Nude paintings, obscene sculptures and gods having sex with animals: Pompeii's explicit artefacts which were kept secret by the prudish scholars of 19th-century Europe Erotic paintings and sculptures were part of everyday life in PompeiiBut when the artefacts were rediscovered they were kept out of sightItems were placed in 'Gabinetto Segreto' and hidden until 2000 By Hugo Gye Published: 16:19 GMT, 30 September 2013 | Updated: 17:19 GMT, 30 September 2013 When the treasures of Pompeii were unearthed in the 18th century, you might imagine that archaeologists would have been keen to show off their finds, which revolutionised modern understanding of the Roman world. But one part of the collection was hidden away for nearly 200 years - the erotic art which was a central part of everyday life as it adorned the houses of local citizens. And even now, the sexually explicit material with embarrassed its discoverers is kept in a so-called 'secret cabinet' separate from the rest of the material discovered in Pompeii and neighbouring Herculaneum. Warning: explicit content Beautiful: But extraordinary works of art were condemned as obscene by 19th-century scholars
Charity Program Operated by Students at Risk Photo This is a tale of good deeds gone unrequited. And of city officials unable to nourish the good fortune they find in their midst. I’m getting ahead of myself, however. Let’s walk into Public School 19, a brick fort of a school that sits alongside a hillside road in West Brighton on Staten Island. Jeanne Raleigh, 50, who greets me at the door, vibrates like a tuning fork. Each year, P.S. 19’s children collect piles and piles of pennies, plopping them in buckets. “I wanted to show the kids, ‘Hey, you can make a difference in this world!’ It could all end in the next few weeks. Should Common Cents fail to make its payroll and close, 721 city schools, public and private, will lose one of the nation’s most innovative service programs for elementary school children. Although they deny it now, school officials two years ago cut a sort of deal with Teddy Gross, the founder and executive director of Common Cents. Mr. Common Cents delivered gloriously. And about those pennies? Perhaps Mr.
Mexico Soda Tax Proposed By President Enrique Peña Nieto To Control Obesity The country that tops per capita world consumption of Coca-Cola products is pondering a soda tax. Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto proposed a tax on sugary beverages to rein in obesity as part of a larger reform effort unveiled Sunday. If the proposal were to become law, Mexicans would pay an extra peso -- about 7.6 cents -- per liter, according to McClatchy newspapers. The tax would net the Mexican government $900 million in revenue, the Wall Street Journal reports. The proposal to tax sugary drinks came as part of a broader reform package originally expected to address only tax policy. "The tax reform is a social policy reform," Pena Nieto said in a speech announcing his plan, the Associated Press reports. Mexicans drink more Coca-Cola products per capita than people from any other country in the world, at average of 728 8-ounce drinks per year in 2011, compared to 403 per year for Americans, according to McClatchy.
Loud Voice Fighting Tide of New Trend in Education Photo Diane Ravitch made her name in the 1970s as a historian chronicling the role of public schools in American social mobility. In the 1990s, she went to work in the Bush administration’s Education Department, where she pushed for a rejection of 1960s relativism and a return to basics and standards. After leaving government, she called for the removal of incompetent teachers, for tying school performance to student scores, and for closing failing schools. Now Ms. Ravitch, 75, is in the full flower of yet another stage in her career: folk hero to the left and passionate scourge of pro-business reformers. She pumps out hundreds of barbed words on her blog and thousands of posts on Twitter. Ms. While previously well known in education circles, she gained a much broader audience after she publicly rejected almost everything she had once believed. Robert Pondiscio, a former Bronx schoolteacher who says Ms. Others say that Ms. Her critics call Ms. Ms. Both Mr. Ms.
A Muslim Prosecutor in Britain, Fighting Forced Marriages and Honor Crimes Photo LONDON — NAZIR AFZAL’S enemies are a diverse lot. Some, like him, are Muslim men who were born in Britain but have roots in Pakistan or other South Asian countries and cannot understand how Mr. Afzal would be critical of forced marriages and honor crimes and give “racists another stick to beat us with.” Others are from Britain’s far-right fringe and cannot accept that a Muslim is chief prosecutor for “their” queen and “their” country. They once wrote a letter to Prime Minister David Cameron, demanding that he fire and deport Mr. One of 13 chief crown prosecutors in Britain, he oversees more than 100,000 prosecutions a year and manages 800 lawyers and paralegals in England’s Northwest, the largest region after London. Mr. Before Mr. Mr. Mr. BEING a man, a practicing Muslim and the son of immigrants from the conservative tribal area in northwestern Pakistan might make Mr. “Women have been talking about these issues for a long time,” he said. “I come from these communities. Mr.
Beanie Babies billionaire creator weeps over his tax-evading behavior Photo by Flickr user dominiquegodbou Remember Beanie Babies? The collectible little stuffed toys that caused as much of a retail frenzy in the 90s that Cabbage Patch dolls did in the 80s? H. The 69-year-old admitted he failed to pay around $5 million in taxes due over 11 years, the AP reported. Forbes recently estimated Warner’s net worth at $2.6 billion. Barilla’s homophobia apology is too little, too late Thanks, Barilla – you’ve given even the diminishing population of those of us who still love carbs and tolerate gluten just fine a reason to avoid pasta. Well played, foot shooting-wise. The world’s largest pasta company found itself in hot water this week when chairman Guido Barilla did an interview on the Italian radio show “La Zanzara” Wednesday in which he declared, “I would never do an advert with a homosexual family.… I would not do it but not out of a lack of respect for homosexuals who have the right to do what they want without bothering others… [but] I don’t see things like they do and I think the family that we speak to is a classic family…. if [gay people] like our pasta and our message they will eat it; if they don’t like it and they don’t like what we say they will… eat another.” By Thursday, the brand was facing a mountain of severe criticism. “I’m sorry if my comments on La Zanzara have created misunderstanding or polemic,” Mr.
