Author: Worlding

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Children’s book apartheid

Of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people, according to a study by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin.

Walter Myers writes in the New York Times that “Reading came early to me, but I didn’t think of the words as anything special. I don’t think my stepmom thought of what she was

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doing as more than spending time with me in our small Harlem apartment.

From my comfortable perch on her lap I watched as she moved her finger slowly across the page. She probably read at about the third grade level, but that was good enough for the True Romance magazines she read. I didn’t understand what the stories were about, what “bosom” meant or how someone’s heart could be “broken.” To me it was just the comfort of leaning against Mama and imagining the characters and what they were doing.

“Later, when my sisters brought home comic books, I got Mama to read them to me, too. The magazines and comics pushed me along the road of the imaginative process. When I got my first books — “The Little Engine That Could,” “Bible Stories for Every Day,” and “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” — I used them on the same journeys. In the landscape of my mind I labored as hard as I could to get up the hill. I stood on the plain next to David as he fought Goliath, and tasted the porridge with Goldilocks.

“As a teenager I romped the forests with Robin Hood, and trembled to the sound of gunfire with Henry in “The Red Badge of Courage.” Later, when Mama’s problems began to overwhelm her, I wrestled with the demons of dealing with one’s mother with Stephen Dedalus in “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” But by then I was beginning the quest for my own identity. To an extent I found who I was in the books I read. I was a person who felt the drama of great pain and greater joys, whose emotions could soar within the five-act structure of a Shakespearean play, or find quiet comfort in the poems of Gabriela Mistral. Every book was a landscape upon which I was free to wander.

“In the dark times, when my uncle was murdered, when my family became dysfunctional with alcohol and grief, or when I realized that our economics would not allow me to go to college, I began to despair. I read voraciously, spending days in Central Park reading when I should have been going to school. Continue reading “Children’s book apartheid”

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Why the Columbia firings matters

About a month ago, The New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof wrote a much-discussed column calling for academics to take on a greater role in public life. imagesMost professors, he lamented, “just don’t matter in today’s great debates,” having instead burrowed into rabbit holes of hyper-specialization. PhD programs, he wrote, “have fostered a culture that glorifies arcane unintelligibility while disdaining impact and audience.” Professors, Kristof pleaded, “don’t cloister yourselves like medieval monks—we need you!”

As reported in The Nation, Shortly before his column came out, Carole Vance and Kim Hopper, longtime professors at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, learned that they were losing their jobs because they hadn’t brought in enough grant money. Both, ironically, are models for the sort of publicly engaged intellectual Kristof wants to see more of. Vance has done pioneering work on the intersection of gender, health and human rights. “She has been a mentor and a leading influence on generations of scholars as well as activists and practitioners,” says Rebecca Schleifer, the former advocacy director for the health and human rights division at Human Rights Watch. Hopper, who divides his time between Columbia and the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research, is both an advocate for the homeless and one of the nation’s foremost scholars on homelessness. Last year, American Anthropologist ran a piece highlighting his work beyond academia, noting that Hopper “has long urged anthropologists to take part in public debates, to translate ethnographic findings into policy proposals.”

“His termination, along with Vance’s, suggests that scholars have good reason not to take this advice. Kristof is right that universities have become inhospitable places for public intellectuals, but he misses the ultimate cause. The real problem isn’t culture. It’s money.

“Like many schools of public health, Mailman operates on a “soft money” model, which means that professors are expected to fund much of their salaries through grants. (Many professors there, including Vance and Hopper, work without tenure.) Recently, the amount expected has increased—from somewhere between 40 and 70 percent of their salaries to as much as 80 percent—and professors say that it’s become a hard rule, with less room for the cross-subsidization of those who devote themselves to teaching or whose research isn’t attractive to outside funders. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health, the primary source of grant money, has seen its budget slashed. These days, only 17 percent of grant applications are successful—a record low. Continue reading “Why the Columbia firings matters”

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Protecting the public from for-profit colleges

The Obama Administration announced today new steps to address growing concerns about burdensome student loan debt by requiring career colleges to do a better job of preparing students for gainful employment—or risk losing access to taxpayer-funded federal student aid.

