Poet Emily Dickinson, who was more than a little odd herself, noted that madness is what society ascribes to those who do not conform: “Assent, and you are sane ;/Demur, — you’re straightway dangerous,/And handled with a chain.” There are, I would argue, three great novels that better than any others captured this theme for […]
In Wilbury’s “Fascist Mash-Up” of three plays – although really two plays and an epilogue – director Josh Short deserves praise for conceiving a radical experiment well carried out. Interweaving scenes from The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht and from Party Time by Harold Pinter, the result is surprisingly more palatable than […]
Education comes in many different forms and not every student learns best in a classroom setting, according to Steven Heath, executive director of FabNewport, a private non-profit organization that seeks to bring the “maker culture” to youth. “We are born to learn. If you put a 2-year-old on the floor you don’t have to teach […]
In probably the most emphatic repudiation of the status quo by voters since the electoral rout that ended the reign of Democrat Party chairman and Senate majority leader Rocco A. Quattrocchi in 1983, six of the 18 General Assembly incumbents facing 2016 primary challenges, all Democrats, were defeated by insurgent newcomers. This should terrify the […]
Trinity Rep’s production of Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage is a lot more fun than the average high school English class, and there won’t be a quiz afterward. The catchy rock-opera style of the book and lyrics by Jason Craig and music by Dave Malloy is a very modern take on an epic poem […]
I write this a few minutes after receiving a $25 ticket for overtime parking at a meter in Providence. I walked out of Olga’s Cup and Saucer, where I had paid $5.74 for a tea and croissant plus $2 tip after paying $2.50 for the maximum two hours on the parking meter. I was watching […]
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, in a major speech on August 8 outlining his economic plan for the country, made what has been treated as almost an off-hand remark (at 24m48s): “We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades. 58% of the African-American youth are either outside of the labor force or […]
Young people interested in traditional scouting that emphasizes outdoor activities and interaction with nature had few opportunities if they felt excluded by policy from more widely known scouting organizations. The Baden-Powell Service Association (BPSA) seeks to remedy that by opening its membership without discrimination on the basis of religious views, sexual orientation or gender, aiming […]
[See main article: motifri.com/gmofood] Surprisingly, the first and hardest problem of talking about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is defining them. Advanced biotechnology since the 1990s makes possible direct modification of cellular genetic material through genetic engineering, but the results are distinguishable only by their precision from traditional breeding techniques used for millennia with plants and […]
[See sidebar: motifri.com/gmoguide] Food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) made by genetic engineering (GE) has been in the news recently following the May release of results from a major study conducted by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS), a private non-profit corporation funded entirely by the federal government and originally chartered by […]