Category Archives: New Utopia

With Broadway mothballed for the foreseeable future and the Tony Awards shelved until a to-be-determined date, whats a theater fan to do these days? In the absence of a Tony ceremony that was supposed to air Sunday night, weve compiled a list of award-worthy performances and plays that fans can watch to celebrate the best of the truncated Broadway season. (Unless otherwise noted, you can find all of these clips on YouTube.)

Tell me more, tell me more! In place of this years postponed awards show, CBS is presenting a sing-along version of the classic 1978 film Grease, starring John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, and Stockard Channing, as part of its revived Sunday Night Movies lineup. The Grease Sing-Along, airing at 8:30 p.m., will be accompanied by onscreen lyrics to all the shows classic songs, including Summer Nights, Look at Me, Im Sandra Dee, Youre the One That I Want," Greased Lightnin, and Hopelessly Devoted to You.

The rousing Moulin Rouge! The Musical is the epitome of a big, splashy, vibrant Broadway musical thats much missed these days. Scrambling up hits from the likes of Beyonc, Rihanna, Adele, the Police, OutKast, and Lady Gaga, the show received its world premiere at Bostons Emerson Colonial Theatre in 2018 before bowing on Broadway last summer. It wouldve been a top Tony contender in many categories, including best musical. You can see stars Aaron Tveit and Karen Olivo, who play lovestruck composer Christian and doomed chanteuse Satine, harmonizing on the soaring Elton John ballad Your Song on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert last fall. Or watch Danny Burstein, as nightclub impresario Harold Zidler, and the dynamic cast perform the shows explosive opening mash-up of Lady Marmalade and Because We Can from the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Good Morning America in February.

Another show with local roots that wouldve been a serious Tony contender is Jagged Little Pill, which premiered at Cambridges American Repertory Theater in 2018 and opened on Broadway last fall. The show features the songs from Alanis Morissettes trailblazing 1995 album, finding the fire and fury in a story that touches on a range of hot-button issues, including opioid addiction, racism, rape culture, and gender identity. Watch the cast perform You Learn on Good Morning America last December. Or go behind the scenes at a rehearsal with director Diane Paulus, choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and cast members Celia Rose Gooding and Antonio Cipriano as they work through a performance of Head Over Feet.

The fierce, cheeky, female-empowered musical Six, which passed through the ARTs Loeb Drama Center last summer on its way to Broadway this spring, was a legit contender for Tony gold, including best musical. Written by Lucy Moss and Toby Marlow and staged as an exhilarating pop concert, the show tells the story of the six wives of Henry VIII, tossed-aside queens who refused to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Check out the London cast slaying the shows scorching opening number, Ex Wives, at the 2019 Olivier Awards, in a flash-mob performance of that electric anthem outside the Tower of London, or strutting to Anne Boleyns catchy cautionary tune Dont Lose Your Head on BBCs The One Show.

The race for best actress in a musical likely would have included previous Tony winners Olivo and Katrina Lenk. Yet the contest was shaping up as a showdown between Olivier Award winner Sharon D. Clarke for her stirring performance as a Black woman grappling with the Jim Crow South in Tony Kushner and Jeanine Tesoris Caroline, or Change and pint-size dynamo Adrienne Warren for her turn as the inimitable pop diva in Tina: The Tina Turner Musical. Watch Clarkes soul-shaking rendition of Lots Wife at last years Oliviers and the sparkling Warren, who came to Boston in a 2010 tour of Dreamgirls, sing an earthquaking River Deep/Mountain High at the same ceremony. Or click on Warren belting out Turners pop anthem The Best from her bathtub on The Rosie ODonnell Show in March.

Patti LuPone has long been one of Broadways most renowned divas. She has two Tony Awards (for Gypsy and Evita) and seven other nominations. Would she have added a third award to her shelf as the acerbic Joanne in the revival of Stephen Sondheims Company? Judge for yourself. Check out LuPone slaying the lacerating lament The Ladies Who Lunch at a 2011 concert performance of Company or delivering a more sardonic version at the composers 80th birthday bash in 2010. Well drink to her.

Speaking of Company, Marianne Elliotts revelatory revival reimagined the restless bachelor Bobbie as a romantically ambivalent single woman facing the uncertainties of aging alone. Lenks turn as Bobbie on Broadway had only just begun before the show had to shut down. For now, fans can view Lenks star-making turn as the enigmatic Dina in a duet with Tony Shalhoub on the aching Omar Sharif from The Bands Visit at the 2018 Tonys, where it won best musical and nine other trophies. The shows tour was set to arrive at the Colonial in late March, until the pandemic shut theaters. This is a small glimpse of its magical charms.

David Byrnes dazzling American Utopia, a heart-lifting theatrical concert that had a tryout at the Colonial last September before opening on Broadway, felt like a balm for these times. Watch Byrne and his diverse band as they summon an anguished cover of Janelle Mones searing protest anthem against racial violence and the deaths of Black men and women at the hands of the police, Hell You Talmbout. The powerful call-and-response song recites the names of 18 victims, including Sean Bell, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, and Emmett Till, and was written, said Mone in 2015, to challenge the indifference, disregard, and negligence of all who remain quiet about this issue. (You can also watch Monae herself perform the song here.) Say their names, say their names, say their names.

Theres nothing wrong with escapism in these fraught times. But in light of the urgent Black Lives Matter protests, theater fans might be in the mood for more thought-provoking drama. Dominique Morisseaus haunting Pipeline tells the story of a mother desperate to protect her young Black son from getting caught in the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. The play is available for streaming on the subscription service BroadwayHD.com (a free trial is available). The trailblazing writer-performer Anna Deavere Smith explores similar territory in her solo performance piece Notes From the Field, seen at the ART in 2016. In the film version, available on HBOs streaming services, Smith embodies a multitude of characters as she investigates the connections between police brutality, the mass incarceration of Black men, and an educational system that often fails communities of color.

One of the most talked-about new dramas of the Broadway season, Jeremy O. Harriss Slave Play, would have been a top contender for best play, along with Matthew Lopezs multi-generational epic The Inheritance. You can watch Harris discuss the psychological and personal roots of his provocative examination of race, sex, trauma and America itself, on the BUILD series. Or click on an interview with Lopez and actor Kyle Soller discussing generational responsibility and the legacy of AIDS in the Oliver Award-winning Inheritance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.

Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at chriswallenberg@gmail.com.

Continued here:

Though you cant watch the Tonys this weekend, some of Broadways best are just a click away - The Boston Globe

MONTREAL The death of George Floyd in Minnesota following a police intervention has spurred massive protests in both Canada and the United States and societal soul-searching on the need to fight racism on both sides of the border.

But while many Canadian leaders have denounced the death of Floyd, who died in Minneapolis last week after pleading for air while a white police officer pressed a knee on his neck, his death has also prompted some public figures to claim systemic racism doesn't exist in Canada as it does in the United States.

The Canadian Press asked several black Canadians to share their experiences with racism and their thoughts on systemic discrimination in both countries.

Kenrick McRae

McRae, 49, said Floyd's experience in the United States hit home with him, because it has echoes of his own experiences with Montreal police.

"What I've been seeing (in the United States) is a reflection of what I went through," he said. "In my cases, if there were no video recordings, these police here in Montreal would have gotten off."

In March 2017, McRae was stopped by police who claimed his car's licence plate light was out. When he argued that the light was working and got out of the car to film the officers, he says, they rushed at him, tried to take his camera, and arrested him and held him in their car for 90 minutes before releasing him without charges.

In a 2019 decision, the police ethics board upheld McRae's complaint and concluded that the two officers had illegally arrested and detained him during a stop that was "founded on his race."

McRae, who now keeps several cameras to film his interactions, says this incident is one of dozens over the years in which he's been stopped and harassed by police without cause.

"I would say in an average of two years (I've been stopped) over 25 times," he said. "And out of the 25 times, there's never been a ticket, for anything."

Omari Newton

Newton, a Vancouver-based actor and writer, says he's experienced racism both in that city and in Montreal, where he grew up.

He recalled one time when he was pulled over by police when driving home from an intramural basketball game with three black friends and one of their girlfriends, who is white. He said he was initially confused when police started flashing their flashlights and demanding ID.

Eventually, Newton said, the officer leaned in to ask the sole white passenger if she was OK.

"She's confused. She's like 'Yeah, what are you talking about?' " he recalled. "The cop says 'You're here on your free will?' "

He said he then realized what was happening.

"These cops decided that four brothers with a white girl in the middle, clearly, this is like a kidnapping or potential assault situation. There's no way that these guys are friends," Newton said.

Newton, 40, said those who deny there is racism in Canada "don't know the history of our country's formation."

"I'm proud to be Canadian. We've come a long way as a nation, and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. That doesn't mean we are a utopia," he said.

Sharon Nelson

Nelson, who works with Montreal's Jamaica Association, believes firmly that what happened to Floyd could have happened anywhere, including Canada.

She said most black people, including herself, can tell stories about being followed by sales staff while shopping, being treated differently depending on whether they're wearing business attire or clothes perceived as "ethnic," and being told to "go home."

Nelson, 49, bristles at Quebec Premier Francois Legault's statement this week that there is no systemic discrimination in Quebec.

"Why is it harder for people of colour to find a decent apartment, or housing or places to live?" she asked.

"Why is it that when racialized people move into certain neighbourhoods, certain people start moving out of that neighbourhood? Those are the questions that those individuals who say there's no systemic discrimination in Quebec need to ask."

Lauren Jiles

"As a black and an Indigenous woman, I don't have the privilege to think of the police force as a helpful resource," says the burlesque performer known by her stage name Lou Lou la Duchesse de Riere.

"I've been pulled over with an ex, and then I was accused of being a prostitute once my band card was taken as an ID. I was 17 years old. I've been detained at the border and accused of smuggling cigarettes when I was 18, and I've been directly assaulted by police when I was 30."

She said she regularly has her accomplishments diminished and accredited to some form of affirmative action. "I was accepted to McGill's law faculty when I was 19, straight out of (junior college) without a bachelor's degree. It's really hard. I was told by a lawyer, a potential colleague and employer, that the only reason was because it looked good for the university."

Jiles, 32, says that while working in clubs, she has been exoticized and targeted as an Indigenous woman and has repeatedly watched as black people are not let in, are kicked out or are given poor service.

"Racism is more in your face in the U.S., and I feel like here (in Canada) it's insidious and it intrinsically hides into our policies, into our legal system, into all of our infrastructures," she said.

"We have just as much work to do in our own backyard, and this lie, this narrative that things are so much better here, it's a form of racism. It's a form of blindness."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 5, 2020.

Note to readers: This is a corrected story. A previous version referred to a bank card being taken as ID from Lauren Jiles.

See the rest here:

Black Canadians say racism here is just as harmful as in the United States - The Record (New Westminster)

TheGlobal Cooking Whisks Market Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis along with Major Segments and Forecast, 2020-2026. The Cooking Whisks Market report is a valuable source of insightful data for business strategists. It offers the industry overview with growth analysis and historical & futuristic cost, revenue, demand, and supply data (as applicable). The report explores the current outlook in global and key regions from the perspective of players, countries, product types, and end industries. This Cooking Whisks Market study provides comprehensive data that enhances the understanding, scope, and application of this report.

Top Companies in the Global Cooking Whisks Market:Best Manufacturers, Chefaith, OXO, Utopia, Kuchenprofi, Ouddy, Kuhn Rikon, Cuisipro, Barmix, WMF, Norpro, Winco, and Other.

To Remain In front of Your Competitors, Request For Sample Report Here (Use Corporate email ID to Get Higher Priority): (20% OFF)https://www.marketinsightsreports.com/reports/05262044818/global-cooking-whisks-market-growth-2020-2025/inquiry?Mode=19

This report forecasts volume and revenue growth at global, regional, and country levels and provides an analysis of industry trends in each of the sub-segments from 2015 to 2026. For the purpose of this study, Market Insights Reports has segmented the global Cooking Whisks market report on the basis of Product-type, Application, and Region:

Based ontype, the global Cooking Whisks market is segmented into:

Traditional Stainless Steel

Silicone Coated

Others

Based onapplication, the global Cooking Whisks market is segmented into:

Online Sales

Offline Sales

Regional Segments Analyzed Include: Europe Market (Germany, UK, France, Russia, Italy) North America Market (United States, Canada, Mexico) Asia Pacific Market (China, Japan, Korea, India, Southeast Asia) Center East and Africa Market (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa) South America Market (Brazil, Argentina, Colombia).

