We were discussing homosexuality because of an allusion to it in the book we were reading, and several boys made comments such as, “That’s disgusting.” We got into the debate and eventually a boy admitted that he was terrified/disgusted when he was once sharing a…
The 1979 Black and White Mural by L.A. Chicano master Gronk. From his oral history with the Smithsonian Archives of American Art:
“I don’t do Virgins of Guadalupe. I don’t do corn goddesses. I can only do what I’m about, and I’m an urban Chicano living in a city. I can’t impose upon my work other things. I can be influenced by a war that’s taking place, that’s killing off people. I can look at the world and say, ‘Yeah, yuk, it’s disgusting at times as well. And how being tear-gassed in your own country.’ All of those kinds of different things that took place, I think had an impact. And it was like reading Sartre and Camus and all those kinds of things early on in my early development as a person, and seeing, ‘Yeah, it is pretty disgusting out there. Yeah, we do live in an absurd kind of world and things like this happen.’ And so I think those were concerns for me in my work early on. And I think for the the Black and White Mural I was attempting more to give it a cinematic, documentary kind of thing—almost like a time capsule for that neighborhood. Like, this is what was experienced here at a particular moment in time. I intentionally wanted black and white as opposed to color. I felt that, to me, it was—well, documentaries are in black and white—usually—at that time. And that this was like a way to give some intensity to the piece.”
In American today, anti-evolutionism matters because it has become the vanguard of a genuine anti-science movement. To be sure, opposition to evolution isn’t new. State laws against the teaching of evolution actually go back nearly a century, and the famous Scopes trial took place 87 years ago. However, if you thought such things were behind us, guess again. Laws designed to encourage the teaching of non-scientific “alternative” theories to evolution were introduced in 11 state legislatures last year. This year, Darwin’s 203rd birthday, on February 12th, saw an anti-evolution bill, already passed by the Indiana State House of Representatives, awaiting action in the State Senate. Its fate there is uncertain, but there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.
Our Darwin problem is really a science problem. The easier it becomes to depict the scientific enterprise as a special interest immersed in the culture wars, the easier it becomes to reject scientific findings. We see this everywhere in American culture and politics today, from the anti-vaccine movement to the repeated assertion that global warming is a deliberate “hoax” rather than a straightforward conclusion driven by reams of scientific data. Sometimes this is done for deliberate political reasons, to secure advantage for a particular industry or financial group, but just as often it is motivated by fear of the implications of what science has discovered or might discover in the future.
Our Darwin problem matters for two reasons. First, it threatens the future of American scientific leadership in an increasingly competitive world. Convince enough young Americans that science is a close-minded system with a particular cultural and political agenda, and we will cede leadership to emerging countries that don’t share our Darwin hang-ups, and see science as the wave of the future. If you doubt this is happening today, look at the graduate programs of America’s research universities, still the greatest in the world. Increasingly, they are filled with bright, eager, creative students from around the world, taking places that American students just don’t seem interested in filling. Once trained, they will become the scientists of the future, while more and more of our own students have been persuaded that science has nothing to offer them. If this doesn’t change, scientific discovery will increasingly become something that happens elsewhere.
Second, and in my view just as important, our problem with science constrains and narrows our views and vision of the world. My personal concern for those who hold that view isn’t just that they are wrong on science, wrong about the nature of the evidence, and mistaken on a fundamental point of biology. It’s that they are missing something grand and beautiful and personally enriching.
Evolution isn’t just a story about where we came from. It’s an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn’t demean human life — it enhances it. We may be animals, but we are not just animals. We are the only ones who can truly appreciate, as Darwin put it, that there is “grandeur in this view of life,” and indeed there is. To accept evolution isn’t just to acknowledge the obvious — that the evidence behind it is overwhelming — it is to open one’s eyes to the endless beauty that life has generated and continues to produce. It is to become a knowing participant, in the truest sense, in the living world of which we are all a part.
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| — | Ken Miller, Biology Professor from Brown University and Roman Catholic, on America’s Darwin Problem (via crookedindifference) |
California weather.
Morning: HOLY SHIT it's freezing.
Afternoon: Who the fuck set the earth on fire.
hello friends
hello friends. thesis!
is back to torture us all.
start the submissions!
hi i’ve decided to resurrect that haiku shit. and maybe this blog? got lots of juicy queer theory quotes from class.
looking for summer internships
Since I’ve done summer research in math and science every summer, I figure since I’m graduating this year I’ll dabble in something else. I’m interested in social justice, but I’ll do anything. I also have coding/quantitative skills. But, it has to start in July.
So, does anyone know of any cool summer internships that are not in math and science that start in July, that are preferably paid (but it’s ok if it’s not)?
Awww the little town where everyone bought glâce! This place was so pretty.Azay-Le-Rideau, France
(by Anto57 -)
Hey Raab remember when??
In the instances when POC say shit like ‘Oh I can’t stand white folk’ or ‘Damn white people’, they aren’t saying ‘Oh I think they are inferior, I want to humiliate them, abuse them, enslave them and wipe out their people!’, they’re saying ‘Damn, after a couple hundred years of white people thinking I’m inferior, humiliating me, abusing me, enslaving me, and trying to wipe out my people, I don’t wanna deal with them.’ The context is completely different.
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Briana (via absinthedisco) Reblogging every time I see it. (via dr—grumbles) |
As the article notes, “88% of women in India resort to using ashes, newspapers, dried leaves and even husk sand during their periods, according to a report by market research group AC Nielsen called Sanitatary Protection: Every Woman’s Health Right. As a result of these unhygienic practices, more than 70% of the women suffer from reproductive tract infections, increasing the risk of contracting associated cancers.”
So one man, after discovering his wife had to choose between using old rags and being able to buy milk for her family, took to inventing a low-cost sanitary towel—and sharing the manufacturing process with rural women’s groups to enable them to make money.
The entire system operates on a woman-to-woman basis. Women making the towels spread awareness of the product locally, eventually helping others make the shift to this more hygienic method of control.
“I am trying to create a second white revolution,” says Muruganantham. Setting up 100,000 units, he says, will generate employment for one million women. “No one is bothered about uneducated and illiterate people. Through this model, they can live with dignity.”
I also love this bit:
With no women willing to discuss Muruganantham’s handmade sanitary towels in any depth, he decided to test them himself. Collecting goat’s blood from a butcher shop and treating it chemically to prevent coagulation, he wore a bladder-and-tube contraption and women’s underwear for a week. His homemade uterus would release a small dose of blood whenever pressed.
Click through to read the whole thing.
