It is that magical time of the week….the IST news dump bringing you all the news you cannot possibly use.
In these days of banning and censorship it just keeps getting worse…..
Miss Marple and James Bond aren’t who you thought they were… at least not if you read a recent edition. Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming are on a growing list of authors whose books have quietly been “updated” by the publishing industry with the help of “sensitivity readers.”
Sensitivity readers scour texts — both new and previously published — to find phrases they deem triggering, problematic or incompatible with modern mores.
Their purpose? To protect readers from ideas they might find upsetting or to ensure authors share their so-called “lived experiences” in an authentic fashion. That can mean bringing on a black sensitivity reader, for example, to edit material written by someone of a different race.
Then there is the bans….there is a ripple forming in this….
The Good Book is being treated like a bad book in Utah after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools convinced a suburban district that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children. And the Book of Mormon could be next. The 72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools after a committee reviewed the text in response to a parental complaint, per the AP. The district has removed other titles, including Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and John Green’s Looking for Alaska, following a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes “sensitive material.”
District rep Williams said the district doesn’t differentiate between requests to review books and doesn’t consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire. The reviews are handled by a committee made up of teachers, parents, and administrators in the largely conservative community. The committee published its decision about the Bible in an online database of review requests and didn’t elaborate on its reasoning. The decision comes as conservative parent activists, including state-based chapters of the group Parents United, descend on school boards and statehouses throughout the US, sowing alarm about how sex and violence are talked about in schools. Due to the district’s privacy policy, it’s unknown who made the request for the Bible to be banned from Davis schools or if they’re affiliated with any larger group.
A copy of the complaint obtained by the Salt Lake Tribune through a public records request shows that the parent noted the Bible contains instances of incest, prostitution, and rape. “Utah Parents United left off one of the most sex-ridden books around: the Bible,” the parent’s complaint, dated Dec. 11, said. The review committee determined the Bible didn’t qualify under Utah’s definition of what’s pornographic or indecent, which is why it remains in high schools, Williams said. An unnamed party filed an appeal on Wednesday.
The answer to problem children and it involves guns…..
A Florida mother was fatally shot through a door outside a neighbor’s home after what officials characterized on Monday as a 2 1/2-year feud over children playing, the AP reports. Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods said at a news conference Monday that deputies responding to a trespassing call at an Ocala home on Friday night found Ajike Owens suffering from gunshot wounds. The 35-year-old mother of four was taken to a nearby hospital, where she died. Since January 2021, Woods said, deputies have responded at least a half-dozen times in connection with the feuding between Owens and the woman who eventually shot her. The sheriff’s office hasn’t arrested or identified the shooter, though calls are mounting for an arrest to be made.
Woods said detectives are working with the State Attorney’s Office, and they must investigate possible self-defense claims before they can move forward with any possible criminal charges. The sheriff pointed out that because of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, he can’t legally make an arrest unless he can prove the shooter did not act in self-defense. Before the shooting, Owens’ children had been playing in a field near the shooter’s apartment complex, officials said. At some point, the woman yelled at the children and threw a pair of skates, which hit one of the children, Woods said. When Owens later confronted the woman at her apartment, an argument ensued, and the woman shot Owens through the front door, investigators said.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing Owens’ family, said in a statement that the shooter had been yelling racial slurs at the children before the confrontation with their mother. Owens and her children are Black. The sheriff’s office hasn’t confirmed there were slurs uttered or said whether race was a factor in the shooting, but Crump says the unidentified shooter is a 58-year-old white woman, NBC News reports. Crump says that after the alleged shooter yelled at the kids, one of them accidentally left an iPad behind, and the woman took it. Crump says when the child went to get it back, the woman threw it, hitting him and cracking the screen. Owens went over to her house to talk to her about that when she was fatally shot, Crump says.
Interesting….very interesting.
Environmental stuff….
There is trend to use the biodegradable plastics…..but could that all be hype?
The use of plastic across all facets of human life has grown more and more pervasive in the last few decades, resulting in a surge in global environmental pollution. More than half of the amount of plastic produced from 1950 to 2017 became plastic waste, which harms ecosystems, livelihoods, and food security around the globe. In the United States alone, about 35.7 million tons of plastic were generated in 2018. Exploring potential alternatives to conventional petroleum-based plastics, like bioplastics, is necessary to mitigate pollution and reduce the waste stream.
Bioplastics are usually made from extracted starches, oils, and sugars from renewable sources such as corn and sugarcane—like poly(lactic acids) or PLAs. Others are made from polymers produced by microorganisms, like polyhydroxyalkanoates or PHAs. PLA, one of the most commonly used bioplastics, has similar functionalities to conventional plastic and is considered to be recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable. “Biodegradable” means that it can be degraded naturally by microorganisms, while “compostable” means it is biodegradable in industrial composting operations. However, new research shows that PLA might not be as environmentally friendly as initially thought.
Those are my offerings for this Saturday….enjoy.
Have a great day
I Read, I Write, You Know
“lego ergo scribo”