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Be Not Afraid…

Isis Isis the Scientist
There is something wrong with how this journal and its editors engage 50% of the population (or 20% of scientists) and I believe in my right to say “this is not ‘ok’.”

Reading Capital: Books that Shaped Work in America

Kathy M. Newman Working-Class Perspectives
I was pleased, and rather surprised, when I saw that the U.S. Department of Labor—in honor of its one-hundred-year anniversary—is assembling a list of books that shaped American ideas about work.DOL officials, after seeing a 2012 “Books that Shaped America” exhibition at the Library of Congress, were inspired to make a similar call for books about work in order to emphasize the “significant role published works have played in the shaping American workers and workplaces.”

Almost Everything in “Dr. Strangelove” Was True

Eric Schlosser The New Yorker
The first casualty of every war is the truth—and the Cold War was no exception to that dictum. Half a century after Kubrick’s mad general, Jack D. Ripper, launched a nuclear strike on the Soviets to defend the purity of “our precious bodily fluids” from Communist subversion, we now know that American officers did indeed have the ability to start a Third World War on their own.

The Problems with the Common Core

Stan Karp Rethinking Schools
The CCSS have been adopted by 46 states and are currently being implemented in school districts throughout the United States. Today everything about the Common Core, even the brand name—the Common Core State Standards—is contested because these standards were created as an instrument of contested policy.

Egypt in Year Three

Sharif Abdel Kouddous The Nation
Since the military ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi last July, followed by the brutal crackdown against the Muslim Brotherhood, the security establishment has emerged re-empowered, reinvigorated and out for revenge, cracking down on its opponents with unprecedented severity. Much of Egypt is awash in conformist state worship, fueled by the shrill narrative of a war on terror and the age-old autocratic logic that trades rights for the promise of security.

Left Out of Obama's Commission on Elections? Race

Brentin Mock Demos
The North Carolina state conference of the NAACP recently amended their voting rights complaint against the state arguing that the elimination of pre-registration would affect black and brown teens harder than their white peers because they otherwise have less opportunities to register to vote.

Poverty and Inequality, in Charts

Jared Bernstein The New York Times
Not only are we now faced with slower growth, but that lesser growth rate is much more narrowly distributed.

Alive Inside: How the Magic of Music Proves Therapeutic for Patients with Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Amy Goodman Democracy Now!
With advanced dementia, when people no longer can recognize their own family members, they stop speaking. But when they hear music that’s familiar from their youth, because those memories are preserved, they come alive. They connect with that. It’s a direct sort of a backdoor to that failing cognitive system right to the emotional system, which is really very much intact.