Influence of the Cooking Whisks Market report:Comprehensive assessment of all opportunities and risk in the Cooking Whisks Market.Cooking Whisks Market recent innovations and major events.Detailed study of business strategies for growth of the Cooking Whisks Market market-leading players.Conclusive study about the growth plot of Cooking Whisks Market for forthcoming years.In-depth understanding of Cooking Whisks Market market-particular drivers, constraints and major micro markets.Favorable impression inside vital technological and market latest trends striking the Cooking Whisks Market

Inquire For Discount at:https://www.marketinsightsreports.com/reports/05262044818/global-cooking-whisks-market-growth-2020-2025/discount?Mode=19

What are the market factors that are explained in the report?

-Key Strategic Developments:The study also includes the key strategic developments of the market, comprising R&D, new product launch, M&A, agreements, collaborations, partnerships, joint ventures, and regional growth of the leading competitors operating in the market on a global and regional scale.

-Key Market Features:The report evaluated key market features, including revenue, price, capacity, capacity utilization rate, gross, production, production rate, consumption, import/export, supply/demand, cost, market share, CAGR, and gross margin. In addition, the study offers a comprehensive study of the key market dynamics and their latest trends, along with pertinent market segments and sub-segments.

-Analytical Tools:The Global Cooking Whisks Market report includes the accurately studied and assessed data of the key industry players and their scope in the market by means of a number of analytical tools. The analytical tools such as Porters five forces analysis, feasibility study, and investment return analysis have been used to analyzed the growth of the key players operating in the market.

The research includes historic data from 2015 to 2020 and forecasts until 2026 which makes the reports an invaluable resource for industry executives, marketing, sales and product managers, consultants, analysts, and other people looking for key industry data in readily accessible documents with clearly presented tables and graphs.

Contact Us:Irfan Tamboli (Head of Sales) Market Insights ReportsPhone: + 1704 266 3234 | +91-750-707-8687[emailprotected]|[emailprotected]

Note: All the reports that we list have been tracking the impact of COVID-19 the market. Both upstream and downstream of the entire supplychain has been accounted for while doing this. Also, where possible, we will provide an additional COVID-19 update supplement/report to the report in Q3, please check for with the sales team.

Go here to read the rest:

Cooking Whisks Market Size, Share, Growth Survey 2020 to 2025 and Industry Analysis Report - Cole of Duty

Martha Jones is one of the most relatable Doctor Who companions. Like many fans, she fell in love with The Doctor, had sibling relationships, sass, sarcasm, and aspirations. She graced the screen after the beloved Rose, but never considered herself as second best.

RELATED:10 Doctors And Companions Sorted Into Hogwarts Houses

But as a companion, some things aren't quite right: from audience opinions, plot lines, and character flaws that weren't fitting to her character. Here are 10 things about Martha that just didn't make sense.

After everything she had gone through with The Tenth Doctor during the two-part episode "Human Nature," and "The Family Of Blood," Martha should have known better. The Doctor didn't want his real self known to him. In the season 3 episode "Utopia," Martha knew that a Chameleon Arch was used to rewrite the biology of a Time Lord, yet she brought it to The Master's attention.

For fans of The Tenth Doctor, some of his behavior was difficult to watch. His relationship with Martha just didn't make any sense. Yes, the writers wanted him to go through a grieving period, and yes, he couldn't just leap into another companionship. But he strung her along, and at points, she let him.

RELATED:Doctor Who: 10 Reasons The Doctor & Martha Weren't Real Friends

But why make him sabotage his friendship with Martha? Martha became a gateway companion that was halfway between love interest and friendship, essentially becoming the transition from Rose to Donna.

When Martha is approached by The Doctor after the events of "Smith and Jones," she is wearing a red jacket and faded denim jeans for her brother's birthday celebration. The Doctor promises he can bring her back to that same night, and the two go off for "one" adventure in time and space. One becomes several, and Martha is still wearing the same clothes. It might be one night for the rest of the universe but Martha has been to the past, the future, and faced Daleks in Manhattan. We Don't see her change clothes until "The Lazarus Experiment," when she arrives back home. One theory is The Doctor didn't want her to get used to being in The TARDIS as she was meant to leave after one trip.

In the episode, "Smith and Jones," The Doctor kissed Martha without a clear explanation and mostly ignored her genius during their travels. Martha was interested in The Doctor, he was dashing and intelligent and nothing intimidated him, not even a smart, forward medical student such as herself. The Doctor often brought up Rose, instead of seeking Martha's opinion and shared in joy with Captain Jack over her safety on a parallel world.

RELATED:Doctor Who: 5 Reasons Martha Was A Better Companion Than Clara (& Vice Versa)

But when Rose and The Doctor were reunited in "Journey's End," and Martha saw them together, she expressed happiness. "Oh my God, he found you." She wasn't scorned, The Doctor was her friend and she loved him.

Tom Milligan and Martha Jones officially met during the Toclafane invasion in the three-part Master epic. Tom assisted Martha on the last leg of her journey and sacrificed himself when he thought The Master was going to kill her. But a connection had been formed, and although all memories were wiped of the horrid events, Martha called his practice and found him again. They became engaged between Martha's departure as a companion and her reappearance in season 4. Between that time and the Big Finish Productions audio episode "Dissected" it was revealed Martha broke it off. Yet speculation remains as to why.

Ah yes, the plot hole filler. This isn't the first time an actor has been on the show as two characters. Peter Capaldi appeared asCaecilius and The Twelfth Doctor, Karen Gillan as a soothsayer and companion Amy Pond,Colin Baker as Commander Maxil and The Sixth Doctor, the list goes on. Freema Agyeman appeared as Adeola in the two-part final of season 2 and companion Martha Jones. Some of the similarities have explanations, such as Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor. But Adeola was only referenced in passing and could have had a stronger storyline.