The proposed regulations released by the U.S. Department of Education “will help to strengthen students’ options for higher education by giving all career training programs an

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opportunity to improve, while stopping the flow of federal funding to the lowest-performing ones that fail to do so.

“Higher education should open up doors of opportunity, but students in these low-performing programs often end up worse off than before they enrolled: saddled by debt and with few—if any—options for a career,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “The proposed regulations address growing concerns about unaffordable levels of loan debt for students enrolled in these programs by targeting the lowest-performing programs, while shining a light on best practices and giving all programs an opportunity to improve.”

“To qualify for federal student aid, the law requires that most for-profit programs and certificate programs at non-profit and public institutions prepare students for gainful employment in a recognized occupation. Some of these programs, whether public, private, or for-profit, empower students to succeed by providing high-quality education and career training. But many of these programs, particularly those at for-profit colleges, are failing to do so—at taxpayers’ expense and the cost of students’ futures.

Students at for-profit colleges represent only about 13 percent of the total higher education population, but about 31 percent of all student loans and nearly half of all loan defaults. In the most recent data, about 22 percent of student borrowers at for-profit colleges defaulted on their loans within three years, compared to 13 percent of borrowers at public colleges. Continue reading “Protecting the public from for-profit colleges”

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50 shades of gender inequity

Not only does the gender wage gap have real staying power, but it’s alive and kicking in all 50 states.

As reported in Huffington Post, “according to a new report released earlier this week by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), the gender pay gap — which had significantly narrowed since the 1970s — has slowly plateaued in recent years.

“Compiling data from the Census Bureau, the Department of Education and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, AAUW calculated the median salaries for full-time employment in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In the U.S., women are paid 23 percent less than men on average. Although down from a 2012 figure of 91 percent, Washington, D.C. maintains the smallest wage gap in the U.S., with women earning 90 percent of what their male counterparts do ($66,754 vs. $60,116). Also consistent with last year’s results, Wyoming came in last with women taking home a shocking 64 percent of men’s average earnings ($51,932 vs. $33,152).

“While it remains important to note that geography and local industry have a large influence on differing salaries, there are other major factors that come into play — namely education level, race/ethnicity and age. AAUW analyzed the pay gap by looking at full-time, year-round workers over the age of 15. Beyond comparing salaries of all men to salaries of all women, the report broke down wage imbalances between the sexes along three additional demographics: race/ethnicity, education level and age. Asian-American women had the largest gender wage gap while Hispanic or Latina women’s earnings were most comparable to their male counterparts.  Continue reading “50 shades of gender inequity”

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Amazon not-so prime

We knew it couldn’t last. Here at the Worlding offices, we’ve been getting cases of soft drinks delivered via

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Amazon Prime, along with all of the other junk we buy. it was just too good to be true.

As Wired reports, “for nearly a decade, Amazon.com customers could enjoy unlimited two-day shipping for $79 per year. But the company has now hiked that price to $99. The move could change purchasing habits at the world’s largest online retailer if customers balk at the increase. But Prime — which also offers unlimited access to online video — is still a perk that’s unrivaled across the web.

“For existing Prime members, the hike will hit if their membership renews before April 17. And according to reports, the price for new members goes up March 20. Though the extra $20 might be disappointing to customers, it was expected. In its most recent earnings call, the company said it would likely have to raise Prime’s price to keep up with rising shipping costs. CFO Tom Szktuk told analysts and reporters that the price hike would be anywhere form $20 to $40, so Amazon is at least coming in at the bottom end of the scale.

