Tuesday, January 13

VIDEO REELS

A History Of Myths About Black Hair: From Slavery To Colonialism And School Rules
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HAIR, VIDEO REELS

A History Of Myths About Black Hair: From Slavery To Colonialism And School Rules

“Your hair feels like pubic hair.” That was one of the first insults that someone hurled at my hair. She was a junior at my school. She would touch my hair and repeat this sentence to all present. I had to threaten her with violence to get her to stop touching my hair and comparing it to her pubes. This is one of the first dilemmas that black people face: do I let people touch my hair and under what circumstances? The question, “can I touch it?” becomes one of the most awkward social moments and can break relationships before they even start. This fascination with the texture of black hair (please don’t call it “ethnic”), is not new. In slave societies, white women would often hack off the hair of their enslaved female servants because it supposedly “confused white men” . Today, black w...
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What We Don’t Understand About Young People’s Motivations
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PARENTING, VIDEO REELS

What We Don’t Understand About Young People’s Motivations

Young people are demanding change. In the last few days, young Indigenous activists and their supporters blocked parliamentarians in Victoria, B.C., from accessing the provincial legislature and led waves of protest across the country. For some young people, climate change is urgent. For others, gun violence is a crisis. From truth and reconciliation to inclusion and diversity and mental health, young people are bringing awareness to societal crises and making headlines along the way. Historically, this is really nothing new. Young people have long been leaders and catalysts of important movements. Unfortunately, these change-makers are often thought to be outside of what is considered typical of this age group. Young people are often labelled problematic, selfish or not yet ready to le...
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The Uproar Over The First Black Woman Supreme Court Nominee
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VIDEO REELS

The Uproar Over The First Black Woman Supreme Court Nominee

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement in late January, after months of pressure from progressives. At 83, Breyer is the oldest member of the nation’s highest court and is one of three liberal justices remaining on the nine-member body. Now, Democrats, who retain the slimmest of majorities in the U.S. Senate, have a chance to replace Breyer with a younger liberal justice. President Joe Biden, in keeping with his campaign promise to name a Black woman to the court, announced in January, “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience, and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court.” Republicans and conservatives immediately protested the announcement,...
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The Origin Of Video Games
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VIDEO GAMES, VIDEO REELS

The Origin Of Video Games

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, University of California, Santa Cruz Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Some people just love to play. Give them a ball, or a pen, or a pile of leaves and they’ll find a way to play with it. In fact, enough people love to play that just about any time someone invents something new, people find a way to play with it. Christopher Strachey didn’t invent modern computers. He didn’t even see one until 1951, several years after others had first created the first ones. But he had been friendly with Alan Turing, who was one of the inventors of modern computers, when he was in college in England. The Mark I is considered the first computer because it could stor...
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For Low-Wage Women Of Color What About Work-Life Balance
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VIDEO REELS

For Low-Wage Women Of Color What About Work-Life Balance

October is National Work and Family Month, a designation that the U.S. Senate first marked in 2003. The struggle that workers face in balancing job-related responsibilities with family obligations became a signature issue for former President Barack Obama, who in a 2014 speech at the White House Summit on Working Families declared, “family-friendly policies are good business practices.” Today, government officials, corporate executives, and media outlets are increasingly calling attention to the importance of alleviating workplace stresses and promoting better “work-life balance.” But most of the rhetoric is directed at higher-income professionals such as managers and executives who tend to be largely White, and not low-wage workers of color, particularly Black and Brown women. During th...
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Cuomo And His Protectors A Textbook Example – Complicity And Silence Around Sexual Harassment Are Common
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VIDEO REELS

Cuomo And His Protectors A Textbook Example – Complicity And Silence Around Sexual Harassment Are Common

