Famous Short Story

Age-Friendly Environments (AFE) ECHO – is a multi-session learning cycle in English, aligned with approaches and guidance from WHO on Age-friendly cities and communities particularly the recent guidance from EURO. The AFE ECHO  is an innovative opportunity for capacity building of representatives from Member States that are interested to develop age-friendly cities and communities at the national, regional, or local levels. The program structure provides a safe environment where participants can share knowledge and learn from experts and other learners through collaborative problem-solving, to gain the skills necessary to advocate and drive the age-friendly model within their own city and/or community. Link to register Key features of the AFE ECHO course: The learning cycle comprises  5 one hour sessions  (09:00 to 10:00 Eastern Time Zone.) Session take place  bi-weekly over a 3-month period from February 10 to April...

Cathy O'Neil. Crown, $27 (272p) ISBN 978-1-984825-45-2 More By and About This Author Data scientist O'Neil ( Weapons of Math Destruction ) takes a thought-provoking look at shame in contemporary America. Typically understood as the feeling derived from a conflict between the individual's desires and society's norms, shame in the digital age is "manufactured and mined" by "giant sectors of the economy" that want to "harvest something of value from us," O'Neil argues. These "shame machines" include social media platforms, the health and wellness industry, and programs ostensibly created to help the poor that require drug testing or immense bureaucratic burdens, and only serve to perpetuate dysfunctional status quos. O'Neil explains that when shame is used properly—by punching up ...

Premiering on January 14, 2022, the Netflix original miniseries The House is a three-part animated horror-comedy that plays to the sensibilities of the older and younger crowd alike. The stop-motion anthology series follows three distinct stories set in one creepy haunted house, calling to mind some of the most memorable animated horror films of its ilk. Mainly, creepy cartoonish things going bump in the night in one relatively confined indoor location. RELATED: 10 Best Anime Like Netflix's Squid Game Animated horror fans who've yet to see The House or those awaiting the fate of a potential season 2 would be wise to prepare by checking out the coolest and spookiest animated haunted house movies. Coraline - Stream On Roku An absolute paragon of stop-motion animation, the Oscar-nominated  Coraline takes the artistic plaudits that Henry Selick achieved in The Ni...

Spoilers for 'Offering to the Storm' Those who are aware of Dolores Redondo's 'The Baztan Trilogy' are no stranger to the story of inspector Amaia Salazar who uncovers the darkest truths about her family in the process of solving a crib-death investigation. It's a nuanced soap opera with several meandering narratives as we see Amaia embrace motherhood at the expense of learning the harrowing reality of her mother's past. It's just-premiered Netflix counterpart, however, relies more on melodrama than storytelling, that Redondo's three books are so widely known for. Fernando González Molina's ambitious thriller tries doing Redondo's book justice with a Luiso Berdejo co-written script, but it loses its biggest charm and falls prey to what can be blamed on dramatizing the plot even more while leaving out some of the crucial elements that work for its folklorish and occult essences. We're not saying it's a bad movie; it just seems too ...

I'm not ashamed to admit that I got Gryffindor pyjamas for my 40th birthday. That wasn't so much the case back in 1999, as I tried to read my copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban while awkwardly hiding the cover on my train ride to work. Back then, it was pitched as a book for children, a magical romp that riffed on Roald Dahl's Matilda and Tolkien's The Hobbit . But beneath its youthful guise was a world that adults were secretly enjoying too. It was clever, inventive, witty, and a chance to step out of our grown-up worlds for a bit. For me, it was pure escapism to a fantastical world of wizardry. But it was also about optimism and courage — a belief that you can be your full magical self, that nobody should live in a cupboard, and that love trumps hate. ...

Miracle and Wonder: Conversations With Paul Simon by Malcolm Gladwell and Bruce Headlam Published (released?) in November 2021 The news has been filled with stories of the struggles of higher education to adapt to the realities of Omicron. We all seem to be doing our best to navigate an educational environment that is partly analog and partly digital, but optimized for neither. Face-to-face learning at residential institutions is the expectation. But the realities of infection and risk, worry and constraints, constantly challenge our abilities to return to an educational normal. Mostly, I'm happy that most residential colleges and universities are back to primarily in-class learning, or at least have a plan to get there. As I read things, the costs to student well-being of continued remote education would now (mostly) outweigh the health risks of a (masked) return to the classroom. While I am relieved about the commitment of most college and university leaders to push to...

Romance has long been one of the top-selling genres in adult fiction, but there's no doubt that 2020 only proved to reemphasize its popularity. As readers around the country were forced to quarantine at home and grapple with the realities of the pandemic—and a national racial reckoning—rapid sales growth showed many found refuge in the guaranteed happily-every-after of a love story. Fast-forward to today and this fact still rings true with 2022 romance novels. "Readers are looking for escapism in their fiction," says Cindy Hwang, vice president and editorial director of Berkley Books, one of the leading publishers of romance fiction. "I think that is going to continue. With the state of the world, even when the pandemic is under control, they're looking for books to help them deal." Statistics find that in the midst of societal turmoil, sandwiched between manga and women's fiction, romance has unsurprisingly maintained its spot as one of the highest-sel...