“Of course, that was probably part of the company’s PR strategy. “Look! We raised it the bare minimum!” It’s also no surprise that Amazon brought Prime right up to the edge of triple digits without going over. If there’s anything about customer psychology that any retailer knows, it’s that 99 — cents or dollars — is way better than 100. Prime is such a huge driver of sales for Amazon that messing with the price at all carries a big risk of losing existing subscribers and failing to sign up as many new ones. Amazon had to strike a balance between keeping its revenue engine running and slowing the billions it loses each year in shipping. Continue reading “Amazon not-so prime”

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About letter grading

Letter grades are a tradition in our educational system, and we accept them as fair and objective measures of academic success. Jessica Lahey writes in The Atlantic that: “If the purpose of academic grading is to communicate accurate and specific information about learning, letter, or points-based grades, are a woefully

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blunt and inadequate instrument. Worse, points-based grading undermines learning and creativity,rewards cheating, damages students’ peer relationships and trust in their teachers, encourages students to avoid challenging work, and teaches students to value grades over knowledge.

“Letter grades communicate precious little about the process of learning a given subject. When a child earns a ‘B’ in Algebra I, what does that ‘B’ represent? That ‘B’ may represent hundreds of points-based assignments, arranged and calculated in categories of varying weights and relative significance depending on the a teacher’s training or habit. But that ‘B’ says nothing about the specific skills John has (or has not) learned in a given class, or if he can apply that learning to other contexts. Even when paired with a narrative comment such as, “John is a pleasure to have in class,” parents, students, and even colleges are left to guess at precisely which Algebra I skills John has learned and will be able to apply to Algebra II.  Continue reading “About letter grading”

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Hollywood’s diversity problem

A new study by the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University has

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confirmedwhat so many critics have long-observed about diversity in Hollywood: even in 2014, it is virtually nonexistent.

Salon reports that the study says that “only 15 percent of the year’s 100 top-grossing films featured women in leading roles, a rate that has barely changed from 2002, when the Center’s executive director Martha M. Lauzen first began to study the numbers. Beyond lead roles, only 30 percent of speaking roles belong to women, which has risen by only a few percentage points in about 80 years. Lauzen explained the findings to the New York Times:

“We think of Hollywood as a very progressive place and a bastion of liberal thought,” she said. “But when you look at the numbers and the representation of women onscreen, that’s absolutely not the case. The film industry does not like change.”

Ms. Lauzen also found consistencies over the last decade in the number of roles given to African-American, Latina and Asian actresses: last year they accounted for, respectively, 14 percent, 5 percent and 2 percent of all female characters. Those figures also have barely wavered from 2002.

Ms. Lauzen attributed the lack of growth in the number of leading female characters to the relative paucity of women in key roles behind the scenes: since 1998, she has found that women have consistently accounted for roughly 17 percent of writers, directors and producers.

“Lauzen’s findings highlight why it’s so important to have diversity not just on screen, but within the staff of a project. This is not just a problem in film, however; it is a problem that encompasses the entire entertainment industry: Offering a comprehensive look at the dismal record of diversity among leading television programmer HBO, the Huffington Post’s Maureen Ryan wrote last week, “If one focuses only on the last dozen years at AMC, FX, Showtime, Netflix and HBO, around 12 percent of the creators and narrative architects in the dramatic realm were women.”

 

More at: http://www.salon.com/2014/03/11/hollywoods_depressing_gender_problem_new_study_shows_its_barely_improving/

 

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Those starting college worry about money

The 2013-14 academic year marks a half-decade since the economic recession hit, but concerns about the costs of attending college are influencing incoming freshmen more than ever, a new survey shows as reported by InsideHigherEd.

“While more than three-quarters of this year’s freshmen were admitted to their first-choice institution, an all-time low of 56.9 percent chose to attend it. Nearly 46 and 48 percent — both all-time highs — said price and financial aid, respectively, were “very

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important” in their decision about which institution to attend. Among students who were accepted but did not enroll at their first-choice institution, about a quarter said lack of financial aid from that college was a very

important factor in their decision, and 60 percent said the same of being offered financial aid from the institution they chose to attend.

“The record-setting numbers are not an anomaly. Last year’s survey found that financial concerns increasingly affected students’ decision-making in ways both educational (where to attend college and what to study) and personal (why to attend and whether to live on campus). So it appears the impact of the 2008 economic recession has only gotten stronger from year to yea

“As state economies have recovered, we haven’t really seen all of those dollars come back into higher education, and it’s concerning that they may be gone for good,” said Kevin Eagan, interim director of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program at the University of California at Los Angeles, which publishes the report annually. “Institutions cannot be too comfortable resting on their laurels and expecting that academic reputation will carry as much weight, or more weight, than any other factor in whether admitted students choose to enroll.”

