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☆ The Visions of Octavia Butler
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Lynell George | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +27 min

As a science fiction writer, Butler forged a new path and envisioned bold possibilities. Mural with a portrait of Octavia Butler and her name, composed of dots of various densities in 3-D space. In 1995, she became the first science fiction writer to be awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant. “‘Kindred’ was a story of ordinary people trapped in fantastic circumstances,” Butler wrote in a 1988 notebook. Her point of view was one not traditionally found in science fiction and, simply by writing, she demanded a larger world.

☆ Big brands set to miss plastic sustainability targets
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-02 | by ( Joe Brock | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The study by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and the United Nations Environment Programme also revealed that some companies - including Coca-Cola (KO.N) and Pepsi - are using more virgin plastic despite a pledge to reduce its use. Dozens of major brands have in recent years set targets to increase plastic recycling and reduce the use of single-use packaging in partnership with the Ellen MacAurthur Foundation, as part of efforts to burnish their green credentials. The headline pledge was that 100% of plastic packaging would be reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, but this goal will "almost certainly be missed by most organisations", the environmental group's report said. Greenpeace said the report is evidence that voluntary corporate targets have failed and called on the U.N. to forge a treaty that forces governments and companies to use less single-use plastic packaging. "This underlines the need for governments to ensure that the global plastic treaty ... delivers major reductions in plastic production and use," said Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s USA Global Plastics Project Leader.

☆ MacArthur fellow P. Gabrielle Foreman wants to make sure 'unremembered' Black history gets taught
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-14 | by ( Zachary Schermele | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +4 min

That history, Foreman argues, has been largely erased from academic discussions and mainstream conversations. P. Gabrielle Foreman and Jim Casey, back row, and Denise Burgher, second from right, with their colleagues at Pennsylvania State University. “The Colored Conventions movement helps us to understand a history full of possibilities,” he said. Now, it has a massive interactive online archive and was the inspiration behind “The Colored Conventions Movement: Black Organizing in the Nineteenth Century,” which was published last year. Amid widespread efforts to suppress teaching about race and racism in the U.S., Burgher said a greater and more accurate understanding of Black history is more important now than ever before.

☆ Science says parents of successful kids have these 26 things in common
▼ + stars: | 2022-02-07 | by ( Marguerite Ward | Rachel Gillett | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +24 min

Here's what parents of successful kids have in common, according to research. Children with parents who stepped in to provide instructions frequently displayed more difficulty regulating their emotions later, the researchers wrote. "Too much direct engagement can come at a cost to kids' abilities to control their own attention, behavior and emotions. When parents let kids take the lead in their interactions, children practice self-regulation skills and build independence," Obradović wrote in the study. The parents tend to take parental leave.

☆ Is the Joke on Joe Biden?
▼ + stars: | 2021-10-02 | by ( Peter Funt | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

When Joe Biden says, “no joke,” as he so often does, he might as well be talking about the impact his first two years in office had on comedy. He has been the least lampooned president since Eisenhower—who, after all, didn’t have to worry about late-night monologues on multiple TV channels, YouTube mashups or savaging sketches on “Saturday Night Live.”But here’s the funny thing about President Biden: Politics aside, the guy is a genuinely amusing character, with plenty of what comedians call “hooks.” He’s an occasionally confused octogenarian, sometimes frisky with facts and inclined to spend five minutes telling a one-minute story. When he dons the type of dark aviator glasses that looked good on Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Joe Biden is comedy gold. Yet, until recently, comedians haven’t ripped him nearly as much as his supporters might fear and his opponents would wish.

☆ Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction
▼ + stars: | 1992-04-19 | by ( Richard B. Woodward | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Finished off with one of his twinkly-eyed laughs, this mealtime anecdote has a more jocular tone than McCarthy's venomous fiction, but the same elements are there. Each of his five previous novels has been marked by intense natural observation, a kind of morbid realism. A cult figure with a reputation as a writer's writer, especially in the South and in England, McCarthy has sometimes been compared with Joyce and Faulkner. Says the historian and novelist Shelby Foote: "McCarthy is the one writer younger than myself who has excited me. I told the MacArthur people that he would be honoring them as much as they were honoring him."

Persons: McCarthy, wildness, blurbed, Joyce, Faulkner, Saul Bellow, Shelby Foote, Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, Hemingway Organizations: MacArthur Locations: hovels, East Tennessee, American, England, Texas, Mexico

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