Monday, May 11, 2009

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Senate Guru: PA-Sen: Netroots Overwhelmingly Support a Draft Sestak Effort Top
{ First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru . } As many of you know, over the last five days, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee , in partnership with a number of progressive organizations and blogs including Senate Guru , asked those in the netroots, "Should a Draft Sestak movement be created to take on Sen. Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Democratic primary?" The results are in and they are overwhelming. 85% of Pennsylvanian respondents and 86% of respondents nationally want Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak to challenge Arlen Specter in the 2010 Democratic Senate primary. The poll has even gotten the attention of Congressman Sestak, as the PCCC points out: "I am honored that so many of you took the time to vote in the recent grassroots Straw Poll. Let me tell you, I and many others were paying attention. If I decide to run it will be in large measure because of the grassroots energy of so many people like you. Until I and my family make that decision, please accept my thanks and my best wishes as you continue be active participants in our people-powered democracy. Thank you so very much!" Due to such an overwhelming response, a Draft Sestak Fund has been created on ActBlue. To contribute and further encourage Congressman Sestak to enter the race, click on the image below: If you need any additional motivation to contribute to this effort to draft a real Democrat to oppose Specter in the primary, consider Specter's actions since announcing his Party switch: 1) Specter opposed the Obama budget. 2) Specter opposed the "cramdown" mortgage/bankruptcy reform, siding with banks over families. 3) Specter reiterated his opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act. 4) Specter reiterated his opposition to President Obama's nomination of Dawn Johnsen to the Office of Legal Counsel. 5) Specter announced his support for Republican Norm Coleman over Democratic Senator-elect Al Franken in Minnesota's Senate race. 6) Specter promoted a website that appeared to raise money for cancer research but, in actuality, simply raised money for his campaign. 7) Specter denied reports that he told President Obama that he would be a "loyal Democrat" despite multiple reporters sticking to their story . The netroots have displayed overwhelming support for Congressman Sestak to take on recently-Republican Arlen Specter. Help the effort by contributing to the Draft Sestak Fund . More on Arlen Specter
 
WorldFocus.org: Drug War Hurts Many Bolivian Farmers Who Rely On The Coca Plant Top
For more than 30 years, a drug war was waged in Bolivia with the help of the U.S. drug enforcement administration. Bolivia's Yungas region is one of the world's leading sources of the coca plant -- the key ingredient in the production of cocaine. But Bolivia's leftist leader, Evo Morales -- himself a former coca farmer -- recently expelled U.S. drug enforcement agents from the country. As Worldfocus' Ivette Feliciano, Bryan Myers and Ara Ayer discovered, many impoverished Bolivians depend on the coca plant for their livelihood. Also, pass through a drug checkpoint in Bolivia's mountains (web original video). WATCH: See more from WorldFocus. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Latin America
 