“The annual survey is The American Freshman: National Norms. The report is usually released in January, but last fall’s federal government shutdown delayed the results because the U.S. Education Department’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, on which CIRP relies for the report, was blocked for a time. The survey includes 165,743 first-time, full-time students entering 234 four-year American colleges and universities of varying selectivity and type. Continue reading “Those starting college worry about money”

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Giant walls could stop tornados

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Building three “Great Walls” across Tornado Alley in the US could eliminate the disasters, a physicist says.

The BBC reports that “The barriers – 300m (980ft) high and up to 100 miles long – would act like hill ranges, softening winds before twisters can form.

“They would cost $16bn (£9.6bn) to build but save billions of dollars of damage each year, said Prof Rongjia Tao, of Temple University, Philadelphia. He unveiled his idea at the American Physical Society meeting in Denver.

“However critics say the idea is unworkable, and would create more problems than it solves.Every year hundreds of twisters tear through communities in the great north-south corridor between the Rocky and Appalachian Mountain ranges. The proposed walls would not shelter towns – they would not be strong enough to block a tornado in motion. Instead, they would soften the clashing streams of hot southern and cold northern air, which form twisters in the first place, Prof Tao said.

“If we build three east-west great walls, one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma, and the third in the south in Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the threats in Tornado Alley forever,” he said.As evidence, he points to China – where only three tornadoes were recorded last year, compared to 803 in the US.”

More at: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26492720 

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Rewriting the SAT

In July 2012, a few months before he was to officially take over as president of the College Board, David Coleman invited Les Perelman, then a director of writing at M.I.T., to come meet with him in Lower Manhattan.

As the New York Times reports, “Of the many things the College Board does — take part in research, develop education policy, create curriculums — it is perhaps most recognized as the organization that administers the SAT, and Perelman was one of the exam’s harshest and most relentless critics.

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“Since 2005, when the College Board added an essay to the SAT (raising the total possible score from 1,600 to 2,400), Perelman had been conducting research that highlighted what he believed were the inherent absurdities in how the essay questions were formulated and scored. His earliest findings showed that length, more than any other factor, correlated with a high score on the essay. More recently, Perelman coached 16 students who were retaking the test after having received mediocre scores on the essay section. He told them that details mattered but factual accuracy didn’t. Continue reading “Rewriting the SAT”

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How one’s race can change over time

As a cultural construct, a person’s race is not fixed but can change over time, research shows.

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Aliya Saperstein, assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University, found that the race of about one in five of those surveyed had at least one change in their race, as the Christian Times reports

“Saperstein spoke with National Public Radio about her research for a segment that aired Tuesday morning.

“What our research challenges,” she said, “is this idea that the race of an individual is fixed. Twenty percent of the respondents in the NLSY survey experienced at least one change [in their race classification] over the course of different observations.”

“The NLSY tracks the same people over a long period of time. The race of those participating in the survey is recorded as it is perceived by the interviewer.

“Race is socially constructed. There is no such thing as a “race gene” that identifies people as being of different races. Rather, the human brain subconsciously perceives people to be of different races based upon certain physical characteristics, such as skin color, hair type and nose shape. These perceptions can change over time.

What is even more interesting about Saperstein’s findings, though, is that changes in race were correlated with changes in respondent’s life circumstances. Those who went from being employed to unemployed, were sent to prison or went on welfare, were more likely to be classified as black after their lives took a turn for the worse. Continue reading “How one’s race can change over time”

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Challenge to 1266 fails

The California secretary of state’s office issued the final full check Monday, February 24, as reported in the Bay Area Reporter.

“It showed that the Privacy for All Students coalition, which sponsored the referendum, needed 540,760 valid signatures. The coalition ended up with only 487,484 valid signatures.

