Quickies

Quickies: Villainesses, Baltimore, and Deadly Snails

  • L Is For Learning: A New Book On Proven Approaches And How Teachers Can Use Them – I’m definitely adding this one to my reading list.
  • Studies shine light on mysterious placenta, how it goes awry – “The research team at Children’s National Health System is using a 3-D bioprinter to create a unique living model of how a human placenta forms, to mimic how trophoblasts create that blood supply. The printer deposits layer after layer of human cells and other substances they need to thrive.”
  • The Ordinary Outrage of the Baltimore Police Report – “But the most striking part of the report on Baltimore is the extent to which it is interchangeable with the reports on race and policing that have come out of Chicago, Cleveland, Ferguson, and Newark in the past two years. The reports were most often the product of a particular outrage that had initially been met with official denials or understatements, and then with grudging acknowledgment of wrongdoing, followed by a federal examination of what went wrong.”
  • In Defense of Villainesses – “Why is it that female cartoon villains get to be all of these things, to have all of these things? Why do they get to have hairstyles—no, Hairstyles, with a capital Hair—while their protagonist counterparts are drawn small and soft and childlike? Why does Ursula get to have a beauty mark and the most impeccably waterproof makeup a sea witch could hope for, while Ariel gets the same wide-eyed small-jawed face as every other white Disney princess? Why does Maleficent get a headpiece that defines menacing elegance and dark grandeur, while Aurora gets generic late-fifties bangs?”
  • This Is Why There Are So Many Ties In Swimming – “As it turns out, FINA used to. In 1972, Sweden’s Gunnar Larsson beat American Tim McKee in the 400m individual medley by 0.002 seconds. That finish led the governing body to eliminate timing by a significant digit. But why?”
  • Why snails are one of the world’s deadliest creatures – “Freshwater snails carry a parasitic disease called schistosomiasis, which infects nearly 250 million people, mostly in Asia, Africa and South America.”

Featured Image: Disney

Mary

Mary Brock works as an Immunology scientist by day and takes care of a pink-loving princess child by night. She likes cloudy days, crafting, cooking, and Fall weather in New England.

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