Waylon Lewis: The Cove: an "eco-thriller" halfway between Flipper and The Bourne Identity. Top
Pass it on: The Cove may be the best, most worthwhile yet thoroughly entertaining movie you haven't seen yet. Winner of the Sundance 2009 Audience Award, The Cove is an "eco-thriller" documentary via Lionsgate, produced by a bunch of friends and acquaintances including filmmaker, Louie Psihoyos, right here in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado. As always, independent media such as this film is only as powerful as the support we give it. If you haven't seen it yet, be sure to find a theater near you where it's playing. If you have seen it, email this on to your friends and encourage 'em to check it out. On making the film: " We didn't need filmmakers, we needed pirates." ~ Louis Psihoyos Click above for trailer. A few photos: For more amazing photos, click the "raw dolphin menu" photo below: "Sundance is known for documentaries. But this baby, a cross between Flipper and The Bourne Identity, packed the heat. Using technology borrowed from George Lucas' ILM, an intrepid America crew slips into Japan and nails the bad guys for doing terrible things to dolphins." ~ Rolling Stone magazine. Trailer: "Don't make a movie in the water with animals in a secret cove where people want to kill you." Via the Sundance Channel: Interview via a Boulder, Colorado-based pal o'mine...with filmmaker Louie Psihoyos: Louie, tell us a bit about your film, The Cove. Louie Psihoyos: The film is about bringing together a team of activists: surfers, world champion freedivers, tech specialists, using high tech surveillance gear, military grade thermal cameras, remote-controlled aerial drones, to penetrate a secret cove in Japan that hides some of Japan's darkest secrets. We also had the help of George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic (now Kerner Optical) to create special "rock cams" to hide high definition cameras and microphones in the cove where we wanted to shoot--the Japanese police and whalers didn't want us to get in and capture footage of what happens in the cove, so we had to go totally covert. Rolling Stone Magazine said it was like the "Bourne Identity meets Flipper." That's a pretty good description. I like to think it was the result of watching too many James Bond movies and Jacques Cousteau specials as a child. It's an eco-thriller - it's a documentary but it plays like a thriller. Still, it was mostly made right here in Boulder--that's why it was important to do a screening locally, in the Boulder Theater. Our cast and crew have been great. Their friends and families here will have a chance to see the film in a theater well ahead of the rest of the country. The theatrical release is set for July? Yes, several art house theaters in New York and LA. Then it will roll out to about 35-40 of the top markets. Basically if you live on the coasts and have large skyscraper in your city you can see The Cove this summer. For the smaller markets we will have to see what the box-office numbers do nationally to see if it can break out further. What we have going for us is that it's a great word of mouth film, impossible to forget and people can't stop talking about it for days after they've seen it. There are images and scenes in the movie that will burn your retinas forever. It's the most beautiful movie you will ever see and perhaps the most terrifying. How have audiences responded? Ever since we won the audience award at Sundance we have been playing to sold out houses and standing ovations on the festival circuit. We have been picked up by Lionsgate/Roadside Attractions domestically and international distribution through The Works. It's a tough market right now for indie films, and we feel very fortunate to have so much interest. We already licensed it to Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It hasn't been announced but one of my favorite film makers in the world is picking it up for France, Luc Besson who did The Big Blue, The Professional and Taken. When we show it in Cannes next week, out of competition, the announcement should perk up the ears of every foreign distributor. We have been invited to screen at dozens of film festivals around the world and at this point we need to be pretty selective, we could spend every day of the next year waking up in a new town. Who financed the Film? My dive buddy Jim Clark, who was the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape and WebMd was the main backer. "He's a serial entrepreneur who now is giving back because he's seeing that we're running out of time to fix the problems that are building up in the environment." Our friend Richard Schaden, who has been my attorney for more than a decade got behind the project and gave us the backing for P & A (Prints and advertising) so that if the film breaks out, our non-profit stands to keep most of the back-end. Who was the principal talent in Boulder? Paula Dupre Pesman has been our producer from day 1. She worked in Hollywood for years with the director Chris Columbus who did the Harry Potter series, Home Alone, Mrs., Doubtfire, she kept us organized and on track along with Olivia Ahnemann who was a line producer. I like to think of them as the grown ups. Joe Chisholm was our production manager, kept track of hundreds of cases of gear, Charles Hambleton, co-owner of the Fox Theater was in charge of Clandestine Operations, most of our work in Japan was done at night, Cinematographers Brook Aitken and Eric Abramson are seasoned pros. Editors Mike Scalisi, Miles Hubley and Tommy White and Russ Wiltse were top notch. My wife Viki did press releases and edits my work into English. Our aerial crew was terrific. James Mac and David Sundstrom were world class. James Mac builds components for satellites at CU and it was his first time out of the country, and he's flying remote controlled helicopters with high def cameras attached into the secret cove - he has a really warped idea of foreign travel now. What do you hope happens as a result of your film? I would say that we have a different mission from most films. We're not just trying to put butts in the seats, which is a part of it. We are trying to achieve something. The Cove is the first product of our non-profit company, Oceanic Preservation Society, OPS. "We have mission statement, 'We're not trying to save the whole planet, just 70% of it.'" With The Cove we are trying to accomplish several things. We're trying to raise awareness about what's going on in the oceans. Dolphins, who have bigger brains of our own, they are sentient gregarious creatures, and we're capturing them by the thousands to perform stupid tricks for out amusement. I think that says a lot more about our own intelligence than it does theirs. Also, we are killing them for their meat because we are running out of food. Let's look at that. And the dolphin meat, and tuna meat, and almost all large, long living fish are toxic, and not just a little . Some are off the charts. Some of the most expensive sushi is the worst for your health. I used to eat a lot of sushi and large fish but as a result of doing the film I found out that I had mercury poisoning. "I had to stop eating most fish. And that's because of us." Human activity, burning of fossil fuels like coal is ending up in their meat and we are not just damaging them but damaging the humans that consume them. Mercury has a half-life in the human body of about 70-90 days so after about two years my mercury levels came down to tolerable levels. What's next? After this, we continue to work the domestic film festival circuit. Soon, we have the international screenings coming up. I try to give intros and Q & A for most festivals when I can. It seems that most viewers are curious, "How did you get the footage?" "Were you worried for your safety?" And of course the common refrain, "What can I do to help?" It seems that when a film is finished, you are only halfway there. We are only now at the halfway point. More videos: Skip to 1:11: Amazing story around 1:11: Bonus videos. Pretty touching at 1:30, Hayden Panettiere: This is Graphic. If you can watch all of it and eat sushi within the same 24 hours, I'll be surprised. Helps contextualize why Sea World and others would boycott Rick O'Barry. Matt Damon narrates:
 
Beth Shulman: What Working Mothers Needed this Mother's Day Top
For generations, Americans shared the belief that if you worked hard, you could take care of yourself and your family and move into the middle class. In light of the current economic crisis, and recent data showing that wages have remained stagnant despite increased worker productivity, it's clear that this promise has been broken. In furtherance of our recent Mother's Day celebration, it is imperative that we think of solutions to make the middle class dream possible for working mothers once again. Lawmakers recently extended a helping hand to get our nation's workers back on their feet by introducing the Employee Free Choice Act. This legislation, strongly backed by President Obama and a majority in Congress, would make it easier for workers to join unions if they so desire, giving working mothers a chance to get ahead. The legislation couldn't come at a more critical time. As families continue to witness loved ones lose jobs in this recession, many married women are now finding themselves as the sole breadwinners for their households. Countless others who are single also are responsible for providing for their families, and are being squeezed by stagnant wages, increased expenses, and fewer opportunities. According to the Center for American Progress, women now account for a larger share of those employed because the industries dominated by male workers have been losing jobs at a faster pace. But all too often, women aren't making enough to support their families. Women make up 60 percent of the low-wage workforce, and often occupy the lower rungs within this sector. What's more, since women continue to bear the primary responsibility for child care, elder care, and care for disabled relatives, and are more likely to be custodial single parents, they are often forced to reduce their work hours, take breaks from employment, or avoid jobs requiring work schedules that would clash with their critical family responsibilities. This leaves many with no choice but to take low-wage jobs. Combined with the grim reality that workers in low-wage jobs are the least likely to be provided health care coverage, sick pay, paid time off, family leave, or retirement benefits, many working mothers are barely making ends meet. For these workers, union membership is a means to get out of low-wage jobs and into the middle class. Union membership increases womens' wages by an average of 11 percent (or about $2 per hour) compared with women in similar non-union jobs, according to a recent report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. They are also about 19 percent more likely to have employer-provided health insurance and about 25 percent more likely to have an employer-provided pension. Unions are playing a role similar to the one they have played before -- when they turned the once low-paid, dirty, dangerous factory work into the good jobs of the mid 20th century. Workers organizing through unions raised wages and brought paid leave, health benefits, and retirement to these initially "bad" manufacturing jobs, helping transform them into solid middle-class positions from which generations raised families, bought homes, and put their children through college. Unfortunately, too many barriers to having a union exist, preventing us from creating the good jobs of the 21st century. The Employee Free Choice Act will help curb this problem, by giving workers a direct path to form unions so they can bargain for better wages, benefits, and job security. Lawmakers must now act quickly to pass this important legislation and help remove the obstacles that keep millions of women in dead-end, low-wage jobs. Working moms deserve a level playing field and an economy that works for everyone again. More on Economy
 
