Good Reads

[trysail]

The Ancient Art of Cheese Making Attracts Scientific Gawkers
(NPR)

From Swiss to cheddar, cheeses depend on the action of microbes for their flavor and aroma. But it's far from clear how these teams of microbes work together to ripen cheese.

To a cheese-maker, that's just the beauty of the art. To a scientist, it sounds like an experiment waiting to happen.

A handful of scientists who study cheese recently gathered to share their latest findings at a farm in the English county of Somerset. They know cheese well here — after all, Somerset invented cheddar...​

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/10/17/cheese_wide-da128da18dcdcb5d36f1ef2ebb69e90dcc0557b4-s40-c85.jpg


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[Laurel]

http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/140825_r25364-320.jpg

I—JUNE 14, 2012

It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, and Jacqui had just got home from work. She made a pot of coffee and took it out to the garden with the Daily Mail. It was the start of her weekend. The sun was out. She sat down at a patio table and poured the coffee, taking a minute to enjoy the scent of the wisteria that was blooming on her trellis.

She opened the paper: the Queen in Nottingham for her Golden Jubilee; bankers under scrutiny; wives and girlfriends of the England football team. Absent-mindedly, she continued to read. She barely glanced at an article titled “How Absence of a Loving Father Can Wreck a Child’s Life.” A few pages later, she came to a photograph of a smiling young man with bouffy brown curls that parted like curtains around his eyes. Even after twenty-five years, she knew the face’s every freckle and line.

She subsequently told a parliamentary committee:

I went into shock. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and I started shaking. I did not even read the story which appeared with the picture. I went inside and phoned my parents. My dad got the paper from their nearest shop and my mum got out the photos of Bob and our son, at the birth and when he was a toddler. They confirmed to me, by comparing photos, it was definitely Bob.​

Bob Robinson was Jacqui’s first love and the father of her eldest child. He had disappeared from their lives in 1987, when their son was two. (To protect her son’s privacy, Jacqui asked me not to use her last name.) Over the years, Jacqui had tried many times to track Bob down, but she had never been able to find him. Neither had any of the government agencies she had enlisted to help in the search. Bob had seemingly vaporized. Now there he was, staring back at her from the pages of a tabloid.

Jacqui tried to focus. “An undercover policeman planted a bomb in a department store to prove his commitment to animal rights extremists, an MP claimed yesterday,” the article that the picture accompanied began. “Bob Lambert is accused of leaving an incendiary device in a Debenhams in London—one of three set off in a coordinated attack in 1987.” (No one was hurt in the attacks, which caused millions of dollars’ worth of damage to the stores, targeted because they sold fur products.) It went on to explain that Caroline Lucas, an M.P. for the Green Party, had invoked parliamentary privilege to make the accusation. She was calling for “a far-reaching public inquiry into police infiltrators and informers.” Jacqui read on. The officer, the article said, had insinuated himself into animal-rights groups in the nineteen-eighties, creating an alter ego under which, for several years, he led a double life. Bob Robinson was Bob Lambert, and Bob Lambert was a spy.​

- read the full article The Spy Who Loved Me: An undercover surveillance operation that went too far. (from The New Yorker)​

 

[Laurel]

http://www.trbimg.com/img-54503cbd/turbine/lat-samuel-marlowe-la0018641965-20131214/767

It was hot and I was late for lunch. I was feeling mean, like I’d been left out in the sun too long.

We were meeting at a joint on La Brea, the kind of place where the booths have curtains you can pull shut if you need a little privacy. I slid across cool leather and got my first good look at Louise Ransil, a wisp of a redhead with high cheekbones and appraising eyes.

She sat with her hands folded on the worn table, a stack of old paperbacks next to her.

Ransil had a script she’d been peddling to the studios. I’d started reading it — a detective caper set in 1930s Los Angeles — and wanted to find out about the claim on the title page.

“BASED ON A TRUE STORY: From case files of P.I. Samuel B. Marlowe.”

Ransil didn’t waste any time.