Martha Jones became a companion to The Doctor after Rose. Rose was the first companion in the New Who series and The Doctor's attachment was a mutual fondness. Then when Rose left, the Casanova Doctor who had regenerated full of love, broke, slowly declining and full of reckless abandon. Martha is seen as the rejected companion, only there in an attempt to fill the void left by Rose.

RELATED:Doctor Who: 5 Companions Who Grew A Lot (& 5 Who Didn't)

But Martha saved The Doctor's life on multiple occasions and knew when it was her time to leave. She stopped clinging to him not because she stopped loving him, but because she knew it was unhealthy.

So, now Martha is conveniently single after her engagement with Thomas Milligan, just in time for the big goodbye sequence in "The End Of Time: Part 2." The Tenth Doctor is making his way through time and space to say farewell to all his companions and receive his final reward. During this time, Martha and Mickey are shown fighting against Sontarons, revealing they are married, and The Doctor saves them from being killed by Sontaran Jask. Did Martha and Mickey start a relationship immediately after the events of "Journey's End," when they left the TARDIS with Captain Jack? And was it more closure for his character than hers?

Martha was needed to create a connection with the Hath. But she spent most of the episode separate from The Doctor and Donna. Why was she brought back only to be put on the back burner? She hardly had any interaction with The Doctor to show her character growth, and her involvement in "The Sontaran Stratagem" and "The Poison Sky" was mainly as a clone. Everyone loves a companion crossover, and Martha did show she was able to save herself and everyone else without The Doctor, yet again. But was it needed?

Martha will forever be seen in the eyes of many fans as the companion who pined after The Doctor. But that wasn't her legacy, it wasn't what she stood for. Martha was aware. She pushed The Doctor when he was apathetic and left when the time was right. She was strong and sassy. She told him that the title of a Doctor was something that had to be earned. Martha was cool, calm, and collected, with a level head in dangerous situations, but always empathetic. Despite all of these things, Martha isn't appreciated.

NEXT:Doctor Who: 10 Things That Make No Sense About Amy Pond

Next Friends: Chandler's 15 Most Hilarious Pick-Up Lines That Are So Bad They're Good

Zarreen Moghbelpour is a cinephile, writer, reading enthusiast, and performer based in Australia.

The rest is here:

Doctor Who: 10 Things That Make No Sense About Martha Jones - Screen Rant

Rutger Bregman begins his new book Humankind: A Hopeful History with what he calls this "radical idea" that most people deep down are pretty decent.

Bregman is a historian and writer for The Correspondent in the Netherlands and author of the previous bestseller Utopia for Realists.

"If we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces," Bregman tells NPR.

On whether this is a good or bad time to make his argument

You know, I think it's actually exactly the right time. We often assume that during times of crises, the veneer that we call civilization cracks and that people reveal their true selves. And that we really become quite horrible versions of ourselves. But in the first chapters of the book, I go over all the evidence of sociology that we have and it's quite a lot. It's actually more than 700 case studies that show that, especially in times of crisis, we show our best selves. And we get this explosion of altruism and cooperation. This happens again and again after natural disasters, after earthquakes and after floodings. And I think that, if you zoom out a little bit during this pandemic, you see the same phenomenon.

On thinking this way amid all of the discouraging news

It's one of the ironies of writing a book about the power of human kindness is that you have to go on for hundreds of pages about all the dark chapters in our history. Right? Because on the one hand, biologists say we are one of the friendliest species in the animal kingdom. And they literally talk about survival of the friendliest, which means that for millennia it was actually the friendliest among us who had the most kids and so had the biggest chance of passing on their genes to the next generation.

But then, on the other hand, we're also the cruelest species, right? We do things that other animals just don't when you think about wars or ethnic cleansing or, you know, racism, discrimination, you name it. It's true. Both of these things are true at the same time.

On media raising misperception of risk, anxiety, contempt and hostility

Well, the news is mostly about things that go wrong, right? It's about sensationalist incidents that happened today, instead of things that happen every day. So if you watch and follow a lot of the news, at the end of the day, you know exactly how the world is not working. And you'll have a quite bleak view of human history and human nature. And this is what you can see with people who, basically, just follow too much of the news. You know, they've become cynical and depressed and feel anxious. So, yeah, there's a real mental health hazard here. ...

Maybe we have to make a distinction here between the news and journalism. So I think that good journalism helps you to zoom out, to focus on the structural forces that govern our lives. And I think that good journalism is also not only about the problems, but also about the solutions, and the people who are working on these solutions. So I'm not saying that journalism should all be happy ... But it can give us hope, because there are a lot of reasons for hope in this world today as well.

On rules to live by

I think it's rational to assume the best in other people because most people are pretty decent. And it's, as I said, it's actually the reason why we have conquered the globe. You know, human beings are just incredibly good compared to other species at cooperating on a skill that other species just can't. Do you really want to live your whole life distrusting other people? That price is way too high to pay. I think it's more rational to say, OK, this is just going to happen a couple of times in my life that I'll be the victim of some confidence game. And if you've never been conned, then maybe you should ask yourself the question: Is my basic attitude to life trusting enough?

I'm just saying that we have to remember here that cynicism is, in the first place, it's a synonym for laziness. It sort of gives you an excuse to do nothing. And in the second place, it's often used as a legitimization of hierarchy, because if we cannot trust each other, then we need them we need the CEOs and the monarchs and the generals and the kings and you name it. But if we can actually trust each other, if we do have the courage to move to a more realistic, hopeful view of human nature, then we can move to a very different kind of society as well and build very different kinds of schools and democracies and workplaces. So people may think, oh, this is this guy has written this nice book about the power of kindness, but it's actually quite revolutionary in a subversive idea to go in that direction.

Read the original:

In 'Humankind,' Rutger Bregman Aims To Convince That Most People Are Good - NPR

This column originally appeared in the Washington Times.

Courtesy of our educational infrastructure having been transformed into leftist indoctrination centers, the result is politicians who care only about ideology where citizens are collateral damage in their march toward a leftist utopia.

Our media is populated with news-actors who are similarly bound to their teachers idols of social justice, political correctness and identity politics. All of our institutions are suffering from the twin masters of identity politics and woke philosophy.