Neal Wolin, Top Geithner Pick, Joins The March From Wall Street To Treasury Top
As Dick Durbin watched his effort to stave off home foreclosures get slaughtered in the Senate by bank lobbyists earlier this month, he concluded that the financial industry "frankly owns the place." They obtained that ownership partly through tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to members of both parties. But they also buy the staff, a crucial investment when a few words deep in the text of a bill can mean billions to an industry. Staffers aren't bought outright with manila envelopes filled with cash. Instead, they see for themselves what fruit awaits a staffer loyal to the banking industry. And then they return to lawmaking. On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee takes up the nomination of Neal Wolin to be Timothy Geithner's number two at the Treasury Department. During the Clinton administration, Wolin worked under Larry Summers as the Treasury Department's top lawyer, where he helped write the deregulation bill -- Gramm-Leach-Bliley -- that undid Depression-era reforms and is partly blamed for the financial meltdown. The Bush years were good to Wolin, who became head of the lobby shop at Hartford Financial Services Group, where, according to the company website, he "oversaw the company's legal, government affairs, [and] corporate relations." Now Geithner wants him back in the administration. "Neal wasn't on Wall Street. He was in the insurance industry," said Treasury spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter in an e-mail. He'll join Mark Patterson, Geithner's chief of staff, a former top lobbyist with Goldman Sachs. (Cutter points out that Patterson also worked for former senator Tom Daschle. "He's got an extensive policy career," Cutter writes.) Goldman Sachs didn't have to look far for a lobbyist to replace Patterson. It tapped Michael Paese, who has been a top lobbyist for the past year for the Wall Street trade group SIFMA -- the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association. A Goldman spokesperson confirmed the Paese hiring but declined to comment further. Before joining the bankers' lobby, Paese wrote laws for Democratic Rep. Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee. In 2007, he and Rick Delfin, another Democratic committee aide, worked closely with SIFMA to neuter a bill aimed at preventing banks from bundling up and selling fraudulent, subprime loans, according to Business Week (jump to page four) and confirmed by the Huffington Post. The changes to the bill requested by SIFMA effectively gave banks operating in the "secondary market" a get-out-of-jail-free card for making, bundling and selling bad loans. The bill was watered down and the market for the securitized loans was allowed to continue as it was. The secondary market was almost completely exempted from rules governing liability for bogus loans. It is the securitization process that prevents homeowners from selling their home for less than is owed on it, forcing them into foreclosure instead. Securitized loans are at the very heart of the financial collapse, as the process allowed banks to shed responsibility for bad loans by bundling them and shipping them off. After their work on SIFMA's bill, Delfin and Paese went to work for SIFMA. Often in Congress it is the prospect of future riches -- rather than money already delivered -- that can have the most impact. It's a drunken conga line snaking through the party, starting at the staff level, shuffling to K Street and then shaking it over the White House. All a staffer needs to do is get up and dance. "We are grateful for the opportunity to have provided insight and input throughout the legislative process," Marc Lackritz, SIFMA president and CEO, said before the vote on the bill. Regrettably, he said, he still couldn't support it, because it might cramp the subprime lending market. "The bill could severely restrict home loans for a segment of consumers striving to reach the American dream of home ownership," he said. "Firms may choose to abandon the market for making loans to individuals with less than perfect credit -- an end result that would restrict credit to the very borrowers this legislation aims to help. It's regrettable that such a well-intentioned bill, if made law, could have the adverse effect of constraining the mortgage credit market, making it harder for families to own their own home." The bill was a total failure and led to but a handful of mortgage modifications. It did not stop or even slow the subprime lending market, which continued to burn hotly, right up until it scorched the global economy. After it passed a similar but undeniably tougher mortgage reform bill last week, the House Financial Services Committee patted itself on the back , saying that if "Congress had enacted these long overdue mortgage lending reforms, which Democrats have been advocating since 1999, the subprime lending meltdown could have been avoided altogether." But the Center for Responsible Lending, in an otherwise laudatory press release, pooh-poohed the bill for coming up short on securitization. The bill "does not sufficiently fix the misalignment of incentives throughout the mortgage market that led to the current crisis," it said. As they did at the last dance, the industry found a way to carve out generous exemptions for itself. "Moreover, in some very important ways, the bill exempts from its scope those loans that have been bundled into mortgage-backed securities -- the very loans that are proving most problematic as we try to address the foreclosure crisis." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Gerald Bracey: On Education, the Obama Administration Veers Off Course Top
How can the Obama administration get it right in education when its data are all wrong and its assumptions about its faulty data are flawed? President Obama told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, "8th graders have fallen to 9th place." That statistic comes from the 2008 round of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. It's true. But there were 45 nations in the study so being in 9th place means being ahead of 36. More important, when TIMSS first began in 1995, American eighth graders finished 28th among 41 nations. Over 13 years, we have "fallen" up 19 ranks. Many would consider that extraordinary progress. The President also said, "Only one third of our thirteen- and fourteen-year olds are reading as well as they should." This is a finding from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). NAEP reports results in terms of the percent attaining the Basic, Proficient, and Advanced levels. It is true that only about one third of American 13- and 14-year olds reach the Proficient level. Is this awful? One study asked, How many students in other countries would reach this level? The answer for Sweden was, about one third. Sweden scored higher than any of the other 35 nations in the study. Another investigation asked the same question about NAEP math and science in 45 countries. Only five nations would have small majorities of their students scoring at the Proficient level in mathematics and only two would clear that barrier in science. "Proficient," as defined by NAEP, is something that very few students in any country can attain. NAEP data distort our perceptions of achievement. We can see this from a recent study from the U. S Department of Education wherein 80% of high school seniors who scored at the NAEP Basic level in mathematics attended 2- or 4-year institutions of higher education. School critics and the public interpret "Basic" as "illiterate" in reading and "can't calculate" in math. Yet 49 percent of the students scoring at the Basic level attained a bachelor's degree and another 9 percent received an associate's degree. The NAEP achievement levels do not reflect the true achievement of American students. According to the President, "Of the 30 fastest growing occupations in America, half require a bachelor's degree or more." First off, that means that half do not require even a bachelor's. More important, the fastest growing occupations never account for many jobs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the occupations accounting for most jobs are low-paying service sector jobs. Retail sales alone accounts for more jobs than the top ten fastest growing jobs combined. For every systems analyst Microsoft lusts after, Wal-Mart and other retailers put about 15 sales associates on the floor. Here are the occupations the Bureau projected as those with the most jobs from 2006 to 2016: retail sales, cashiers, office clerks, registered nurses, janitors and cleaners, bookkeeping clerks, waiters and waitresses, food preparers and servers, customer service representatives, and truck and tractor drivers. Shouldn't we focus at least in part on providing these tens of millions with living wages and health benefits? Turning his attention to standards, the President contended, "Today's system of fifty different benchmarks for academic success means fourth-graders in Mississippi are scoring nearly 70 points lower than students in Wyoming and getting the same grade." The only test that students in Wyoming and Mississippi share in common is NAEP. In 2007, Wyoming's fourth graders score 225 on NAEP reading and Mississippi 4th graders 208. That is a big difference on the NAEP scale, but it's 17 points, not 70. No matter how Wyoming and Mississippi might differ, does the difference come, as the President asserts, from the difference in the two states' educational standards? Perhaps, but I'd put my money more on poverty. Thirty percent of public school children in Wyoming are eligible for free or reduced price lunches. In Mississippi, it's 68 percent. And, as the President himself observed, "a stubborn gap persists between how well white students are doing compared to their African American and Latino classmates." Only 1.5 percent of Wyoming's public school students are African American. In Mississippi, the figure is 50.8 percent. Everyone agrees that American education can be improved and should be improved, especially in areas of high poverty. But the right policies and right programs cannot issue from bad data and faulty assumptions.
 
