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26 Mar 02:58

Performing Slanderous and Sweet Words Said About Women

by Elisa Wouk Almino
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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York (all photos by the author for Hyperallergic unless otherwise noted)

On Wednesday evening at the FLAG Art Foundation, men and women — though mostly women — gathered to read from a list of 1,000 words and phrases characterizing women. The descriptions were pulled from Betty Tompkins‘s project WOMEN: Words, Phrases, and Stories, for which she circulated by email and through social media the following request: “Please send me a list of words that describe women. They can be affectionate (honey), pejorative (bitch), slang, descriptive, etc.” She conducted this experiment twice, in 2002 and 2013; she was, as she stated at the event titled “Words on WOMEN,” “curious to see whether language had changed.”

While Tompkins didn’t offer her results, from the slew of words and phrases — each painted on its own canvas, filling the gallery’s two large walls — it seems safe to say, not really. Glenn Fuhrman, the founder of the FLAG Art Foundation, was quick to note in his opening remarks that most of the descriptors, which came from an equal number of men and women from around the world, are severely negative. He likened the way we direct our messages online to “missiles,” with people not really taking the impact of their words into consideration. The point of the evening’s performance, he said, was to restore meaning by voicing these words aloud.

“Words on WOMEN” cards (image courtesy the FLAG Art Foundation)

Upon arrival, I was directed to a table where stacks of words were arranged in alphabetical order. Shuffling through them to pick my 20 words to read, I came across sweet phrases (“dear loved,” “aching to touch her”), a surprising number of French ones (“mon coeur,” “mon petit chou”), some fairly puzzling ones (“Fairy who appears at a relative’s death”), but mainly a lot of slander — the four most sent words were “bitch,” “cunt,” “mother,” and “slut.” I tried to select a range of words within the span of a few minutes: words that I found creative (“kinetic”), ones that I have often said (“wifey”), and ones that felt all too familiar (“used,” “taken”) and hurtful (“NO,” “sad,” “weak”).

Greta Lee

Greta Lee, actress, reading at “Words on WOMEN” (image courtesy the FLAG Art Foundation) (click to enlarge)

By far, the most arresting performers —artists, writers, arts professionals, and one self-described “dandy” — were those who appropriated the words in personal ways, whether sarcastically or earnestly. One woman labeled herself a “flirt,” slipping the elastic band from her hair, then a “ditz,” followed by casually unbuttoning her dress, and ended as a “dumb blonde,” swaying her hair in an exaggerated manner. Another woman inserted “I” before each phrase: “I’m a widow”; “I’m beautiful”; “I’m always faking it.” A man chose words that reminded him of his first girlfriend, Nancy, such as, “soft,” “smart,” “assertive angel,” “slut #1,” and concluded with, “she is a dream. I change my mind”; whereas a woman selected terms that her ex-boyfriend used to say to her, mainly “bitch,” “bitch,” and “bitch,” occasionally peppered with something like, “ravishing.” One woman, after uttering “douchebag,” added, “somebody called me that last week.” Audience members, myself included, almost always responded by laughing, whether from genuine amusement or discomfort wasn’t exactly clear.

There were also a few people who felt compelled to give introductions or disclaimers that all said something along the lines of, “the most important people in my life are women.” In sharing how much they valued their mother, daughter, sister, or best friend, these speakers, it seemed, wanted to protect their loved ones from the insults circling around us in the room. While a reasonable impulse, I couldn’t help but feel slightly annoyed by what felt like reassurance.

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

Then there were people, like me, who had selected words at random only moments before the performance — and it was generally clear who these people were. We were the ones who didn’t quite know how to read our words, where to place emphasis, whether to be funny or mocking or serious, whether our raised eyebrows and slight inflections were sufficiently conveying our opinions. The main conundrum seemed to be: do I try to invoke or defy the person who sent in these words? The word “virgin,” for instance. Do I read that with surprise, praise, or pity?

Surrounding us were Tompkins’s paintings, the words rendered in all caps and various sizes so that they seemed to shift and recede as if in conversation. The canvases read like loud assertions, alternatively making me feel proud and empowered, or scolded and degraded. I imagined the hypothetical situations that inspired this exacerbating sense of contempt or occasional awe. But neither the voice in my head nor the others onstage could quite embody or channel the hatred of those who originally articulated these aspersions and actually meant them.

Stephanie Roach, FLAG Director

Audience gathered for “Words on WOMEN” (image courtesy the FLAG Art Foundation)

Betty Tompkins and Larry Krone at the FLAG Art Foundation for “Words on WOMEN” (image courtesy the FLAG Art Foundation)

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

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Installation view of ‘Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories’ at the FLAG Art Foundation

Words on WOMEN” took place at the FLAG Art Foundation (545 West 25th Street, 9th Floor, Chelsea, Manhattan) on March 23. Betty Tompkins: WOMEN Words, Phrases, and Stories continues at the FLAG Art Foundation through May 14. 

20 Mar 17:46

Kevin Spacey And The Florida Panthers: A Love Story

by Patrick Redford

Please look at the photograph above.

Read more...










22 Nov 16:52

Those OTHER People

by Betty Cracker

The NYT published a column Friday that’s getting some attention: “Who Turned My Blue State Red? Why poor areas vote for politicians who want to slash the safety net,” (Alec MacGillis). The column touches on several controversial issues, including why the white working class seems to vote against its own interests and how Democrats can change the political calculus so that we not only elect presidents but give them a functional legislative branch.

The whole thing is worth a read IMO, but here are some excerpts below the fold:

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net… The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests.

But this reaction misses the complexity of the political dynamic that’s taken hold in these parts of the country. It misdiagnoses the Democratic Party’s growing conundrum with working-class white voters. And it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

[snip]

Where opposition to the social safety net has long been fed by the specter of undeserving inner-city African-Americans — think of Ronald Reagan’s notorious “welfare queen” — in places like Pike County [KY] it’s fueled, more and more, by people’s resentment over rising dependency they see among their own neighbors, even their own families.

“It’s Cousin Bobby — ‘he’s on Oxy and he’s on the draw and we’re paying for him,’” [Jim] Cauley [Democratic political consultant] said. “If you need help, no one begrudges you taking the program — they’re good-hearted people. It’s when you’re able-bodied and making choices not to be able-bodied.” The political upshot is plain, Mr. Cauley added. “It’s not the people on the draw that’s voting against” the Democrats, he said. “It’s everyone else.”

That tracks with my experience with rural working- and middle-class family members, many of whom have benefited from government assistance at some point in their lives, be it via Pell grants, unemployment insurance or WIC. Just as there’s no more zealous opponent of tobacco than a reformed smoker, these former dole recipients see current government check-cashers as weak-willed rather than needy.

I think MacGillis is exactly right about the shifting target of white working class contempt. The GOP has carried on Reagan’s tradition of stoking racial resentment with variations on the projects-dwelling, Cadillac-driving welfare queen trope, and that’s still a powerful meme for the IGMFY crowd.

But the “Cousin Bobby” who lives around the corner is perhaps even more damaging to Democrats’ prospects with white working class voters, and thanks to the decimation of the manufacturing economy, the rise of prescription drug abuse and a host of other factors (many brought on by run-amok plutocracy), there are more Cousin Bobbies than ever before.

One of my much-beloved aunts is a GOP voter of the exact type described in the article, a woman who bootstrapped her way into the middle-class via education — with help from the state! — and who has nothing but contempt for the “sorry” (her term) individuals who don’t follow a similar path and only scorn for any politician who wants to redirect a portion of her income to assist them.

How do we reach people like her? Well, it has been a multi-decade project of mine, and here’s my conclusion: We can’t.

