Sasha Weiss on the Cleveland Victims and Our Hunger for the Obscene Details: "I can't help asking, for whom, and for what purpose, were these details publicized? Why do I need to know what I now know?" (from New Yorker)
The process of integrating into mainstream America is a complex one if you are an immigrant. Often, people lose touch with their country of origin. A report about retro-acculturation or cultural straddling.
Jason Collins, a veteran NBA center, has become the first male professional athlete in the four major American sports leagues to come out as gay. Collins wrote a first-person account posted Monday on Sports Illustrated's website. (from Code Switch, and NPR blog)
Cleveland prosecutor Victor Perez stepped into the familiar ethnic spokesman role when he distanced the city's Puerto Rican population from Ariel Castro, who is accused of kidnapping several women (from Code Switch, an NPR blog about race, culture and ethnicity)
A research team led by Mark Pagel at the University of Reading in England has identified 23 "ultraconserved words" that have remained largely unchanged for 15,000 years (Washington Post)