Marlowe, she said, was the city’s first licensed black private detective. He shadowed lives, took care of secrets, knew his way around Tinseltown. Ransil dropped the names of some Hollywood heavies — Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Howard Hughes.

But it got better. Marlowe knew hard-boiled writers Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, she said.

The private eye had written them after reading their early stories in the pulp magazine Black Mask to say their fictional gumshoes were doing it all wrong. They began writing regularly, or so her story went. The authors relied on Marlowe for writing advice, and in the case of Chandler, some real-life detective work.

So his name was Samuel Marlowe … and their most famous characters were Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe.

That was no accident, she was sure of it.

Maybe, maybe not. At the very least, it was a hell of a coincidence.​

- read the full article Finding Marlowe (from The Los Angeles Times)​

 

[glynndah]

http://www.trbimg.com/img-54503cbd/turbine/lat-samuel-marlowe-la0018641965-20131214/767

I hate mysteries without endings. I want to know.

 

[lovetoread]

Thought you all might find this an interesting read.


When a bad review of her first novel appeared online, Kathleen Hale was warned not to respond. But she soon found herself wading in

In the months before my first novel came out, I was a charmless lunatic – the type that other lunatics cross the street to avoid. I fidgeted and talked to myself, rewriting passages of a book that had already gone to print. I remember when my editor handed me the final copy: I held the book in my hands for a millisecond before grabbing a pen and scribbling edits in the margins.
[...]
For the most part, I found Goodreaders were awarding my novel one star or five stars, with nothing in between. “Well, it’s a weird book,” I reminded myself. “It’s about a girl with PTSD teaming up with a veteran to fight crime.” Mostly I was relieved they weren’t all one-star reviews.
[...]
Blythe went on to warn other readers that my characters were rape apologists and slut-shamers. She accused my book of mocking everything from domestic abuse to PTSD. “I can say with utmost certainty that this is one of the worst books I’ve read this year,” she said, “maybe my life.”
[...]
“But there isn’t rape in my book,” I thought. I racked my brain, trying to see where I had gone wrong. I wished I could magically transform all the copies being printed with a quick swish of my little red pen. (“Not to make fun of PTSD, or anything,” I might add to one character’s comment. “Because that would be wrong.”)
[...]
“If you still feel you must leave a comment, click ‘Accept and Continue’ below to proceed (but again, we don’t recommend it).”

I would soon learn why.[/indent]

- read the full article 'Am I being catfished?' An author confronts her number one online critic (from The Guardian)​

Interesting follow-up piece with more background/context:
http://jezebel.com/author-stalks-anonymous-blogger-who-gave-her-a-1-star-r-1648545005

She was a loon who stalked a person and no one in power said anything. Cause of who her in laws to be are.

The bloggers did a blackout where there were no reviews at all.

She could have done this: http://groupthink.jezebel.com/richard-brittain-violently-assaults-book-reviewer-1649170122

And everyone would still kiss her ass.

She should have been arrested.

And she needs to figure out what the word catfish means.

 

[Angeline]

I am rereading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

"The painting, the magic and aliveness of it, was like that odd airy moment of the snow falling, greenish light and flakes whirling in the cameras, where you no longer cared about the game, who won or lost, but just wanted to drink in that speechless, windswept moment. When I looked at the painting I felt the same convergence on a single point: a flickering sun-struck instant that existed now and forever. Only occasionally did I notice the chain on the finch’s ankle, or think what a cruel life for a little living creature — fluttering briefly, forced always to land in the same hopeless place."


http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/dc/2c/57/dc2c570861ef9d677dc6035508bf2ba0.jpg

 

[Noor]

Angeline

 

[eyer]

Berlin’s digital exiles: where tech activists go to escape the NSA

With its strict privacy laws, Germany is the refuge of choice for those hounded by the security services. Carole Cadwalladr visits Berlin to meet Laura Poitras, the director of Edward Snowden film Citizenfour, and a growing community of surveillance refuseniks

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/09/berlins-digital-exiles-tech-activists-escape-nsa

The tone of this piece seems as dreary as I've always imagined Berlin itself to be; "democracy" activists there and "democracy" activists in Hong Kong and everywhere else need to mature to the degree that their "democracy" utopia doesn't mire them down so much...

