Weekly Round Up! Bullying, Buzzkills, and Budgetary Priorities.

 

Our hearts are with the survivors and victims of Sunday’s destructive tornadoes that ripped through Illinois, destroying lives, homes, and livelihoods.  Click here to donate to relief efforts on the ground.

 

Stockton’s youngest City Councilmember Michael Tubbs launches a youtube channel encouraging civic participation to break cycles of poverty and incarceration.  In this video he explains his mission in a minute, this one teaches the viewer how to build a campaign team, and this one helps people apply to college.

 

The Boston Globe catches Wade Davis, in his pink sneakers, between speaking engagements, and runs a spotlight on his life story and his work promoting inclusion in sports.  Davis also weighs in on the Miami Dolphins bullying story that’s come to light.  “What’s really the most annoying thing is that they’re saying he’s not being a man, that he needs to stand up and be a man.  Really?  What the hell does that mean?  Is that the only way that we can define ourselves as a man is that we have to fight?  Meet violence with violence?  Is that what we’ve come to as a people?”

 

To much enthusiasm, the Daily Show launches a new segment: Neil DeGrasse Tyson: Buzzkill of Science (or an agent of Satan, as this flyer attests?).  Watch Dr. Tyson take on the physiological impossibility of zombies, much to Jon Stewart’s disappointment.  Elsewhere in New York, the Wall Street Journal runs a profile of Dr. Tyson’s work at the Hayden Planetarium and its current feature “Dark Universe,” surprisingly enough the first of its shows to be narrated by the revered science communicator.

 

Pitchfork’s latest 5-10-15-20 features Kathleen Hanna, talking about the music of her life, learning to sing from Donny Osmond, starring as Annie in a school production, and why she started going to reggae shows as a teenager.

 

At the Box Turtle Bulletin, Randy Potts contextualizes Russia’s anti-gay legislation within a larger struggle for dominance.  “Putin’s imperial designs on his neighbors suddenly tie in very, very well with federal anti-gay legislation.  To its neighbors, Russia is suddenly a bastion of morality and also the seat of the glorious Winter Olympics, a brave, proud country that can save Ukrainians and other slavic nations from the pedophile values of the West. “

 

Astronomer Derrick Pitts joins a panel on Melissa Harris-Perry.  Harris-Perry, a space race skeptic, asks about budgetary priorities and the privatization of space exploration, as NASA teams with profit-motivated private industry.

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