By UIC

Seven students working in humanities comprise the 2020-2021 cohort of a national fellowship program designed to mentor Latino studies scholars as they complete their doctoral research and improve their job-market readiness.
Presented by the Inter-University Program for Latino Research, or IUPLR, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, each fellow will receive a yearly stipend of $25,000, a faculty mentor in Latino studies, monthly teleconferences with other fellows and opportunities to present their research.

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Posted on June 29, 2020

By The Center for Inquiry

Can you read other people’s thoughts? Can you move objects with your mind? Can you predict the future? More to the point, can you prove it? If you can, the Center for Inquiry Investigations Group will give you $250,000.
For two decades, CFIIG has offered those who profess to have supernatural, paranormal or occult abilities the opportunity to definitively prove their claims under mutually agreed upon testing conditions. For several years, the award for passing the CFIIG Challenge was $100,000, but no one has ever been able to claim the prize.
That award has now been raised to $250,000.

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Posted on June 26, 2020

By David Rutter

Abiding by the rules of the common misconception, I claim my birthright as the most non-Chicago Chicagoan in the history of demographics.
Being uniquely market-conscious is my speciality.
I also still have club memberships for Circuit City and Blockbuster video and a 10-cent off coupon for A&P bananas. I shopped for socks at Kresge, for Pete’s sake.
A marriage was inspired by – I’m not kidding – an eHarmony profile, and they kept sending sign-up solicitations after the divorce. The second bite of that marketing apple did not appeal to me.
So, clearly I stand on the precipice of cultural self-awareness. A claim that you might be culturally self-aware is the first sign that you are not. Let the evidence speak for itself.
Nonetheless, there is no dispute about my Non-Chicago Chicagoan credentials. This NC-C identity is the tradition of those who live in Chicago suburbs, exurbs, boroughs, villages, regional affiliates and various minimum-security prison municipalities, and then claim this proximity makes them Chicagoans.
Or that they live in “Chicagoland,” a realm just as real as Oz.

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Posted on June 25, 2020

By MarketsandMarkets

According to the new market research report “Pressure Sensitive Adhesives Market by Chemistry (Acrylic, Rubber, Silicone), Technology (Water-based, Solvent-based, Hot Melt), Application (Labels, Tapes, Graphics), End-Use Industry (Packaging, Automotive, Healthcare), Region – Global Forecast to 2025,” the global Pressure Sensitive Adhesives Market size is projected to grow from $9.5 billion in 2020 to $12.8 billion by 2025.
The primary factor driving the pressure sensitive adhesives market includes the increase in demand from end-use industries such as packaging, medical & healthcare, building & construction, and automotive & transportation.
The growth of the packaging industry in the emerging countries of APAC and South America is driving the demand for PSAs in these regions.
Furthermore, wide acceptance of PSA’s owing to the ease of adaptability, growing use in tapes and labels, and high demand in APAC are driving the market.

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Posted on June 24, 2020

By E.K. Mam

I hate to cut the fun and excitement of teenagehood short, but I’ve got news for you: very soon, you’ll be walking into something serious. Something that needs to be changed. Something only you can help change. I’m not talking about you going away to college. I’m talking about you playing a vital role in our society.
Look, I’m neither a philosopher, nor a psychologist, nor a saged old woman who has lived through a Depression and two World Wars, nor anyone with relevant credentials, unless of course being a jaded existential young adult counts for anything. I’m a college student. Out of the frying pan into the fire, you could say. Why do I care what high schoolers are like? I’m done with them, you might be thinking. Why would I go through the pains of drafting a slightly pretentious letter to a group of people I no longer have to deal with? If only that were the case, and that is the reason why I’m doing this. You’re the change our world needs, but it comes at a cost: you have to change first.

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Posted on June 23, 2020

By The Tree House Humane Society

The Tree House Humane Society, in partnership with Felines & Canines Chicago, took in 22 homeless kittens transferred last month from the Felines & Canines Hunter Stephenson Rescue Center in Northern Alabama.
In Alabama and in surrounding Southern states, shelters face overpopulation in their communities because a warmer climate leads to a year-round kitten season. When local shelters there are at capacity, homeless animals like these 22 kittens are left at risk. Tree House was happy to step in to ensure these kittens have the opportunity to thrive.
Because of the incredible growth Tree House’s foster program has seen over the past few months, there are currently an abundance of foster homes available to take in both the local kitten population as well as transfers from outside Tree House’s immediate service area.

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Posted on June 19, 2020

By Abby Zimet/Common Dreams

Sign of the changing times: Aunt Jemima, the minstrel-based, cringey racist “mammy” figure on the classic fake maple syrup of our childhoods – and for some white people, their only black friend – is about to go.
Amidst ongoing national protests for racial justice, parent company Quaker Oats has announced that before the end of the year it will remove the woefully outdated name and image on their 131-year-old, well-camouflaged corn syrup to better “reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations.”
While originally portrayed as a happy maternal servant who “many Americans nostalgically associate (with) fond familial memories,” the director of the Jim Crow Museum and many others see in her “the vestiges of enslavement and segregation.”

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Posted on June 18, 2020

By The Center for Inquiry

The Center for Inquiry vowed to continue its efforts to end the deceptive marketing of homeopathic fake medicine, announcing that it will appeal the dismissal of its consumer protection lawsuit against Walmart.
On May 20, 2019, the Center for Inquiry (CFI), an organization dedicated to advancing reason and science, filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia against Walmart, accusing the world’s largest retailer of committing wide-scale consumer fraud and endangering the health of its customers through its sale and marketing of pseudoscientific homeopathic drugs. The suit charged Walmart with misrepresenting homeopathy’s safety and efficacy by hawking homeopathic products right alongside real, evidence-based medicine on its shelves and its online store, with no distinction made between them, under signs indicating them as treatments for particular ailments.
Exactly one year later, on May 20, 2020, Judge Florence Pan of the D.C. Superior Court dismissed CFI’s case on extraordinarily dubious grounds.

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Posted on June 15, 2020

By E.K. Mam

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” – Marcus Aurelius
With some chagrin, I have to admit that I was one of those students in history class who always jumped in to correct the teacher; challenge the teacher; thought I was more qualified than the teacher.
Maybe it was my zeal for history that made me such a pain in the ass, though it’s important to know that doesn’t mean I romanticize the past like some history buffs. I’m able to see quite clearly that being born today is far better than to have been born in another era. No, things aren’t perfect today. Yes, it’s possible that some things were done better in the past. But with improved plumbing, the refinement of democracy, open-heart surgery, and Starbucks, there isn’t much competition between today and yesterday.

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Posted on June 12, 2020

By The U.S. Postal Service

The number of U.S. Postal Service (USPS) employees attacked by dogs nationwide fell to 5,803 in 2019 – more than 200 fewer than in 2018 and more than 400 fewer since 2017.
Today, USPS highlights technology that helps reduce potential attacks, while releasing its annual list of cities with the most recorded dog attacks.
The organization also highlights safety initiatives to help protect its employees and offers tips to pet owners as part of the Postal Service’s National Dog Bite Awareness Week, which runs Sunday, June 14, through Saturday, June 20.

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Posted on June 11, 2020