Teacher Resource: Re-thinking Fast Fashion Lesson Plan | Youth Radio photo: Adnan Islam/ BY-NC-SA Introduction Fall is here, which means colder weather and, for some teens, a reason to buy new clothes. According to the US General Accounting Office, a sweatshop is defined as a business that “regularly violates wage or child labor laws and safety or health laws.” The incident hit home for Youth Radio reporter and teen fashionista Bianca Brooks, who had recently traveled to Bangladesh and taken a tour of a clothing factory. “Before I’d seen the factory, I was so flattered when my new Bangladeshi friends had complimented my casually elegant name-brand button down,” Brooks said. Do Now How should teens balance affordability, style and ethics when it comes to buying clothing? To respond to the Do Now, you can tweet your response. Resource Youth Radio audio segment Rethinking Fast Fashion After Bangladesh More Resources Youth Radio podcast Consumer Appropriation It’s not uncommon to see t-shirts and mugs with iconic figures on them, like Che Guevera or Malcolm X.
Whiteness Project Nerd culture is destroying Silicon Valley - Quartz My first girlfriend was someone I met through a MUD, and I had to fly 7,000 miles to see her in person. I read a paper version of the Jargon File at 15 and it became my bible. Just reading its descriptions of the internet I knew it was world-changing, even before the web, and as soon as I could I snuck into the local university computer labs with a borrowed account to experience the wonder of Usenet, FTP, and Gopher. I chose my college because Turing had once taught there, and the designer of the ARM chip would be one of my lecturers. I’m a grown man who still plays Dungeons and Dragons. My point is that if anyone can claim to be a nerd, it’s me. Nobody really understood why I took a poorly-paid job in game programming after college instead of joining a bank, and most people’s eyes would glaze over when I mentioned I worked in computers. Over the last decade, that’s changed. Startups are sexy. And that’s where the problem lies. What would something better look like?
Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today The Centers for Disease Control tells us that in recent years there has been a jump in the percentage of young people diagnosed with Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder, commonly known as ADHD: 7.8 percent in 2003 to 9.5 percent in 2007 and to 11 percent in 2011. The reasons for the rise are multiple, and include changes in diagnostic criteria, medication treatment and more awareness of the condition. In the following post, Angela Hanscom, a pediatric occupational therapist and the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England, suggests yet another reason more children are being diagnosed with ADHD, whether or not they really have it: the amount of time kids are forced to sit while they are in school. State-based Prevalence Data of ADHD Diagnosis (2011-2012): Children CURRENTLY diagnosed with ADHD (Centers for Disease Control) By Angela Hanscom The mother starts crying. More from Answer Sheet:
The Transformation of Justin Bieber From a White Youth to a Black Man | Darron T. Smith, Ph.D. In what took Usher most of his 20-year music career to accomplish, it took Justin Bieber just a short five years to reap similar financial success and actually surpass his mentor. Usher Raymond IV was an R&B phenom who started his career much like Bieber as a young teen and is among America's top selling artists. He saw something special in the young star during their initial meetings. This is something W.E.B. Black men and boys are "onstage" every day. Because blacks have little to no control over their social condition in life, cool pose then is a source of empowerment. People are stereotypically drawn to cool black males because they represent vitality, making them instantly marketable. Even still, whites have a long history of appropriating coolness, not caring to know its pathogenic origins, particularly in music. Bieber's most recent release, Journals, is his commitment to that tradition which features a more grown up and urban sound from his syrupy "Baby" pop tunes days.
Addicting Info – Rich Guys Try To Kick Poor Kids Off Their Own Playing Field, Get A Life Lesson Instead (VIDEO) This is what happened when a group of wealthy, white tech workers in San Francisco attempted to kick a group of local kids off their playing field — they got a life lesson they’ll never forget. The Mission Playing Field, enjoyed for decades as a shared public space, is being privatized by San Francisco Parks & Recreation in collusion with the private City Fields Foundation. Without community approval, the private foundation decided to issue costly permits to use the small traditional pick-up soccer field. So, the inevitable happens and the entitled show up and try to kick the neighborhood kids off of the field at prime time without even showing their “permit.” They don’t want to wait their turn and play with everyone else. One of them is even heard off-camera crying: “Who cares about the community?!” The kids hold their ground and explain that they’ve been playing this field for years and the rules are: you take your turn or you do not get one.
City ends reserved soccer at Mission Playground after Dropbox flap The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has decided to end reserved adult play at Mission Playground — the site of a video-recorded confrontation between tech workers and locals that went viral — after meeting with a group of neighborhood kids on Wednesday, according to department director Phil Ginsburg. Ginsburg said park officials met with a combination of kids and youth soccer advocates and came to the conclusion that, in this instance, the need for unstructured play on weekday evenings outweighed the desire to accommodate adults. “The most compelling suggestions came from the kids who said, ‘This is a safe place we can come and play and we feel like we need more time,’” said Ginsburg. Youth teams will continue to be able to reserve the field after school until 7 p.m. While Dropbox apologized for the incident, the employees in question had gone through the proper channels to reserve the field. The incident has become something of a political soccer ball.
The only guide to Gamergate you will ever need to read Anita Sarkeesian, the feminist writer and media critic who has been attacked in “Gamergate.” (Feminist Frequency/Flickr) Gamergate, the freewheeling catastrophe/social movement/misdirected lynchmob that has, since August, trapped wide swaths of the Internet in its clutches, has still — inexplicably! Late last week, when many of us thought we’d seen its end, the mob drove yet another woman from her home: This one, Brianna Wu, because she dared to tweet some jokes about the ongoing drama. Here at the Intersect, we have ignored Gamergate for as long as humanly possible — in large part because it’s been covered in enormous, impressive depth elsewhere, and in smaller part because we’re exhausted by the senseless, never-ending onslaught of Internet misogyny, which really can’t be explained in a blog post — or, frankly, anywhere else. What is Gamergate? Whatever Gamergate may have started as, it is now an Internet culture war. Why should I care about this? How did it actually start?
Whites riot over pumpkins in NH and Twitter turns it into epic lesson about Ferguson Police were forced to descend on Keene, New Hampshire Saturday night after students and outside agitators turned the city’s 24th annual Pumpkin Festival into “a destination for destructive and raucous behavior.” Those words — spoken by Keene State College President Anne Huot to CNN — only begin to describe the scene, which led to dozens of arrests and hospitalizations. One rioter, Steven French, told the Keene Sentinel that he traveled from Haverhill, Massachusetts to attend the festival because he knew it would be “f*cking wicked.” “It’s just like a rush. You’re revolting from the cops,” he continued. The police viewed the behavior of French and his cohorts less favorably, barricading streets and firing tear gas into crowds in an effort to disperse them. Meanwhile, on Twitter, users marveled at how different the police response to these unruly young adults was to another recent event: Of course, some good could come from this: Watch video of the mayhem via the Keene Sentinel below.