Via Heather Johanssen I came across this video of a woman who has acne, a skin condition that can create physical scars and even deeper emotional ones. She had posted images of herself on social media with and without makeup. The video shows her transition and the comments that she received. It seems like she just can’t win.
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The second annual one-day conference on Humanism at Work sponsored by the Foundation Beyond Belief will held on July 25, 2015 in Boston, MA. The program is designed to help identify more and better ways for humanists to put their nontheistic compassionate beliefs to work for the betterment on the world. You can get more details here.
There was a time when the limbo was a huge craze with people doing it all over the place, usually accompanied by Chubby Checker singing Limbo Rock, one of his repertoire of songs tailored round a particular type of dance that he got into the popularity charts.
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The July 2015 issue Harper’s magazine compiled from newspaper accounts some of the bizarre things done by passengers on planes since 2010 that required either the removal of the disruptive passengers or the rerouting of planes in order to make a quick landing. Here’s their list.
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We talk about the poor and rich and middle class and can even classify people into those categories based on metrics such as income and wealth. But if we ask people directly to describe themselves, my guess is that fewer than we expect will describe themselves as currently being poor. This is because the subjective and objective interpretations of the word are quite different.
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I was reading about the large number of baseball pitchers who suffer serious elbow injuries that require something popularly known as Tommy John surgery so named after a famous pitcher. Something known as the ulnar collateral ligament in the elbow gets frayed, stretched, or torn during the pitching motion and has to be replaced. These injuries, along with rotator cuff injuries, can occur in even young children playing in Little League games.
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We live in an era of fear of all manner of dangers, many of them highly exaggerated. This extends to many parents not allowing their children out of their sight. I have been interested in the so-called ‘Free-Range Kids’ movement, where parents are encouraged to give their children more freedom to roam the neighborhood and not have adults hovering over them all the time.
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There is a national exam taken by all students in British high schools known as the GCSE exam and apparently one recent problem has caused an uproar because it stumped most students. Here it is:
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When it comes to discussing issues of gender identity and transgender issues, I must admit that I tread very gingerly simply because it is so new to me. Even though I personally know six people who are transgender, I don’t feel that I fully understand all the nuances involved and thus am cautious so as to avoid inadvertently saying something insensitive or even offensive.
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Cartoonist and essayist Ted Rall asks a good question.
This is for you older readers: when did news conferences become long-winded acceptance speeches?
I’m too young to remember for sure, but there must have been a time when, after a train derailment or a tornado or a flood or a race riot or whatever, public officials stepped up to the microphones to deliver a status update (“as soon as we learn more, we’ll let you know”), and perhaps some advice to the public (“avoid downed live wires, especially the ones that are sparking, like in that movie The Ice Storm”), answered reporters’ questions and left the stage.
Today’s news conferences are a dreary, undignified mélange of pro forma acknowledgements and sentimental pabulum.