Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Long Island, New York native James McLurkin loved working with Legos, models, and bicycles as child. But his tinkering went beyond mere child's play. Soon he was assembling parts and creating new toys from objects he found around the house. As a teenager he was inspired to build his first robot, "Rover," which he completed during his sophomore year in high school. By the time he finished high school he had created three robots on his own.
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McLurkin was admitted to MIT, where he pursued a degree in electrical engineering. As a student there in 1991, he began working in the university's Artificial Intelligence Lab, where he first began developing his idea for "Robot Ants." These tiny machines (one inch or less per side) would each house internal computers and motors, with sensors that would allow them to detect objects in their paths that they could pick up or avoid. Each robot would also have an internal communication system using infrared emitters. These characteristics would give the robots "intelligence"—theoretically they would be able to work together to play games and accomplish tasks.
McLurkin, who believes that the greatest inspiration comes from observing nature, studied the behavior of real ants in ant colonies as a basis for his programming. He would keep "ant farms" on his desk at school and watch how the creatures worked together. He examined the ways in which the insects structured their workloads so they could succeed even when some members of the group were no longer able to perform.
McLurkin left MIT after receiving his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Next he returned to MIT to pursue his PhD in Computer Science, all the while continuing to work on his robot colonies. As part of his doctoral research, McLurkin is developing algorithms and techniques for programming "swarms" of autonomous robots, which would be programmed to mimic the behavior of bees, including their abilities to cluster, disperse, follow and orbit
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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This is not a bad thing. It's a sign of progress that so many white people have a interest in consuming art that deals with race. But where are the people of color. Color Lines: The Overwhelming Whiteness of Black Art.
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“Kara’s Work is courageous in that is just puts it out there,” says Hank Willis Thomas, a black artist who’s exhibit “Question Bridge” has appeared in more than 60 museums across the country, noting that some black audiences aren’t particularly interested in revisiting profoundly painful parts of their histories. “You’re supposed to feel drawn in and horrified by the work. For me the sphinx does that. She can make something that’s repulsive and beautiful and sticky and troublesome all at the same time.”
The overwhelming whiteness of viewers isn’t unique to Walker’s exhibit. There are more than 17,500 museums in the United States that are visited by 850 million people annually, the vast majority of whom are white. Art, particularly when it’s commissioned and it’s covered in important publications like the New York Times, is often seen as the exclusive domain of white folks. Museums, dating back to their modern origins in the 18th century, were usually built by wealthy white patrons and enjoyed by middle and upper class European families. In the American context, they served a specific purpose for opening up and exploring a new continent, according to Ford Bell, head of the American Alliance of Museums who was quoted by NPR in 2008. People of color — their customs, their cultures and, in the infamous case of Sara Baartman, their bodies — were usually the object of those white gazes. But in recent years, as the country’s demographics have shifted in favor of a so-called majority-minority, the art world has made great strides in featuring the work of artists of color. It’s hard to imagine any work by an artist like Walker or Carrie Mae Weems, at the Guggenheim 50 years ago.
But while high art’s content has changed, its viewership, by and large, has not. Slightly more than 68 percent of America’s population is white but 80 percent of museum visitors are, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts. Interestingly, the number of black patrons has shrunk significantly in recent years, going from 19 percent in 1992 to 12 percent in 2008. In a study called “Demographic Transformation and the Future of Museums,” researchers summed up the problem: “Between 1992 and 2008, the gap between the percentage of white and non-white Americans who visit art museums also grew steadily.”
Researchers and scholars have tried to explain the story behind the numbers in a variety of ways: that museums are exclusionary and intimidating; that the art inside of them isn’t interesting or accessible to people of color; that families don’t forge strong museum-going habits; that patterns of work and leisure are changing so drastically in the United States; and that parents don’t have the time to take their kids to see art. In some cases, they can also be prohibitively expensive. But some experts point to even stronger structural issues.
Viewers experience the sphinx portion of Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety.” Photo: Andrew Burton/ Getty Images
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Obama says personnel deployed to Chad 'will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance'. Guardian: US sends 80 military personnel to help return missing Nigerian schoolgirls.
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The United States has deployed about 80 military personnel to Chad in its effort to help find and return more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls kidnapped by Islamist militant group Boko Haram, President Obama said in a letter to Congress on Wednesday.
"These personnel will support the operation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft for missions over northern Nigeria and the surrounding area," Obama said in the letter." The force will remain in Chad until its support in resolving the kidnapping situation is no longer required," he said.