Jim Selman: Youthful Idealism and Boomer Resignation: Two Sides of the Same Coin Top
There was a wonderful article in USA Today by our new First Lady extolling the importance of 'youthful idealism' in these uncertain times. I couldn't agree with her more and am happy to see her taking on this kind of generational motivation as part of her platform on behalf of the new Administration. Her call brings to mind JFK's challenge to our generation: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." This appeal to our higher selves and the innate desire to contribute is all too often lost in a sea of cynical media pundits and talk-radio blowhards more interested in taking cheap shots to advance their short-term ratings than in helping to create a future we can all be proud of. I wonder what would be possible if we Boomers could recall and reconnect with how we felt on that cold January day in 1960 when we believed the future was up to us. What could be accomplished if we shared our own idealism with our children and grandchildren? What if we responded to Michelle's challenge by putting their (and our) idealism to work through opportunities opening under the new Serve America Act? However, idealism -- at any age -- is only a dream without action. The enemy of idealism is resignation and the belief that we don't and can't make a difference. Margaret Meade said that we should "never underestimate the power of the individual or a small group of people to change the world, indeed that is the only way it ever happens". Barack Obama was elected on a promise of change. Michelle is now restating the obvious: the president can't change anything unless and until we the people take responsibility for the way things are, commit ourselves to some course of action, and become involved in whatever ways are available to us. Eric Utne, founder of the Utne Reader , has launched a campaign to transform 'olders' into Elders and to bring 'olders and youngers' together. The Eldering Institute is working to build new practices and forums for intergenerational collaboration on many of our intractable problems. Paul Hawkins in his book Blessed Unrest pointed to millions of organizations committed to achieving breakthroughs in environmental sustainability and social justice. The signs are there. The young and the old are moving and (maybe for the first time in a long time) they are beginning to move together to create a world that works for everyone. Is this idealistic? Absolutely. Now is the time for our generation to complete what we started in the 1960s, and to do it hand in hand with today's youth. More on Barack Obama
 
