Category Archives: News

Like Germany, Russia is the birthplace of many literary giants: Anton Chekhov, Fyodor Abramov, Leo Tolstoy and, more recently, Boris Akunin and Maria Arbatova.  Last month Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced a list of 100 Russian books “that every Russian school leaver will be required to read.”  In a 4,500-word editorial published by Russia’s Nezavismaya Gazeta newspaper, Putin notes that, “in the 1920’s, some leading universities in the United States advocated something referred to as the Western Canon,” a collection of books that academics considered to be the most influential in shaping Western culture.  Proclaiming that Russia has “always been described as a ‘reading nation,’” Putin proposes taking a survey of the country’s “most influential cultural figures” and compiling their works into a single collection for all future schoolchildren.  It’s an ambitious project and a unique one; given Russia’s history of censorship under the Soviet regime.  It would be nice to see a similar project here in the U.S.  But, I know religious and social politics would probably undermine the endeavor, even before it gets started.

Chekhov

It’s always all about the money.

A University of Texas – Austin student grabs a pair of condom roses handed out by the Texas Freedom Network to promote safe sex education on Guadalupe Street in Austin, Monday afternoon, the 13^th.  She didn’t want to end up miserable and angry like Katherine Eyberg – especially on Valentine’s Day.

Photo courtesy: Shila Farahani | Daily Texan Staff

“I graduated from a public school where sex education consisted of an abstinence speaker that came in one day and told us that if we had sex we would die and we were encouraged to sign purity pledges.  When I came to UT, I found that there was a better way of teaching sexual health concepts that’s more inclusive, more informative.  I felt robbed because of the discrepancy between what I learned in high school and what I learned in college.”

— Katherine Eyberg, a senior at University of Texas – Austin explaining efforts to inform fellow students about contraception just in time for Valentine’s Day

I still think sex should be taken out of the schools and put back in the gutter where it belongs, don’t you?

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, filmmakers Nancy Buirski and Elisabeth Haviland James are releasing their 2010 HBO documentary The Loving Story with new photographs of Mary and Richard Loving, the Virginia couple who challenged the state’s ban on interracial marriages nearly half a century ago.  The Lovings went from a fortuitously named and very private duo to reluctant civil rights heroes.  They wed in June of 1958 and were arrested on the charge of violating the state’s anti-miscegenation statutes a month later.  They pled guilty in January 1959, but their sentences were suspended, as they agreed to leave the state and not return as a couple.  Not content to accept their forced exile, they engaged Bernard Cohen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in November 1963.  When the Virginia Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal in 1966, the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case.  In June 1967, the latter Court declared Virginia’s ban unconstitutional, essentially overturning a law that had stood since 1691.  Richard Loving died in a car accident in 1975, and Mary Loving died of pneumonia in 2008.  Their daughter Peggy provided additional pictures of her parents to Buirski and Haviland James.  In an age when the institution of marriage seems to suffer the flippancies of Newt Gingrich and Kim Kardashian, it’s necessary to remember a couple who fought so hard for the simple human right to love each other.

Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, which stands 2,723 feet and boasts 209 stories, plus 2 parking levels in the basement, in Dubai.  Currently, the Mitsubishi Corporation is designing a high-speed “bullet elevator” to be installed in the structure.  I’ll stay with my 1-story house, thank you!  It’s easier to vacate when the power goes out.