Category Archives: History

But what computers were bad at, traditionally, was strategythe ability to ponder the shape of a game many, many moves in the future. Thats where humans still had the edge.

Or so Kasparov thought, until Deep Blues move in game 2 rattled him. It seemed so sophisticated that Kasparov began worrying: maybe the machine was far better than hed thought! Convinced he had no way to win, he resigned the second game.

But he shouldnt have. Deep Blue, it turns out, wasnt actually that good. Kasparov had failed to spot a move that would have let the game end in a draw. He was psyching himself out: worried that the machine might be far more powerful than it really was, he had begun to see human-like reasoning where none existed.

Knocked off his rhythm, Kasparov kept playing worse and worse. He psyched himself out over and over again. Early in the sixth, winner-takes-all game, he made a move so lousy that chess observers cried out in shock. I was not in the mood of playing at all, he later said at a press conference.

IBM benefited from its moonshot. In the press frenzy that followed Deep Blues success, the companys market cap rose $11.4 billion in a single week. Even more significant, though, was that IBMs triumph felt like a thaw in the long AI winter. If chess could be conquered, what was next? The publics mind reeled.

That, Campbell tells me, is what got people paying attention.

The truth is, it wasnt surprising that a computer beat Kasparov. Most people whod been paying attention to AIand to chessexpected it to happen eventually.

Chess may seem like the acme of human thought, but its not. Indeed, its a mental task thats quite amenable to brute-force computation: the rules are clear, theres no hidden information, and a computer doesnt even need to keep track of what happened in previous moves. It just assesses the position of the pieces right now.

There are very few problems out there where, as with chess, you have all the information you could possibly need to make the right decision.

Everyone knew that once computers got fast enough, theyd overwhelm a human. It was just a question of when. By the mid-90s, the writing was already on the wall, in a sense, says Demis Hassabis, head of the AI company DeepMind, part of Alphabet.

Deep Blues victory was the moment that showed just how limited hand-coded systems could be. IBM had spent years and millions of dollars developing a computer to play chess. But it couldnt do anything else.

It didnt lead to the breakthroughs that allowed the [Deep Blue] AI to have a huge impact on the world, Campbell says. They didnt really discover any principles of intelligence, because the real world doesnt resemble chess. There are very few problems out there where, as with chess, you have all the information you could possibly need to make the right decision, Campbell adds. Most of the time there are unknowns. Theres randomness.

But even as Deep Blue was mopping the floor with Kasparov, a handful of scrappy upstarts were tinkering with a radically more promising form of AI: the neural net.

With neural nets, the idea was not, as with expert systems, to patiently write rules for each decision an AI will make. Instead, training and reinforcement strengthen internal connections in rough emulation (as the theory goes) of how the human brain learns.

AP PHOTO / ADAM NADEL

The idea had existed since the 50s. But training a usefully large neural net required lightning-fast computers, tons of memory, and lots of data. None of that was readily available then. Even into the 90s, neural nets were considered a waste of time.

Back then, most people in AI thought neural nets were just rubbish, says Geoff Hinton, an emeritus computer science professor at the University of Toronto, and a pioneer in the field. I was called a true believernot a compliment.

But by the 2000s, the computer industry was evolving to make neural nets viable. Video-game players lust for ever-better graphics created a huge industry in ultrafast graphic-processing units, which turned out to be perfectly suited for neural-net math. Meanwhile, the internet was exploding, producing a torrent of pictures and text that could be used to train the systems.

By the early 2010s, these technical leaps were allowing Hinton and his crew of true believers to take neural nets to new heights. They could now create networks with many layers of neurons (which is what the deep in deep learning means). In 2012 his team handily won the annual Imagenet competition, where AIs compete to recognize elements in pictures. It stunned the world of computer science: self-learning machines were finally viable.