Sandy Hershcovis, University of Calgary; Ivana Vranjes, Tilburg University; Jennifer L. Berdahl, University of British Columbia, and Lilia M. Cortina, University of Michigan New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation came after more than a week of bad news, starting with a damning report from the state attorney general’s office that detailed his sexual harassment of 11 women, some of whom worked in his office. An executive assistant to Cuomo, Brittany Commisso, filed a criminal complaint against him with the Albany County sheriff’s office. The state Legislature readied impeachment proceedings. Then, top aide Melissa DeRosa resigned amid a flurry of questions surrounding her role in protecting Cuomo. Attorney Roberta Kaplan also resigned from the #MeToo advocacy organization Time’s Up after...
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In 1910 All Hell Broke Loose When A Black Boxing Champion Beat The ‘Great White Hope’
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VIDEO REELS

In 1910 All Hell Broke Loose When A Black Boxing Champion Beat The ‘Great White Hope’

Chris Lamb, IUPUI An audacious Black heavyweight champion was slated to defend his title against a white boxer in Reno, Nevada, on July 4, 1910. It was billed as “the fight of the century.” The fight was seen as a referendum on racial superiority – and all hell was about to break loose in the racially divided United States. Jack Johnson, the Black man, decisively beat James Jeffries, nicknamed “the Great White Hope.” Johnson’s triumph ignited bloody confrontations and violence between Blacks and whites throughout the country, leaving perhaps two dozen dead, almost all of them Black, and hundreds injured and arrested. “No event yielded such widespread racial violence until the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., fifty-eight years later,” Geoffrey C. Ward wrote in his biography...
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A Problem For Women’s Health – Too Few Women Get To Invent
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VIDEO REELS

A Problem For Women’s Health – Too Few Women Get To Invent

Rem Koning, Harvard Business School MacArthur Genius and MIT professor Linda Griffith has built an epic career as a scientist and inventor, including growing a human ear on a mouse. She now spends her days unpacking the biological mechanisms underlying endometriosis, a condition in which uterus-like tissue grows outside of the uterus. Endometriosis can be brutally painful, is regularly misdiagnosed and misunderstood, and has affected Griffith’s life along with the lives of over 6 million other women in the U.S. Griffith’s research and inventions have the potential to improve women’s health dramatically. The problem for women is that she stands out for another reason: She’s female. In 2020, only 12.8% of U.S. inventors receiving patents were women, and historically male researchers have i...
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Python skin jackets and elephant leather boots: How wealthy Western nations help drive the global wildlife trade
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FASHION STYLE & BEAUTY, VIDEO REELS

Python skin jackets and elephant leather boots: How wealthy Western nations help drive the global wildlife trade

Three-quarters of new and emerging infectious diseases in humans originate in wildlife. COVID-19, SARS and Ebola all started this way. The COVID-19 global pandemic has drawn new attention to how people think about wild animals, consume them and interact with them, and how those interactions can affect public health. Any activity that puts people in close proximity to disease-prone animals is risky, including wildlife trade and the destruction of natural habitats. In response to the current pandemic, China and Vietnam have instituted bans on wildlife consumption. Global leaders and U.S. policymakers are calling for a ban on wildlife markets worldwide. We study global environmental governance and human security. As we see it, banning the wildlife trade without action to reduce consumer dem...
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Beware Of Claims That Ecstasy Is A Magic Bullet – MDMA May Help Treat PTSD
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MENTAL HEALTH, VIDEO REELS

Beware Of Claims That Ecstasy Is A Magic Bullet – MDMA May Help Treat PTSD

Recent clinical trials, including one soon to be published in Nature Medicine, have suggested that MDMA combined with psychotherapy may help treat post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The news generated considerable optimism and excitement in the media, and some in the scientific community. As a psychiatrist and an expert in neurobiology and treatment of PTSD, I think these developments may be important – but not the major breakthrough that some people are suggesting. This approach is not a new magic bullet. A combat veteran discusses his experience with PTSD. PTSD, a disorder of emotional memories Post-traumatic stress disorder is a result of exposure to extreme traumatic experiences, such as natural disasters, motor vehicle accidents, assault, robbery, rape, combat and torture. Base...
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