Lynn Harris: Bully for Who? Top
The current most popular emailed story at NYTimes.com: "Backlash: Women Bullying Women at Work." A new survey has apparently revealed that "a good 40 percent of [workplace] bullies are women. And that unlike their male counterparts, they" -- the Times notes AnimalPlanetarily-- "prefer their own kind," targeting other women over 70 percent of the time. (Source: The Workplace Bullying Institute, which, you'll forgive me, sounds like the place where bullies go for board certification.) "In the name of Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem," wails the piece, "what is going on here?" Sorry, but this article makes me want to go out and give someone an atomic wedgie. While it's passed off as "news" -- this time, natch, something about the recession making people extra ornery -- this supposedly revelatory mean-girls meme gets trotted out at least annually, hung on any news hook handy. (Cf., The Devil Wears Prada, etc. etc.) My lovely personal assistant, Miss Lexis Nexis, easily found me numerous examples of essentially the same story, starting in 1997. Back in 2000, I had a bit of a bad breakup with a women's company we'll call Moxygen Edia. Frequently, when people heard the gory deets, they'd say, "Really? I'm so surprised that would happen at a women's company ." Me, I'm so tired of the expectation that women = nice and feminism = "sisterhood" and of this "Sorry, Steinem!" surprise when the opposite is reported to be the case. 'Cause you know what? Roughly half of people are women, and at least one-third people are assholes. So yeah, at some point, ladies -- mathematically speaking -- you're bound to work with a beeyotch. That's the unfortunate reality of the workplace, not some sad failure of feminism. The piece, rightly, does mention the unrealistic, and unresolvable, expectations of women in leadership roles: "If women business leaders act consistent with gender stereotypes, they are considered too soft," the research group Catalyst has found. "If they go against gender stereotypes, they are considered too tough." But they're always good for a headline, huh? We might not like that bully at work, but in the popular imagination, she'll always have a job: the manager who backstabs her way to the middle, the bitch who boils the bunny in the office coffeepot. Call me "nurturing," but I'd rather read more about what people are doing to make workplaces nicer for everyone.
 
Mark Pasetsky: Boosting Magazine Sales? It's About the Covers! Top
Jonathan Newhouse, the chairman of Condé Nast International spoke at the FIPP World Magazine Congress in London, and provided his answer to boosting magazine sales. He says, it's "the same as it has always been. Make a great magazine. Dazzle your readers, inform them, inspire them and grip their imagination. Connect to their hearts and their minds. Do it with conviction and with emotion. Convey the same values with a website, with a weekend, with an event or an experience which engages them. Love your readers (and your advertisers) and they will love you back." But, Mr. Newhouse misses the biggest blunder being made month after month. It's the cover and the interviews featured in these magazines! The Covers & Interviews are Boring! Check out this cover of InStyle UK or this cover from Glamour or UK's She Magazine. Many editors are sticking to the same-old, same-old approach when it comes to creating a monthly magazine cover. The photos on the cover often look like they've been photo shopped for hours and sometimes don't even look like the stars. The magazines use cover lines that don't capture the reader when they are making that impulse purchase. However, I'm not surprised that the editors feature these less than intriguing cover lines. Monthlies in Bed with Celebrities and Publicists It's no secret that the monthly magazines continue to be in bed with the celebrities as well as the publicists. In order for a magazine to line-up a big star, many times the editors must "obey" the list of commands provided by the publicists. In the end, many of the inside articles read like a trade piece on the star. That's a big problem because readers want to know the personal side of their favorite celebrities. It's even a bigger problem for an editor who is trying to sell the story on the cover! Can you really write a juicy cover line based on a star's upcoming flick? I don't think so. In some cases, celebrities do dish about their personal lives - but not enough in this weekly tabloid age and 24/7 news cycle. The Real Solution It's time for the monthlies to engage in much more personal interviews with the stars and drop the age old agreement they have with publicists. In the end, the stars are just as dependent on appearing on these covers and will do what they have to do to market their films. And, that's how you'll boost sales. Read more about covers at CoverAwards.
 
David Holtgrave: To End America's AIDS Crisis, Reinvest in Prevention Top
For the past decade, America's response to its domestic AIDS epidemic has stalled, due to declining resources and attention at all levels. Last month, HIV advocates thought the tide was finally turning when, in its first domestic action on AIDS, the Obama administration and the CDC announced a $45 million, five-year communication campaign to put HIV/AIDS back on America's radar. A key theme: Every 9½ minutes, another person in the U.S. becomes infected with HIV. But last Thursday President Obama released a deeply disappointing 2010 budget proposal with only a small increase in domestic HIV prevention funding. The $53 million in new funds requested of Congress is less than one-tenth of what is needed to drive down HIV infection rates in the United States, and is even less than President Bush's most recent annual requests to Congress. We learned last year that the number of Americans becoming infected with HIV is far higher than previously known -- about 56,000 per year. HIV continues to take a disproportionate toll on African American communities, and HIV infections have been increasing at an alarming pace among gay and bisexual men of all races. If we are to reduce HIV infection rates in the U.S., we must invest significantly more resources into prevention programs. My research demonstrates that federal funding for prevention is highly effective. There is a direct correlation between federal dollars spent and national HIV infection rates. Yet, the CDC's budget for HIV prevention has declined by almost 20% in real dollars since 2002. To turn the tide of this epidemic, CDC's domestic HIV prevention budget should be expanded from its current level of roughly $750 million to $1.3 billion per year for the next five years. This would undo the harmful effects of inflation, address the unmet needs that have continued to grow over time, and rectify our failure as a nation to invest in programs at the scale needed to dramatically alter the course of the epidemic. This is one of the smartest public health investments the U.S. can make -- over five years, it could prevent approximately 89,000 new HIV infections, save $18.5 billion in averted treatment costs, and, most importantly, save some 1,350 lives. A renewed investment in HIV prevention does not need to wait for a vaccine or other major new breakthrough. We have a range of effective HIV prevention tools at our disposal right now that could allow us to make dramatic progress in reducing new infections. The problem is that the scale of our response has been insufficient. The House and Senate considered investing substantial new resources in HIV prevention in the recent stimulus package, but removed that provision before the final bill was signed into law. That decision was not only terrible public health policy, it was also bad economics that will cost the nation more in the long run. Last Thursday's budget request was another missed opportunity. Today, one in five individuals living with HIV does not know it, indicating that too few people are being reached by testing and counseling services. Only a small percentage of people at risk for HIV are able to access the effective behavior-changing programs that are proven to reduce a person's chances of becoming infected. Prevention services for people who are HIV-positive also need to be expanded, particularly as the number of people living with the disease continues to increase, thankfully, due to effective treatments. Complacency about HIV is another key challenge. Data show that America has largely forgotten about AIDS. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the proportion of Americans who say they have seen, heard, or read about the problem of AIDS in the U.S. declined from 70% to 45% in the past five years. The percentage ranking HIV/AIDS as the most urgent health problem facing the nation fell to just 6%, down from 44% in the mid-1990s. It was my hope that, by elevating the visibility of HIV/AIDS through the new communication campaign, the administration was signaling a renewed commitment to prevention. The campaign -- coupled with more robust prevention resources in the 2010 budget -- could have jump-started national efforts to finally tackle this disease in a serious way here at home. Sadly, my hopes took a major step backwards with the administration's anemic budget request. We're at a historic crossroads in the HIV epidemic in the United States. We must work to combat complacency and increase our national commitment to prevention. With the terrible human and fiscal consequences of HIV, a new infection every 9½ minutes in the U.S. simply is not acceptable to me, and I hope not to anyone. More on HIV/AIDS
 