Ten years into the deep-learning revolution, neural nets and their pattern-recognizing abilities have colonized every nook of daily life. They help Gmail autocomplete your sentences, help banks detect fraud, let photo apps automatically recognize faces, andin the case of OpenAIs GPT-3 and DeepMinds Gopherwrite long, human-sounding essays and summarize texts. Theyre even changing how science is done; in 2020, DeepMind debuted AlphaFold2, an AI that can predict how proteins will folda superhuman skill that can help guide researchers to develop new drugs and treatments.

Meanwhile Deep Blue vanished, leaving no useful inventions in its wake. Chess playing, it turns out, wasnt a computer skill that was needed in everyday life. What Deep Blue in the end showed was the shortcomings of trying to handcraft everything, says DeepMind founder Hassabis.

IBM tried to remedy the situation with Watson, another specialized system, this one designed to tackle a more practical problem: getting a machine to answer questions. It used statistical analysis of massive amounts of text to achieve language comprehension that was, for its time, cutting-edge. It was more than a simple if-then system. But Watson faced unlucky timing: it was eclipsed only a few years later by the revolution in deep learning, which brought in a generation of language-crunching models far more nuanced than Watsons statistical techniques.

Deep learning has run roughshod over old-school AI precisely because pattern recognition is incredibly powerful, says Daphne Koller, a former Stanford professor who founded and runs Insitro, which uses neural nets and other forms of machine learning to investigate novel drug treatments. The flexibility of neural netsthe wide variety of ways pattern recognition can be usedis the reason there hasnt yet been another AI winter. Machine learning has actually delivered value, she says, which is something the previous waves of exuberance in AI never did.

The inverted fortunes of Deep Blue and neural nets show how bad we were, for so long, at judging whats hardand whats valuablein AI.

For decades, people assumed mastering chess would be important because, well, chess is hard for humans to play at a high level. But chess turned out to be fairly easy for computers to master, because its so logical.

What was far harder for computers to learn was the casual, unconscious mental work that humans dolike conducting a lively conversation, piloting a car through traffic, or reading the emotional state of a friend. We do these things so effortlessly that we rarely realize how tricky they are, and how much fuzzy, grayscale judgment they require. Deep learnings great utility has come from being able to capture small bits of this subtle, unheralded human intelligence.

Still, theres no final victory in artificial intelligence. Deep learning may be riding high nowbut its amassing sharp critiques, too.

For a very long time, there was this techno-chauvinist enthusiasm that okay, AI is going to solve every problem! says Meredith Broussard, a programmer turned journalism professor at New York University and author of Artificial Unintelligence. But as she and other critics have pointed out, deep-learning systems are often trained on biased dataand absorb those biases. The computer scientists Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru discovered that three commercially available visual AI systems were terrible at analyzing the faces of darker-skinned women. Amazon trained an AI to vet rsums, only to find it downranked women.

Though computer scientists and many AI engineers are now aware of these bias problems, theyre not always sure how to deal with them. On top of that, neural nets are also massive black boxes, says Daniela Rus, a veteran of AI who currently runs MITs Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Once a neural net is trained, its mechanics are not easily understood even by its creator. It is not clear how it comes to its conclusionsor how it will fail.

For a very long time, there was this techno-chauvinist enthusiasm that Okay, AI is going to solve every problem!

It may not be a problem, Rus figures, to rely on a black box for a task that isnt safety critical. But what about a higher-stakes job, like autonomous driving? Its actually quite remarkable that we could put so much trust and faith in them, she says.

This is where Deep Blue had an advantage. The old-school style of handcrafted rules may have been brittle, but it was comprehensible. The machine was complexbut it wasnt a mystery.

Ironically, that old style of programming might stage something of a comeback as engineers and computer scientists grapple with the limits of pattern matching.

Language generators, like OpenAIs GPT-3 or DeepMinds Gopher, can take a few sentences youve written and keep on going, writing pages and pages of plausible-sounding prose. But despite some impressive mimicry, Gopher still doesnt really understand what its saying, Hassabis says. Not in a true sense.

Similarly, visual AI can make terrible mistakes when it encounters an edge case. Self-driving cars have slammed into fire trucks parked on highways, because in all the millions of hours of video theyd been trained on, theyd never encountered that situation. Neural nets have, in their own way, a version of the brittleness problem.