In New York City during the riots, two individuals were arrested for attempting to bomb a marked New York Police Department cruiser with a Molotov cocktail. Upon arrest, police found additional material in the car to make more Molotov cocktails, and the booking complaint alleges they intended to hand out the bombs to other rioters.

BEN SHAPIRO: GEORGE FLOYD'S DEATH, RIOTS AND THE LIBERAL MEDIA'S NONSENSICAL, DANGEROUS GAME

The kicker? Both of the suspects are lawyers.

One, Colinford Mattis, a 32-year-old man had been working with a corporate law firm in New York City, and is a graduate of Princeton University. The other, Urooj Rahman, a 31-year old woman, is a graduate of Fordham Law School and was admitted to the bar in 2019.

On her Facebook page, she fashions herself a human rights lawyer. His background as an anti-poverty intern for a mayor of San Francisco was listed on LinkedIn, as well as being president of the Princeton Black Student Union.

With such promising backgrounds and illustrious educations, we must ask, what went wrong?

Education went wrong, which is a dangerous realization, considering its importance not just as a conveyer of information, but as an important and formidable influence on character and values. With the breakdown of the American family, for many, the leftist indoctrination at the academy is the only instruction on life and principles to which theyve been exposed.

On Twitter, the Federalists Molly Hemingway noted, Battle lines are more clearly being drawn these days, between those who clearly believe America is irredeemably evil and must be violently overthrown and those who believe America remains greatest country on earth, based on rule of law, individual liberty, inalienable rights. Decades of public education have given former group a *huge* advantage, reinforced by media that awards itself prizes to indoctrinate message. Seriousness of that side now being impossible to ignore, however, finally forces rule of law side to realize fight must be engaged.

Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman

As leftists consumed public education, they accepted open-minded young people into their realm and are now vomiting them back up as heartless anarchists. The issue is not just at Ivy League institutions, it is a systemwide problem.

Case in point is brought to us by the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB). In the midst of violent rioting in dozens of cities across the United States, and on the same night rioters set fire to Washington, D.C.s historic St. Johns Episcopal Church, Sarah Parcak, a faculty member of UAB went to Twitter encouraging people to topple a local monument she deemed a racist insult.

Ms. Parcak began coaching rioters about how to tear down monuments as networks covered the unrest in Washington on Sunday night. PSA for ANYONE who might be interested in how to pull down an obelisk* safely from an Egyptologist who never ever in a million years thought this advice might come in handy, Ms. Parcak tweeted. She went on to fire off more than a dozen tweets demonstrating how protesters could topple obelisks , The Washington Times reported.

As leftists consumed public education, they accepted open-minded young people into their realm and are now vomiting them back up as heartless anarchists.

On Parcaks bizarre tweet frenzy encouraging mayhem, Mark Bauerlein, the editor of First Things Magazine, a journal on religion and public life, said, The crucial point in this maniacal tweet is that this professor has been honored by TED, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim, and asked, Many advocates of disorder now occupy elite institutions that have in the past been the guarantors of order. Who let them in?

CLICK HERE FOR THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Kyle Shideler, the director/senior analyst for homeland security andcounterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy, has the most direct answer: They took over the academy and all credentialing. The middle and lower-middle-class families in this country paid millions to let the Weather Underground raise their kids in hopes they would climb the social ladder, as he responded on social media.

A Fox News producer inquired with UAB if it had any comment about a faculty member encouraging the destruction of property and mayhem on a night when the nation was aflame in violence.

UAB responded, These are not the opinions of the university. Our 45,000+ students, faculty and staff often use social media to express thoughts that do not necessarily reflect the voice of the university. If a public comment by a member of the campus community needs to be addressed by Student Affairs or Human Resources, it would be. However, personnel and student conduct matters are addressed privately between the individual and the institution.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Whoever Mattis and Rahmans professors were, they werent out fixing up Molotov cocktails Sunday night, but for some reason their young charges allegedly were.

And Parcak was no doubt comfortable in a chair during the 10 p.m. hour on a Sunday as she was tweet-inciting others to put themselves and their futures at great risk. Why put yourself on the line when others who look up to you are too naive to know youre stuffing them into a cannon?

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM TAMMY BRUCE

Originally posted here:

Tammy Bruce: Education gone wrong riots reveal this about nation's colleges, professors - Fox News

This past week, Lori Lightfoot released her guidelines for safely opening Chicagos restaurants as new COVID-19 infections begin to wane. The asks are onerous: plexiglass between tables, temperature checks upon entry, customers only being able to remove their masks once their food is served, and eliminating waiting areas and bar seating. By turning dining out into a grueling ordeal, the mayors new ruleslike the CDCs new recommendations for office spaces, some impractical, if not near impossible to implement, argues The New York Timeswill likely collapse the industry theyre meant to salvage.

Should it open its doors in the fall, the University must not make the same mistake with its own public spaces and sense of physical community.

As weve learned through our quarter learning (and in my case, also teaching) on Zoom, our universitys life is about so much more than classroom instruction. In fact, it is perhaps primarily about chance encounters: with an old acquaintance in a study lounge or at a house party, with an unexpected book on some shelf in the Reg or Powells, with a beloved professor in a hallway or on 57th Street on a Saturday afternoon. This shouldnt be surprising: True education is relational, as all the critics of the banking model from Paulo Freire to bell hooks have long told us, and it is such non-transactional relationships that certain shared public spaces make possible.

This is why, all fiscal cynicism aside, the best American universities mandate that their students reside at least initially on campus: the campuss ambulatory lifestyleone of the last truly pedestrian spaces in American lifeis what permits certain pedagogical relational qualities to flourish. Our most important spaces as a scholarly community are thus the Reg, the main quad, the coffee shops that dot campus and, expanding our scope, Hyde Parks many conversational hauntsJimmys, our bookstores, our parks, the Point. Knowing, sharing, and bumping into one another in these spaces is what defines life as a University of Chicago student at any level, and that of most of our professors as well. We need these spaces as fish need water.

