Tag: places

Stop Shrinking To Fit Places You’ve Outgrown
EDUCATION

Stop Shrinking To Fit Places You’ve Outgrown

Stop shrinking to fit places you've outgrown. That saying is more pertinent today than ever before. Have you ever seen a cat curl up in the bathroom sink? It's such a cool and comfortable place for them to go. What if a giant Great Dane puppy was trying to fit into the bathroom sink? That suggestion doesn't seem like a very comfortable fit. Could that be you in your preparation to go back to work after the lockdown? If you have found yourself without a job during the pandemic and are dreading going back to the place that paid the bills but you didn't necessarily enjoy, now is the time to search for a place where you naturally fit in perfectly. Ask yourself what you enjoy or what you have spent time doing during the lockdown that might pay the bills because at this time there are worker sh...
Columbus Day Is Being Abandon In Favor Of Indigenous Peoples Day In Some Places
Journalism

Columbus Day Is Being Abandon In Favor Of Indigenous Peoples Day In Some Places

Increasingly, Columbus Day is giving people pause. More and more towns and cities across the country are electing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day as an alternative to – or in addition to – the day intended to honor Columbus’ voyages. Critics of the change see it as just another example of political correctness run amok – another flash point of the culture wars. As a scholar of Native American history – and a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina – I know the story is more complex than that. The growing recognition and celebration of Indigenous Peoples Day actually represents the fruits of a concerted, decades-long effort to recognize the role of indigenous people in the nation’s history. Why Columbus? Columbus Day is a relatively new federal holiday. In 1892, a joint congre...
The UAE’s Mars mission seeks to bring Hope to more places than the red planet
SCIENCE

The UAE’s Mars mission seeks to bring Hope to more places than the red planet

On July 14, a new Mars-bound spacecraft will launch from Japan. While several Mars missions are planned to launch over the next month, what makes this different is who’s launching it: the United Arab Emirates. Though new to space exploration, the UAE has set high goals for the probe, named Hope. The mission aims to further study the climate of Mars, but Omran Sharaf, mission lead, also says, “It’s a means for a bigger goal: to expedite the development in our educational sector, academic sector.” With space exploration usually pursued by actors like the United States, Russia, China, the European Space Agency and more recently, India, Hope will be the first mission to the red planet from a Middle Eastern country. As a space policy expert, I believe Hope is also significant in two other way...
How cafes, bars, gyms, barbershops and other ‘third places’ create our social fabric
IN OTHER NEWS

How cafes, bars, gyms, barbershops and other ‘third places’ create our social fabric

Social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic implies many painful losses. Among them are so-called “third places” – the restaurants, bars, gyms, houses of worship, barber shops and other places we frequent that are neither work nor home. The third place is a concept in sociology and urban planning that recognizes the role these semi-public, semi-private places play in fostering social association, community identity and civic engagement. In giving people a familiar setting for social interaction among regulars, they encourage “place attachment” – that is, the bond between a person and a place. Now, experiencing the coronavirus from the fortress of our living spaces, we may enjoy the feeling of being in a haven that protects against this invisible new enemy. But we’ve lost the social an...
Closing polling places is the 21st century’s version of a poll tax
IN OTHER NEWS

Closing polling places is the 21st century’s version of a poll tax

Delays and long lines at polling places during recent presidential primary elections – such as voters in Texas experienced – represent the latest version of decades-long policies that have sought to reduce the political power of African Americans in the U.S. Following the Civil War and the extension of the vote to African Americans, state governments worked to block black people, as well as poor whites, from voting. One way they tried to accomplish this goal was through poll taxes – an amount of money each voter had to pay before being allowed to vote. This practice was abolished by the passage of the 24th Amendment in 1964. Further protections for nonwhite voters came with the Voting Rights Act, which closely followed the Selma to Montgomery civil rights protest marches 55 years ago, in...
Journalism

White Supremacy Thrives, Even in Progressive Places

As a Black woman, I know we were never living in a post-racial paradise. But I still have hope for a society that cares for us all. Native Bay Area Black folks like myself are all too familiar with a form of NIMBYism that lives in progressive places. This strand of parochialism is less about the ills of urban development (although that certainly exists), than the dogged belief that this region has somehow escaped the litany of “isms” that plague the rest of the country. Over the years, friends, colleagues, and even random strangers have earnestly assured me that prejudice and discrimination do not exist in _____, fill in the city or the organization or the industry; that my experiences of bias, unequal treatment, or disrespect were isolated events or misunderstandings—on my part; and ...