You can point out a thousand times how minuscule a portion of government spending actually goes toward welfare assistance like food stamps. You can provide irrefutable evidence that the GOP uses wedge issues to keep the flow of cash and goodies channeled upward while doing fuck-all to address working-class concerns. You can emphasize that the country, indeed these folks themselves, prosper under Democrats and take a hit during Republican administrations.

It doesn’t matter. None of these facts has the visceral weight of the example of the never-married cousin with five children who lives down the road in a squalid trailer with her pill-head, disability check-collecting boyfriend.

I agree with the folks who advocate writing these voters off. But it’s important to remember they are only a subset of the white working class.

The NYT column’s author visited an Appalachian health clinic, where he met another subset:

In the spring of 2012, I visited a free weekend medical and dental clinic run by the organization Remote Area Medical in the foothills of southern Tennessee. I wanted to ask the hundreds of uninsured people flocking to the clinic what they thought of President Obama and the Affordable Care Act, whose fate was about to be decided by the Supreme Court.

I was expecting a “What’s the Matter With Kansas” reaction — anger at the president who had signed the law geared to help them. Instead, I found sympathy for Mr. Obama. But had they voted for him? Of course not — almost no one I spoke with voted, in local, state or national elections. Not only that, but they had barely heard of the health care law.

If there’s any hope of turning red states blue again, it lies in mobilizing those non-voters. And as red regions implement shitty policies and turn into Kansas-style failed states, there will be an increasing number of red state citizens with a lot less to be complacent about.

Maybe that’s what happened in Louisiana last night — I don’t know. But I do know this: We need those votes. We can’t wait for demographics to save us.

14 Nov 04:45

Birthdays Are Weird

by Tim Urban

To best understand this comic, read this post first, or at least look at this drawing.

___________

My birthday was yesterday. Here’s what this week has been like:

Mountain Monday

 

Mountain Tuesday

 

Mountain Wednesday

 

Birthday

 

Mountain Friday

The post Birthdays Are Weird appeared first on Wait But Why.

07 Oct 14:35

Little Football Players Abandon Game To Dance Like Champions

by Tom Ley

There’s an argument to be made that the more people learn about the inherent dangers of football, the less parents will be inclined to let their children participate in the game, thus leading to the eventual death of youth football. Thankfully, the Milford Mighty Mites have developed a plan to save the sport.

Read more...

05 Oct 13:48

An Insane Collection of 1990s GIFs

by Adrienne LaFrance
A Power Macintosh 6500 series, photographed in 1997 AP

People of the Internet, join me, as we travel back to the year 1997. It was an era of yowling modems, AOL chatrooms, and websites under construction.

And you knew they were under construction because they told you. With GIFs. Glorious, blinking, yellow-and-black GIFS.

Like this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And this one:

And, well, you get the idea. If the mere glimpse of those things gives you twinges of longing, you remember a time when they were everywhere. The web was littered with them. Simple as they may appear, seeing those “under construction” GIFs in 2015 underscores a profound shift in the way people think about the web.

“It represents this utterly different philosophy that you need to know that this site is under construction, it's not done yet,” said Jason Scott, a historian at the Internet Archive. “Now, we know all sites are not done. If your site is done, something is wrong. It’s bad. You’re either out of money or you’re boring.”

Scott has given this matter a good deal of thought, in part because he’s spent time collecting these lost GIFs from across the web, saving them from total obscurity. “It's a ridiculously massive collection,” he said. And it’s worth perusing his page devoted to “under construction” GIFs, in all their frenetic 1990s glory, for yourself. (The dizzying effect you get when the page is loading was intended.)

These animations may look simple—janky, even—but it’s important to remember the web environment in which they emerged. The amount of data a website could handle was minuscule compared with today. “People might have had only three megabytes of space,” Scott said. “So they had to make their decisions.”

Today designers are making more complicated decisions, and deploying changes constantly. The web has always been under construction, but that no longer needs to be said. “The web is becoming less permanent,” Scott said, “And more of a dynamic, shifting thing.”


This story is part of an occasional series about abandoned Internet imagery. Related stories here and here.











04 Oct 12:45

The Young Iraqis Promoting Darwinism and Rationalism To Save Iraq

by contributors

Marwan Jabbar | Baghdad | (Niqash.org) | – –

One of the more unusual, grass roots groups in Iraq today is Real Sciences. They are young Iraqis who translate scientific articles into Arabic, believing that a little more of this could combat violence.

In the midst of the conflicts that Baghdad in particular, and the rest of Iraq in general, has suffered through over the years, many grassroots movements advocating positive social change have arisen. Whether they are aid campaigns or movements that lobby for certain rights, gauging their impact remains difficult. What one can be sure of though, is that activism and advocating for a civil, liberal society is ongoing in Iraq – and in some creative ways.

All of this may sound harmless but in Iraq advocating rational scientific thought can be a dangerous pastime.

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One of the most unique groups in this category is made up of young men and women who are fierce promoters of science as a partial answer to their community’s sectarian conflicts. The group is called Real Sciences and works together with another associated group called the Iraqi Translation Project. Both groups have their own websites and they also have popular Facebook pages – boasting over 130,000 Likes from fans altogether – and they regularly post translations of popular scientific articles on everything from why human beings enjoy running to how cavemen used their hearing to, most recently, the apparent presence of waterways on the planet Mars.

All of this may sound harmless to Westerners but in Iraq advocating rational scientific thought, or even encouraging different points of view on evolutionary theory, can be a dangerous pastime.

Hayan al-Khayat, a 25-year-old law graduate who has his own TV show where he invites experts to clarify common legal questions on subjects like divorce and company and media law, is one of the Real Sciences group’s founders and a key member. He recently published a book, Science For All, with the title an homage to the 80s TV program with the same name that was such a big hit in Iraq. The first print run disappeared from local book stores within three months and demand remains high. The book is a compilation of 25 of the Iraqi translators’ best pieces about science.

“I receive personal threats regularly because we don’t tolerate those who claim they can work miracles and who use this to gain power and money,” al-Khayat says. “Our society has a tendency to believe in these things, especially when they come with religious references. We will continue our efforts – although every now and then, I personally tone it down or stop writing when I feel as though the threats are legitimate.”

The group’s translators often venture into fields not common among local Arabic readers such as the subject of evolutionary psychology. They also often cross red lines when topics touch on creationism versus Darwin’s theory of evolution. One member has translated many important books by authors like British philosopher A.C. Grayling, US particle physicist and religious sceptic Victor Stenger, and US historian and noted atheist Richard Carrier. But he cannot be credited for his translations because he would be in danger; he uses an alias.

“Our movement has impacted even the conservative societies in the most conservative cities,” he told NIQASH when asked about the Real Sciences group’s impact beyond social media. “And we always receive recognition and gratitude notes – but not publicly.”

The group was formed in 2012 because the members’ passion for science was not being fulfilled by the local market. The Iraqi book market predominantly sells religious books, which often promote hatred and sectarianism, books about Communism and old pan-Arab style books with nationalistic leanings. There are not many science books or magazines available at Mutanabi Street, Baghdad’s famous street of book sellers, which pretty much represents what is available in Iraq; if you can’t find it on Mutanabi Street, you won’t find it elsewhere in Iraq.

With the occasional exception, the scientific magazines and books for sale on Mutanabi Street were either very scarce or mostly outdated. In 2011 the Real Sciences group was formed, with less than five people at that stage. In 2013, some of the group members with a better command of English started the Iraqi Translation Project, volunteering to translate important scientific materials and promoting scientific breakthroughs via social media. Today the two groups work in parallel even though they no longer share members and are independent of one another.

Our movement has impacted even the conservative societies in the most conservative cities.