Phil Bronstein: No Tricks Here: Dick Cheney Has Become Nixon 2.0 Top
There's something about former Vice President Dick Cheney that's been struggling to get out like a rare bald eagle chick ready to hatch. After listening to his remarks this weekend about Rush Limbaugh (loves him) and Colin Powell (doesn't), and his jut-jawed "I don't regret anything" moment on CBS, I know what it is: Mr. Cheney is now replacing Richard Nixon in the national political and cultural consciousness as the Gorgeous George of our era, the guy whose very existence makes some people furious and who brings to the surface all those intense and complex emotions about power and the people who wield it. And, like Mr. Nixon, the former Bush Veep can't help himself and won't ever stop reopening the wounds. Forget Rush Limbaugh, dissed by Barack Obama at the one-big-happy-family White House Correspondents' Dinner. Mr. Limbaugh is just a voice, albeit successfully shrill and hugely popular. He's irritating or entertaining, depending on your politics. But he's no Nixon, whose image alone could trigger spasms in the national psyche. Rush is often called bad but rarely evil. This Cheney role comes just in time for those of us who were reminded by " Frost/Nixon " just how much we missed the original. As knotty as the man was himself, he could somehow make everything else seem clearer. Life without him appeared colorless, less darkly symphonic. While he was around, kicked after a defeat or voted in by a landslide, he provided psychological hand-holds in a post-1950s world where there was always mysterious and dangerous trouble lurking somewhere. He gave a face to your fears, whether you feared him or worried about the things he feared. Mr. Nixon's Shakespearean behavior was always a giant societal Rorschach, and continued to be well after he left the White House amid charges that he shredded the Constitution. Other than George W. Bush, apparently renditioned into the Texas brush, who else can complainers say that about these days other than Dick Cheney? But Mr. Cheney is like the Nixon Terminator 2, T-1000 , the improved version. Torture, OK, but no self-torture with him. Mr. Cheney does not have the jowly, 3 a.m., talking to portraits and praying with Henry Kissinger (pick a more trustworthy prayer partner!) madness of Richard Nixon, or his visionary command of foreign policy and political detail. There's still a Nixon hole where the philharmonic complexity of the character can never be filled by anyone else. But Richard Cheney's self-assured manner makes up for Nixon's gnawing self-consciousness. Mr. Cheney isn't seeking revenge for past perceived slights. He's just still hunting down the guilty with the sure-footedness of an official Inquisitor. Even out of power he perseveres, fearlessly defenestrating those he thinks are weakening the country, including Barack Obama, who he essentially accused of giving comfort to the enemy by getting squishy on terrorists. And on Face the Nation Sunday, he even used the word "enemies." OK, he was quoting the oath of office, but it still had that old familiar ring. Most interesting, though, is that there's a whole separate standard for Mr. Cheney, as there came to be for Richard Nixon. Wanda Sykes can get by calling Rush Limbaugh a traitor at the Correspondents' dinner -- and wishing for his death. But when Mr. Cheney suggests Colin Powell is a Democrat, watch out! By the way: if Ann Coulter started calling herself a comedienne (only she wouldn't use the Frenchy version), would she be invited to emcee the White House/press gang bang so she could be shocking and accusatory, because she's so good at that? Or have we done away with any pretext of unbiased/fair-and-balanced press events? Just asking. This is why Mr. Cheney is such a refreshing pail of water on the face of feel-good hypocrisy loose on the land these days. He is what he is, like it or not. The only question left is: who will be the present day David Frost? Maybe someone from The View . Welcome back, Dick. More on Richard Nixon
 