“Called the School Success and Opportunity Act, Assembly Bill 1266 ensures that California public schools are committed to the success of all students, including those transgender-identified. Under the law, transgender students have the right to participate in all school activities like sports teams, and use school facilities like bathrooms based on their gender identity.

In January, random samples taken from petition signature counts in each county qualified the referendum, albeit barely, for a full signature count. As final numbers rolled in on Monday, AB 1266 supporters nodded their approval and celebrated the continued protection of transgender youth in California schools. AB 1266, which was signed by Governor Jerry Brown last summer, went into effect January 1.

“Richard Poppen, an Equality California board member and mathematician, watched the signature counting process closely and relayed regular informative updates to colleagues as each county reported their numbers.

“The process went through in the standard way,” Poppen told the Bay Area Reporter. “Referendum proponents got the full benefit of the statutory process but failed fair and square to meet the threshold. Trans kids will continue to be protected as the legislature intended.”

“Supporters of the new law, including Equality California, the Transgender Law Center, and other groups that came together under the Support All Students campaign, were pleased the referendum failed to qualify, and thus there won’t be a divisive anti-LGBT measure on the November ballot.”

 

More at: http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=69512

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Disney vs the Scouts

Walt Disney has booted the Boy Scouts out of the Magic Kingdom, allegedly due to the national organization’s discriminatory policies against gay members. Although the Boy Scouts began welcoming gay scouts in January, it dispels these members after they turn 18, banning them, as well as gay parents, from leading troops and packs.images Florida-based Walt Disney World, the latest company to stop giving money to Boy Scouts in recent years, said that it cut off funding because the organization’s “views” do not align with theirs, according to a letter sent from the Central Florida Council of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to the state’s scout leaders and parents.

“In losing this grant money…we may have to cut back on activities, delay replacing aging equipment, or reduce ‘high-adventure’ camping. Unless the families can make up the difference, we will have reduced experiences for the boys available,” said a Florida pack and troop leader, who wished to remain anonymous because of potential retaliation from the local scouting community. “My kids are losing money solely based on National BSA’s moral judgment against gay people. It’s not what I believe or teach my kids. Discrimination is not what we practice as a local scout unit.”

Walt Disney World did not provide financial support to the national BSA council, but it did give grants to local scouting troops through a program called, “Ears to You,” in which employees do volunteer work, and, in return, the company gives money to a charity of the employee’s choice. The Florida scout leader toldMother Jones that many members of the Florida scouting community participate in this program, and some units were receiving up to $6,000 per year.

According to the letter sent by the BSA Central Florida Council, the national leadership of BSA reached out to Walt Disney World to address the dropped funding, but the company said that their “views do not currently align with the BSA and they are choosing to discontinue this level of support.” Walt Disney World did not respond to comment as to whether those views specifically refer to the Scouts’ LGBT policy, and BSA spokesman Deron Smith declined to comment on the rationale. But Brad Hankins, a spokesman for Scouts for Equality, which advocates for equal LGBT rights, said the group believes it’s over BSA’s anti-gay policy: “Beyond the membership policies, what other views does the BSA hold that are controversial?”According to its Standards of Business Conduct, Disney World permits no discrimination based on “sex, sexual orientation [and] gender identification” among its employees. Continue reading “Disney vs the Scouts”

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California’s beer drought

Along with California’s water supplies and public health, the ongoing drought in the state may have yet another victim to claim: beer.

As ThinkProgress reports, “Lagunitas Brewing Company — one of California’s biggest craft breweries — told NPR last week that the drought is threatening the Russian River,

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where they get the water for their beer. Such sources play a key role in the brewing process — as NPR notes, producers like Coors and Cold Spring Brewing Co. tout their use of water from the Rockies and a Minnesota natural spring, respectively. But if the drought forces Lagunitas to switch from the river to groundwater for its supplies, the heavy minerals in the latter won’t go well with the beer.

“It would be like brewing with Alka-Seltzer,” Jeremy Marshall, Lagunitas’ head brewer, told NPR.

