Atlas Obscura: There’s an Art Deco Airport Lying Ruined in Brooklyn

Long before JFK and LaGuardia, there was Floyd Bennett Field, New York City’s first municipal airport. Designed in stunning Art Deco style, it was once the most modern airport in the world, a glittering gateway into America’s principal metropolis. Many of the leading aviators of their day started daring adventures here during the golden age of aviation—pilots like Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Roscoe Turner, the latter of whom flew with a lion cub as his co-pilot. Wiley Post, the man who was the first to fly solo around the world, took off and landed here in front of crowds of 50,000 fans. When Howard Hughes set the world record for flying fastest around the world, it was from Floyd Bennett that he piloted his gleaming Lockheed Super Electra. [...]

The focal point of the roughly 1,400-acre airport was a beautiful terminal, which is still there today. Designed in the Art Deco style with classical Doric columns, it was a suitably grand airport for New York City. In the 1930s air travel was still largely enjoyed only by the wealthy, and well-dressed passengers would arrive at the sweeping drive way in front of the terminal where their luggage was collected by porters and taken underground by twin ramped tunnels which emerged out on the runway. The inside of the terminal was decorated with vast, elaborate murals from the WPA program.

read the article

Salon: Rep. Keith Ellison draws attention to Israeli apartheid in tweet on Palestinian life under occupation

Ellison noted that, while Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in Hebron may have windows in their homes that open to segregated streets, they cannot walk or drive down them. [...]

Veteran Jewish South African anti-apartheid activist Denis Goldberg, who spent two decades in a South African prison for his activism and briefly lived in Israel before moving away in protest, has also called Israel an apartheid state.

“There is no doubt in my mind that Israel is an apartheid state,” he said in 2015. “Having lived through apartheid in South Africa, I cannot allow in my name the same kind of oppression to go on.” [...]

And it is not just Palestinians living under illegal military occupation who endure apartheid, rights advocates say. Israeli human rights organization Adalah has documented more than 50 laws “that directly or indirectly discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life.”

read the article 

Quartz: Economists show that boys who grow up around books earn significantly more money as adults

But the researchers were surprised to find that, among kids who benefited from an extra year of school, those who grew up with more than 10 non-school books (that is, books they weren’t forced to read) at home eventually doubled that lifetime earning advantage, to 21%. Factors like whether the boys’ fathers had white-collar jobs, and whether their homes had running water, did not seem to make a difference. [...]

The researchers based their models on data collected from men between ages 60 and 96 from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden, part of a massive ongoing survey of Europeans. They compared whether the men grew up in rural or urban environments, the years they were in school, roughly how many books they had in their houses at age 10, and their income across their lives. The study was published online in April in The Economic Journal.

read the article 

Politico: Russia’s top enemies: US, Ukraine, Turkey and Poland

Russians believe their main enemies in the world are the U.S., Ukraine and Turkey, and 62 percent have a poor opinion of the EU, according to a Levada Center poll that measures sentiments towards other countries.

Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, India and Armenia are Russia’s five best friends in the world, according to the poll. [...]

The majority of those polled said they would either probably or definitely oppose Russia joining the EU, and 65 percent said they wouldn’t be concerned if the EU fell apart as a result of the refugee crisis. While many believed Russia’s relationship with the EU hadn’t changed recently (47 percent), 28 percent were convinced relations were getting worse.

read the article 

Salon: Religious extremism in the age of Trump: Empowered radicals are pushing harder than ever to legalize discrimination

These people do not appear to have gotten the memo that once marriage equality was affirmed by the Supreme Court the issue was settled. In fact, that ruling sparked a coordinated effort among conservative religious organizations to  roll back gay rights wherever they can. The report says that in 2016 over 100 anti- LGBT equality bills have already been introduced in statehouses around the country. And there is every indication that these activities are picking up speed. [...]

The lesson here is that even as the Trump craziness dominates the conversation and our civic life seems to be morphing into something unrecognizable, more familiar political activity carries on at all levels of society. I recall the feeling of euphoria when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality being tempered by the knowledge that reproductive rights had been under siege for decades despite Roe vs Wade.  We’re already seeing the battle lines expand on LGBT rights from marriage to bathrooms.

read the article