Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright explore the words that children invent and reimagine, from snotrils and jumpolines, to Farmer Christmas and the hippyhoppymus. What do these linguistic leaps of imagination tell us about how children learn language? With writer Nicola Skinner and linguist Dr Kriszta Szendroi, who explains what's going on in the brain when children reach for the right word.
31 October 2016
The Atlantic: A World Without People (MAR 15, 2012)
For a number of reasons, natural and human, people have recently evacuated or otherwise abandoned a number of places around the world -- large and small, old and new. Gathering images of deserted areas into a single photo essay, one can get a sense of what the world might look like if humans were to vanish from the planet altogether. Collected here are recent scenes from nuclear-exclusion zones, blighted urban neighborhoods, towns where residents left to escape violence, unsold developments built during the real estate boom, ghost towns, and more.
The Week: Why Vladimir Putin swore allegiance to ultra-conservatism
Although ultra-conservatism has always played a major role in Russian society, particularly outside the big cities, it was granted the status of Russia's unofficial ideology in 2012, after mass protests in Moscow against Vladimir Putin's return to the Kremlin for a third term.
In a keynote speech to parliament after the pro-democracy protests had been quelled, Putin declared that social and religious conservatism were the only ways to prevent Russia and the world from slipping into what he called "chaotic darkness." In a separate speech he also accused Western countries of betraying "Christian values" and pursuing polices that "place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan." [...]
This intolerance for anything that smacks of "liberal" Western values has also had serious consequences for Russia's national health, in particular its fight against a growing HIV and AIDS epidemic. Almost one million Russians are registered as having contracted HIV, out of a population of 143 million people, an almost twofold increase from 2010. Officials predict that up to three million Russians will be living with the virus by 2020. [...]
In August, Putin appointed Olga Vasilyeva, a religious scholar with deep ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, as education minister. One of her first acts as minister was to visit the Russian Orthodox Church's powerful head, Patriarch Kirill, to seek his blessing for her appointment. Vasilyeva is not only an Orthodox believer, however: She has also previously praised Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who sent millions to their deaths in the gulags.
Deutsche Welle: Film brings Ukrainian atrocities in wartime Poland to big screen
The region of Volhynia had been within Polish borders before the war. It was first occupied by the Soviets in 1939 and then by the Germans in 1941.
Some 100,000 ethnic Poles were slaughtered in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia from 1943 to 1945 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).The UPA was a guerrilla force seeking Ukrainian independence and which cooperated with local Ukrainians in some of the very brutal killings.
Later reprisals by Poles claimed the lives of 10,000-12,000 Ukrainians, including 3,000-5,000 in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. [...]
In July, for example, the Polish parliament passed resolutions declaring the Wolyn massacres genocide, to which the Ukrainian government responded by accusing Poland of 'politicizing history,' with the deputy speaker of parliament promising 'retaliation.'
Kyiv city council also in July named a street in honor of Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera and in August a Ukrainian MP forwarded a resolution declaring that Poland had committed genocide against Ukrainians in the years 1919-51. [...]
But most reviews of the film have focused on its balance and lack of finger pointing. Poland's largest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, for example, notes that the film does not just focus on events during the war, but places them in a longer-term context. "This reveals the entire chain of evil," including the pre-war Polish state's mistreatment of its Ukrainian citizens. "Poles in this film are not only victims, but also avengers," conducting violent reprisals against Ukrainians. As such, the newspaper notes, the film "does not judge" - nor does it, as many had feared, play into any group's "historical politics." It will not "disrupt fragile Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation, support Polish nationalism or the Russian point of view."
Deutsche Welle: Just how far will the nativist vote get Trump and the AfD?
As the US winds up its most unwound presidential campaign in modern history, Germany is preparing for the 2017 Bundestag battle to unspool. The rise of Donald Trump as a major-party presidential candidate in the US and the likelihood that Alternative for Germany (AfD) will enter parliament show that nativism remains an effective election strategy. Advocating for "the people" but preferring policies that exclude large segments of the population, nativist candidates and parties exploit insecurity to steer the political conversation in directions that had no longer been politely permissible. [...]
Like Trump in the United States, the AfD is letting everything ride on German voters' distrust of foreigners. And, so far, enough of the electorate has been willing to gamble on the party's lack of a track record. In many ways, it is the AfD's very inexperience that appeals to its voters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is three-quarters of the way through her third term, and her Christian Democrats (CDU) have chosen to form coalitions with their primary rivals, the Social Democrats (SPD), for two of those terms, with another round of joint governance looking increasingly possible after the 2017 elections. [...]
