Personhood

Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a natural person or legal personality has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability.

Personhood continues to be a topic of international debate and has been questioned critically during the abolition of human and nonhuman slavery, in theology, in debates about abortion and in fetal rights and/or reproductive rights, in animal rights activism, in theology and ontology, in ethical theory, and in debates about corporate personhood and the beginning of human personhood.

Processes through which personhood is recognized socially and legally vary cross-culturally, demonstrating that notions of personhood are not universal. Anthropologist Beth Conklin has shown how personhood is tied to social relations among the Wari' people of Rondônia, Brazil. Bruce Knauft's studies of the Gebusi people of Papua New Guinea depict a context in which individuals become persons incrementally, again through social relations. Likewise, Jane C. Goodale has also examined the construction of personhood in Papua New Guinea.

Crash Course

Crash Course (also known as Driving Academy) is a 1988 made for television teen film directed by Oz Scott.

Plot

Crash Course centers on a group of high schoolers in a driver’s education class; many for the second or third time. The recently divorced teacher, super-passive Larry Pearl, is on thin ice with the football fanatic principal, Principal Paulson, who is being pressured by the district superintendent to raise driver’s education completion rates or lose his coveted football program. With this in mind, Principal Paulson and his assistant, with a secret desire for his job, Abner Frasier, hire an outside driver’s education instructor with a very tough reputation, Edna Savage, aka E.W. Savage, who quickly takes control of the class.

The plot focuses mostly on the students and their interactions with their teachers and each other. In the beginning, Rico is the loner with just a few friends, Chadley is the bookish nerd with few friends who longs to be cool and also longs to be a part of Vanessa’s life who is the young, friendly and attractive girl who had to fake her mother’s signature on her driver’s education permission slip. Kichi is the hip-hop Asian kid who often raps what he has to say and constantly flirts with Maria, the rich foreign girl who thinks that the right-of-way on the roadways always goes to (insert awesomely fake foreign Latino accent) “my father’s limo”. Finally you have stereotypical football meathead J.J., who needs to pass his English exam to keep his eligibility and constantly asks out and gets rejected by Alice, the tomboy whose father owns “Santini & Son” Concrete Company. Alice is portrayed as being the “son” her father wanted.

PBS Digital Studios

PBS Digital Studios is a YouTube channel and network through which PBS distributes original educational web video content. It comprises both original series and partnerships with existing YouTube channels. Most of the series are about science, pop culture, art, food, news, and music, though the channel originally launched with a series of video remixes based on PBS icons such as Mr. Rogers.

History

PBS Digital Studios founded by Jason Seiken in June 2012. They had their first viral hit with a "remix" of autotuned vocals from Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood titled "Garden of Your Mind."

The PBS Digital Studios network has received more than 500 million views and has over 7 million subscribers. Popular series found on their channels include Crash Course, Blank on Blank, It’s Okay To Be Smart, and the multiple Webby Award-winning PBS Idea Channel. Each month, the shows average more than 5 million streams.

Its first scripted series, Frankenstein, MD, launched on August 19, 2014 and ran until October 31, 2014.