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What the history of AI tells us about its future - MIT Technology Review

Talking Chop Archives

2010 - Centerfielder Nate McLouth discloses that he dealt with vision problems at the end of the 2009 season and began wearing contacts during the offseason.

2010 - The Braves are reportedly the favorites to sign Dominican shortstop prospect Edward Salcedo.

2014 - The Braves extend the contracts of GM Frank Wren and manager Fredi Gonzalez.

2019 - Veteran reliever Peter Moylan agrees to a deal with the Braves. Mauricio Cabrera is designated for assignment to clear a 40-man roster spot.

1935 - Lou Gehrig signs a contract with the Yankees worth a reported $30,000.

1937 - The New York Giants open their spring training camp in Havana, Cuba.

1953 - Ted Williams safely crash-lands his Panther Jet after flying a combat mission in Korea.

1970 - Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announces the suspension of Tigers pitcher Denny McLain for his involvement in a bookmaking operation. The suspension will begin April 1 and will last for three months.

1983 - Fernando Valenzuela wins his salary arbitration case with the Dodgers. Valenzuela is the first player to be awarded a $1 million salary through the arbitration process.

1987 - Vida Blue announces his retirement from baseball a month after signing a free agent contract with Oakland.

1995 - The Toronto Blue Jays assign manager Cito Gaston and his coaching staff to work with minor league players until the strike is settled.

2002 - 37-year old Jose Canseco signs a minor league deal with the Montreal Expos. However, he will be released before the end of spring training.

2018 - The Red Sox sign J.D. Martinez to a five-year, $110 million contract.

2019 - Manny Machado signs the largest free agent contract in history by agreeing to a 10-year, $300 million deal with the San Diego Padres.

Information for this article was found via Baseball Reference, NationalPastime.com and Today in Baseball History.

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Today in Braves History: Atlanta extends contracts of Fredi Gonzalez and Frank Wren - Talking Chop

Coronado Playhouse is to partner with TYPA Theatre Company in hosting its inaugural showcase dedicated to honoring Black History Month entitled "Expression of Black Joy and Unity." This addition to the current 76th season is part of Coronado Playhouse's ongoing efforts to strengthen its ties to all of the San Diego theatre community and beyond.

This program occurs shortly after another new initiative with a similar goal, the Co-Production Partnership Program, which has recently closed submissions. While the Co-Partnership Program seeks to uplift another theatre company's production through resources and support to be determined by show needs, Coronado Playhouse hopes to expand its personal and professional reaches, utilizing the talents of San Diego County's Black performing artists and highlighting existing Black-owned theatre companies.

"There are a number of theater groups without a permanent home base who do amazing creative work. The board saw this as a wonderful opportunity to help provide a more open space for them in our community," states Heather Barton Tjalma, Board Member of Directors and Play Selection Committee Co-Chair about the Co-Production project, "in these partnerships, we hope to nurture relationships with a wider range of artists and audiences members." Barton Tjalma is also on the committee working to organize the Black History Month performance. This February, the Coronado Playhouse board strengthened and expanded upon its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion values and commitment statements which can be viewed on its website.

"This collaborative production has us at TYPA smiling from the inside out for Coronado, and all of San Diego because right now is the perfect time to celebrate the beauty, strength, and resilience of the African-American People!" states TYPA Founder and Program Organizer, Kimberly King. King's excitement is evident through the inaugural program's full title and theme: "Expression of Black Joy and Unity, All Our Black Lives: Forging Unity." As cultural dialogue looks to recognize intersectional identities and distinguish experiences, it was important for all involved to ensure audiences knew Black people are not a monolith. "TYPA believes in the power of theatre to transform," she continues, "to affirm, unify and amplify. Our greatest hope is that all the Black History Month celebrations, all around the City of San Diego bring us together to experience the joy of representation."

