“A Rocklin school board voted unanimously late Monday night to retain the policies that allowed a book about a transgender child to be read in kindergarten, but adopted a provision to forewarn parents of potentially controversial subject matter. The vote followed months of controversy that erupted over the book” – which was brought in by a transgender child – “being read at a Rocklin charter school’s story time.”
Tag: 09.18.17
All The Lies About The Origins Of The Phrase ‘Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire’
“[It] is not the most intuitive of phrases. Although people’s pants do sometimes catch on fire, this correlates more with carrying around accidentally explosive materials than it does with truthfulness. Meanwhile, the vast majority of liars make it through life unscathed by this particular fashion catastrophe. The mystery of the phrase’s origins is compounded by the fact that several of its more popularly reported etymologies are, in fact, lies.” Cara Giaimo gets to the bottom of the matter.
Why We Need Artists In Politics Now More Than Ever
“If there was ever a time that the world needed artists, it is now. We need their radical ideas, visions, and perspectives in society. … The world [can] only be changed by those willing and able to conceive of reality in a holistic and intuitive manner.” Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, sounds the call, with reference to artists from Joseph Beuys and John Latham to Theaster Gates and Tania Bruguera to Edi Rama, they mayor who had the dingy old buildings of Tirana, Albania repainted in bright colors and transformed the mood of the city.
What Does It Mean To Change As A Person?
“Every worldly example of continued personal identity involves tremendous transformations – whether it is developing language, sociality or morals; discovering a hidden passion; coming out of our closets; changing careers; falling in or out of love; growing or finding a family. Such dynamism does not throw our identities into question; instead, these changes represent some of the most significant aspects of our selves.”
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Says These Seven Books Made Him Smarter
“Nadella, whose own first book, the memoir/vision for the future Hit Refresh, is being published in late September, says that he’s drawn particular inspiration from these seven works on history, economics, technology, and management strategy.”
What Can We Learn From The Progress Of Civilization?
“The news here is that the lives of most of our progenitors were better than we think. We’re flattering ourselves by believing that their existence was so grim and that our modern, civilized one is, by comparison, so great. Still, we are where we are, and we live the way we live, and it’s possible to wonder whether any of this illuminating knowledge about our hunter-gatherer ancestors can be useful to us.”
‘Mother!’ – Darren Aronofsky Tells How He Made This Strange Film (And Got Hollywood To Let Him Do It)
“Say what you will about Darren Aronofsky, but the guy knows how to get a reaction out of people. … We caught up with Aronofsky a few months before the film’s premiere, while its contents were still top secret, to talk about its allegorical meaning, its startlingly unusual use of Kristen Wiig, and the surprising difficulty of its postproduction process.” (Warning: spoilers included.)
There Are Thousands Of Different Colors – Why Do Most Of Us Have So Few Words For Them (And Some Languages Fewer Than Others)?
“In an industrialized culture, most people get by with 11 color words: black, white, red, green, yellow, blue, brown, orange, pink, purple and gray. That’s what we have in American English. Maybe if you’re an artist or an interior designer, you know specific meanings for as many as 50 or 100 different words for colors – like turquoise, amber, indigo or taupe. But this is still a tiny fraction of the colors that we can distinguish. … [And] nonindustrialized cultures typically have far fewer words for colors than industrialized cultures.” (One language has words only for white, black, and red.) Two cognitive scientists look into why this is.
How ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Became The Term For So Many Of France’s Bêtes Noires
Le monde anglo-saxon. Le modèle anglo-saxon. Le capitalisme anglo-saxon. L’hégémonie anglo-saxonne. You hear and read the term more and more in France these days, almost always for something opposed to the way the French do things and usually for something undesirable or worse. Yet before the mid-19th century, “anglo-saxon” was used in France only to refer to pre-Norman Conquest England. Emile Chabal lays out how the word went from historical designation to disparaging epithet. (It’s not really about English-speakers at all.)
Now That He’s In A Big Movie, Is Sergei Polunin Going To Give Up Ballet For Acting? Naah
“A few months ago, I was sure that I was going to stop dancing to become a good actor. But then when I was by myself for a week, I asked myself, What are you doing? You have that talent. Use it to the fullest. And if I can use that talent as well as acting, that’s magical to do both. Would I be happy just to be an actor? I don’t think I would.”