The girls were taken in April from a boarding school close to Nigeria's border with Cameroon, Niger and Chad in a sparsely populated region. Their whereabouts are unknown.
US surveillance aircraft have been flying over remote areas of northeast Nigeria for two weeks, and the Pentagon struck an agreement last weekend to allow it to share intelligence directly with the Nigerian government.
The girls were taken in April from a boarding school close to Nigeria's border with Cameroon, Niger and Chad.Photograph: Joe Penney/Reuters
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Going natural was once about breaking free from European beauty standards and embarking on a journey to embrace one's own natural hair. But somewhere along the way the beauty industry took control and is overwhelmingly praising a certain type of natural hair, and clearly ignoring another. Ebony: The Sad Truth About Natural Hair Discrimination.
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The natural hair community is a sisterhood of Black and bi-racial women who have made the decision to abstain from relaxers and chemical hair treatments in exchange for the unprocessed form of their waves, curls, wavy curls, curls and coils, and coils and kinks.
As with all large groups centered around a common idea, there are varying views on how best to define that idea—in this case the term, "natural." The spectrum spans from "devout naturals"—women who pass on all chemicals from color treatments and relaxers to certain product ingredients—to your "technical naturals," women who no longer wear relaxers, but happily rock weaves, blowouts and the like on a regular basis. In the middle are your naturals who rock color, but don’t mess with weaves. You also have your naturals who live the 24/7 protective style life, which includes box braids, Marley twists, crochet braids and other trendy styles.
Point is, every type of natural you can think of exists. In hair forums, the race to define what it all means rages on but the prevailing thinking seems healthy—natural is an individual thing. It's the other, less talked about issue in the natural hair community that is concerning—some naturals are essentially being eliminated from the conversation as a whole.
Over the past few months, a great debate has been steadily brewing in the natural hair community about the value of hair-typing--the grading of hair textures on a spectrum. Going natural was once about breaking free from European beauty standards and embarking on a journey to embrace one's own natural hair, but somewhere along the way, things seem to have gone astray, and we’ve found ourselves sponsors of a beauty industry that is overwhelmingly praising a certain type of natural hair, and clearly ignoring another.
Women with kinky textured hair, commonly known as type 4, are experiencing something of a "texture discrimination" as a consequence of this new natural new beauty standard. Curly and wavy girls dominate the branding in products mass marketed to natural hair. So while the recent rebirth and modern day celebration of natural hair has provided some balance for Black women looking to escape the media induced pressure to yearn for European imitated straight, long hair, now there is a new pressure for natural women to yearn for a specific type of natural hair.
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This story is a sad commentary on the power of subconscious racism. The Oregonian: Study: Portland Drivers Show Racial Bias When Yielding to Pedestrians.
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Racial bias doesn't stop with education, employment, health care and criminal sentencing. It's also prevalent at crosswalks in Portland, according to a new study of traffic psychology.
Conducted in downtown Portland, the joint Portland State University and University of Arizona study found that twice as many drivers failed to yield for black pedestrians than those who were white. Meanwhile, black pedestrians typically had to wait a third longer for cars to stop for them when they had the legal right of way.
With fewer motorists yielding for them, minorities are more likely to take greater risks to cross the street, which might factor into why they're disproportionately represented in U.S. pedestrian fatalities, the study concluded.
"In a fast-paced activity like driving, where decisions may need to be made in a fraction of a second, people's' actions can be influenced by these subtle attitudes," the study said.
The results come at the same time as the Smart Growth America's annual "Dangerous by Design 2014" report (PDF) showing the most dangerous U.S. Cities for pedestrians. Despite a string of deaths in the final weeks of 2013, the Portland metro area was ranked the seventh safest for walking, according to the group's "pedestrian danger index."
Between 2003 and 2012, 47,025 pedestrians died along American roads — 16 times the number killed in earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and tornadoes, the report showed. Another 676,000 pedestrians were injured.
Nationally, African-Americans have a 60 percent higher rate of pedestrian deaths than whites, the Smart Growth America study shows. Meanwhile, it's 43 percent higher for Hispanics.
Do Portland drivers exhibit racist tendencies at crosswalks? Yes, according to a new PSU study. (PSU)
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I struggled on how to excerpt this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates, but it's a must read. The Atlantic: The Case for Reparations.
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Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
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Pull up a chair and sit down a while and enjoy the company.