This is not waxing poetic or why-cant-we-get-back-to-normal-ism: It is about the Universitys institutional and economic survival. Aside from the overwhelming empirical evidence that in-person instruction, absent niche conditions, universally trumps tele-learning, the ongoing lawsuits throughout the country show that undergraduates are keenly (and rightly) aware that their college educations Zoomification is daylight robbery. Undergraduates do not pay up to $80,000an admittedly absurdly inflated sumto read the canon in their bedrooms: They could do that on their own. What being a student at UChicagoor any great universitygives is the chance to cultivate oneself in an intensely intellectual, and intellectually successful, milieu, and that mainly through friendships. Graduate students like myself can sneer at this as mere networking, but if were honest, wed admit that getting, say, a UChicago doctorate is valuable for the same reasons. As a Divinity School professor once told our entering cohort: After all, if youd just wanted to write a book on your favorite obscure monk, you couldve stayed at home. (We now feel the full weight of this witty aside.)

This means that, if the administration moves forward with fall reopening plans, maintaining students access to shared spaces, and ability to engage one another in those spaces, must remain a priority. It is not realistic, or right, to expect students to socially isolate from one another or to limit essential scholarly resources such as the Regenstein (and other University libraries). Recent library communiques have suggested, for example, that in-person visits to the Reg may be appointment-based and time-limited. This may be a good transitional solutionand is certainly better than nothingbut it cannot become long-term policy. The praxis of browsing the stacks, for example, of returning to collect new sources, and of perusing more volumes than one could possibly pick up curbside to get a sense of some scholarly landscape, is a basic humanistic method. One could say the same of shared lab benches in the natural sciences. Sharing research facilities with ones peers for prolonged periods is just a core feature of what it physically means to be a student and scholar. It isneeded.

To speak of these as needs is to challenge one of the most contested aspects of the political and societal response to COVID-19: our dividing human life into essential and nonessential activities. What boggles the mind here is not so much the categories themselves, but both whats slotted into each and the mistaken belief that we can defer the nonessential forever. Through our duly elected representatives in Chicago, for example, weve decided that our ability to buy liquor is essential, but to use our own parks for exercise and a brief respite from cramped apartments is not. The same goes for our ability to meet family, friends, or lovers: that, too, is apparently nonessential to human life (as some now say). The result is that, even in the worlds most robustly democratic countries, discontent, goaded by extreme agendas, is boiling over.

Since it is clear that our federal (and in many cases state) governments are neglecting their civic responsibility to provide guidance, respected institutions like UChicago must embrace their trendsetting role. This means, first of all, recognizing that something like higher education is indeed essential to societys well-being and should not only exist in fair-weather conditions. It also means recognizing that a shared social and physical life is essential to that educational mission. Our response to the pandemic must thus be guided by that realityas opposed to us radically redefining the character of university life in search of a utopia of perfect safety.

This may come at a high logistical cost, such as universal COVID-19 testing of all returning students, staff, and faculty; large, randomly selected testing thereafter; and a robust contact-tracing program run by the University. It may also require new restrictions like an ongoing ban on international or even domestic travel, even if not on official University business (e.g. for Thanksgiving and winter break). We must also summon newfound levels of self-discipline and responsibility, such as by practicing meticulous personal hygiene.

The UChicago community is capable of these virtues, but only if their upkeep means to permit students and faculty to take part in those relational and, yes, social and physical practices at the core of our pedagogy and scholarship. Otherwise we will have not only betrayed our institutional principles but will find ourselves crafting restrictions that will not only be unlivable, butabsent the most draconian measures repulsive to a free society, such as RHs roaming the dorms to prevent late-night trystsalso ultimately unenforceable. If we are unable to bear this risk (legally or morally), we might as well delay.

Kristf Oltvai is a student in the Divinity School.

Read the original here:

Overabundance of Caution - The Chicago Maroon

Early-stage startups and social entrepreneurs with solutions that can help shape the Lagos of the future have been invited to participate in the first-ever Lagos Uban Innovative Challenge with $10,000 in view. Put together by Utopian conjunction with Future Africa, Business Insider, Skoll Foundation, the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, Lagos Innovates and Rain Tree, the challenge seeks to financially empower startups with ideas that can help solve critical urban issues in Lagos, in areas such as energy, food and water, gov-tech, mobility, infrastructure, and public health and safety.

According to a statement by Emmanuel Adegboye, managing partner of Utopia Lagos, the company is very pleased to be supporting the entrepreneurs putting in the work now to build the future Africa deserves while placing the continent on the path to a new model of urban growth. He further added that shaping Lagoss urban future will require innovative approaches and collaboration between government, citizens, innovators and corporates.

Some of the major challenges that directly limit the growth of the Nigerian tech ecosystem include lack of finance, poor infrastructure, insecurity, lack of trust by security agents among many others. In comparison to the countrys worth, the Nigerian government have not done enough in recent years to support the growth of technology in the country. There are no concrete systems put in place to encourage and empower tech startups with further skill sets that could help them compete favourably on the global stage.

In August 2019, a 9-year -old tech genius, Basil Okpara Jr, was discovered somewhere in Lagos. As of then, he has invested 30 games with his parents laptop. According to Okpara, he learnt to build games at a boot camp and currently builds whenever he is bored. Similarly, 25-year-old Jerry Isaac Mallo in December 2019 manufactured Nigerias first carbon fibre-sports-car plus a ventilator invention in March 2020 to aid the fight of the coronavirus. He called on the federal government for support with access to raw materials and funds to improve on his inventions but that was how far it could get. Nothing more is known about what the government is doing to support these geniuses.

The latest brain drain in Nigeria is happening in its tech industry. Many Nigerian tech developers are beginning to migrate to countries like Canada in search of a better quality of life and incomes because the countrys system is not lucrative enough for them.

As of 2019, machinery including computers cost Nigeria $9 billion of its import, taking the largest import slot by 18.9 percent. The Nigerian government needs to take proactive steps to make the tech space truly conducive for its tech innovators. Infrastructures like constant power supply, affordable internet services and access to raw materials should be among its top priorities. If not considered, the country would keep spending more on the importation of technology while losing its prospective tech geniuses to other countries.

Utopia is the worlds first urban innovation group that centres solely on using innovation to transform emerging cities and their slums. The company aims to support startups with solutions that can help solve critical urban issues in Lagos. Winners in the competition would be given access to a virtual urban accelerator, over $10,000 worth of resources, and access to a support network from the challenge partners.

