“A teaching associate at a private school in Dubuque has been fired for allegedly disrupting classes by telling students that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a ‘racist’ novel.”
Tag: 07.16.12
And The Worst Book On American History Ever Written Is …
The results of the History News Network’s contest are in. “After a week of voting by readers, [right-wing historian] David Barton’s The Jefferson Lies won with some 650 votes, narrowly edging the left-wing historian Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, which received 641 votes.”
Tare Modern Opens Its New Space, ‘The Tanks’
“The Tanks’ purpose is to bring live work and performance art – often, since its origins in the 1960s and 70s, seen as too fragile, fugitive or plain avant garde to be co-opted by museums – into the mainstream. The underground galleries will also provide space for the kind of large, complex film and video installations that the museum has struggled to show in the past.”
England Expands Its Sistema Youth Orchestra Scheme
“Four new youth orchestras are being launched across England as part of the In Harmony programme, inspired by Venezuela’s world-famous El Sistema. New projects in Gateshead, Leeds, Nottingham and Telford and Wrekin will all receive funding until 2015. … Existing orchestras in Liverpool and Lambeth, London will also benefit.”
Dictionaries Are Gold Mines Of Anthropology And Social History
“If you want to know what a soldier’s life was really like in the Forties, pick up a dictionary of Services slang. Most of the words have nothing to do with fighting: they’re to do with gossiping, making tea, and waiting around.” And among the 3,000 new words in the latest edition of the Modern Chinese Dictionary are “fengkoufei (a bribe paid to a journalist to keep his mouth shut), Baijin Zhuyi (money worshipper) and fenqing (angry young nationalist).”
Dancers Invade The Home Of The Large Hadron Collider
“In the hushed library of CERN’s headquarters on the Swiss-French border, a dancer, moving slowly and nimbly, climbs up to the top of a bookshelf and then hangs off it. Elsewhere another dancer, also dressed in everyday clothes, soundlessly crawls under the chair of an unsuspecting physicist.”
New York’s Public Spaces Are Going Entertainment. Why?
“The Department of Transportation has announced that it hopes this “entertainment plaza model” might spread to other squares around the city. I suppose it’s better than tripping over back-up generators and boa-constrictor extension cords, but it also hints at sound-and-light events to come of nightmarish proportions. Cleaner pavements would be more welcome.”
Are Cable TV’s Days Numbered?
“This triple threat adds up to cable TV’s business getting whittled away from every side, and forcing the entire sector to face some hard choices if they want to keep their customers much longer.”
Study: Dance Lessons Mitigate Pressure For Young Girls To Be “Sexy”
Dance training appears to be “a protective factor against young girls’ sexualization,” the researchers write.
Seattle Art Museum Names New Director
“Kimerly Rorschach, founding director of the Nasher Museum at Duke University, will become the Seattle Art Museum’s new director this fall.”