Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Reading While Texan | The Weekly Sift

Worse, “debated” and “controversial” are fundamentally subjective notions. An issue becomes “debated” not because it is objectively dubious, but because somebody chooses to debate it. It becomes “controversial” whenever someone starts a controversy, no matter how baseless that controversy might be. [3] As much as I want to accept the school district’s assurance that “this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts”, I can’t find such a clear statement in the text of the law.

And even if you grant an exemption for “historical facts”, the very distinction between facts and opinions is itself controversial these days. The essence of Trumpism is to deny that objective facts can be found by examining evidence. (American intelligence agencies say one thing, but Vladimir Putin says something else. Who can determine where the truth lies?) If Trump repeats something often enough, it is true — or at the very least it becomes an “alternative fact“. Any evidence that refutes his opinion is “fake news”.

So it appears to me that if, say, a large number of people in some Texas community believe the Earth is flat — or if the Oracle of Mar-a-Lago starts making that claim — a classroom’s globe might become debated and controversial; it might need to be balanced against some other representation of the Earth. HB 3979 would then require teachers not to “defer” to the view that the Earth is spherical.

Or suppose one of your students has a parent like this guy, who wore a “Six million wasn’t enough” shirt to a Proud Boys rally in December. (They’re available online.) Would that make the Holocaust “controversial” enough to invoke the provisions of 3979? Or maybe you regard the fact of the Holocaust as beyond controversy, but describing it as “a terrible event” is a value judgment that this guy disputes. Doesn’t that make it “debated”? How many people have to agree with him before it’s “widely” debated?

Source: Reading While Texan | The Weekly Sift

Tadrart Akakus, Libija – Tadrart Akakus, Libya

Myrela

U blizini jednog od rijetkih giltija (bazeni za skupljanje kišnice) u Vadi Sugdu, skrivenom u prevoju Akakusa, leži “Saharska pošta”. To je zid od bazalta, uglačan od vjetra, na kojem su generacije Tuarega, nomadskog plemena iz ove pustinje, ostavljale poruke karavanima. Ima poruka iscrtanih kredom, kao i onih urezanih komadom metala. Neke su stare samo nekoliko dana, neke su tu već vijekovima, a sve su napisane na tifinagu, pisanoj verziji tuareškog jezika tamašaka. Pošta je samo uvod u istoriju te oblasti, staru više od deset hiljada godina, o kojoj pripovijedaju mnoge slike i urezi razbacani širom Tadrart Akakusa. Tadrart Akakus je planinski vijenac (na tamašaku je tadrart množina od riječi adrar, to jest planina) u jugozapadnoj Libiji, koji se proteže u dužini od oko 250 kilometara, sve do alžirske granice. Paradoksalno, najnoviji tragovi što ih je čovjek ostavio, najmanje su prefinjeni, kao da je umjetnički senzibilitet uvenuo kada je…

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Pretzel Nuggets

snapshotsincursive

What’s Cooking in Gail’s Kitchen? Equal Measures: Pretzel Nuggets! Anyone who has been to an outlet mall, movie theater complex, or shopping center may have been seduced by the tantalizing aroma of freshly baked pretzels. How about those wonderful travel cups of soft buttery nuggets speared with a wooden pick? Who can resist? Especially with a side of gooey molten cheese? Here’s a shortcut to making a batch at home in your own kitchen. It’s all about portion control to keep it real. The next time you’re at the grocery, pick up a tube of refrigerated biscuit dough. You can thank me later.

PRETZEL NUGGETS

Ingredients:

1 tube refrigerated biscuit dough, 8-count

1/4 cup baking soda

1 egg, beaten

1-2 teaspoons Everything But Bagel Seasoning*

1 tablespoon coarse sea salt

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 425°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut each biscuit slice into quarters. Roll…

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I was raised vaccine hesitant. Now I’m double vaxxed against COVID-19 | CBC News

Then, one day in the early 2000s, I fell ill with a low-level fever. I developed a vicious, strangling cough that would leave me gasping for air as I hovered over the toilet bowl. It lasted for weeks. The residual effects lasted for months. I just couldn’t get well.

A visiting doctor from the N.W.T. knew what she was seeing. It was whooping cough. I was shocked. I’d had the pertussis vaccine in childhood. She explained that the protection wears off. It was then I realized what those booster shots were all about.

So much of what my father knew from his years as a physiotherapist has been proven right. But on the flip side, when Dad suffered a heart attack at age 74, I saw him cry before his bypass operation, apologizing to my stepmom for not being willing to take the cholesterol-lowering medication his doctors kept prescribing in vain over the years.

After his bypass, he dutifully took the once-snubbed pills, and even began to get flu shots. He lived almost to his 92nd birthday. COVID caught him a year ago in October 2020, in the midst of the second wave. If there had been a vaccine then, there is no question that he would have taken it.

It’s a shame that it took an illness and a heart attack to knock the stubbornness out of me and my Dad.

Today, I honour my father’s death and memory by taking the vaccine, listening with kindness to the vaccine-hesitant and then telling them my story.

Rachel Grantham arrived in Whitehorse, Yukon in 1989. She is a choral conductor and music educator by training, a filmmaker by happenstance, and a government employee by necessity. She lives with gratitude in the traditional territory of the Kwanlin Dün and Ta’an Kwach’an Council.

Source: I was raised vaccine hesitant. Now I’m double vaxxed against COVID-19 | CBC News