"Expression of Black Joy and Unity" will perform February 26th, 2022 at Coronado Playhouse at 7PM. The oldest arts organization in Coronado, Coronado Playhouse, stands proudly among the best in the Community Theatre world of San Diego and constantly strives for excellence in its productions. They diligently strive to select diverse creative and production teams that will deliver smart and enlightening productions to CPH audiences.

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Coronado Playhouse and Typa Theatre Company to Have Inaugural Black History Month Program - Broadway World

History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours

Francesca Morphakis,PhD Candidate in History at the University of Leeds

History is narratives. From chaos comes order. We seek to understand the past by determining and ordering facts; and from these narratives we hope to explain the decisions and processes which shape our existence. Perhaps we might even distill patterns and lessons to guide but never to determine our responses to the challenges faced today. History is the study of people, actions, decisions, interactions and behaviours. It is so compelling a subject because it encapsulates themes which expose the human condition in all of its guises and that resonate throughout time: power, weakness, corruption, tragedy, triumph Nowhere are these themes clearer than in political history, still the necessary core of the field and the most meaningful of the myriad approaches to the study of history. Yet political history has fallen out of fashion and subsequently into disrepute, wrongly demonised as stale and irrelevant. The result has been to significantly erode the utility of ordering, explaining and distilling lessons from the past.

Historys primary purpose is to stand at the centre of diverse, tolerant, intellectually rigorous debate about our existence: our political systems, leadership, society, economy and culture. However, open and free debate as in so many areas of life is too often lacking and it is not difficult to locate the cause of this intolerance.

Writing history can be a powerful tool; it has shaped identities, particularly at the national level. Moreover, it grants those who control the narrative the ability to legitimise or discredit actions, events and individuals in the present. Yet to marshal history and send it into battle merely to serve the needs of the present is misuse and abuse. History should never be a weapon at the heart of culture wars. Sadly, once again, it is: clumsily wielded by those who deliberately seek to impose a clear ideological agenda. History is becoming the handmaiden of identity politics and self-flagellation. This only promotes poor, one-dimensional understandings of the past and continually diminishes the utility of the field. History stands at a crossroads; it must refuse to follow the trend of the times.

Chandak Sengoopta,Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London

Any thoroughly researched and well-argued study of any aspect of the past counts, for me, as history. I do have a preference for historians who probe into the why and the how but, overall, I think that our scope should be as broad and as catholic as possible. I am old enough to remember a time when womens history was a separate field left, in many universities, to Womens Studies programmes and the existence of non-white people was recognised by historians only in the context of imperial history. Back then I am talking only about the late 1980s English, Anthropology and even History of Science departments were often more adventurous in addressing the history of others but their work, we were often told by real historians, wasnt proper history: they use novels as evidence, for heavens sake! Have any of them been near an archive?

If things are better today in History departments, it is because the disciplinary frontiers have been redrawn. But we still have our borders, not all of which are imposed by our institutions or funding authorities. How many History departments would exclude an otherwise excellent candidate only because her sources are mostly literary? A great many, I dare say, including my own. Many of the fields old fixations may have disappeared, but quite a few antiquated fences still await a well-aimed boot.

Political, economic and social history are, without question, essential; so is the history of Europe and America. But they are not the alpha and the omega of History as a discipline. We still do not pay enough attention to histories of ideas, of the arts, of medicine, of philosophy, of entertainment, of technology, whether in Europe or America or elsewhere. Nor do we feel particularly comfortable about biographical approaches to history. None of these potentially enriching themes can be addressed unless we jettison our atavistic equation of the archive with a collection of yellowing reams of paper. It wont be easy to dislodge this idol, but I would like to hope that coming generations of historians will chip away at it with greater conviction than mine has been able to muster.

Marcus Colla,Departmental Lecturer in European History at Christ Church, Oxford

Though almost 60 years have passed since E.H. Carr first posed the question, undergraduates still continue to find much to unpack in his answers. Indeed, Carrs 1961 book What is History? has enjoyed a longer shelf-life than most works of actual history.

