"One of the most prolific art forgers in America is getting a show this weekend at the University of Cincinnati. Curators say they are putting on display more than 90 forgeries by Mark A. Landis, an eccentric painter who donated dozens of phony works to museums around the country for more than 25 years before being found out in 2008."
"The truth is, women who write literary fiction frequently find themselves in an unjust world, even as young single women are outearning men in major American cities and higher education in the United States is skewing female. As VIDA, a women’s literary organization, showed in February in its second annual statistical roundup, women get shockingly short shrift as reviewers and reviewees in most prestigious publications. Of all the authors reviewed in the publications it tracked, nearly three-fourths were men. No wonder that when we talk about today’s leading novelists — the ones who generate heat and conversation and are read by both men and women — we are talking mostly about men."
"The frequency of autism spectrum diagnoses has been increasing for decades, but researchers cannot agree on whether the trend is a result of heightened awareness, an expanding definition of the spectrum (emphasis is mine: the current definition of autism now includes introverted (shy) people. Apparently, extroverts only are accepted as normal, although I hear they are going to get a mental illness diagnosis just to make things "fair" for the newly autistic), an actual increase in incidence or some combination of those factors. Diagnosing the condition is not an exact science. Children “on the spectrum” vary widely in their abilities and symptoms, from mute and intellectually limited at one extreme to socially awkward at the other.
Children with such diagnoses often receive extensive state-financed support services — which some experts believe may have contributed to an increase in the numbers."
Bully: A Documentary by Lee Hirsch
"'Bully', Lee Hirsch’s moving and troubling documentary about the misery some children inflict upon others, arrives at a moment when bullying, long tolerated as a fact of life, is being redefined as a social problem. “Just kids being kids” can no longer be an acceptable response to the kind of sustained physical and emotional abuse that damages the lives of young people whose only sin is appearing weak or weird to their peers.
And while the film focuses on the specific struggles of five families in four states, it is also about — and part of — the emergence of a movement."
Bully: A Documentary by Lee Hirsch
"'Bully', Lee Hirsch’s moving and troubling documentary about the misery some children inflict upon others, arrives at a moment when bullying, long tolerated as a fact of life, is being redefined as a social problem. “Just kids being kids” can no longer be an acceptable response to the kind of sustained physical and emotional abuse that damages the lives of young people whose only sin is appearing weak or weird to their peers.
And while the film focuses on the specific struggles of five families in four states, it is also about — and part of — the emergence of a movement."