Read more:

Utopia to fund Nigerian startups with over $10,000 via its Lagos Urban Innovation Challenge - Ventures Africa

Crystal Z Campbell, Notes from Black Wall Street #77 (2016), mixed media, 11 x 8.5 inches (all images courtesy the artist/author)

Dear Tulsa,

Recently, a youthful physicians assistant used a medical-grade version of a hole punch to extract layers of tissue from my right arm. My skin, the largest organ on my body, now features a gaping hole, clumsily held together by two meager stitches. Despite this invasive procedure, my body is expected to make the repairs on its own.

A biopsy reminded me of you, Tulsa. I thought about how we can grow new skin, but the scar remains. Scars are histories written upon our skin.

Steps from my front door is the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. This land was once called Black Wall Street. Imagine over thirty-five bustling blocks of mostly Black homes and businesses being firebombed, in one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States. Imagine being one of hundreds detained, shot, or worse killed blocks from your home or place of business. Imagine a city ordinance forbidding you to rebuild on your own land. Imagine a century of silence, with little to no trace of your relative, neighbor, friend, or partner. Imagine the bounty of fear and rumor.

Despite coming of age in this state and taking mandatory classes on Oklahoma history, I had never heard of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre until I turned 30. By chance, an artist I met in New York City mentioned the massacre in passing. Just shy of a century after-the-fact, the massacre is now a mandatory part of the curriculum in Oklahoma schools, though the massacre was referred to by many Oklahoma state officials as The Tulsa Race Riot as recently as 2018. In archives, some newspaper articles about the riot are literally punched out, missing from record.

Who imagined someone in the future would search for this? Who omitted bits of evidence surrounding the massacre from the archive? What stake did they have in doing so? I search archives for shelved witnesses while fast-forwarding past land grabs, urban renewal, and gentrification. I wonder about Black residents who resisted during the Tulsa Race Massacre a resistance omitted by popular media.

Tulsa, I have a complicated relationship with you, and to you, but there is also love. It is the kind of love like familial love which you didnt quite ask for, nor choose, but that you know will always be the haint of your existence.

In my creative research, I have made several attempts to think through these historical gaps shrouded in silence. In 2013, I was an artist-in-residence in Lake Como, Italy. A week upon arrival, I made the first of many works I still make around the Tulsa Race Massacre. Paradise is an installation that poses questions about the idea of a Black utopia. Who is accountable for such racially motivated destruction, and who might be accountable for reparations, for healing, for the absence of this narrative in public memory? A minimal gesture, the installation featured a large, empty room bathed in blue light. Within closed doors, viewers were immediately immersed in the smell of burning wood. The smell was more of a phantom no visible objects were burned, nor was there any source of fire.

In Notes From Black Wall Street, I have been compiling one-hundred archival images from Greenwood before, during, and after the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. As we reflect on the recent centennial of other instances of racially motivated domestic terrorism, such as the Red Summer, and approach that of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I meditate on these images through the application of tactile layers of paint, like scars, atop archival photographs. I offer these works as prompts to meditate on the future of our complicit fictions, suppressed memories, and united histories.

Walk with me.I am in search of an elevator. A black man. A white woman. Escaped goats.Walk with me.I am in search of traces of a former community thriving in exile because of segregation.Walk with me.I am in search of pennies, melting together by fire.

To be truthful, for most of my youth, I planned to escape this arid, open plain. This was not because I did not find your red dirt beautiful. This was not because I was not enamored by your rose rocks, your sweeping wind, or your thunder. My father, who chose to retire here from the military, later claimed the most racist experiences hes had in his sixty plus years of living have been in Oklahoma. When he returned from war, my parents moved us from a mostly Black township to a sundown town: Norman, Oklahoma. Traces of racial segregation littered my childhood bus rides through the countryside, tainted my impressions of cowboys, and instilled a perpetual anxiety about open land. I grew up here, but this has never been a place of comfort.

Recently, my work rooted in the massacre was pulled from a high-profile exhibition in Oklahoma. Another potential collaboration regarding the massacre was cancelled, with an explanation that Tulsas sensibilities were peculiar. I wondered if support for the organization would be revoked; if my work would create discomfort, if it didnt align with the politics of the institution, if it was a history they didnt want to be affiliated with, if it would prompt a conversation they did not want to have.

I am not particularly concerned about my work being shown. I am concerned about critical narratives of this city, this state, this nation, being omitted from history. I am concerned about the culture of silence and censorship that has forced many to try to heal themselves, even if such wounds are beyond repair.

Narratives are skins.

Narratives are tools.

Narratives are weapons.

Narratives are scars.

Rooted by your central Council Oak Tree, Tulsa, you are a place that was founded by Creek Indians following forced removal; they named this old town Talasi in 1836. This area of Indian Territory became home to both forced Indigenous migrants and actual outsiders (yes, the namesake film was shot here), attracting outlaws and freed slaves who migrated here in search of land of their own.

Amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, I have been investigating my own rootedness. Ancestry.com searches suggest that my fathers family was rooted in Indian Territory (prior to Oklahoma statehood in 1907), and were Creek Freedmen descendants. I am left to imagine if they had any connection to Black Wall Street, or where they would have landed, were it not for waves of racial intimidation. I am here now, by choice, because I want to unearth these narratives.

Oklahomas history is riddled with pioneers on Indigenous land, land grabs, oil extraction, boomtowns, unchecked privilege, and waves of settler colonialism. I never imagined as a child that some parcels of Oklahoma would be someones version of utopia. However, I find comfort in picturing the over fifty Black townships that Oklahoma boasted after the Civil War.

I have always found this state beautiful and ugly too. I ask, in 2020: How can we be truthful? How can we revisit history in a reparative way? How can we move closer to the impossibility of this utopian vision?

Dear Tulsa, you are famous now, as much as youve ever been. Will oil be slick enough to preserve our futures? Ask Larry Clark if his pictures of hard-lived Tulsa still hold true. Ask viewers of HBOs Watchmen how a graphic novel adaptation can instantly amplify otherwise hushed, historical transmissions? Ask the Supreme Court if the reclamation of Indigenous land should proceed. Ask if art can reframe one of our states greatest public secrets. And while all of this is happening: Where do you want us to look?