But it is a curious fact that What is History? remains a go-to reference for teachers and students everywhere. After all, much of Carrs argument and the debates to which he was contributing might strike us now, as we attempt to answer the question, as being quaintly archaic. The interim 60 years encompass postmodernism, the rise of gender history and the memory boom, to name but a tiny sample. Todays students inhabit a completely different intellectual universe.

Carrs ideas clearly resonate more with our contemporary sensibilities than do those of his detractors, who remained wedded to the idea of an objective historian unfettered from all current assumptions. By contrast, Carr saw history as fundamentally a problem-solving discipline. Not only should historians divest themselves of the illusion that they could somehow stand outside the world in which they live, he argued. They should in fact embrace the fact that the study of the past could be oriented to the needs of the present.

One can immediately see the appeal of such an argument today. In an academic world where the humanities are under greater pressure to justify their significance than ever before, studying the past for the pasts sake no longer cuts it. But I dont think this is the whole story. Rather, I sense that the enduring fascination with Carr reflects something much more fundamental in how we view the relationship between past and present. For instance, we are surely less inclined than previous generations to demand rigid dichotomies between history on the one hand and memory or heritage on the other. Furthermore, were more democratic in who we believe history belongs to: who from the past it includes, and who in the present can benefit from it.

Each historian will view the relationship between past and present differently. But it was Carrs great achievement to identify the tensions of this relationship as the very engine of the discipline itself.

Faridah Zaman,Associate Professor of History, University of Oxford

One way to attempt to answer this question is to ask ourselves what and who are histories for? A common starting point might be that histories are useful for telling us how we got here. Such histories might take the form of origin stories, of relatively linear and perhaps teleological accounts how did we come to organise our societies and political systems in the ways that we have now, for instance or, as the apocryphal saying goes, a series of lessons to learn from in order to avoid the ignominy of repetition.

Such an understanding of history conceals within itself a more exciting and fraught though not necessarily antithetical possibility. Just as we might look to the past to better understand the myriad, complicated ways in which our present world came to exist, historians might also set themselves the task of illuminating worlds unrealised and of other presents that might have existed. Such histories, counter-intuitively, help us understand our own times better either by underscoring the contingency of the world around us or, depending on your perspective, the enduring power of the structures responsible for foreclosing those other paths.

These kinds of histories require attending to and often recovering and reconstructing narratives and perspectives that have been lost in dominant historical accounts. My own work has focused on unsuccessful revolutions and failed political visions in the early 20th century. More broadly, we might consider it a fundamental task of history to reveal the complexity and plurality that people lived with in the past. Such histories can demonstrate how differently people have thought about and related to the world around them, including other ways of recording their ideas and experiences. Much of this terrain used to be marginal to History proper; M.K. Gandhi noted as much in 1909 when he dismissed conventional history as simply a record of war. In recovering what has been subsumed and forgotten for instance, radical dissenting traditions that were drowned out, or anticolonial resistance movements that were defeated history might instead serve much more emancipatory ends and open up spaces of critical and imaginative possibility for our own times.

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What is History? | History Today

An Indiana public school has become embroiled in controversy after a school counselor reportedly sent a letter to parents giving them the option to opt their children out of Black History Month lessons.

Why it matters: The Indiana case comes as some states impose new restrictionson diversity education under the guise of banning the teaching of critical race theory.

How it happened: In the letter posted to Twitter, Sprunica Elementary School counselor Benjamin White wrote that he will be teaching lessons related to "equity, caring, and understanding differences" in the next two weeks.

The latest: Brown County Schools Superintendent Emily Tracy acknowledged the letter in a message to students, families and staff on Wednesday.

Worth noting: The Indiana House has already passed a bill to restrict what teachers are allowed to say about race, politics and history in the classroom, IndyStar reports. The legislation is now with the state Senate.

The big picture: Since last year, 14 states have imposed such restrictions through legislation, executive actions or commission votes,an Education Week analysis found.

What they're saying:"Its so anti-intellectual. Its so rigidly closed. Its almost an effort to keep people walled off from the past," Yale historian David Blight told Axios after hearing about the Indiana opt-out controversy.