War Funding Bill To Include Money For Relocating Gitmo Inmates Top
WASHINGTON — A war funding bill headed to the floor next week would provide the $50 million sought by the Pentagon to relocate prisoners from the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the top Democrat in the Senate said Monday. The administration would be denied the money until it came up with a detailed plan on how to close the Guantanamo detention facility and how to deal with the 240 or so detainees being held there, said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has told him that the measure would not allow money to be spent to bring accused terrorists to the U.S. before the end of the budget year on Oct. 1. The move by Inouye is sure to spark a lively debate within the ranks of Senate Democrats, some of whom have spoken strongly against bringing Guantanamo detainees to the United States. Inouye said last week he was leaning in favor of granting the Pentagon's request with the proviso it comes up with a plan for what to do with the detainees. He is also likely to provide $30 million sought by the Department of Justice to review the legal status of Guantanamo detainees and to bring their cases to trial. The House Appropriations Committee has declined to fund either request. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called the $50 million request merely a "plug in the budget" that was just "a hedge that would allow us to get started if some construction is needed to be able to accommodate those detainees." Gates has testified that about 50 to 100 detainees would be shipped to the U.S. Republicans are on the offensive in daily attacks on the idea of closing the prison and in criticizing the administration for moving ahead without a plan. "Closing this facility by an arbitrary deadline without any alternative is irresponsible and dangerous," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "It is unacceptable to the American people and it is unacceptable to an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides of the aisle." Underlying the Guantanamo debate is the suggestion that holding terror detainees in the United States would represent a security threat. Also at issue is what to do with them if they are acquitted at trial. (This version CORRECTS in lede that Reid sted Inouye addressed issue Monday.) More on Guantánamo Bay
 
Michele Swenson: For-Profit Health Insurance Is Responsible for Large Cost-Shift to Consumers/Taxpayers Top
False assumptions that drive the current U.S. health care reform debate are often expressed as common buzzwords: 1) Choice - To free-market advocates, choice applies to "affordable" private insurances -- often, inadequate minimum benefit health insurances that render many at health and financial risk. Private insurances further limit choice of providers to in-plan doctors. By contrast, Single Payer permits full choice of health care providers. 2) Competition - Health care competition invoked by free marketers implies competition among for-profit insurances, whose primary goal is to maximize shareholder profits -- often by reducing coverage with low-value products, like minimum-benefit health insurance. Progressives assert that competition should be restored where it belongs -- among providers and hospitals, based on quality of care. 3) Government Bureaucracy - It is somewhat ironic that opponents of a single-payer financing system argue that a government bureaucracy will come between patients and doctors. There is nothing more obstructive to patient care than the $20 billion annual private health insurance bureaucracy that games the system for profit by frequently denying or delaying health care claims, fracturing both the patient-provider relationship and U.S. primary care infrastructure. Fully one-third of U.S. health insurance claims are initially denied -- compared to many European countries, where T.R. Reid reported (Sick Around the World) claims are paid within two weeks. Perhaps the greatest distortion is the notion that the uninsured are primarily responsible for rising health costs -- the health care cost-shift to the insured and taxpayers. John Sheils, VP of the Lewin Group (a scheduled witness at the May 12 Senate Finance Committee hearing) previously headed the team that evaluated 5 Colorado health care reform proposals in 2007. Sheils told the Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform that fully half of the uninsured pay their own medical bills. In fact, the numbers of underinsured are growing at a faster rate than the numbers of uninsured, and contribute as much if not more, to growing rates of uncompensated medical care and to U.S. personal medical bankruptcy rates. Underinsurance has increased since the '90s, when escalating health care premiums precipitated the move by employers and individuals toward catastrophic coverage (euphemistically branded 'consumer-directed' or HSA health plans by free-market advocates). Coincident with the expanding catastrophic health insurance market, out-of-pocket costs also soared. As out-of-pocket health costs rose about 70% from 1995-2005, the American Hospital Association TrendWatch Reports simultaneously tracked an approximate 65% increase in uncompensated medical care - costs that are picked up by taxpayers and consumers. In other words, as private insurers pass on more and more of their costs, they are subsidized big-time by taxpayers. A 2008 study by the University of Colorado Medical School demonstrated a growing rate of underinsured in Colorado -- 36.3% who delay or ignore recommended care due to inability to pay. Add the rising numbers of uninsured Coloradans, and a total of over 50% are uninsured and underinsured -- a very different picture than that painted by Colorado Republicans who assert that major health care reform is unnecessary because "80% are fully covered and content with their coverage." Nationally, a study by the LWV reported that 25 million adults under age 65 were underinsured during 2007, despite having insurance all year. The study estimated that 42 percent of all U.S. adults (86.7 million) were either uninsured or underinsured during 2007. The model of Massachusetts health care reform reportedly being advanced by some in Congress is the worst of all worlds for consumers and taxpayers. It creates a mandate to purchase taxpayer-subsidized private insurance -- often high out-of-pocket cost minimum benefit plans. Massachusetts-style health care reform grants a windfall (sort of a taxpayer-funded bailout) to private for-profit health insurances, while leaving people at financial and health risk. Dr. David Himmelstein testified on April 23 in a hearing of the Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions Subcommittee that the Massachusetts Plan costs have skyrocketed, rising 23% between 2005 and 2007. He reported that "one in five Massachusetts residents went without care last year because they couldn't afford it. Hundreds of thousands remain uninsured, and the state has drained money from safety net hospitals and clinics..." to fund the plan. If the private health insurance industry prevails, as they did in writing Medicare prescription drug reform, Obama's parallel 'public option' for health care coverage would quickly turn into a public subsidy for the mandated purchase of private for-profit health insurance. By contrast to the U.S., most industrialized nations save administrative costs and cover all by utilizing not-for-profit insurances.
 