“In some [of the region’s wells] there are taste and odor issues,” added Jay Jasperse, chief engineer with the Sonoma County Water Agency. “You have high nitrate concentrations in places, from agricultural industries, and iron and manganese.”

“Lagunitas does have options: they could switch to another facility in Chicago, and they’re experimenting with a reverse osmosis system to purify the groundwater. But many other breweries also operate off the Russian River, and don’t have the scale and resources to pursue those alternatives.

“During recent tours of California, President Obama explicitly linked the drought to climate change: higher temperatures generally mean faster evaporation and drier conditions in dry areas. Rainfall shifts to longer dry spells broken by heavier deluges — so when precipitation does come, there’s less time for it to add to snowpack or soak into the ground. That means reduced water supplies for reservoirs like Lake Mendocino, which feeds the Russian River. California officials are worried the lake could come close to disappearing in the summer months if the drought continues.

“Beyond water, global warming and the resulting climate change bring shifts in rainfall, stronger storms, droughts, heat waves, and other forms of extreme weather that reduce yields of barely and hops. Heavy rains in Australia and drought in England have damaged barely crops in recent years, and scientists worry the damage could spread to New Zealand as well. A 2009 study suggested the quality of Saaz hops from the Czech Republic has been falling since 1954 due to warmer temperatures. And shifting seasonal patterns started hitting hops crops throughout Europe as early as the 1990s. Continue reading “California’s beer drought”

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Made in LA

Los Angeles is brimming with hidden treasures and at the Hammer Museum’s second biennial show, “Made in L.A. 2014,” some of the city’s best-kept art secrets will be revealed, as reported in the LA Times

“Consider the selections from the Los Angeles Museum of Art — not to be confused with Wilshire Boulevard’s Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

“Tucked down an alleyway, wedged

against the steel siding of an Eagle Rock garage, the LAMOA is a tiny, 9

la-la-et-made-in-la-2014-02-jpg-20140218-by-12-foot open-air wooden hut built by the artist Alice Könitz.

“Artworks from LAMOA’s permanent collection of local and international artists, including some of Könitz’s own sculptural installations, will be on display at the Hammer’s ambitious “Made in L.A. 2014.”

“The exhibition, which opens June 15, features emerging and under-recognized artists from the L.A. area. On Wednesday, the museum announced the lineup of 35 artists and collectives. Among them are emerging artists Marina Pinsky and Devin Kenny; AM radio station KCHUNG, which is also the Hammer’s public engagement artist-in-residence; and more widely known artists who include Gabriel Kuri, Wu Tsang and Judy Fiskin.

“The inaugural “Made in L.A.” show, a 2012 collaboration between the Hammer and the art space LAXART, took place in three locations: the Hammer, LAXART and the Department of Cultural Affairs’ Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery at Barnsdall Park. It featured 60 artists.  Continue reading “Made in LA”

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The arts boost California’s economy

The results of the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy were unveiled today at an event produced by Otis

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College of Art and Design, held at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, CA.Speakers included California State Senator Ted Lieu (Chair of the Joint Committee of the Arts, and Chair of the Business, Professions and Economic Development Committee); Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Chief Economist Robert Kleinhenz; Director, Western Region of the Actors Fund Keith McNutt; Otis President Samuel Hoi, California Arts Council Director Craig Watson; and Executive Director of Arts for L.A. Danielle Brazell.

The UCIRA reports that “Otis has commissioned this annual report from the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation since 2007, underscoring its commitment to measuring, benchmarking, and assessing trends of the creative economy. The Otis Report was expanded this year to include data for the entire state.

“Significant findings in the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy include:
-In the Los Angeles region, the creative sectors supported 1 in 7 wage and salary jobs, with a net economic output contribution of 10.4% of the region’s gross total.
-The Los Angeles regional creative industries sustained 726,300 workers who earned labor income of $50.6 billion.
-California’s creative economy contributed 7.8% of the gross state product in 2012. Across the state, with a total of 1.4 million workers, the creative industries accounted for directly or indirectly 9.7% of all wage and salary employment, or roughly 1 in 10 jobs.
-Entertainment, fashion, and furniture and the decorative arts were the largest industries in California’s creative economy but nearly 6 of 10 (56%) creative occupations are found outside of the creative industries.
-The Los Angeles region is undisputedly the creative nexus of the state, with over 44% of California’s workers engaged in creative occupations.
-By 2017, creative economy employment will be up by 3.1% or 12,600 jobs from 2012 levels. Creative industry employment in the Los Angeles-Orange County region will total 416,500 wage and salary jobs by 2017.

