Resources for August 29, 2014

Hedges, Chris. "How the Brutalized Become Brutal." Common Dreams (August 25, 2014)

"Racism/Apartheid." Dialogic Cinephilia (Ongoing Peace and Conflict Studies Archive)

"Statement on Ferguson." Sociologists for Justice (2014)

"Ferguson Syllabus." Sociologists for Justice (2014)

Davis, Charles. "Hollywood's Latest Garbage: Our Tax Dollars at Work." Vice (August 28, 2014)

Palmer, Landon. "Can Cinema Ever Be Spontaneous?" Culture Warrior (March 22, 2011)

DuVernay, Ava. "The Day Before: Ryan Coogler on Fruitvale Station." Filmmaker (July 18, 2013)

Weismann, Jordan. "Here's Exactly How Much the Government Would Have to Spend to Make Public College Tuition-Free." The Atlantic (January 3, 2014)

Davis, Natalie Zemon. "World-Renowned Historian Natalie Zemon Davis Pleads Case of Steven Salaita with U-Illinois." Informed Comment *August 29, 2014)

Ng, Yvonne. "After Police Abuses Caught on Video, a New Guide Teaches How to Best Archive and Distribute Footage." Democracy Now (August 28, 2014)

---. "Part 2: Yvonne Ng on the 'Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video.'" Democracy Now (August 28, 2014)


Merriam-Webster Word of the Day:

precocial \prih-KOH-shul\

adjective: capable of a high degree of independent activity from birth

EXAMPLES

The mallard is a type of precocial bird that can often fly independently just 24 hours after hatching.

"Hares are like deer, horses and cattle in the sense that their offspring are precocial. They still have multiple offspring per pregnancy, but they are born fully furred with their eyes open." — Bill Danielson, The Recorder (Greenfield, Massachusetts), June 26, 2014

Precocial and its partner altricial are really for the birds. Well, at least they are often used to describe the young of our feathered friends. The chicks of precocial birds can see as soon as they hatch and generally have strong legs and a body covered with fine down. Those are attributes you would expect in birds described by the word precocial, which traces to the Latin precox, a term that means "precocious" or "early ripening" (yes, that root also gave us the word "precocious"). Ducks, geese, ostriches, pheasants, and quail are among the birds that hatch precocial offspring. Altricial chicks, on the other hand, are basically featherless and helpless at birth and require days or weeks of parental care before becoming independent.