Link:

Indiana school's reported Black History Month opt-out option draws ire - Axios

February is Black History Month.

Why do we need Black History Month? Why dont we set aside special occasions to observe the history of other ethnicities in our country?

My answer to this question is that Black history tells a uniquely important story in our nation. It is a story that no other race or ethnicity shares. It is a story that must be grasped and understood if we are to understand our country as a whole, where it has been and where it needs to go.

Unique among a large percentage of Black Americans is a history in which their ancestors did not choose to come to America. They were brought here by force and enslaved. No other ethnicity shares a history in which their ancestors did not come here by choice.

According to the 1790 Census of the United States, of a population of 3,893,635, 17.8%, or a total of 694,280, were slaves.

In a nation founded on the principle of human liberty, almost one-fifth of the population were slaves. How should we understand this?

Some want to tell us that slavery is not just a stain on American history but that it defines America and American history. That America is a nation founded in racism and evil and that the task today is to reinvent and recreate the nation.

This is what wokeness and DEI diversity, equity and inclusion programming is about.

Those who have declared that the nation was evil at its birth now want to seize control and put themselves in charge of deciding what it should be about and what it should look like.

This is a great and dangerous distortion, doomed to add on to, not erase, the sin at Americas founding.

The proclamation from the White House noting National Black History Month 2022 says, Our nation was founded on an idea: that all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated with equal dignity throughout our lives.

This, I think, is false.

Our nation was not founded on an idea. An idea is a product of thought.

When slave trader John Newton, composer of the haunting hymn Amazing Grace, had the horrible confrontation with himself, realizing the grave sin he had committed, he wrote I was lost, but now Im found. / Was blind, but now I see.

Newton did not discover he had a bad idea and decide to replace it with a better idea.

He realized that there is truth in the world, which he gravely violated.

The ideals upon which our nation was founded were rooted in divine principles and recognition that all are created equal because all are the product of the same Creator.

It is for this reason that those who signed the Declaration of Independence concluded saying, With a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

Sacred is not about ideas. Sacred is about faith and divine truth.

The presence of slavery at our nations founding was about Mans ability and willingness to sin.

Slavery was the symptom, not the cause.

Black History is documentation that even in a great nation, sin was present.

The Creator gave man the ability to choose. This is why freedom is important. Men cannot be denied their ability to choose. But they also cannot escape their responsibility to choose good over evil.

This is the lesson we must learn from Black History.

We will not live right, we will not treat our neighbors right, until we recognize that we all are the results of the same Creator.

America is in crisis today because recognition of that Creator has been widely purged.

And like the plantation owners that usurped truth, so today we have a new generation of usurpers.

This is what we must recognize and fix.

Star Parker is a nationally syndicated columnist.

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Learning the lessons of Black history | News, Sports, Jobs - Marshalltown Times Republican

This past weekend, the Houston Astros made Major League Baseball history by promoting the first Dominican-born conditioning coach Hazael Wessin.

After eight seasons in the minor leagues, Wessin has been promoted to the major-league staff as an assistant strength and conditioning coach.

Wessin has worked as a Latin America coordinator, and as a strength coach in the Dominican Summer League, Class-A, Class-A Advanced and Triple-A for Houston. His promotion comes a month after the Astros lost athletic trainer Lee Meyers to the Miami Marlins.

With eight minor-league seasons behind him, Wessin had nothing but gratitude in his announcement on Instagram.

Thanks to all the people who believed in me when not a lot of people did, Wessin said via Instagram. Carlos Alfonso, Geremias Guzman, Brendan Verner, Bill Firkus and Rachel Balkovec. Ill always be thankful to each one of you. Thanks to all my former players at the Minor League Level because of you guys Im the coach Im today.

Want your voice heard? Join theClimbing Tal's Hill team!

Many former and present Astros prospects and players were excited for Wessins next step, including Robel Garcia, Freudis Nova, Alex De Goti, Garrett Stubbs, Enoli Paredes, Jose Siri and Cristian Javier.