...it's not about "democracy" - it's about individual liberty for all.

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://media.npr.org/assets/img/2014/11/07/race-getty_custom-2b8f30c03619b23e86740a3aeb3fc94396360591-s40-c85.jpg

Why We Have So Many Terms For 'People Of Color'

November 07, 201412:49 PM ET


A heads-up to our readers: We use some language in this post that some folks might find offensive.

Last week, the Toronto Star found itself in the midst of one of those blink-and-you-missed-it Internet kerfuffles over race.

Here's what happened. The Ontario Human Rights Commission had settled on a term to use in reference to people of color — "racialized people."

The commission wrote:

"Recognizing that race is a social construct, the Commission describes people as 'racialized person' or 'racialized group' instead of the more outdated and inaccurate terms 'racial minority,' 'visible minority,' 'person of colour' or 'non-White.' "

In turn, Star reporter Natasha Grzincic created a listicle: "5 other labels for people of colour er... non-whites uh ... racialized people." It seemed to be riffing on a common idea that these designations are tortured and overly sensitive.

Some readers complained that Grzincic was making light of the agency's decision, and the story was subsequently removed from the Star's website a few hours later, with a note saying that it did not meet the paper's standards.

On this side of the border, the Army found itself in hot water after it updated its regulations to prevent discrimination, noting that some people who are "black or African-American" might also identify as "Negro." The story was widely reported as Army says 'Negro' is OK to use, and although that's not exactly what happened, the Army felt compelled to issue an apology and remove the motive. (You might recall a similar controversy over "Negro's" appearance on U.S. Census forms that prompted the bureau to announce last year that it would be removed from future questionnaires.)

Minorities. Nonwhites. People of color. In some corporate-esque sectors, you might even hear someone use the term "diverse" as a modifier — as in, "We're really interested in hearing a diverse voice on this issue," as though an individual person might be diverse. Each of those terms came into wide usage in the 20th century, only to fall out of vogue and be replaced with a new one. Each replacement was meant to be less loaded than its predecessor, only to eventually take on all of that predecessor's anxieties — and some new ones. Linguists refer to this process as "pejoration."

"If a word that refers to something always appears in sentences where that thing is framed negatively, then that term will take on that negativity," Lauren Hall-Lew, a sociolinguist at the University of Edinburgh, told me over email.

Steven Pinker gave this idea a more colorful name in his 2004 book The Blank Slate: the "euphemism treadmill."

"The drive to adopt new terms for disadvantaged groups ... often assumes that words and attitudes are so inseparable that one can re-engineer people's attitudes by tinkering with the words," Pinker wrote.

He went on:

"People invent new words for emotionally charged referents, but soon the euphemism becomes tainted by association, and a new word must be found, which soon acquires its own connotations, and so on. [...] Even the word 'minority' — the most neutral word label conceivable, referring only to relative numbers — was banned in 2001 by the San Diego City Council ... because it was deemed disparaging to nonwhites. ... The euphemism treadmill shows that concepts, not words, are primary in people's minds. Give a concept a new name, and the name becomes colored by the concept; the concept does not become freshened by the name, at least not for long. Names for minorities will continue to change as long as people have negative attitudes toward them. We will know that they have achieved mutual respect when the names stay put."

These terms also become outmoded because of our shifting politics. A designation like "nonwhite" is often criticized because it makes white people a kind of neutral default from which other people might deviate. A term like "minority" might ruffle some folks because we're entering the age of pluralities, with no clear majorities.

That same volatility dogs more specific racial designations than those describing all people of color. As I wrote in a story some months back, Americans often change which boxes they checked for the race question on the United States census. Indeed, the Census Bureau said no two decennial censuses have ever used the same language or categories for questions about race or ethnicity.