In September 2013, a few members from the two groups got together with other civil society activists they had met on Mutanabi Street, long a home to Baghdad’s intellectuals, and started an initiative called “I am Iraqi, I read”.

Members of the Real Sciences group and the Iraqi Translation group helped immensely with the preparation of this populist initiative, volunteering not only their time and effort but also their personal libraries, only to find themselves sidelined by other members of the group later on.

Security threats are the main problem hindering the group’s progress on the ground today, says Atheel Fawzi, one of the Real Sciences group’s Baghdad-based founders. In fact, many of the group members have left the country over the years even while their presence on social media is still very strong.

“While the group’s members were effective contributors at many independent and government-sponsored conferences and events, the fear of personal prosecution and the exodus of many of our valuable friends in the group were what stopped us from organizing ourselves into a registered NGO,” Fawzi explains.

The Real Sciences group are continuously labelled as “an atheist group that targets religion and values”. But al-Khayat and Fawzi dispute this, saying they don’t have any prejudice against local religion. What they are opposed to is anything unscientific. As proof that they don’t discriminate, they reference their recent campaign against a speaker appearing at TedX Baghdad in mid-September as an example. The speaker in question was an Iraqi academic who believes in parapsychology and the Real Sciences group was opposed to his presence for this reason.

“TedX is a secular event by all means,” explains al-Khayat. “We are not targeting a specific religion or sect, we are against all kinds of pseudoscience.”

The stir the group created on social media led TedX organisers to reconsider their choice of that particular speaker.

“The brave translators are not afraid of taboos,” says Atheer al-Attar, a graduate of Louisiana State University in the US, resident in Basra and member of the Iraqi Translation Project. “Not because they want to fight religion, they simply advocate for the truth, and nothing but the truth. They even mock the National Geographic channel, dubbed into Arabic, and their regional magazine because the Arabic version regularly censors some scientific facts so they become more politically correct for the Middle East.”

Al-Attar recently translated a children’s science book into Arabic and he is currently trying to find someone who will help him fund its printing.

The book aims to, “educate new generations and familiarize them with basic scientific principles in a fun way,” al-Attar explains. He’s had some interest from potential funders but they have tended to withdraw once they see the subject matter. “They apologize and say they’re concerned,” Al-Attar explains, quoting the potential local funders he had met, “they worry that the book might promote ‘unfamiliar ideologies’.”

*This story was altered on October 2, 2015, to reflect the fact that Atheer al-Attar is a member of the Iraqi Translation Project, rather than a regular contributor to the Real Sciences group, as was originally stated.

Via Niqash.org

14 Sep 14:06

Pickle Your French Fries For the Ultimate Salt and Vinegar Snack

by Claire Lower on Skillet, shared by Andy Orin to Lifehacker

As a salt and vinegar/anything pickled super fan, I am always looking for new ways to incorporate the holy combination of acetic acid and sodium chloride into my diet, so you can imagine my glee when Bon Appetit recommended I pickle french fries.

It is, in a word, genius. Watch the video above and click the link below for the full recipe (courtesy of Al’s Place in San Francisco), but don’t be intimidated; all you need to make these funky fries are potatoes, cabbage, and salt. Honestly, the hardest part is the waiting.

Pickled French Fries | Bon Appetit

05 Sep 20:11

The Power of Free Community College

by Nancy Cook
Brad Montgomery / Flickr

Caitlin McLawhorn could nev­er have gone to col­lege, she says, without the free tu­ition she re­ceived to at­tend com­munity col­lege first and to earn an as­so­ci­ate’s de­gree.

Grow­ing up as the daugh­ter of a single moth­er, money was al­ways tight in McLawhorn’s house­hold in East Ten­ness­ee. Her fath­er left the fam­ily eight years ago, and her moth­er, who didn’t fin­ish col­lege, sup­por­ted her two chil­dren on her salary as a low-level of­fice work­er in Oak Ridge, out­side of Knoxville. Col­lege—even if it was a goal—seemed far away from the classrooms of McLawhorn’s rur­al high school.

But in 2010, McLawhorn’s guid­ance coun­selors told her about a pro­gram called Ten­ness­ee Achieves, which al­lows any loc­al high-school stu­dent to at­tend community col­lege for free. The only caveats? Stu­dents must main­tain a C-average and at­tend com­munity col­lege for con­sec­ut­ive semesters. They also must per­form eight hours of com­munity ser­vice each semester and meet regularly with a vo­lun­teer ment­or (usu­ally, a pro­fes­sion­al in the com­munity) who can help the stu­dent re­main on track.

McLawhorn filled out the ap­plic­a­tion and, by 2011, found her­self en­rolled in Pellis­sippi State Com­munity Col­lege in Knoxville, where she stud­ied lit­er­at­ure and even­tu­ally earned her as­so­ci­ate’s de­gree. “I would have had no chance to go without this pro­gram,” she says now, just months away from earn­ing a full-fledged bach­el­or’s de­gree. “It is so sur­real to achieve something that I nev­er thought I could in my life.”

The pro­gram ori­gin­ated in Knoxville in 2008. A brainchild of the city’s may­or, Bill Haslam, a Re­pub­lic­an who is now Ten­ness­ee’s gov­ernor, it was in­ten­ded as a work­force-de­vel­op­ment ini­ti­at­ive to cre­ate a bet­ter-edu­cated class of loc­al workers. After dig­ging in­to loc­al edu­ca­tion stat­ist­ics, city of­fi­cials real­ized that a third of Knoxville’s gradu­at­ing high-school seni­ors didn’t pur­sue any type of high­er edu­ca­tion, in­clud­ing cre­den­tial or tech­nic­al school­ing. They came mainly from low-in­come fam­il­ies in which no one else had at­ten­ded col­lege. Many had mediocre grades in high school and re­quired re­medi­al classes.

The im­petus for Ten­ness­ee Achieves was Knoxville of­fi­cials’ de­sire to give these stu­dents a chance for more edu­ca­tion. The fund­ing ori­gin­ally came from sev­en private donors, not­ably Randy Boyd, the founder and ex­ec­ut­ive chair­man of a com­pany that makes elec­tron­ic fences for pets. The $1.2 mil­lion he donated and raised, com­bined with the may­or’s staff and man­power, formed a pub­lic-private part­ner­ship to get Ten­ness­ee Achieves off the ground.

By the fall of 2009, the pro­gram helped 287 Ten­ness­ee stu­dents en­roll in community col­lege, aided by 181 vo­lun­teer ment­ors. The fund­ing covered all tu­ition ex­penses, so that stu­dents such as McLawhorn could fin­ish com­munity col­lege debt-free. “The fund­ing is very crit­ic­al to the con­ver­sa­tion,” says Krissy DeAle­jandro, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of Ten­ness­ee Achieves (or tnAchieves, as the organ­iz­a­tion calls it­self on its web­site). “It is the car­rot that brings the kids to the table, but it is the ment­or­ing and oth­er sup­ports that truly define suc­cess.” A third of these ori­gin­al stu­dents gradu­ated with­in three years.

The Knoxville pro­gram in­tro­duced so many ad­di­tion­al stu­dents to the community-col­lege sys­tem that Haslam, elec­ted gov­ernor in 2010, ex­pan­ded it last fall in­to a statewide gov­ern­ment ini­ti­at­ive called Ten­ness­ee Prom­ise. Its $361 mil­lion en­dow­ment, gen­er­ated by the state lot­tery funds, en­ables stu­dents to at­tend any of the state’s 13 com­munity col­leges, 27 tech­nic­al col­leges, or four-year in­sti­tu­tions that of­fer as­so­ci­ate’s de­grees. Of­fi­cials es­tim­ate that 16,000 to 18,000 in­com­ing stu­dents will at­tend com­munity col­lege in Ten­ness­ee this academ­ic year thanks to the pro­gram.