Wessin worked with all these players, mostly at the Triple-A level this past season. He also followed the team during the postseason, as players and staff members of minor-league clubs joined the Astros in October.

These players were the first to congratulate Wessin on social media, while current staff at different minor-league levels reached out as well.

Nothing but hard work, discipline, attitude and trust in yourself are key for getting your dream to become real, DSL Astros strength and conditioning coachGeremias Guzman said to Wessin via Instagram.

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Astros make MLB history with staff promotion - Climbing Tal's Hill

The Chicago Bulls will enter the All-Star break 38-21 and on a five-game win streak thanks to Wednesdays 125-118 victory over the Sacramento Kings.

Here are 10 observations:

1.In a development that should surprise no one, this one was a shootout. The Bulls scored 125 points, shot 50 percent (for an NBA-high 23rd time this season) and committed just eight turnovers, yet this one hung in the balance until the final minutes of the fourth quarter because the Kings shot 51.2 percent and 12-for-30 from 3-point range.

2.DeMar DeRozan made NBA history with his seventh straight game of 35 or more points on 50 percent or better shooting, breaking the record previously set by Wilt Chamberlain in 1960-61 and 1963.

To put it precisely, DeRozan notched 38 points on 16-for-27 shooting to lead the charge against Sacramento. And, as has become a regular occurrence, he was at his best down the stretch, notching 12 points in the fourth quarter.

3.This must also be noted: Early in the period, as he faced double-teams on every ball-screen and sometimes in isolation, DeRozan consistently made the right read as a facilitator. In addition to those 12 fourth-quarter points, he handed out three of his six assists in the final frame. Hes now averaging 5.2 assists per game on the season, and 5.6 during the 35-point/50-percent shooting streak.

4.Coby White was brilliant yet again in what the Bulls hope is his last start in place of Zach LaVine for the time being.

Not only did White continue his recent hot streak of scoring posting a season-high 31 points he also continued to display the leap as a decision-maker he has made in his third NBA season, handing out six assists against one turnover. Five of those dimes came in the first half as he leveraged a handful of drives and closeout attacks into scoring opportunities for others.

White also drained a season-high-tying six 3-pointers for the second time in four games three in the fourth quarter deftly utilizing shot fakes and strategic spot-ups off his double-teamed teammates to free himself up. He's now hit 21 3s in his last four games, and with a 63.6 percent conversion rate.

5.Nikola Vuevi secured his 34th double-double of the season with a last-second rebound, bringing his final stat line to 21 points, 10 rebounds and three assists. He enters the break averaging 22.9 points, 12.8 rebounds and four assists in his last 14 games.

6.Javonte Green was questionable much of the day with a sprained ankle, but the Bulls are happy he made it onto the floor. Green scored in double-figures for the eighth time in 13 games since returning from a groin strain on Jan. 24, notching 15 points and making six of his seven field-goal attempts.

Again, the key to Greens success was finding gaps to cut through and spot up in, to the tune of 3-for-4 3-point shooting around his higher-gravity teammates. Green had one game in his NBA career with three made 3s entering this season, but now has two in his last three appearances.

7.Its beating a dead horse at this point, but the decimated nature of the Bulls bench must be noted. Still without LaVine, Lonzo Ball, Alex Caruso and Patrick Williams, the teams reserve group of Troy Brown Jr., Derrick Jones Jr., Matt Thomas and Tony Bradley combined for just eight points on 2-for-12 shooting, including a third 0-fer from Brown Jr. (0-for-5) in his last four games.

It helped, then, that each of the Bulls starters cracked double-figures, with Ayo Dosunmu the low man at 12 points to go with six rebounds, six assists and two steals.

8.The 3-pointer that DeAaron Fox banked in just after the first-quarter buzzer may have gotten waved off, but the fact that it went in at all spoke to his hot start. He scored a game-high 14 points (on 6-for-8 shooting, 2-for-3 from 3) in the opening period, dicing the Bulls up on dribble-drives and pull-up jumpers throughout. He hardly slowed down from there, finishing with 33 points and nine dimes.

