Authors: The Conversation
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter with Fidel Castro in 2011. Picture taken March 30 2011. Cubadebate/ReutersThirty-eight years ago, Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro agreed to open downgraded embassies called Interest Sections in Havana and Washington DC. Carter’s intent was to normalize relations between the two countries...
Authors: The Conversation
A drummer performs at the Beijing International Jazz Festival.ReutersEarlier this summer, the famed New York City jazz club Blue Note announced that it would be opening a venue in the basement of the old American Embassy in Beijing.
In addition to the Beijing club, Blue Note expects to push ahead with new operations in...
Authors: The Conversation
Break the taboo.SuSanA Secretariat/Flickr, CC BYDonald Trump did the girls and women living in developing world a great favor this week. He got menstruation – the taboo of all taboo words in polite society – onto the front page of the Sunday New York Times. That doesn’t happen every day. In fact,...
Read more: Menstruation is a global health problem – and we need to talk about it
Authors: The Conversation
Look to the Pacific for reasons behind the hiatus.diversey/flickr, CC BY-SAThere are many ongoing signs that the planet is heating up, even “on fire.”
In the western region of North America, the prolonged drought has led to high temperatures and many wildfires, from Canada and the Northwest earlier this summer...
Authors: The Conversation
A change in the scales isn't likely to put a major dent in the growth in US exports to China.Yuan dollar via www.shutterstock.comNews that the People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, changed its formula for calculating the reference rate of the yuan (RMB) prompted the currency to fall to a four-year...
Authors: The Conversation
Ouch.PROKris Fricke/Flickr, CC BY-NC-NDAnimal attacks have been in the news a lot. Late last year, a 22-year-old student in New Jersey was killed by a black bear he had been photographing. This summer, swimmers off the coast of North Carolina have suffered a record number of shark attacks, several of which resulted in...
Authors: The Conversation
Better policies could do a lot to help children orphaned by Ebola.UNICEF Guinea, CC BY-NCWhile the worst of the Ebola epidemic has passed, its impact is far from over for the orphans left behind. In Sierra Leone alone, a country of just over six million people, the Ebola epidemic has orphaned more than 12,000 children who...
Read more: Better policies are needed to support local adoptions for children orphaned by Ebola
Authors: The Conversation
The biopic Straight Outta Compton tells the story of rise and fall of Los Angeles rap group NWA.Automotive Rhythms/flickr, CC BY-NC-NDLast week, Dr Dre released Compton: The Soundtrack – his first album in 16 years – with cover art that features the iconic Hollywood sign transformed to read C-O-M-P-T-O-N.
The...
Read more: Compton commodified: NWA was always a blend of fiction and reality
Authors: The Conversation
It's all just data – how can it be prejudiced?Trey Guinn, CC BY-NC-ND“This program had absolutely nothing to do with race…but multi-variable equations.”
That’s what Brett Goldstein, a former policeman for the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and current Urban Science Fellow at the University of...
Read more: Big data algorithms can discriminate, and it's not clear what to do about it
Authors: The Conversation
And what are universities doing about it? Wolfram Burner, CC BY-NCThe myth has been shattered. The college campus, it turns out, is not always a sheltered sanctuary of peaceful, rolling green lawns and ivy-covered brick.
The reality of sexual assault at college has been brought home by recent investigations by the Office...