Magazine Posts

When the federal government set up boarding schools in the 19th century to assimilate Native American children into American culture, one of the objectives was to get them to turn away from the use of their native languages. In recognition of Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the U.S., The Conversation turned to Daryl Baldwin, a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma who is a leader in Native American language and cultural revitalization and a member of the National Council on the Humanities, for insight into a tribal community’s efforts working with a university to help bring languages back...Read more

Kids are naturally curious. But various forces in the environment can dampen their curiosity over time. Can anything be done to keep kids’ curiosity alive? Read more

Wealthier neighborhoods in St. Louis have armed themselves with private police, giving them a level of service poor areas can’t afford and fueling racial and economic disparities.... Read more

"The first thing to remember is that the great philosophers were only human. Then you can start disagreeing with them."...... Keeping in mind that "each giant of philosophy was a human being trying to figure out life by doing just what you do: reading, thinking, observing, writing"....  Read more

"More than 450 people are dying of COVID-19 in the U.S. each day as of late August 2022......  "When COVID-19 vaccines first became available, public officials, community organizations and policymakers mobilized to get shots into arms. including significant investments in making vaccines accessible to Black, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native populations.... ....... But boosters are a different story"....... Read more

"Data from last year’s survey at this point seems to confirm that there was a massive decline in the number of young snow crab in the Eastern Bering Sea — something like 99% fewer female snow crab showed up in the survey from 2021" .... Read more

 "Beneath Cappadocia's crumbling surface, a marvel of equally gargantuan proportions lay hidden away for centuries; a subterranean city that could conceal the whereabouts of up to 20,000 inhabitants for months at a time"   Read more

Photo credit: Halil Sayim 

"The Nonprofit, RIP Medical Debt was launched in 2014. They started raising money from donors to buy up debt on secondary markets — where hospitals sell debt for pennies on the dollar to companies that profit when they collect on that debt....... To date, RIP has purchased $6.7 billion in unpaid debt and relieved 3.6 million people of debt. The group says retiring $100 in debt costs an average of $1.... Read the full NPR article

"Since the Paris agreement, the six largest US banks – Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs – have provided $1.4tn in financing to the fossil fuel industry" Read full article

"Earth warming has not been uniform, with some regions warming at a far greater pace. One such region is the Arctic..... which has warmed nearly four times faster than the rest of the world over the past 43 years. This means the Arctic is on average around 3℃ warmer than it was in 1980....... This is alarming, because the Arctic contains sensitive and delicately balanced climate components that, if pushed too hard, will respond with global consequences" ... Read more

"A vanadium redox flow battery (VRFB) design created at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has wound up in the hands of a Chinese company, which has since gone on to become the largest manufacturer of VRFBs in the world" The US, which owns the patent and invested $15 million of taxpayer dollars into its development, reportedly has no domestic production site for the novel VRFBs" ..... Read more at The Register

"While many American students and their parents worry that the next mass shooting could happen at their school, schools are also facing a number of other threats that do not involve guns. Many of these threats are related to the mental health of educators and students" .... Read more