9.Dosunmu had his share of rookie moments checking Fox and committed four turnovers, including a head-scratcher on a late inbounds play with the games outcome decided.

That said, he also made the defensive play of the game with this chasedown block on Donte DiVincenzo:

10.LaVine joined the Bulls bench in street clothes for the second half, a good sign after Donovan told reporters pregame that LaVine's visit with a Los Angeles knee specialist went very well, and hes cleared to return when the Bulls reconvene after the All-Star break. LaVine is now bound for Cleveland:

Next up for the Bulls: A week off, before returning next Thursday at home against the Hawks.

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10 observations: DeRozan makes history in win over Kings - NBC Sports Chicago

There are a variety of events to choose from throughout the rest of the month. Some can also be attended virtually.

ST. LOUIS The Missouri History Museum's Black History Month program series starts Thursday, and there are several events to choose from throughout the rest of the month.

Most events are in person, but some can also be attended virtually. Click the links in the descriptions below for more information about the events, including time and if there are any capacity limits.

Thursday, Feb. 17: The Legacy of Homer G Philips HospitalYou'll learn more about the hospital and hear from a panel of contemporary Black medical practitioners about their experience in the profession today. Click here for more.

Friday, Feb. 18 - Saturday, Feb. 19: K-12 History Exploration Days "Protests and Progress: St. Louis Neighborhoods"This event will look at how neighborhoods in St. Louis have changed throughout the years. It'll include a photo collection of the historic Black neighborhood Mill Creek Valley, which was demolished in the mid-20th Century, and interactive drop-in stations.Click here for more.

Friday, Feb. 18: Storytelling in the Museum (ages 2-11) "Protests and Community Storytelling"This storytelling event will teach kids about "community, protest, and St. Louis neighborhoods through childrens books." There's also a special storytelling session on Zoom as well.Click here for more details.

Thursday, Feb. 24: Race, Violence, and Justice: The Mink Slide SalonSt. Louis filmmaker Owen K. Woodard will show a clip from his film "The Mink Slide" and Dr. Geoff Ward from Washington University will talk about "racial violence within American history, how it relates to Missouris history, and how reconciliation and healing can begin."Click here for more details.

Friday, March 4: St. Louis Regional STEAMaster Competition 2022Find out who the next STEAMaster of St. Louis is. This competition takes a new approach to science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) education. Students will show their knowledge through rap or poetry.Click here for more details.

For a full list of events and details, click here.

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Here's what's going on at the Missouri History Museum for Black History Month - KSDK.com

SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) A Sarasota teacher dresses up as prominent African-Americans whove made history to teach her students Black history lessons.

Teidra Everett is a second grade teacher at Bay Haven Elementary School. She has taught there for two years, making it a point to educate her students about Black history. And in February, she gets really creative!

They come in excited like who is she? Who are you? Everett said.

Everett has dressed up as Ida B. Wells, Queen Latifah, Whitney Houston, Rosa Parks, Mae Jemison and many more.

Theyre going to remember she dressed up as this person and this person did that versus just reading it from a book, she said.

Everett creates PowerPoints and videos for the students about each person she dresses up as. The students keep a journal and are quizzed in March.

I dont want them to lack compassion for other peoples situations or their hardships, Everett said. I want to be able to connect on that level and I want my students to grow and be able to connect with people and not just dismiss them because they havent experienced it.

Everett is the only African American teacher at Bay Haven. She hopes other teachers, regardless of their race, will put more effort into teaching Black history.

I would like for this to be a district wide thing where people are not afraid to be expressive because African American history is American history, so it shouldnt be something youre afraid to talk about or something you dont honor because it is who we are as people, she said.

Even though Everett has been at Bay Haven for two years, she has been dressing up for Black history lessons for five years. She said she is a firm believer of being the change you want to see in the world. She hopes her efforts inspire other educators.

Continued here:

Sarasota teacher gets creative with Black history lessons - WFLA