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firstbook: The lack of diversity in kids’ books is a real problem for many kids in need. To become strong readers, they need to see themselves in books and stories.Today, at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) meeting,  First Book proposed a solution.READ MORE: http://blog.firstbook.org/2013/06/13/lack-of-diversity-in-kids-books-and-how-to-fix-it/

firstbook:

The lack of diversity in kids’ books is a real problem for many kids in need. To become strong readers, they need to see themselves in books and stories.

Today, at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative America (CGI America) meeting,  First Book proposed a solution.

READ MORE: http://blog.firstbook.org/2013/06/13/lack-of-diversity-in-kids-books-and-how-to-fix-it/

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"

I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.

There are not any.

By far your best shot, numbers-wise, at finding one that’s at least even-handedly featuring a man and a woman is Before Midnight (on 891 screens) so I hope you like it. Because it’s pretty much that or a solid, impenetrable wall of movies about dudes.

Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space, dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny, dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes glowering at each other.

Somebody asked me this morning what “the women” are going to do about this. I don’t know. I honestly am at the point where I have no idea what to do about it. Stop going to the movies? Boycott everything?

They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by “we,” I do not just mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah. You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says “win some, lose some” and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every “surprise success” about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.

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At The Movies, The Women Are Gone : Monkey See : NPR

The whole article is fantastic, as is pretty much everything Linda Holmes writes.

(via kdhart)

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lizthefangirl:

the-apple-pie-was-worth-it:

How to properly break the 4th wall

this is my movie

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thesmithian:

…up to 200,000 people angry with high costs and poor public services took to the streets. Protesters in Rio de Janeiro burned cars and looted buildings as police attempted to disperse them with teargas and rubber bullets. Aerial images showed thousands of people attempting to storm the congress building in Brasilia. The rallies…are some of the biggest ever seen in the country…

more.

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slightlyignorant:

Free books at the upcycling furniture charity shop in Gloucester Green, Oxford. I asked one of the men who worked there if they were really free, and how come, and he said that they would be thrown away if people didn’t take them. They ask for a donation if you take more than three at a time. Well worth it. 

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yahighway:

What we’re reading here at YA Highway

All Our Pretty Songs by Sarah McCarry
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
Dark Triumph by Robin LaFevers
Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell
The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour
If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan
In The After by Demitria Lunetta
Unbreakable by Kami Garcia

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"I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of DNA isolated from its natural state sought to be patented is identical to that portion of the DNA in its natural state; and that complementary DNA (cDNA) is a synthetic creation not normally present in nature."
— A big-deal case passed the Supreme Court this morning, with the court finding that genes can’t be patented. But the fun part of this decision is Justice Antonin Scalia’s reasoning for joining with the majority, which disregards a part of the opinion which notes that “Genes form the basis for hereditary traits in living organisms.” Apparently Scalia slept through biology class in high school, because that’s all way over his head. (via shortformblog)
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"It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and, also, scraps of letters which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald (I believe that is how he spells his name) seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home."
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—Zelda Fitzgerald, in a review of her husband’s book in 1922 (via trishahaddad)

Reminder that F. Scott Fitzgerald stole his wife’s writing, many times, while suppressing her works. See “Save Me the Waltz”, which he forced her to revise so that he could use parts of it in his own book “Tender Is the Night”. And which author do we study in school?

(via rubyvroom)

I didn’t know this.

(via alienswithankhs)