Culture Watch

"Today’s announcement is the first step in the Attorney General’s phased strategic plan to restore and expand the emphasis on access to justice within the department and throughout the federal government. The plan, which was submitted to the President last month, resulted from a strategic review process launched by the Attorney General in May, which engaged a wide range of stakeholders across all levels of government and beyond nationwide – including civil legal aid and public-defender organizations; pro bono practitioners; bar associations; data scientists; and leaders in environmental justice, economic justice and immigration reform. The review revealed that longstanding justice gaps in our country have been exposed and exacerbated by COVID-19. It identified a clear and immediate need for the restoration of a standalone office within the Justice Department dedicated to the mission of closing those gaps."  more »

It is widely expected that children, ages 5-11, will soon become the latest group to be eligible for COVID-19 vaccination in the United States. The federal government is also partnering with over 100 children’s hospitals across the country to set up vaccination clinics through the end of the year. As such, children could become eligible as soon as November 3 or 4. In anticipation, the White House and CDC have engaged in operational planning with state and local jurisdictions. However, when the doses for children become available and how rapidly the rollout translates into shots getting into kids’ arms nationwide remain to be seen. At least in the near term, there could be some unique challenges to this new vaccination effort as well as a repeat of some of the difficulties faced during previous COVID-19 vaccination phases. more »

"Extinction is also not new on our planet. We estimate that more than 99% of species that ever existed on the planet have gone extinct. So extinction is a natural process on planet earth but what’s different about the dynamics of extinction today are the pace, extinctions are happening much more quickly than they have in the past, and the cause. Extinctions have never before been caused by a single species. So species have always caused each others’ extinction because of species interactions. But the fact that we have a single species, our species, that’s having a global impact on extinction patterns around the world is new. This is something that we think has never happened before on the history of our planet. And so extinction is a natural process, but extinction is being accelerated because of human impacts on the planet." more »

THE ART MANUALS UNWRAPPED PODCAST: Art Manuals Unwrapped is a podcast that currently features 8 episodes recorded during 2020. Hosts Iyabo Oba and Priscilla Wrightson "unpack the ideas and thoughts of different art manual creators and their unique contributions to the Western European art scene," concentrating on the methods artists and art instructors have used to teach people how to draw and paint. WEATHER PUPPY, SCIENCE: www.weatherpuppy.com: Readers who find their typical weather forecasts overly dry and insufficiently cute should check out the Weather Puppy smartphone app, which pairs forecasts from Weather Underground with weather-themed background pictures of puppies and dogs. The weather data presented include current conditions, hourly forecasts, and 10-day forecasts. more »