Com­munity col­leges across Ten­ness­ee have braced for this in­flux. One of them is North­east State Com­munity Col­lege, in Bloun­tville, which an­ti­cip­ates en­roll­ment will double this fall. The school hired ad­di­tion­al fac­ulty and ad­ded classes, especially for its most pop­u­lar pro­grams, such as ad­vanced man­u­fac­tur­ing, welding, auto­mot­ives, and busi­ness ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Roughly half of North­east State’s stu­dents even­tu­ally trans­fer to a four-year school. But even for stu­dents who stop with an as­so­ci­ate’s de­gree or cer­ti­fic­ate, the ex­pos­ure to com­munity col­lege can be in­valu­able, ac­cord­ing to Janice Gilliam, the school’s pres­id­ent. “We have a lot of stu­dents who do not think about go­ing to col­lege. Some of their par­ents have not even fin­ished high school. This is a huge step to break this cycle,” she says. “A lot of them don’t even know they have tal­ent.”

The vo­lun­teer ment­ors are a cru­cial ele­ment that dis­tin­guishes Ten­ness­ee Promise from or­din­ary schol­ar­ship pro­grams. The ment­ors check in with students weekly, wheth­er by text mes­sage, phone, or in per­son. They help students nav­ig­ate the bur­eau­cracy of a com­munity-col­lege sys­tem, which can be for­eign to first-gen­er­a­tion col­lege stu­dents.

“I had com­pletely taken for gran­ted what know­ledge of the col­lege-ad­mis­sions pro­cess means,” says Owen Driskill, who has worked as a ment­or for the past seven years. “I had a mom and dad who talked about col­lege and knew how the pro­cess works. You just see how big a dif­fer­ence it makes to ment­or stu­dents and help them trans­late all of these steps and pro­cesses.”

The goal is for 55 per­cent of Ten­nesseans to hold some type of high­er-edu­ca­tion cre­den­tial by 2025, says Mike Krause, ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of Ten­ness­ee Prom­ise. Cur­rently, just 34 per­cent of state res­id­ents have a col­lege cre­den­tial.

This means op­por­tun­it­ies for stu­dents who might oth­er­wise have taken less­er career paths. After earn­ing her as­so­ci­ate’s de­gree and liv­ing at home to save money, McLawhorn trans­ferred to Maryville Col­lege, a small, four-year private school in East Ten­ness­ee. She has lived on cam­pus, worked as a res­id­ent ad­viser, and ma­jored in writ­ing and com­mu­nic­a­tions, with a minor in busi­ness.

Now 21 years old, McLawhorn ex­pects to gradu­ate in Decem­ber and hopes to move to Wash­ing­ton, D.C., to lobby for poor fam­il­ies in high­er edu­ca­tion. It’s an in­spir­ing am­bi­tion for a young Ten­nessean who had not an­ti­cip­ated such a ca­reer—or chance in life—for her­self.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/free-college-in-tennessee/403945/











05 Sep 20:08

In and Out of Frame: Lorraine O’Grady’s “Art Is…”

by Louis Bury

Lorraine O’Grady, “Art Is. . . (Cop Framed)” (1983/2009), chromogenic color print, 16 x 20 inches (all images courtesy Alexander Gray Associates, New York and © 2015 Lorraine O’Grady/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York)

Like a Choose Your Own Adventure story or a game of Mad Libs, the elliptical title of Lorraine O’Grady’s 1983 performance piece, “Art Is…,” creates space, playful and inviting, for structured audience participation. You fill in the blank, the title says, in a demotic spirit, Art can be whatever you want it to be. But ellipses do not simply, or even primarily, denote open space, a “to be continued” awaiting information; they also denote omission, something left out, perhaps suppressed. Both functions of the ellipsis — invitation and suppression — are at play throughout the piece, and I don’t mean “at play” metaphorically. O’Grady and her audience had a damned good time making art about something — African-American subjectivity — that is often missing from art. Their joy, thirty years on, is still infectious.

For the performance, O’Grady entered a float into that year’s African-American Day Parade, which ran, and still runs, up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in Harlem. On the side of the float, in big letters, were the words “ART IS…”; atop it, running lengthwise, was a massive 9’x15’ gold picture frame. In character as “Mlle Bourgeoise Noire,” a persona she had adopted, in the years prior, as a guise enabling her to crash art world events and draw attention to issues of racial underrepresentation, O’Grady and a troupe of 15 African-American and Latino performers, dressed all in white, walked around the float carrying empty gold picture frames. The empty frames were sometimes handed to onlookers, sometimes held in front of them, Vanna White-style, to encourage the mostly black audience to consider themselves as valid subjects, even makers, of art. Photographs taken by various people who witnessed these framings were then collected by O’Grady to document the performance. Forty of those images are currently on view in an eponymous exhibit of “Art Is…” at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The results are smart and exuberant, a delightful Conceptualist triumph of both head and heart.

Lorraine O’Grady, “Art Is. . . (Girlfriends Times Two)” (1983/2009), chromogenic color print, 16 × 20 inches

Take, for example, “Art Is… (Girlfriends Times Two).” Standing before a dense crowd of parade-goers are two separate pairs of girls, maybe eight or ten years of age, each pair holding an empty frame, with their faces scrunched together side-by-side inside it. Three of the girls smile with full-mouthed merriment while the fourth plants a playful kiss upon the cheek of her frame-mate. The picture is plain fun to admire, heart-warming, even, as cute and goofy pictures of children often are. At the same time, its many compositional doublings — two internal frames, two groupings of two girls, two distinct halves to the image — bespeak the image’s formal complexity and conceptual rigor. The image’s doublings amplify the self-reflexivity that runs throughout all of “Art Is…”: not only does the title signal that this is art about art, but each image in the show contains an actual picture frame, often multiple picture frames, within the larger “frame” of the photograph. Sometimes, even, there is a frame within a frame within a frame, or a frame overlapping a frame within a frame. Framing, in the piece, thus becomes method, content, and metaphor.

Idiomatically, to be framed means to have been unwittingly set up so that others perceive you as the perpetrator of a crime you didn’t commit. O’Grady means nothing nearly so insidious with her framings — quite the contrary — but this usage points up the way in which framing, of whatever kind, always works through a process of selective inclusion and exclusion. If you’ve been framed for a crime, it means that others have been deceived about your actions; the truth about that crime lies outside the frame someone else has imposed upon you. Within an African-American context, choosing your frame or being subjected to it constitutes much more than an idle metaphor about art-making.

Questions about inclusion and exclusion are everywhere in “Art Is…,” thanks to the beautiful and uncanny emptiness of the many frames contained therein. Ordinarily, frames mark the disjunct between inside and outside, the line of difference between image and museum wall, family portrait and mantelpiece. But because the frames of “Art Is…” contain no actual pictures, what we can see inside of them is always coextensive with what we can see outside of them, and thus the borders between inside and outside come to seem arbitrary. This donut hole effect not only divides up the visual space of the photographs in unusual and compelling ways, giving them an off-balance, Winograndian whimsy, but it also means that there’s often as much going on outside the photograph’s internal frame as in it.

