The Grayson County Middle School sent a group of 39 students to the annual Kentucky Youth Legislature in Louisville Dec. 12-14. The GCMS group was named Best Delegation out of 43 schools attending this year’s KYA. Ben Nelson was selected as President of the Senate and got to run a legislative room. Kristin Jarboe, Maggie Fulp, and Cameron Cooper were recognized as Outstanding Speakers, and Braxton Bratcher was a candidate for KYA Governor. Two of the bills written by GCMS students were recognized among the most outstanding bills at this year’s conference.
because these kids have names and they have stories. they’re real people with families and hopes and dreams that were stamped out by hate. may the reason for the color not be forgotten.
Tyler Clementi
He was a 19 year old student at Rutgers University.
After his…
![hipsterpuppies:
louis is the fifth best harmonica player in portland. he’s considering moving to a smaller town.
[photo via marley p]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0w32twTJ91qb0fx9o1_250.jpg)
louis is the fifth best harmonica player in portland. he’s considering moving to a smaller town.
[photo via marley p]
Williams Syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that causes mental deficits, but also a hypersocial personality. People with Williams Syndrome don’t just love to interact with other socially — they seemingly have no social fear at all, and they’ll talk to just about anyone, happy, sad, angry, black, white, etc. And now a study shows that apparently they’re the only humans who don’t form racial stereotypes. The rest of us, no matter how anti-racist we are, can’t entirely bypass our evolved responses to people we perceive as belonging to a different group than us. Neurophilosophy:
Earlier work by the same group of researchers has shown that hypersociability and lack of social fear in individuals with WS is associated with reduced activity in the amygdala in response to social threats, and to reduced interactions between the amygdala and fusiforn face area (FFA). The amygdala is well known to be involved in fear, and the FFA, as its name suggests, responds selectively to faces. These two structures, together with the prefrontal cortex, are normally thought to encode race information, and it has been shown increased FFA activation is associated with viewing same-race faces.
All of this suggests that the apparent lack of racial bias in children with WS occurs because of reduced activity in the amygdala and FFA and impaired interactions between the two, which causes the threat signal normally elicited by someone from a different social group to be diminished.
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… To sleep… perchance to dream… ?
Were always picked last in gym
Own every Star Wars movie
Quote Disney movies in everyday situations
Were picked on or called names in school
Can name all 150 original Pokémon
Own a deck of Pokémon cards and play with them
Own a deck of magic cards and play with them
Sing show tunes…