"Oriental" became "Asian" became "Asian-American and Pacific Islander." "Colored" changes to "Negro" and then to "black" and "African-American." The nomenclature for white people, on the other hand, has remained more or less stable, even if the definition of who might qualify as "white" has been pretty fluid over the past few hundred years.

But as Hall-Lew points out, this is all less about the words themselves than about the social context in which they're being used. "Colored" is an ugly anachronism in the United States but still a pretty neutral descriptor in South Africa, where "Coloured," with a capital C, refers to people with certain mixed-race ancestries. "Despite the extremely fraught history of racial tension in South Africa," Hall-Lew said, "there was not as direct a relationship between the term '[coloured]' and racist discourse the way there was in the United States, in large part because of the role of the [black African and Indian/Asian groups] in South Africa." She said context also explains why both "colored people" and "people of color" can have such drastically different meanings in the U.S.: "It's about who says it and what they're saying when they say it," she said.

A big reason these terms have been in flux is because of the evolving social positions of the people being referred to — that is, as people from different groups gain visibility, the names people give to their own ethnic groups ("autonyms") are supplanting the names that groups are given by outsiders ("exonyms"). Of course, those are contested, too; it's not like there's consensus on "black" or "African-American," and many people toggle back and forth and employ their own, personal taxonomies.

This got us thinking about a whole other class of charged words whose meanings are especially dependent on the speakers and audience — reclaimed slurs like "nigger" or "queer." As a Redditor pointed out to me, those terms have never been neutral designations — they can't fall off the treadmill because they were never euphemisms. In some contexts, they're terms of affection, markers of in-group status. In other situations, they're derogatory. (Context and consequences, people.)

Hall-Lew told me that "reclamation is the other side to the same coin":

"uccessful instances of reclamation suggest that those speakers have enough social capital (in certain communities, at least) to make it stick (which, for example, might give us some insight on the cultural change in the legitimacy granted to speakers who identify as queer)."
Pinker calls it the euphemism treadmill. Other folks might call it, derisively, "political correctness." But this is how language works: It reflects the relationships between speakers and groups. These descriptors will be in flux as long as our orientations to each other keep changing, which suggests that the treadmill isn't likely to stop anytime soon.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/11/07/362273449/why-we-have-so-many-terms-for-people-of-color?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202507

 

[Laurel]

http://i.harperapps.com/covers/9780062325143/y450-293.png

An explosive memoir by Carine McCandless provides new details about a toxic family environment that drove her brother to embark on the famous and fatal quest immortalized by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild

The Wild Truth, the new memoir by Carine McCandless, is rough going at times. The book covers many years and a lot of ground, and much of it is emotionally powerful in a positive way, including new details that Carine offers about what the late Christopher McCandless was like as a brother. (Short answer: loving and protective.) But this family history features a startling amount of toxic behavior, most of it coming from Carine's and Chris’s parents, Walt and Billie McCandless. Carine describes them as a pair who, at their best, were good providers and fun, caring people. But at their worst, she writes, they were cruel and abusive, and this side of them was on display all too frequently when the kids were growing up in El Segundo, California, and, later, Annandale, Virginia.

According to Carine, Walt was a violent bully who drank heavily and sometimes flew into rages that ended with whippings and beatings for his wife and children. Billie was the primary victim, Carine writes, but she was also a victimizer, belittling and betraying both kids at crucial junctures. A vivid example occurred a week after Carine graduated from high school in 1989, when she came home from a date just before a household curfew. Walt, she writes, was waiting for her at the door, intoxicated, and he jerked her violently into the house.​

- read the full article Does The Wild Truth Tell the True Story of Chris McCandless? (from Outside Online)​

 

[trysail]

Maurice Sendak's Rare Book Collection Is At The Heart of A Legal Dispute
(from NPR)

SIEGEL:...The Rosenbach Museum and Library, longtime home of the author's work, filed a lawsuit earlier this month against Sendak's estate. The Philadelphia museum says the estate has failed to comply with certain provisions of Sendak's will.