Study: Everyone hates environmentalists and feminists Why don’t people behave in more environmentally friendly ways? New research presents one uncomfortable answer: They don’t want to be associated with environmentalists. That’s the conclusion of troubling new research from Canada, which similarly finds support for feminist goals is hampered by a dislike of feminists. Participants held strongly negative stereotypes about such activists, and those feelings reduced their willingness “to adopt the behaviors that these activities promoted,” reports a research team led by University of Toronto psychologist Nadia Bashir. Writing in the European Journal of Social Psychology, Bashir and her colleagues describe a series of studies documenting this dynamic. In one, the participants—228 Americans recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk—described both varieties of activists in “overwhelmingly negative” terms. Another study, featuring 17 male and 45 female undergraduates, confirmed the pervasiveness of those stereotypes.
My embarrassing picture went viral I logged onto my Facebook one morning to find a message from a girlfriend. “You’re internet famous!” it read. Funny enough, I wasn’t even angry at first. I don’t generally view my body size as positive or negative — it simply is. None of this played into my decision to dress up as Lara Croft, one of the most kick-ass female video game characters ever. So I laughed it all off at first — but then, I read the comments. “What a waste of space,” read one. We all know the awful humiliation of a person laughing at you. I called my friend Terri Jean, a photographer. The first thing I needed to do was figure out where the picture came from. But Facebook made it easy to find people who had commented on the images. Most of them were women. ”You’re being an asshole,” the note said. The most common response was not remorse or defensiveness but surprise. And of course, they hadn’t really thought of me as a person. I’ve also learned to keep a tighter rein on my privacy settings online.
Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science? Although Americans take for granted that scientists are geeks, in other cultures a gift for math is often seen as demonstrating that a person is intuitive and creative. In 2008, the American Mathematical Society published data from a number of prestigious international competitions in an effort to track standout performers. The American competitors were almost always the children of immigrants, and very rarely female. The study’s findings apply equally in science. Photo That the disparity between men and women’s representation in science and math arises from culture rather than genetics seems beyond dispute. In elementary school, girls and boys perform equally well in math and science. That cultural signals can affect a student’s ability to perform on an exam has long been known. It’s even possible that gifts in science and math aren’t identifiable by scores on tests. The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.
i-would-never-use-homosexual-couples-in-my-adverts-barilla-pasta-brand-faces-boycott-after-bosss-comments-spark-backlash-8841902 Guido Barilla, whose firm has almost half the Italian pasta market and a quarter of that in the US, told Italy’s La Zanzara radio show last night: “I would never do an advert with a homosexual family…if the gays don’t like it they can go an eat another brand. “For us the concept of the sacred family remains one of the fundamental values of the company.” He added: “Everyone has the right to do what they want without disturbing those around them”. But then the pasta magnate upped the ante by attacking gay adoption. Alessandro Zan, a gay rights campaigner and an MP in the left-wing Sel (Sinistra Ecologia Libertà) party, said: “This is another example of Italian homophobia. Campaigners have urged a boycott of all 20 brands owned by the Parma-based company, which include Voiello pasta and Filiz and Misko products. “I’m sorry if my comments on La Zanzara have created misunderstanding or polemic, or if I’ve offended anyone.
A Nudge to Poorer Students to Aim High on Colleges The group that administers the SAT has begun a nationwide outreach program to try to persuade more low-income high school seniors who scored high on standardized tests to apply to select colleges. The group, the College Board, is sending a package of information on top colleges to every senior who has an SAT or Preliminary SAT score in the top 15 percent of test takers and whose family is in the bottom quarter of income distribution. The package, which includes application fee waivers to six colleges of the student’s choice, will be sent to roughly 28,000 seniors. The program is the largest response so far to new research showing that most low-income students with high test scores and grades do not even apply to, let alone attend, select colleges. Forgoing significant financial aid, many students may instead enroll in nearby colleges with low graduation rates. “We spend so much time worrying about the kids who are not qualified — that’s actually a pretty hard problem,” Ms. Mr. Mr.
What is religion in China? A brief history The complex and ever-changing relationship between the Chinese state and the nation’s religions stretches back thousands of years. While the state never struggled with religious leaders for power, it governed an embedded religiosity in the population, one best described as diffused, non-exclusive, and pluralistic. As a companion to The Immanent Frame’s newly launched series of essays on the state of religion in China, this piece embarks on a brief historical survey, outlining the wide variety of beliefs and practices that religion in China encapsulates, and paying particular attention to the events and philosophies that have shaped the policies of the atheist People’s Republic of China. Early history Shamanic religions were among the earliest recorded religious traditions in China, dating back at least to the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC–1050 BC). European encroachment Chaos and upheaval Recent history Printer-Friendly Version [view academic citations] [hide academic citations] AMA citation: Zhu W.
Should Academics Write for Free? • Vitae — A service of The Chronicle of Higher Education In 2006, I published my first article in an academic journal, a lengthy analysis debunking the existence of an Uzbek terrorist organization. I called my mother to tell her the news. “Great,” she said. “Nothing.” She laughed. I had come to academia from journalism, which, at the time, paid people. I explained to my mother that academic publishing was different. Seven years later, journalism has adopted the academic publishing model, only without the pretense of integrity. Today media outlets making healthy profits refuse to pay the freelance writers who help make them a success. Academics are particularly vulnerable to media-industry exploitation. Should academics ever write for free? Should academics write for free for a publisher that can afford to pay them? When you write for free for a profitable mainstream publisher, you deny yourself fair compensation while normalizing exploitation. Unpaid writing leads to more unpaid writing. It is also misleading. Do your research.