Quickies: Satanists and Religious Freedom, Homeschooling and People of Color, and Female Scientists in Nigeria

Mary February 18, 2015

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One Man’s Quest to Rid Wikipedia of Exactly One Grammatical Mistake – ” ‘I feel sometimes that this motivation feels a little bit fuzzy, or a little bit negative in some ways… Like, one of my favorite Wikipedians of all time is this user called Giraffedata,’ he says. ‘He has, like, 15,000 edits, and he’s done almost nothing except fix the incorrect use of ‘comprised of’ in articles.’ ” I feel this guy.
Did South Carolina Sabotage Its Public Historically Black College? – “South Carolina State’s history has been dogged by ‘separate but equal’ questions. It was founded in 1896, at a time when black folks weren’t allowed to attend other universities in the state. It was also the scene of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, in which three black students were killed by police during a civil rights protest on campus. The school has also played a key part in the economy of surrounding Orangeburg, which is why Robert Ford, a former South Carolina state legislator and an alumnus, has vowed to fight keep it open.”
Can the Satanic Temple Save America? – “America’s new Satanists are less about animal sacrifice and more into ‘Paradise Lost’—and they may be our best hope for saving religious freedoms.”
Shock, Awe And Science – “Imagine you walked outside one morning and there was a 30,000-pound cat sitting in your front yard. Imagine that, on the way to work, you walked past a mushroom the size of a house. Imagine that, in the midst of all the mundane, day-to-day things you take for granted, something utterly new — and utterly unexpected — plopped itself into your reality. Almost every day, something a long those lines is happening in laboratories and observatories around the world. It’s the shock of the new — and it’s one the greatest gifts science has to offers us.”
The Holdouts – Three families who took a pass on the fracking boom—and what it cost them. […] These are the stories of three families who were willing to walk away from thousands of dollars—and battle loved ones, their communities and their government—to make a stand, even when facing insurmountable odds.
Tough As Nails: Women Scientists Rise Up In Nigeria – “Working as a professor isn’t an easy job anywhere. But scientists in many low-income countries, such as Nigeria, cope with problems unheard of elsewhere. Universities commonly lack the funds to support research, while students have no access to computers or the Internet. Despite such slings and arrows, good science does get done in poor countries. And done by women, such as Sa’id. Women make up only about 14 percent of Nigerian academics but account for about a quarter of the science and technology professors — the latter statistic is roughly inline with the percentage in the U.S.”
The Rise of Homeschooling Among Black Families – “African American parents are increasingly taking their kids’ education into their own hands—and in many cases, it’s to protect them from institutional racism and stereotyping.”