Here to talk about the dispute is Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Peter Dobrin. Welcome to the program.

PETER DOBRIN: Thank you.

SIEGEL: What exactly is the Rosenbach Museum and Library claiming in this lawsuit?

DOBRIN: They've asked the judge in a small Connecticut town, not far from where Sendak's home was, to enforce several provisions in the will. One is to turn over the rare books that Sendak called for to go to the Rosenbach Museum upon his death, but also for them to produce an entire inventory of rare books...



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[Lorilei]

For fans of A Wrinkle in Time.

 

[BradBigBrain]

http://bks3.books.google.com/books?id=injpY-EerZgC&printsec=frontcover&img=1&zoom=1&edge=curl&imgtk=AFLRE710UekkYZursuirsMqqP9sPBAjcMrxWilHWZn0NVGLUEphxoxUDrnbiLqdaeuEDCrTxRP09l3w2OopmfdU4lP9R8yk4K8NRbUproAHRJj9qovOrgIekatx7YkO5xpk2AQVMBKXj

Unbroken is a biography of World War II hero Louis Zamperini,
a former Olympic track star who survived a plane crash in the
Pacific theater, spent 47 days drifting on a raft, and then survived
more than two and a half years as a prisoner of war in several
brutal Japanese internment camps.

 

[Learin]

Jeffrey Archer's Prisoner of Birth was my recent read. It was good enough, mostly filled with Courtroom Drama, which I like, and somewhat similar to the novel The Count of Monte Christo.

The pace is somewhat laconic in parts, but the courtroom scenes are very well-written. I wouldn't say it's a must read, but...what the hell, I liked it.

 

[Laurel]

http://www.bloomberg.com/image/i0tSCy1YEwwY.jpg

The best medical advice for surviving Ebola right now might fit in one word: drink.

With targeted drugs and vaccines at least months away, doctors and public health experts are learning from Ebola survivors what simple steps helped them beat the infection. Turns out drinking 4 liters (1 gallon) or more of rehydration solution a day -- a challenge for anyone and especially those wracked by relentless bouts of vomiting -- is crucial.
[...]
The WHO shared transcripts of interviews with Igonoh and five other Ebola survivors with the patients’ permission to provide insight into clinical experiences and management. Igonoh also answered follow-up questions in a direct e-mail.

Patients in Liberia lost 5 liters of fluid a day from diarrhea alone, doctors treating cases there wrote in a Nov. 5 paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Severe fluid loss can cause a type of shock that prevents the heart from pumping enough blood to the body, eventually leading to multiple organ failure.

“As I took the ORS and treated dehydration, it provided me with energy, and my immune system was able to battle the virus,” 29-year-old Igonoh said.​

- read the full article Beating Ebola Hinges on Sipping a Gallon of Liquid a Day (from Bloomberg)​

 

[Laurel]

http://wp.newrepublic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/ARTICLE_INSET_HOBBES_5_625-624x431.jpg

PlayPump International, the NGO that came up with the idea and developed the technology, seemed to have thought of everything. To pay for maintenance, the elevated water tanks sold advertising, becoming billboards for companies seeking access to rural markets. If the ads didn’t sell, they would feature HIV/AIDS-prevention campaigns. The whole package cost just $7,000 to install in each village and could provide water for up to 2,500 people.

The donations gushed in. In 2006, the U.S. government and two major foundations pledged $16.4 million in a public ceremony emceed by Bill Clinton and Laura Bush. The technology was touted by the World Bank and made a cameo in America’s 2007 Water for the Poor Act. Jay-Z personally pledged $400,000. PlayPump set the goal of installing 4,000 pumps in Africa by 2010. “That would mean clean drinking water for some ten million people,” a “Frontline” reporter announced.