“The Otis Report has firmly established that the ‘creative economy’ is a powerful force, both in Southern California and in the state,” said Otis President Samuel Hoi. “Signals abound that creativity and innovation are pivotal to the economy and general well-being of people and communities. Artistic services and intellectual capital are inarguably essential to the 21st century economy, which is dynamic, knowledge-based, and increasingly global.”

“Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation’s Chief Economist Robert Kleinhenz stated, “The health of the state economy depends on continued progress in the U.S. economy and among its major trading partners. Improvements in the consumer sector will be front and center in both California and the nation, as households respond to declining unemployment, increases in income, stronger real estate markets, and stock market gains.”An addendum to this year’s Otis Report is “L.A. Creates,” a special report by Director, Western Region of the Actors Fund Keith McNutt, detailing the way in which deliberate, collaborative, and regional efforts can support and develop the region’s creative industries.Lead sponsors for this year’s event are the California Arts Council and Mattel. Other support came from the James Irvine Foundation, Nike, Sony Pictures, City National Bank, The Boeing Company, Ovation, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.On Wednesday, February 12th in Sacramento, CA, the 2013 Otis Report on the Creative Economy will be presented at an informational hearing of the Joint Committee on the Arts. Senator Ted Lieu will convene the hearing in the state’s capitol to examine the role the creative sector plays in the state’s economy. The hearing starts at 10AM and is open to the public.”

 

More at: http://www.ucira.ucsb.edu/creativity-is-serious-business-in-the-state-of-california/

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High-tech baby boom

More test-tube babies were born in the United States in 2012 than ever

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before, and they constituted a higher percentage of total births than at any time since the technology was introduced in the 1980s, according to a report released on Monday, reports Reuters.

“The annual report was from the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology (SART), an organization of medical professionals.

“SART’s 379 member clinics, which represent more than 90 percent of the infertility clinics in the country, reported that in 2012 they performed 165,172 procedures involving in vitro fertilization (IVF), in which an egg from the mother-to-be or a donor is fertilized in a lab dish. They resulted in the birth of 61,740 babies.

“That was about 2,000 more IVF babies than in 2011. With about 3.9 million babies born in the United States in 2012, the IVF newborns accounted for just over 1.5 percent of the total, more than ever before.

“The growing percentage reflects, in part, the increasing average age at which women give birth for the first time, since fertility problems become more common as people age. The average age of first-time mothers is now about 26 years; it was 21.4 years in 1970.

“Although the rising number of test-tube babies suggests that the technology has become mainstream, critics of IVF point out that the numbers, particularly the success rates, mask wide disparities. Continue reading “High-tech baby boom”

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The internship treadmill

Like other 20-somethings seeking a career foothold, Andrew Lang, a graduate of Penn State, took an internship at an upstart Beverly Hills production company at age 29 as a way of breaking into movie production. It didn’t pay, but he hoped the exposure would open doors.

“When that internship proved to be a dead end, Mr. Lang went to work at a

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 second production company, again as an unpaid intern, reports the New York Times “When that went nowhere, he left for another, doing whatever was asked, like delivering bottles of wine to 27 offices before Christmas. But that company, too, could not afford to hire him, even part time.

“A year later, Mr. Lang is on his fourth internship, this time for a company that produces reality TV shows. While this internship at least pays him (he makes $10 an hour, with few perks), Mr. Lang feels no closer to a real job and worries about being an intern forever. “No one hires interns,” said Mr. Lang, who sees himself as part of a “revolving class of people” who can’t break free of the intern cycle. “Is this any way to live?”