Lorraine O’Grady, “Art Is… (Woman with Man and Cop Watching)” (1983/2009), chromogenic color print, 16 × 20 inches

“Art Is… (Woman with Man and Cop Watching)” is representative in this regard. The center of the photograph consists of a performer holding up a small frame around herself and another woman; both their smiles are subdued, neutral. Outside that frame, behind and around the two women, is a panoply of expressive, in some cases troubling, men’s faces. From left to right: a black man with a quizzical eyebrow; a black man snarling in the direction of the picture frame; a black man in sunglasses, oblivious to the scene, staring off into the distance; a white cop, arms crossed, detachedly observing the women, his expression something between a snigger and a sneer. This multitude of mixed expressions, and not the face of the titular framed woman, is where most of the photo’s action actually takes place.

Lorraine O’Grady, “Art Is. . . (Girl Pointing)” (1983/2009), chromogenic color print, 20 × 16 inches (click to enlarge)

The centrality of side action is key to O’Grady’s method (which turns the spectators, rather than the parade itself, into the performance’s focus). This focus is also an implicit critique of the marginalization of African-Americans’ experiences. Two of the more anomalous photographs in the series illustrate this principle by virtue of what is missing from them. “Art Is… (Cross Street)” is the lone photograph in which a swath of empty space, rather than a person or a building, gets framed: just a deep, V-shaped wedge of sky, cut from the buildings on either side of the street, with a row of distant human heads peeking up over the bottom of the float’s frame. The absence of the richly detailed humanity captured elsewhere makes you realize just how vibrant and visually full the other images are.

Likewise “Art Is… (Cop Framed),” in which a woman performer presses up close against a white male cop, his hands knitted and forcing a smile, to frame his face. While most of the other photographs featuring people are taken from quite close up, often right up against the press of the crowd, leaving no distinct background to the shot, here the performer and the cop stand a distance from the camera, allowing for an unobstructed longways view of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and the police barricades that line it, delimiting the crowds. Police barricades are visible in a number of the other photographs — and, like the frames, can be read as form, content, and even metaphor — but this distant view of them more starkly reminds us of their territorial function and its insidious, punitive undertones. In the close-up shots, by contrast, the barricades make for a surprisingly porous boundary marker, as spectators routinely cross over onto the parade side of them to pose for the camera or just to get a little closer to the action.

Of all the anomalies in the photographic series, of all the things that are outside the performative frame of parade conviviality, the subtle police presence is perhaps the most telling. Of course, the presence of police barricades indicates that the police aren’t, in one sense, anomalies at all: for better and for worse, they are part of the very structure and design of the parade and of the larger Harlem community (then as now). But within the visual universe of “Art Is…,” the police officers, all white, stand out for their discomfort as contextual minorities and, especially, by their role as strait-laced authority figures implicitly restraining the performative merrymaking.

Lorraine O’Grady, “Art is. . . (Framing Cop)” (1983/2009), chromogenic color print, 16 x 20 inches

Four cops appear across the forty images; only one shares the spectators’ gaiety. In that lone image, “Art Is… (Framing Cop),” the framing dynamics are again complex and evocative. On the right, a woman performer stands in profile, facing center, with a tight-lipped and faintly mischievous smile, holding an empty frame close to her face. On the left, a male cop stands facing her, two or three feet away, hand relaxed on his hip, with an easygoing smile. Because the frame, too, is in profile, its empty interior is for once not visible to us; all we can see of the frame is its side. Though the performer, by holding the frame up to her own face, is the ostensible “canvas” here, with the cop as the viewer, her wide and searching eyes suggest, as the picture’s title implies, that she is the one doing the looking, and it is the cop who is on display. Her look puts the question to the cop, tests him: Do you really see me? Can you see that I can see you, too? It is not an easy question — far easier to flinch away or ignore it — but the cop’s naturalness, his obvious pleasure at her performance, suggests that he can indeed see her as a subject with her own agency and lifeblood and not just as an art object — or worse.

Another way to say it: whereas frames that are filled with a picture establish a hierarchy between viewer and viewed, an empty frame frames things in two simultaneous directions, making each viewer also the viewed, potentially eliminating the hierarchy. Hanging by itself, the exhibition’s fortieth and final image, “Art Is… (Girl Pointing),” puts the question to the museum-goer. From off-camera, a black hand holds up an empty rectangular frame in front of a peopled Harlem sidewalk. Front and center in the frame, playfully smiling and pointing at the camera, we see a black girl of about ten or eleven. Her gesture, posed but unforced, implicates the viewer in a teasing way, as if to say, I can see you, too, or, Im throwing it back to you now. It is a gesture of mutual recognition, a gesture of warmth. Behind her, towards the bottom edge of the frame, are rectangular slices of police barricades, Mondrian-esque streaks of blue. Turn up the corners of your mouth, dear Viewer — dear Viewed — and point back at the joy that refuses to be contained by the frames that bind it.

Lorraine O’ Grady: Art Is… continues at the Studio Museum in Harlem (144 West 125th Street, Harlem, Manhattan) through October 25.

19 Aug 14:17

Family Farms Turn To Pizza For Fast Cash And Customers

by Zoe Sullivan

Small farmers have been struggling for years with low commodity prices and rising production costs. But throughout the Midwest, a new farm-to-table strategy is giving a boost to some farmers.

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17 Aug 22:52

Actually, Hurricane Katrina Was Not Super Cool

by Albert Burneko on The Concourse, shared by Albert Burneko to Deadspin
Amandaburnham

Columns like this one are why Burneko has become one of my favorite writers, opinions on Cincinnatti chili notwithstanding. So glad Deadspin opened him up to more than just the food beat.

If you squint hard enough at this nasty number from last week, in which the Chicago Tribune’s Kristen McQueary wrote glowingly of the great civic good Hurricane Katrina visited upon the city of New Orleans a decade ago and of her fervent desire for Chicago to meet a similar fate, you can almost interpret the outline of a relatable, or at least not-completely-horrible sentiment. Something about the fear of corruption and inertia too deeply rooted in the organism of a city to be eradicated, save by the destruction of the city itself. If you close your eyes altogether, you can imagine this sentiment, warped and encumbered by all the familiar pressures and incentives of the internet publishing business, sliding from the ass-end of a heedless editorial process in the form of a world-historically ghoulish well, actually take.

Read more...

17 Aug 22:16

Newswire: Kevin Costner’s not sure you know how much the world loves Waterworld

by Alex McCown
Amandaburnham

Actually, I believe him. I brought up "Waterworld" at a dinner table with a bunch of people when I was in Switzerland recently, and they all (fondly!) remembered the movie and expressed surprise that it was considered a POS in the States...

Waterworld, a film synonymous with giant Hollywood flops (regardless of the eventual profitability of the film), has left a bad—one might even say fishy—taste in the mouths of audience members the world over. But there’s an interesting fact about things that taste fishy: Some people actually enjoy that flavor. In fact, it could be argued the fishy taste of awkward dialogue and inexplicable third acts are a beloved addition to the cinematic palate. Which is exactly what Kevin Costner recently argued when he was asked about his most famous misfire.

Jeffrey Walls of Hollywood Elsewhere was having a text message conversation with the actor recently—you know, as one does, since texting has become Costner’s favored method of communication after The Postman taught him snail mail is for busters—in which Dances With Rose-Tinted Glasses claimed Waterworld is not only good, it’s practically a hero ...

17 Aug 18:30

Reto Pulfer at Centre d’Art Contemporain

by Contemporary Art Daily

Annik-Wetter_37357

Artist: Reto Pulfer

Venue: Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva

Exhibition Title: Dehydrierte Landschaft

Date: May 28 – August 23, 2015

Click here to view slideshow

Annik-Wetter_37548

Annik-Wetter_37374

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Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Annik-Wetter_37336 Annik-Wetter_37350 Annik-Wetter_37357 Annik-Wetter_37367 Annik-Wetter_37374 Annik-Wetter_37384 Annik-Wetter_37392 Annik-Wetter_37548 Annik-Wetter_37551 Annik-Wetter_37556 Annik-Wetter_37567 Annik-Wetter_37571 Annik-Wetter_37581

Images courtesy of Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva. Photos by Annik Wetter. 