About 20 percent of voters display xenophobic tendencies, according to "The Disinhibited Middle: Authoritarian and Extreme Right Disposition in Germany," a study by the Leipzig researchers Oliver Decker and Elmar Brähler released during the summer. The researchers found that 52.6 percent of AfD voters demonstrate prejudice against foreigners. But the population more broadly has xenophobic tendencies. The study found that one-third of Germans believe that migrants come only for social benefits. Another third say the country has too many foreign influences. A quarter want migrants deported in times of low employment. The study found anti-foreigner sentiments in 16.6 percent of SPD supporters, 14.6 percent of CDU voters, 13.7 percent of Free Democrats (FDP), 8.4 percent of Left voters and 7.2 percent of Greens.
Quartz: Ancient Roman mythology shows an obsession with sex robots that’s lasted thousands of years
At a New York University conference on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence earlier this month, Kate Devlin, lecturer in computing at Goldsmiths, University of London, pointed out that interest in sex robots is apparent in the ancient myth of Pygmalion. [...]
“Pygmalion doesn’t like the outside world, he doesn’t like women, he sees them as prostitutes. They disgust him because they wear make-up and behave inappropriately,” she says. “For Pygmalion in Ovid’s story, having a sexbot of his own is great because he doesn’t have to interact with real women, he doesn’t have to engage with the world. He’s no longer living a life of celibacy, which is something David Levy picks up on in his work Love and Sex with Robots, arguing that sexbots in the 21st century will be an answer to loneliness.” [...]
Pygmalion is far from the only tale that draws on sex robot themes. The story was inspired by the Greek myth of Pandora, in which a woman is molded from the earth by the gods. “She’s inherently artificial. She’s a technological creation,” says Liveley. “She’s programmed by the gods to behave in certain ways that are all about being seductive and erotic.” The earliest surviving writing on Pandora dates from 8th century BCE, though Liveley says it likely has much older roots. The tale is also the Greek version of the tale of Adam and Eve, a connection that highlights how the first woman of the Abrahamic religions was molded to serve the needs of the man.
Deutsche Welle: 'Turks in Germany still lack a sense of belonging'
I think the cause lies in that in the beginning people weren't viewed as having needs, but only viewed as labor. Therefore, measures weren't undertaken - there was little interest - that those coming here also learnt German. They were here to work: Germany needed extra hands. The so-called guest workers from Turkey were welcomed to that end. It was an oversight that they didn't also learn the language. This denied them contact to society and everyday contact with people. [...]
German politicians always say they've learned from their mistakes. But when I look at the regulations over the last years or decades - I've been here for 36 years - they aren't very heartening for people in Germany. They more resemble sanctions that don't convey a sense of belonging. Nevertheless, there have been German courses at language schools for several years. I think we're moving in the right direction, albeit 50 years too late. [...]
Compared with 20 years ago, the education situation is better. There are more high school graduates, more university students - despite how socially disadvantaged Turks as a group are. The Turks who came here weren't academics. They were workers, often unskilled, who couldn't further support their children academically. This made for a low education level also in the second generation. Now in the third generation, we see more jurists, medical professionals and businesspeople. They are more successful than the previous generation.
The Huffington Post: How a new generation is changing evangelical Christianity
Since the late 1970s, American evangelicalism has been largely identified with right-wing politics. Conservative religious values entered the political sphere through movements such as Moral Majority and Focus on the Family that opposed gay rights, abortion, feminism and other liberal issues.
Evangelical leaders have influenced national elections and public policy. They have been instrumental in pushing the Republican Party toward increasingly conservative social policies. They have generally been the most consistent voting bloc within the Republican Party. [...]
For example, in most surveys and political polls, “evangelical” is limited to white believers, with others who may be similar theologically being classified into other racial/ethnically identified categories such as “Black Protestant,” “Latino Protestant” or “Other nonwhite Protestant.”
Further, as with all religious groups in the U.S., the evangelical movement began struggling to keep its young people in the fold. Recent research shows that among young adults who were identified as evangelicals as teenagers, only 45 percent can still be identified as such. [...]
Further, while the educational successes of evangelicalism, through its many and varied curricula, have served to socialize young people into the “biblically based” moral world, it has also taught them how to read the Bible critically and to pay attention to biblical themes and narrative through-lines that resonate with their own life experiences.
Vox: The pope tried to convince skeptical US Catholics that climate change is real. Here’s why he failed.
There was much hue and cry among climate hawks in 2015 when Pope Francis issued his "Laudato Si," an impassioned, 184-page statement decrying humankind’s ill treatment of the Earth. In particular, it framed global warming as a challenge to the religious conscience. [...]
Now another, more thorough investigation of the pope’s climate influence has been done by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. (It was just released in the journal Climatic Change.) After more than a thousand 20-minute phone interviews with Catholics across the country, both before and after its release, influence of "Laudato Si" has become clearer. [...]
The Annenberg researchers spend a lot of words trying to explain this, but it’s not that complicated: Partisanship is more powerful than religion in the US. Or as the authors put it, "the worldviews, political identities, and group norms that lead conservative Catholics to deny climate change override their deference to religious authority when judging the reality and risks of this phenomenon."
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