By 2007, less than two years after the grants came in, it was already clear these aspirations weren’t going to be met. A UNICEF report found pumps abandoned, broken, unmaintained. Of the more than 1,500 pumps that had been installed with the initial burst of grant money in Zambia, one-quarter already needed repair. The Guardian said the pumps were “reliant on child labour.”
[...]
I am conflicted about this moment. I have worked at international development NGOs almost my entire career (primarily at two mid-sized human rights organizations—one you’ve probably heard of and one you probably haven’t). I’ve been frustrated by the same inefficiencies and assumptions of my sector that are now getting picked apart in public. Like the authors, donors, and governments attacking international development, I’m sometimes disillusioned with what my job requires me to do, what it requires that I demand of others.

Over the last year, I read every book, essay, and roman à clef about my field I could find. I came out convinced that the problems with international development are real, they are fundamental, and I might, in fact, be one of them. But I also found that it’s too easy to blame the PlayPumps of the world. Donors, governments, the public, the media, aid recipients themselves—they all contribute to the dysfunction. Maybe the problem isn’t that international development doesn’t work. It’s that it can’t.​

- read the full article Stop Trying to Save the World: Big ideas are destroying international development (from New Republic)​

 

[trysail]

China Climate Pledge Needs 1,000 Nuclear Plants

ht tp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-21/latest-china-revolution-seeks-great-leap-for-clean-energy.html

China Climate Pledge Needs 1,000 Nuclear Plants

...China, which does nothing in small doses, will need about 1,000 nuclear reactors, 500,000 wind turbines or 50,000 solar farms as it takes up the fight against climate change.

Chinese President Xi Jinping agreement last week with President Barack Obama requires a radical environmental and economic makeover. Xi’s commitment to cap carbon emissions by 2030 and turn to renewable sources for 20 percent of the country’s energy comes with a price tag of $2 trillion.

The pledge would require China to produce either 67 times more nuclear energy than the country is forecast to have at the end of 2014...

-Bloomberg
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-...lution-seeks-great-leap-for-clean-energy.html
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[Sean]

Don’t prick the Christmas spending bubble – it’s keeping capitalism alive
By David Mitchell.

Global capitalism, as a system, simply doesn’t work. Russell Brand’s new book provides the proof. As does my new book. And the hundreds of other new books that are just out. And the Sainsbury’s advert. And all the current adverts for booze and perfume, chocolates and jewels, supermarkets and computer games. The gaudy, twinkly proof is going up all around us as the last of the leaves come down. It’s called Christmas.

On the face of it, Christmas seems like the most naked celebration of capitalism – and by “naked”, I mean the opposite: wrapped, adorned, decorated and sparkling. It might be dressed sexy but, by God, it’s dressed. Or perhaps by Satan. Or Santa. Or Setanta. Which is doubtless doing a Christmas deal on festive football with the opportunity to treat someone special to a banquet of motor racing in the new year. This is capitalism warmly enveloped by fur and wool and silk and diamonds. It’s retail at its most meretricious. Shopping as goddess and whore, love expressed with money and love bought

http://www.theguardian.com/commenti...as-bubble-keeping-capitalism-alive?CMP=twt_gu

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-11/21/17/enhanced/webdr05/grid-cell-20547-1416607369-34.jpg http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2014-11/21/17/enhanced/webdr05/grid-cell-20547-1416607376-39.jpg

Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and she deserved better than a racist joke.

Last Wednesday, I was supposed to attend the after-party for National Book Awards, but found myself in bed with an ear infection and hives. Still, I had my fingers crossed for two writers I desperately wanted to see walk away with awards. I followed the tweets of friends and fellow writers who attended the banquet, waiting for them to announce the winners. I was disappointed when Claudia Rankine’s name was not called for Citizen for the Poetry award. Rankine’s book on racial micro-aggressions was searing, and it seemed a win would potentially bring it to the attention of a broader audience. I was ecstatic when Jacqueline Woodson won for Brown Girl Dreaming. I tweeted about my excitement for her, and at home, I picked the book up and re-read it until I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I saw what I’d apparently missed the night before. After Woodson accepted the award, Daniel Handler — author of the popular Lemony Snicket series and the host of this year’s award ceremony — said: “I told Jackie she was going to win, and I said that if she won, I would tell all of you something I learned about her this summer, which is that Jackie Woodson is allergic to watermelon. Just let that sink in your mind.”