Press Release:

The Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève is pleased to present Reto Pulfer’s first exhibition in a Swiss art institution.

Self-taught artist, Reto Pulfer constructs singular universes, both intuitive and complex kinds of ‘total artworks’ combining installation, sculpture, painting, performance, music and architecture. To create his environments, he adopts a very simple technique, close to the crafts, and uses basic materials, often recycled, such as bed sheets, cloth, paper and found objects, tinged by an aura.

Pulfer is an artist of method and process, he uses a systematic nomenclature to title his works and invents simple fictional narratives – that he calls mnemonics – as the basis for each of his interventions.

The installation he presents for Dehydrierte Landschaft (Dehydrated Landscape) is conceived as a route through a succession of tent installations containing at its heart a synaesthesic oeuvre taking the shape of a big hemp net called “MMMS Reticulum Dehydrierte Landschaft”. Each piece represents a different mental and conceptual state. “MMMS Reticulum Dehydrierte Landschaft” will be activated on the opening day, as part of a performance by the artist who will then play the work’s soundtrack live, making use of the presented objects. Textile wall pieces, made of torn, reassembled, sewn and painted textiles representing mnemonics, plans and other systems will be presented in parallel to this installation.

Reto Pulfer (1981, Bern) grew up in Basel Land and now lives in Berlin. In 2015, the artist presents a series of solo exhibitions at the Centre d’art Contemporain, Geneva; Musée régional d’art contemporain Languedoc-Roussillon, Sérignan, France; Spike Island, Bristol, UK and Centre International d’art et du Paysage, Île de Vassivière, France.

Link: Reto Pulfer at Centre d’Art Contemporain

Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.

17 Aug 13:59

Rewriting Autism History

by Elon Green
Ali Jarekji / Reuters

History is dotted with simultaneous independent discoveries. From the Möbius strip to the electric telegraph, great minds sometimes do think alike. And for decades now, the Asperger-Kanner mind meld has been the accepted wisdom of the discovery of autism.

Steve Silberman, a writer for Wired, had worked on a book about autism for about a year. It was a topic with which he was familiar; he’d written a widely read story in 2001 on the prevalence of the disorder, which is estimated to affect one in 68 children. The new project aimed, in part, to document the history of autism research, and Silberman had a hunch that the conventional wisdom surrounding the allegedly serendipitous discovery of autism by two clinicians working independently was, at best, incomplete.

It’s a famous story, frequently told, including in The Atlantic. As Silberman put it, fourteen years ago:

In one of the uncanny synchronicities of science, autism was first recognized on two continents nearly simultaneously. In 1943, a child psychiatrist named Leo Kanner published a monograph outlining a curious set of behaviors he noticed in 11 children at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. A year later, a pediatrician in Vienna named Hans Asperger, who had never seen Kanner's work, published a paper describing four children who shared many of the same traits. Both Kanner and Asperger gave the condition the same name: autism—from the Greek word for self, autòs—because the children in their care seemed to withdraw into iron-walled universes of their own.

Amazing! But not entirely crazy, either.

* * *

At first, Silberman didn’t have much to work with. There was a good deal of existing scholarship on the famed Leo Kanner, the psychiatrist who founded the first academic child psychiatry department at Johns Hopkins University Hospital. But there was very little written about Hans Asperger, who practiced at the University Children's Hospital in Vienna. Not much of his writing had been translated and a good deal of his case records perished when, in 1944, Allied bombs destroyed the Children’s Hospital. But Silberman noticed a name in a footnote to a paper, written in German about Erwin Lazar, one of Asperger’s colleagues and founder of the University’s Children’s Clinic, Georg Frankl. Frankl was Asperger’s chief diagnostician.

“I thought, ‘Where do I know that name from?’” Silberman told me recently. He recalled that Kanner name-checked Frankl in his landmark 1943 paper, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.” There he was, a few pages in, amid a description of a 5-year-old boy named Donald Triplett:

Donald, when examined at the Harriet Lane Home in October, 1938, was found to be in good physical condition. During the initial observation and in a two-week study by Drs. Eugenia S. Cameron and Georg Frankl at the Child Study Home in Maryland, the following picture was obtained...

Kanner’s assistant and Asperger’s diagnostician, though separated by time and continents, were one and the same. “I thought, ‘Oh my god, it can’t possibly be the same guy,’” said Silberman.

Frankl’s journey from Vienna to Baltimore, and from one autism pioneer to another, was if nothing else a testament to Leo Kanner’s heroism. Kanner and his wife, in response to the crisis unfolding in Europe, helped doctors, nurses, and researchers—who would have otherwise perished—find visas and jobs in the United States. They saved upwards of 200 lives—one of which was Frankl’s.

And so it was that by time of Donald’s examination, Frankl had become the psychiatrist-pediatrician at Kanner’s Child Study Home. He was, by all accounts, invaluable. Indeed, Kanner and Frankl ran public clinics together. They toured local schools, giving joint diagnoses. It was, professionally speaking, a close relationship.

* * *

Silberman’s discovery, which he writes about in his forthcoming book, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, is not trifling. Not only does it cast serious doubt on the notion that Kanner’s discovery was completely independent of Asperger. Of perhaps greater importance, it may help resuscitate the reputation of Asperger—a man whose prescient ideas were long ignored.

Kanner and Asperger had divergent views of autism. Asperger’s was expansive. He believed that autism was what Frankl called a “continuum,” or what is now called “the spectrum.” This was the idea that, in the words of the National Institutes of Mental Health, autistic people can be “mildly impaired by their symptoms, while others are severely disabled.” Crucially, Asperger believed that the condition was not rare. Once you knew what to look for, you’d recognize it in many people. Kanner, however, framed autism as a rare form of childhood psychosis and, eventually—under pressure from his Freudian psychoanalytic colleagues—adopted the view that it was caused by bad parenting and “refrigerator mothers.”

Alas, Kanner’s view for many years totally dominated the field, and it made him wildly famous. He was so identified with autism that it was known internationally as Kanner’s syndrome. While Kanner benefited, the field of psychiatry was damaged for a half-century. The acceptance of Kanner’s ideas ensured that autistic children and their families would be stigmatized. More often than not, said Silberman, they were “institutionalized because it was believed that taking them out of the toxic home environment that created the autism would be healthy for them, even though the opposite was true.” (Another possible side effect of Kanner’s beliefs: By undercounting the number of people on the spectrum early-on, modern-day autism figures now seem inflated.)

It would take decades for Kanner to realize he was wrong about autism—that it was not narrow and monolithically defined. What Kanner accepted in the 1970s, Asperger already knew in 1938. (The men filed their landmark papers within months of each other. Kanner’s paper was published in 1943; Asperger’s paper was published a year later, delayed by the war.)

* * *

As Silberman found, Kanner and Asperger ought to have been on the same page. Frankl, as well as Anni Weiss—a psychologist also from Asperger’s clinic—worked for Kanner. They had both been members of his “inner circle” since 1938—well in advance of Kanner’s famous paper. (Weiss and Frankl married after they emigrated to the United States.) And Kanner was well-aware of Frankl’s professional bonafides. In a letter from 1939, he mentioned his diagnostician's “good background in pediatrics and close connections for eleven years with the Lazar Clinic in Vienna.” Indeed, it was Asperger’s former clinician who examined Kanner’s first three autistic patients.

So it is a stretch to believe, as Kanner’s colleagues evidently did, that he could be “unfamiliar” with Asperger’s work.

