Sunday roundup

Can so much of China's cultural heritage that has been concentrated in villages, survive urbanization? 

Two things about the Times profile of the tiger couple, specifically the male tiger, who (1) made an excellent point: (1) children in more permissive families aren't necessarily happier, and that there's a middle ground to be had between the extreme of making your kids so achievement-oriented that they're pulling out their arm-hair and that of raising slackers. And (2), "published a paper questioning the standard definition of rape as “unconsented-to sex,” suggesting the better analogy was slavery or torture." This is an especially valuable insight in light of Dylan Farrow's open letter, and the debate has been had over Roman Polanski, with the survivor herself making the opposite case--that it's possibly to separate the artist from the crime. And that may be true, but that's different from ignoring or denying or diminishing the crime. Hell, I recently, accidentally did something similar--in that I forgot/blanked on Mike Tyson's history as I praised some words of wisdom in his recent book. Mitigating factors there--he did jail time, and I'm not endorsing him or suggesting that his crime didn't matter; I'm merely agreeing with what he was saying about being a better person. and I haven't read his book, but those words would be more meaningful if he publicly atoned for his crime. I guess the issue is, given the victim-blaming in that case, do he and his book, which is about rehabilitation, atone or try to dismiss?

Since we've been talking about how to talk about race, the brilliant Henry David Hwang has some insights:

“It is not an easy issue,” he added. “Race, in our country, is not an easy issue. So whenever you deal with it, I think you have to deal with it honestly and openly and frankly, and also very intelligently.”

Hwang hopes that by writing a comic play in which “my character looked like an idiot,” he’s created a safe, humorous space to spark conversation about race, in casting and beyond.

“To make people laugh about race, I feel, is a pretty good achievement, because we’re often so uncomfortable and so tight around the subject,” he said. “So if we can laugh, that can be the beginning of a discussion.”

On a lighter note: it's hard being a pedestrian. I just had to flip off a driver yesterday for not yielding as I was crossing, in a crosswalk, with a walk sign. Which is, incidentally, what I was doing years ago when I was hit by a car.

Brazilians love giving their kids preposterous names.

I love that this tech enterpreneur talks about shifting to plant protein as the one thing we can do in our lifetimes to positively impact climate change, except let's just call it food. Focusing on protein is part of the problem.

There is more science here than I can handle, and even more here, although I am curious about the physics of curly hair.

Et tu, groundhog? It's been so toasty over the last few days, I could go for a swim.