“The intern glass ceiling isn’t limited to Hollywood. Tenneh Ogbemudia, 23, who aspires to be a record executive, has had four internships at various New York media companies, including Source magazine and Universal Music Group.

“In any given month, I’d say I apply to at least 300 full-time jobs,” she said, noting these attempts were to no avail. “On the other hand, I can apply to one or two internship positions a month and get a call back from both.”Call them members of the permanent intern underclass: educated members of the millennial generation who are locked out of the traditional career ladder and are having to settle for two, three and sometimes more internships after graduating college, all with no end in sight. Like an army of worker ants, they are a subculture with a distinct identity, banding together in Occupy Wall Street-inspired groups and, lately, creating their own blogs, YouTube channels, networking groups and even a magazine that captures life inside the so-called Intern Nation. It is a young, rudderless community that is still trying to define itself. “I’m just wondering at what point how many internships is too many,” said Lea, who received a master’s degree from Parsons, the New School for Design two years ago and aspires to work as a magazine art director. (She was allowed to use only her first name to avoid jeopardizing a current job application.) So far, her résumé has been limited to three internships — planning events for teenagers at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, compiling news clippings for a public relations agency in New York, and being the “fetch-the-coffee girl” at an art gallery.While feeling trapped inside what she calls a “never-ending intern life,” Lea satisfies her creative impulses by editing a food and drinks column at a lifestyle blog, selling coral fan necklaces on Etsy, and starting a charity to teach children about “responsible” street art. She wonders if she should surrender to a fourth internship or settle for an office job outside her chosen field. Continue reading “The internship treadmill”

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Non-binary gender roles

“I wouldn’t mind having a mustache to twirl,” says S.E. Smith, who likes to be referred to with the pronoun “ou” instead of she or he and her or him – and prefers seeing ou name in lowercase.

As SF Gate reports, “Smith was female-assigned at birth but doesn’t like to be viewed as a woman. But “male” doesn’t fit either. Smith identifies as “genderqueer,” a word whose definition lacks consensus, but is broadly described as someone who “does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions but identifies with neither, both or a combination of male and female genders.”

“What does genderqueer look like? To Smith, who is 29 and divides time between Fort Bragg and Berkeley, expressing ou gender can mean slicking ou hair back, binding ou chest and sliding into a suit. And it can mean “dressing up in floofy things and heels,” as ou wrote for the website xoJane, where ou works as its social justice editor.

“In that article, Smith wrote that ou “felt a growing sense of wrongness” starting in elementary school, when sent out to play with girls. “I wanted to be with the boys; I wanted to be a boy – but not exactly.” Smith’s eureka moment struck in college when ou got in with a crowd of transgender people. “It’s OK not to be a girl or a boy, there’s a word for that. You’re genderqueer,” said a friend. Continue reading “Non-binary gender roles”

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Understanding gender diversity

There are two core concepts that help in understanding transgender people and their experiences. A recent article in The Guardian suggests some guidelines for writing about transgender people.

“First, gender and sex are distinct in this context: sex = biology, ie sex assigned at birth; gender = one’s innate sense of self. Thus, transgender (where the Latin trans means “on the other side of”) signifies someone whose gender differs from their assigned sex.

“Second, while transgender refers in the broadest sense to someone whose sex and gender do not match, cisgender (from the Latin “on this side of”, ie the antonym of trans) refers to those whose sex and gender do match. In other words, anyone not trans is cis.

“If that sounds like a strange or even offensive concept, you are probably cis. We hope it doesn’t make you feel embarrassed or ashamed. If so, consider yourself endowed with a new level of empathy for your trans brothers and sisters. But rest assured it’s only meant as a helpful linguistic signpost for understanding gender diversity.

“With that in mind, here are some proposed guidelines. Transgender should be used as an adjective, shortened to trans after first use: transgender person, trans person. Never “transgendered person” or “a transgender”. (In the case of trans*, the asterisk represents a wildcard, ie any gender minority. Stick to transgender or trans in formal contexts.) Continue reading “Understanding gender diversity”