And yet, despite the influence of Frankl, Asperger’s ideas were muffled. To some degree, this is due to the unavailability of his papers, which for decades existed only in German. But the greatest factor in his long obscurity, argues Silberman, was Kanner himself. He acknowledged Asperger directly only once in public, in a dismissive review of a book by another child psychiatrist. As Silberman writes, it was the belief of autism researchers that Kanner didn’t discuss Asperger because they worked with such different types of children; the former’s were “low-functioning” and the latter’s were “high-functioning.” But Asperger was very clear in his paper that he saw more than 200 autistic children at all levels of ability.

Other theories as to why Kanner shunned Asperger’s work are less persuasive. Some historians have believed that Asperger’s work was unknown to Kanner because of the language barrier. But German was Kanner’s native language. Not only that, Kanner was keenly familiar with Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten, the neurological journal that published Asperger’s papers, and referenced it many times in his work. As Silberman noted, Kanner obsessively read everything that was written on autism—particularly in the early years, when there wasn’t much scholarship. (To give you an idea how long it took for Asperger’s ideas to be disseminated: It wasn’t until 1991 that Asperger’s paper was finally made widely available to the English-speaking world by cognitive psychologist Uta Frith in her book Autism and Asperger Syndrome.)

It’s possible that Kanner, as a Jew, found it objectionable that Asperger—through no fault of his own—was working for Nazis who had taken over his clinic. It could be that Kanner thought Asperger himself was a Nazi, though Silberman argues persuasively he was not.

In any case, Kanner presented his discovery of autism—“trumpeted it from the rooftops,” as Silberman put it—as his alone. In doing so, said Silberman, Kanner “completely sidelined Asperger. He buried Asperger in history.”

* * *

Once Silberman had Frankl’s name, he still needed further corroboration. After all, ‘Georg Frankl’ was not an uncommon name. Luckily, the Jewish Museum of Maryland has an archive dedicated to Kanner’s effort to rescue Jewish clinicians. One of the documents, a handwritten memo on The John Hopkins Hospital letterhead, references Frankl. He’s also mentioned in Kanner’s unpublished autobiography, Freedom From Within. (Silberman worked with a couple of translators, including Eric Jarosinski, who runs the erudite Twitter account @NeinQuarterly.)

Silberman found Frankl’s biographical file in the medical archive at Johns Hopkins. The file, written by Frankl himself, confirmed that he’d worked for 11 years for the Children’s Clinic in Vienna.

“I almost fell out of my chair,” said Silberman. “I couldn’t believe no one noticed this before.”

A handwritten memo on The John Hopkins Hospital letterhead referencing Frankl (via Steve Silberman)

* * *

Once you consider the implications of such buried history, the scope of the tragedy is almost crushing. These were courageous men. While Kanner’s heroics are well-known, we must observe Asperger’s astonishing immunity to peer pressure, and not just from the medical establishment. Twice the Gestapo tried to arrest him, only to be shooed away by his boss, who had taken a liking to him, despite being one of the most prominent Nazis in Vienna.

But the damage done by Kanner, intentionally or otherwise, is inescapable. For far too long he perpetuated ideas about autistic children that were simply not true. And for too long no one was the wiser. “By burying Asperger in history, Kanner obscured the breadth and diversity of the spectrum,” said Silberman. This, in turn, meant “many children who would have been eligible for a diagnosis under Asperger’s more expansive model of autism were left to struggle along on their own in a world not made for them.”

It is clear now that Kanner and Asperger’s discoveries were neither independent nor simultaneous. “Asperger clearly discovered autism first,” continued Silberman. And yet, even as Asperger’s ideas have achieved acceptance, history still endeavors to forget him. In late 2012, the American Psychiatric Association announced that the name Asperger's syndrome would be dropped from subsequent editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. But his legacy—which is, essentially, being right about autism decades before anyone else—remains.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/autism-history-aspergers-kanner-psychiatry/398903/











14 Aug 15:59

No American Political Ad Will Ever Top This Beautifully Insane Canadian Thing

by Doktor Zoom
American candidates could just swap in a bald eagle
American candidates could just swap in a bald eagle

American candidates could just swap in a bald eagle

Wyatt Scott is running for the Canadian Parliament, which is sort of like Congress except that instead of being owned by Big Oil and Wall Street, it’s owned by Big Oil and Tim Horton’s. He’s an independent seeking the seat for the new “riding” of “Mission-Matsqui-Fraser Canyon,” which we gather is somewhere near Alberta in Saskatchewan. Haha, we are kidding — it is actually in southwestern British Columbia; we looked it up for a change. Also, a “riding” is like a “district,” except that, as we gathered from Mr. Scott’s advertisement, it requires you to actually ride something, like perhaps a giant Canada goose.

Read more on No American Political Ad Will Ever Top This Beautifully Insane Canadian Thing…

The post No American Political Ad Will Ever Top This Beautifully Insane Canadian Thing appeared first on Wonkette.

07 Aug 14:46

A Flock Of Flaccos

by Tom Ley

Joe Flacco tweeted this photo of the Flacco clan, from back when they were all kids. Look at all those damn Flaccos.

Read more...

07 Aug 14:39

The Only Real Question That Needs To Be Asked At A Debate

by Timothy Burke on Screengrabber, shared by Timothy Burke to Deadspin

Have something you think we should know? Email us at tips@deadspin.com, or contact our writers directly , or use our SecureDrop system. You can also follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

Read more...

05 Aug 15:06

Inspired By His Medical Background Nate Stewart Takes The Knife To Paper In His Stunning Carved Sculptures

by Anissa Jousset

paper4 paper3 paper2 paper1

Artist Nate Stewart has been using his medical background as an intensive care nurse to apply intense precision to sheets of paper. The result is a series of stunning paper sculptures full of intricate details, shapes, and angles. Stewart states that his process includes blade, which he uses to “carve, fold, and sculpt the paper.” This combined with his medical precision make for beautiful and original sculptures that each tell stories of their own.

The angular details of these paper sculptures are fascinating in their architectural structure and the use of paper as a medium, not to paint or draw on, but as the material being sculpted adds to their magic. Stewart explains that his work reflects the different aspects of life approaching elements like growth, disease processes, and decay. He cuts into the paper with a surgical precision that merges art and science in a most fascinating way. Stewart has managed to take his knowledge of the various processes and steps of life, death, and disease and has applied them to blank sheets of paper. By doing so, he has given new life to the paper and has extended its use beyond that of being a platform for other types of art. With these sculptures, paper is the medium and the message.

Stewart’s art has recently been in an exhibition with artist Li Hongbo’s work, he has also shown his work at SCOPE with Rush Arts and the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series. His work will be making its way to AQUA and Art Basel later this year.

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The post Inspired By His Medical Background Nate Stewart Takes The Knife To Paper In His Stunning Carved Sculptures appeared first on Beautiful/Decay.

30 Jul 17:43

Trump! leads in yet another poll, but gets trounced by Hillary Clinton

by rss@dailykos.com (Joan McCarter)
Amandaburnham

What I notice most here is that Bernie Sanders beats no one on the Republican side *but* Trump. It's way early, and it's just a poll, but just sayin'...

Businessman Donald Trump, speaking in NH in 2011.    REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Jeb! Bush is going to have to relinquish that exclamation point, because it's still all about the Donald. Trump leads in the CNN/ORC released earlier this week, and now leads again in a Quinnipiac poll released Thursday.

At 20 percent, Trump has "the largest tally for a Republican contender in any national poll by the independent Quinnipiac University." So there you go. He's trailed by Gov. Scott Walker at by 13 percent and Bush at 10 percent. All the others trail below the 6 percent mark. Trump also leads in the "hell no" poll, with 30 percent of Republican voters saying there's no way they would vote for him. But there's not much for Bush to cheer for in that statistic, because 14 percent of Republicans reject him outright. And, happily, 15 percent feel the same way about Gov. Chris Christie.