We forget how often carelessness is a kind of malicious behavior. Woodson was worth taking the time to consider if “the joke” would undercut her moment. She should not have to accept a National Book Award in one hand and Handler’s apology in the other. She was worth the time it would take to come up with a joke that was less lazy. Her story deserved better. A writer’s victory is also a victory for the many readers nourished by her work. Every brown girl watching, hoping, and writing deserved better.

- read the full article: Meanwhile In America, Brown Girls Are Still Dreaming

 

[IrezumiKiss]

Ferguson is the reminder that we will never be satisfied and many are still prepared to fight. The heart of Blackness is in this debacle, and in this spirit of resistance.

Ferguson is not about how Black people feel about Darren Wilson; it’s about how this country feels about Black people. And until this country understands what Black people are protesting regarding our dead, things will only grow worse. If the demand for our humanity continues to be unresolved, I don’t see why things should ever “quiet down.”

The burden of restoring silence and peace over the sounds of injustice this country screams in our ears is not on us. Over time, whether Black people have protested with their hands up or with their fists, the message is clear: We know you’re scared of us but we’re not going to live scared of you.

- read the full article: William C. Anderson, Being Black, the Real Indictment in Ferguson and the USA

 

[IrezumiKiss]

A non-indictment is no absolution of guilt, but are you not angry? Are you not sick of being unsurprised?

Ferguson is indeed a microcosm – of the all the narratives about race and America that we fear and suppress. Still: it is not enough to say that, yes, of course the promise of justice – the promise of America, of democracy – has failed its black citizens, again. It doesn’t make the disappointment any less disappointing, nor the rage any less real. But it doesn’t make the moment any less mighty either.
We can choose to say something else. We are choosing to protest.

There are guidelines – for them and for us, for cops and for protesters – but there is no textbook when history unfolds in real time, and there are no rules for coping with a moment as mighty as this. There will be changes, and there is still a federal civil-rights investigation. Right now, though, there are only tears of rage, frustration and anger – or all three at once.

- read the full article: Ferguson, goddamn: No indictment for Darren Wilson is no surprise. This is why we protest

 

[IrezumiKiss]

http://i.guim.co.uk/static/w-620/h--/q-95/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/11/26/1417029845930/e315a3ea-3597-4147-9c45-fe1ff3d97762-620x372.jpeg

When I was a little kid, I was unaware that I am the bastard child of colonisation, born into a reality in which I’ll spend my entire life combating the way the world views me based on propaganda like national sports mascots and tales of the first thanksgiving.

As an adult, Thanksgiving is just more colonialist propaganda masquerading as history – and a day that represents hundreds of years of genocide, persecution and oppression of our people.

So I love the version of the Thanksgiving story in the movie Addams Family Values, because I get to see the Indians win.

In the summer camp play depicting the first thanksgiving, all the blond, white kids in their Western hegemonic glory are cast as the Pilgrims. The outcasts of the summer camp – the black, brown and disabled kids – are cast as the Indians, with Wednesday Addams as Pocahontas (despite the fact that the Wampanoags were the first to come into contact with the Pilgrims, and Pocahantas was Powhatan). During the performance, Wednesday disregards the script, gives a speech about the impending colonization the Pilgrims will bring, proclaiming, “The Gods of my tribe have spoken. They have said ‘Do not trust the Pilgrims’” – and then leads a revolt and burns the Pilgrim village to the ground.

I love this scene because the cultural appropriation and racist dialogue usually used in portrayals of Indigenous people on thanksgiving is absent. I was taken in by the illusion that we were finally triumphant – if only in a made-up play, in a movie about a strange, fictional family.