Lets begin by scanning holes, historical omissions, and instances of deliberate extraction. Following the current mayors suggestion, lets reckon with history and acknowledge that the Tulsa Race Massacre was a crime. If the past is a lesson, a crime cannot be placated by gifting survivors with medallions in lieu of reparations. Justice extends beyond a pending excavation of mass graves. Justice requires that the identification of victims be paralleled by the identification of perpetrators. Justice is a prerequisite to healing.

Dear Tulsa, today marks the ninety-ninth anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. Will justice take another hundred years?

The Tulsa Race Massacre, formerly known as the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, took place from May 31 to June 1, 1921 in the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Read this article:

99 Years After the Tulsa Race Massacre, an Artist Reflects - Hyperallergic

To make them lightweight, production designer Sabu Cyril got them made in carbon fibre instead of steel. So what happens to such mega productions?

Promotion

From the days of silent, black-and-white films, there has been tremendous progress in every aspect of filmmaking. Even the numbers have grown exponentially. Tens of thousands of feature films, documentaries, TV serials, and commercials are made every year, making it an industry worth billions of dollars.

But the one thing that hasnt changed is the waste generation and the silent damage to the environment! It is in the use of plastics on props and sets, and smoke from action-packed scenes, increasing carbon footprints by the globetrotting crew.

Sadly, including the viewer, no one notices or talks about this.

Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life, said Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar, known for films like Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, High heels etc.

He aptly described the role of cinema in our lives. Producers of this profit-making industry will go to any length to ensure that the celluloid world transports us into a Utopia.

For any historical film, huge sets are maintained in a pristine condition until the shoot is complete. Artificial and aesthetic weapons are made. It is reported that for the epic fight scenes in the film Baahubali, nearly 10,000 weapons consisting of swords, helmets, and armour, were created. To make them lightweight, production designer Sabu Cyril got them made in carbon fibre instead of steel, which is recyclable, whereas carbon fibre isnt.

What happens to the temporary sets or other paraphernalia once the shooting is complete?

With minute detail, we had constructed the replica of a Boeing 747 plane which was hijacked in 1986, for the film Neerja, says Aparna Sud, the production designer. Since the film was released in 2016, the aeroplane has been lying in a heap in Nitin Desais famous ND film studio near Mumbai.

Sud has won several awards, including the Filmfare, Zee Cine Award, and an International Indian Film Academy Award for this films production design. Although she loves her job, she regrets the waste generated by her work.

At the end of the shoot, we just pay Rs 3,500 per truck of waste, and our responsibility ends! Some items like iron and wood may be retrieved by the kabadiwalas, but the rest of that waste goes to landfills, accepts the set designer.

Like other production designers, she too retrieves many items from her sets and stores them to be used in other shoots later.

Another award-winning production designer, Sukant Panigrahy, says, Many times, I tried to initiate a dialogue with the officers at the Film City (Dadasaheb Phalke Chitranagari) in Mumbai about starting a waste management centre on the premises. But the talks never concluded. Even when I was working with Yash Raj Films, I tried; the problem was accepted, but it was never given serious thought.

Art director and designer of films like Chak De! India, Dev D, Tashan, Ek Tha Tiger, Panigrahy has started waste recycling in his capacity. More than a design director, he wishes to be known as an installation artist and collects reusable items like pipes, nuts, bolts, and flex sheets from his film sets. Some of these were displayed at the 2013 Kala Ghoda Art Festival in Mumbai.

Set materials like Flex sheets arent recyclable and damage the environment extensively. They are painted, used as backdrops on film sets and name boards for shops or advertising hoardings. They are made of PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) and dont decompose.

Other items used in large quantities are plastic cups, plates, small mineral water bottles, hand tissues used in makeup and supari packet wrappers.

Besides these materials, carbon footprints are added when the crew goes on location hunting or visit the location to shoot. Large generators are used, and the damage is greater in an action film due to the use of smoke, which harms the air quality.

We have to accept that some kind of waste will be generated on the film sets, with damage to the environment, but the new trend is to minimise the damage as much as possible. A lot of things depend on the story; for example, if the story is based abroad, then one has to fly. But that part is minimised if it is based in India, explains Ravi Popat. Hes the award-winning art director of the Gujarati film, Hellaro.

Luckily for Popat, Hellaros story was Kutch-based. So, he used local material to build 15 Bhungas (traditional houses of Kutch, Gujarat) and labourers, with minimal waste.

Another new trend is to rent equipment from local outlets even when shooting abroad, except cameras. Even the support crew and actors are hired locally. This not only cuts costs but also reduces travel miles. The crew, including directors and actors, have also started replacing plastic water bottles with flasks which are refilled from common storage units.

To reduce travel miles and damage to the environment, big guns in the industry with no financial restraints, use VFX (visual effects) and CGI (computer-generated imagery) to get the required effect. For example, 90 per cent of the action and scenic beauty of Baahubali was created on VFX.

There is increasing use of this technique. And if done well, only experts can identify that it is not a real location. We have expertise but fall short on finances. Hollywood films have immense budgets which help their films look better with these new techniques, says Ramesh Meer, the chief creative director and CEO of the FX Factory.

In nearly five decades, he has made hundreds of films, including Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Pardes, Don and television serials and commercials.

Meer agrees that the increasing use of VFX and CGI will reduce the damage to our environment. In fact, in the latest film, War, a majority of the chase scenes between Hrithik Roshan and Tiger Shroff in the Arctic Circle were done on VFX and CGI.

Although many in India are using this technique, others are strapped for finances and depend on real location shooting. And they are the ones who need to be careful.

Meer says that VFX and CGI will be preferred if budgets are increased, which will help decrease the waste and carbon footprints.

Also Read:Heres Why These Mumbai Scriptwriters & Engineers Become Idol-Makers Once a Year!

In Hollywood, special NGOs like the Ecoset and Earth Angles are hired by filmmakers to manage their waste. The Indian film industry needs to wake up. People like Sud, Panigrahy, Popat are willing to work, and all they need is a little help from the film fraternity.

(Edited by Shruti Singhal)

Promotion

Read the original:

What Happened to Baahubalis 10,000 Weapons? Hint: You Wont Like The Answer - The Better India