A theme that’s emerged in The Conversation Canada’s "Back-to-School" series is the importance of fostering creativity in our kids as society faces a huge technological revolution that will forever alter how we work and live.

Earlier this week we had a piece on so-called makerspaces, and today we have a passionate argument from a University of British Columbia academic about the utter necessity of encouraging creativity in schools. “Creativity is the novelty-generating component of cultural evolution,” writes Prof. Liane Gabora, an associate professor of psychology and creative studies. “As in any kind of evolutionary process, novelty must be balanced by preservation.”

Related to that theme, we also have a comprehensive piece on what precisely that technological revolution is going to look like in our cities, where many more of us will live in the future – and whether we’re ready for it. Sylvie Albert, dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Winnipeg, says we’ve finally stopped talking about what’s coming, and now we’re preparing for it.

And saving the weirdest for last …. Got milk? So, apparently, do the neo-Nazis. That’s right, good old apparently wholesome milk has become a symbol for neo-Nazis due largely to the fact that descendants of northern Europeans do not suffer from lactose-intolerance the way African-Americans, Latinos and Asians do. Andrea Freeman, a Toronto-born assistant law professor at the University of Hawaii, has researched the trend, and her analysis for The Conversation Canada is both fascinating and disturbing.