- read the full article: My family's Thanksgiving on the reservation is a rebuke to America's colonialism — Frank Waln

 

[Laurel]

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How does one eat a Thanksgiving meal? On its face this might seem like a ridiculous question, and also everywhere else too. I mean, who doesn't know how to eat? (Excepting the British, of course.) Thanksgiving is marked, more than anything else, by its abundance of tasty foodstuffs; practically speaking, it is a holiday devoted to eating. You load up your plate, you hoover down its contents, you wash them down with booze—what's so hard about that?

What's hard about it is doing it well: moving on from Thanksgiving at the end of the weekend with no lingering regrets (no food-related ones, anyway—how you'll deal with the eventual fallout from drunkenly roundhouse-kicking your Uncle Ted through the patio door over possession of the remote control is a problem that falls outside of the purview of this column). After all, holiday shopping season begins tomorrow: You can't have your mad, bloodsoaked quest for the sweetest bargain in tablet computing interrupted by nagging sadness that you overstuffed yourself with dinner rolls and didn't save any room for pie, can you? No. You cannot.
[...]
The first step is to gather a token amount of turkey onto your bare plate—one good-sized slice of breast meat, a couple of hunks of dark meat. Don't overdo it here: The last thing anybody wants on Thanksgiving is to mistakenly allow the turkey to occupy any more precious digestive volume than absolutely necessary. You want just enough on there so that later, when Grandma hits you with the inevitable, "Aren't you going to have some turkey, dearie?" you can use your fork to pry a visible corner of meat to the surface of your gravy-coated carb-mound and make a guttural murmuring vocalization without looking up from your plate or taking a break from chewing Things That Are Not Turkey.

From this point it is important to think strategically.​

- read the full article How To Eat Thanksgiving Dinner: A Strategy Guide (from Foodspin)​

 

[DesEsseintes]

Sex, cinema and secrets: early exposure at the arthouse

A fascinating article by Erin Cressida Wilson, writer of Secretary. The opening:

'Growing up in 1970s San Francisco I was often dragged by my parents to explicit foreign films at small cinemas like the Clay or the Vogue, the Balboa or the Castro.

'There I’d sit, underage and somehow smuggled in, on a scratchy red chair that smelled of popcorn and sticky floors, surrounded by bohemians and intellectuals watching the same thing that I was watching: sex.

'Back then, the entire city felt drenched in sensuality, and so did my home. It was here on sweaty afternoons that I watched Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman on TV, curled up with my mother, drawing constellations and stars and universes from freckle to freckle across her skin.'

 

[Laurel]

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How the St. Louis Baby Tooth Survey reconciled the domestic ritual of childhood tooth loss with the geopolitics of nuclear annihilation.

Ava looped a string around the base of the tooth and tied the other end to a doorknob. She braced herself in a chair, cocked her head back, opened wide, and slammed the door. The tooth clattered on the linoleum. She couldn’t see it at first—it blended in with the white speckles on the blue tile—but she scanned the floor until she found a tiny dot of blood. Her tooth. She picked it up, wrapped it in tissue, and prepared her letter. She was going to help scientists, and everyone would know it because the scientists were going to send her a bright red button inscribed with the following message:
I GAVE MY TOOTH TO SCIENCE.
[...]
The article’s argument was simple. Geiger counters could measure radioactivity in food, but tracking its absorption into and passage through the human body was a trickier matter. How to measure the levels of radiation absorbed by the human body? Bone samples were one avenue by which accumulation in the body could be measured. However, the limited samples of bone available from autopsied adults provided a small and erratic body of data.

To avoid these problems, Kalckar proposed turning to a different source of samples: children’s baby teeth. Near-term prenatal incisor teeth (in other words, children’s front baby teeth or “milk teeth”) took up high levels of radioisotopes during their formation, yet renewed their cells at a far slower rate than bone. Therefore, baby teeth could provide a stable snapshot of radiation absorbed by human bodies in a given geographic area around the time of a child’s birth. Since children tend to shed incisor teeth around the age of seven, teeth being shed in 1958 would reflect the levels of environmental radiation absorbed by unborn children around 1951.​

- read the full article Atomic Anxiety and the Tooth Fairy: Citizen Science in the Midcentury Midwest (from The Appendix)​