For all that, Hillary Clinton blows them all out of the water in direct match-ups. She's leading among Democratic primary voters with 55 percent. Sen. Bernie Sanders has 17 percent and someone who so far is not in the race, Vice President Joseph Biden, gets 13 percent. In a hypothetical general election, everyone beats Trump and Hillary beats everyone.

  • Clinton thumps Trump 48 - 36 percent. She gets 41 percent to Bush's 42 percent and gets 44 percent to Walker's 43 percent.
  • Biden tops Trump 49 - 37 percent. He gets 43 percent to Bush's 42 percent and ties Walker 43 - 43 percent.
  • Sanders beats Trump 45 - 37 percent. Bush edges Sanders 44 - 39 percent and Walker slips past Sanders 42 - 37 percent.
It's getting increasingly challenging for the Republican establishment to deny that Trump represents the GOP. And it's getting increasingly dicey for them to keep trying to freeze him out, because he has all the encouragement he needs from the polls to play the spoiler with an independent run. The GOP has a big Trump problem, but he's just a symptom of their larger sickness. They created this monster.
30 Jul 16:18

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Cleaning Algorithms

by admin@smbc-comics.com

Hovertext: Watch - I can make fun of every religion and get no hatemail, but when I write any amount of code...


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30 Jul 16:15

Flavor Bourbon with Apple Peels Instead of Tossing Them

by Claire Lower on Skillet, shared by Andy Orin to Lifehacker

Flavor Bourbon with Apple Peels Instead of Tossing Them

Apple peels are one of those scraps that don’t really seem to have a higher purpose, but leave it to the folks at Food 52 to find a (boozy) use for them. Just toss ‘em in a bottle of bourbon and in no time you’ll have a fancy infused liquor to gift or enjoy by yourself.

Honestly, I don’t usually like my bourbon to be anything but bourbon-flavored, but a bit of this in a glass of ginger beer or a toddy doesn’t sound so bad. The peels of about six apples are enough to flavor a 750-mL bottle of bourbon (I would use the cheaper stuff for this), and the only other ingredients—a cinnamon stick and two cloves—are pretty easy to come by.

Just dump everything into a jar and let it sit at room temperature. Remove the cinnamon and cloves after a few days and the peels after a week, and this tasty infusion is ready for action.

Apple Peel Bourbon | Food 52

19 Jun 17:46

Watch a parrot pull a boy's loose tooth

by David Pescovitz

Watch Anton Adnroshcuk's pet parrot pull his tooth. "This is the 5th one hes pulled already," he writes.

19 Jun 13:38

Heinz Very, Very Sorry for Link to German Porn Site on Ketchup Bottle

by Hudson Hongo

Theoretically, an incorrect hyperlink could point to any random place on the internet, from Sonic fan art forums to Fusion.com . In practice, however, they only link to porn , porn and slightly weirder porn , as was recently the case with an unusually saucy bottle of Heinz hot ketchup.

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13 Jun 11:05

Make a Mini Power Sander Out of a Cheap Electric Toothbrush

by Patrick Allan

If you like to work with models, miniatures, or small carpentry projects, regular power sanders are too big and powerful. This mine power sander is super easy to build and will make a great addition to your toolkit.

In this video, YouTuber kipkay explains how to build the mini power sander out of a cheap electric toothbrush that costs less than $5. All you have to do is cut off the toothbrush’s bristles, cut out a tiny piece of sandpaper, and attach it on the rotating head. This custom tool is great for removing the extra plastic bits that get left on models and miniatures. The smoother you can make things, the easier they will be to paint.

$5 Mini Power Sander! | YouTube

13 Jun 10:44

A Wedding Registry for the Nasty Gal on a Budget

by Laura Bradley

This Saturday, June 13, Sophia Amoruso is getting married. The founder and former CEO of women’s clothing brand Nasty Gal is embroiled in a lawsuit filed by an ex-Nasty Gal employee who claims the company fired her for getting pregnant (along with three other female employees and a male employee about to take paternity leave). But first, wedding bells! Amoruso, engaged to Joel DeGraff, has amassed a mighty steep spreadsheet of suggested wedding gifts, totaling nearly $19,000—a sum well over what most people can expect to spend on their entire wedding. Amoruso and DeGraff are surely a handsome, consummately hip couple that deserve all the bespoke bric-a-brac coming to them. In her own words:

29 May 22:30

Great Job, Internet!: Snap into bodies hitting the floor with a Macho Man remix of Drowning Pool

by B.G. Henne

Nu-metal band Drowning Pool is best known for its 2001 single, “Bodies,” and for offending everyone who hates nu-metal acts. The late wrestler Randy “Macho Man” Savage was best known for his raspy voice, kicking ass in the WWF/WWE ring, and snapping into Slim Jims. He also paired up with DJ Kool to make the 2003 party-anthem “Hit The Floor,” which is heavy on Kool hyping and synth-stabbing, but Savage carries his weight with key “OH, YEAH” interjections and nuggets of science like “New school wrestlers take it from me / This game’s like school ya gotta earn a degree.”

The laws of the universe are such that it was only a matter of time before these two canticles were joined in the sacred bond of a remix. From DJ Cummerbund and courtesy of Uproxx comes “Bodies (Hit The Floor Mix).” Like everything else graced by Savage’s magnetic ...

29 May 08:46

Garkov

random garfield comic nonsense spam

Garfield comics randomly generated by a spambot algorithm.

Submitted by: Slashy55 (via joshmillard.com)

Tagged: random , garfield , comic , nonsense , spam
29 Apr 20:28

This Is The Saddest Baseball GIF

by Timothy Burke on Screengrabber, shared by Timothy Burke to Deadspin

Have something you think we should know? Email us at tips@deadspin.com, or contact our writers directly , or use our SecureDrop system. You can also follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.

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29 Apr 20:28

Hey, London Developers: Up Yours!

by Laura Bliss
Image Copyright Gram Hilleard
Copyright Gram Hilleard

Big Ben, bobbies on bicycles, a darkened pub flying the Union Jack on its doorpost: Such is London, if you've ever received a postcard from there. But for many residents, those quaint popular images are laughable compared to how the city increasingly appears. A dense forest of cranes looms above the skyline. High-rises shoot up like bamboo. With the population booming and a manic surge of capital (both foreign and native) coming in, long-time Londoners are priced out daily, while mansions on "billionaires row" sit rotting and empty.

Maybe it's time to send the world some new views from the city on the Thames. In a new show of original "postcards" at London's Offsite Gallery, British artist and city native Gram Hilleard captures a growing sentiment in town: "Developers, Up Yours." His photo-montages reflect a new London—a London overrun with development, garish wealth, and bereft of what made the city unique. Hilleard states in a press release:

Under the reign of the peroxide clown, London has been redeveloped like never before. The poor are moved out, whilst councils drop their planning regulations for developers to build what they like. Hipsters are encouraged to gentrify, before they’re replaced with overseas buyers. Eventually swathes of the city become uninhabited ghost areas with no citizens, no people. Why and for who?

The postcards are both hilarious and full of grief. See them at the gallery if you can: The show runs through June 7. (Hopefully Mayor Boris "Peroxide Clown" Johnson will be there, too.)

(Copyright Gram Hilleard)
(Copyright Gram Hilleard)
(Copyright Gram Hilleard)
(Copyright Gram Hilleard)
(Copyright Gram Hilleard)
(Copyright Gram Hilleard)