent others from making money from unlicensed depictions of the outfit, made famous by an out-of-step back-up dancer.”

“We are currently operating a Fordist model of mass education that is failing to prepare young people for the dramatic socioeconomic demands of the digital age. What is more worrying is that politicians, rather than supporting a schools system with the flexibility and innovation obviously needed, have fallen for a theology of standardised testing and assessment that is exacerbating the crisis.”

“Seventy-seven years after Superman first leapt into the American imagination, superhero stories have never been more popular (or lucrative). Comics have become a breeding ground for multibillion-dollar movie and TV franchises … But why are superheroes resonating so strongly? And are they worthy of the attention? These questions are important enough to compel Ta-Nehisi Coates to take a timeout from kicking off national conversations about race and politics, don his fanboy cape, and go in search of the answers.”

“The Carnegie Corporation of New York, which announces its first class of 32 fellows on Wednesday, will provide grants of up to $200,000 to each recipient. The award, to be given annually, supports a year or two of full-time research and writing leading to the publication of a book or study.”

A greater demand for transparency and responsiveness has supplanted millennials’ trust in government (see Snowden, Edward) and it’s as close to a unifying political philosophy as millennials have offered.