Search results for: “node/Science”
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Black Woman Wins Mayoral Race in Italian Town
A gem from Afro: By a slim margin of just 38 votes, a Black woman has become mayor of a small town in northern Italy. Sandy Cane, 48, won the election earlier this summer and will govern the town of Valceresio, population 5,300, which borders Varesotto and the Swiss confederation of Ticino. She will serve…
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Is There a Science to Beauty?
“He look-a like a man.” Remember Ms. Swan? Mad TV’s maybe-Korean, maybe-Icelandic, slightly androgynous nail technician played with adroit cultural ambiguity by Jewish-American actress Alex Borstein? Ms. Swan could never give anyone a straight answer and her subterfuge became her most famous catchphrase, “He look-a like a man.” We laughed because the answer was so…
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Semenya's Race and Sex Struggle
What stood out most as Caster Semenya faced reporters at last week’s track and field world championships was that she’s just a kid. Baby-faced and leery, she parceled out answers to ostensibly innocuous questions. “What was your running background before this year?” But a more insidious query lurked for the teen: What kind of freak are…
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Dance Dance Revolution
ABOUT TERESA WILTZ I was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Staten Island, New York and Atlanta, Georgia. Yes, that made for a somewhat schizoid childhood; I quickly learned to flip back and forth between two accents. I like to think that sort of flexibility helped me in my journalism career. After graduating…
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What the U.S. Can Do for Congo
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent trip to Africa included a noteworthy visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo, with a brief stop at Goma, the epicenter of the violence in the east. Clinton’s stopover marked a significant departure from previous U.S. policy with Congo. Her visit, undoubtedly the highest-level visit by an American dignitary ever, represents…
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Ferris Bueller Director: A Mixed Bag Legacy
John Hughes has died. The 59 year-old writer/director who introduced my life to classics like Weird Science, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died of a heart attack while taking a morning walk in NYC. When I first heard the news I didn’t know what to feel. Or should I say, admit what…
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The Real Affirmative Action Babies
Last Sunday, veteran Washington Post journalist Juan Williams and conservative author Shelby Steele wrote two opposing op-eds on the pending death of affirmative action. Williams opined that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was too optimistic when she predicted that affirmative action, born with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had at most 25 more years to…
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Letting Science Lead, Again
This week offers a potentially historic turning point in America’s response to HIV/AIDS, as the Senate weighs whether to show the courage of President Obama’s convictions and end one of the most counterproductive public health laws Congress has ever written: the ban on federal funding for needle-exchange programs. The Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to…
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The Police and the Black Imagination
What are the Massachusetts cops talking about? What are these American naysayers afraid to admit? The Massachusetts Police Association actually said the only thing stupid in the Gates incident was Obama’s comment that the Cambridge Police’s tactics were stupid. Folks, it’s not rocket science or even quantum physics. Racial profiling exists. Whether one is middle-class…
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The Original Moonwalk
I was 9 when Neil Armstrong took that “one small step for man,” and even as a kid, I wasn’t impressed. The moon? Please. On Star Trek, they were whizzing by moons in other galaxies, and Tintin, the protagonist of my favorite series of graphic novels (even in the ‘60s they were way too fancy…