Christopher Hitchens Rips Wanda Sykes: "The Black Dyke Got It Wrong" Top
Buried at the end of Chris Rovzar and Jada Yuan's fantastic White House Correspondents' Association Dinner party report is an incendiary quote from Christopher Hitchens about the evening's entertainment, comedienne Wanda Sykes: "The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling," he said. "The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules." Rovzar and Yuan note that Hitchens was the "last man (barely) standing" of the evening. WATCH SYKES' FULL PERFORMANCE HERE. Other highlights of the always amusing NYMag writers' report include an in-Jada's-face interaction with Tom Cruise, a shoe-less Meghan McCain, an allergy-stricken Elizabeth Banks, and several anecdotes on "Gossip Girl" cast members. Read their full report here. More on Wanda Sykes
 
John Neustadt: It's Time to Change the Discussion About Osteoporosis Top
We're bombarded with messages about building bone all the time. How many times have you heard Sally Field talk about how her bone density increased after taking Boniva? May marks Osteoporosis Awareness Month, and this year, let's shift the focus from increasing bone density to reducing fracture risk . After all, fractures are the most dangerous part of osteoporosis. Up to 40 percent of osteoporosis patients who suffer a hip fracture die within six months, and the increased risk of dying stays elevated for ten years. And 20 percent of people who survive the first year end up in nursing homes. Those with osteoporosis aren't the only ones who should heed this warning. Research shows that most fractures occur within one year of diagnosis in people with osteopenia (pre-osteoporosis). So the time to be proactive about bone health is long before you're diagnosed with osteoporosis. The National Osteoporosis Foundation (NOF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) all now recognize the primary focus of osteoporosis treatment should be on reducing fracture risk, instead of just increasing bone density. The WHO has even launched a free online tool, called the Fracture-Risk Assessment Tool or FRAX. This easy-to-use application provides a 10-year risk of fractures given a person's ethnicity, body mass index, medical history and age. The best way to prevent fractures is to take a proactive approach. Appropriate, weight-bearing and balance exercises are important, as is ensuring proper nutrition. In one study, muscle strengthening and balance exercises (e.g., Qi Gong, Tai Chi) decreased the risk for falls and fall-related injuries (e.g., fractures) by 75 percent. Additionally, one year of weight-bearing exercise training improved bone mineral density (BMD) by 8.4 percent. Just as important is taking a dietary supplement that contains the forms and amounts of nutrients shown in clinical trials to reduce fractures. Most people have heard that they should take calcium and vitamin D to protect their bones. What is lesser known, but equally essential is 45 mg daily of MK4, a form of vitamin K2. MK4 is so effective that a study published in 2006 in the prestigious medical journal, Archives of Internal Medicine concluded that this amount of MK4 may decrease vertebral fractures by 60 percent, hip fractures by 71 percent and all nonvertebral fractures by 81 percent, which is better than all leading osteoporosis medications. MK4 exerts such a powerful influence on bone building that in Japan it's been an accepted osteoporosis treatment since 1995. Fortunately, MK4 is available as a dietary supplement in the United States, which makes this option for bone health accessible to everyone. Unlike osteoporosis medications, which just add minerals to the bone to increase their density, MK4 stimulates the formation of connective tissue in bone. With more connective tissue, bone is more elastic and can absorb an impact--like a fall--and not break. Without the bone collagen, bone minerals are just like a column of chalk that crumbles. In contrast, Fosamax only decreases vertebral fracture risk by about 45 percent, Actonel by about 50 percent and Boniva by 52 percent. They are even less effective at reducing other types of fractures. Plus, many people are concerned about taking these medications because of their dangerous side effects. Fosamax, Boniva and Actonel can cause bleeding ulcers in the esophagus, bone and muscle pain and osteonecrosis of the jaw (bone death in the jaw). The risk of osteonecrosis of the jaw is such a concern, that dentists are now starting to recommend their patients stop Fosamax, Actonel and other related medications before they perform any tooth extractions or implants. Additionally, research published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Trauma and The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery Br concluded that Fosamax may actually increase fracture risk in people taking it for more than five years. Studies show that taking 45 mg of MK4 daily is completely safe and can be used in concert with an osteoporosis drug. There is even a study showing that MK4 increases the effectiveness of the Fosamax. The only people who shouldn't take dietary supplements with vitamin K are those on prescription anticoagulant medications such as warfarin (Coumadin). Osteoporosis and osteopenia are major public health threats for an estimated 44 million Americans. In order to save lives, we can't waste any more time just focusing on increasing bone density and taking drugs. It will take a lot of voices to drown out the pharmaceutical companies' myopic message. So this month start talking--to your mothers, daughters, sisters, and yes, the men in your life and your healthcare providers. Discuss risk factors and make sure you all are doing everything possible to keep your bones healthy and strong. It's a conversation that will save lives. John Neustadt, ND is medical director of Montana Integrative Medicine and the co-founder, with Steve Pieczenik, MD, PhD , of Nutritional Biochemistry, Incorporated (NBI) and NBI Testing and Consulting Corp (NBITC). The doctors created Osteo-K, a dietary supplement formulated by physicians from Harvard, Cornell, MIT and Bastyr. Osteo-K is the only nutraceutical to contain both the form and dose of Vitamin K2 (45 mg of MK4) shown in clinical trials to decrease fracture risk, plus calcium and vitamin D. For more information on how you can decrease your risk for osteoporosis and fractures, click here .
 
Fox Anchor Makes Barney Frank-Themed Gay Sex Joke (After Criticizing 'Tea Bag' Humor) Top
Look at me today, weighing in on the appropriateness and inappropriateness of various forms of humor today, like some learned cultural critic, or something! Well, we've already established: I don't care for the whole "real person might die, ha ha funny" style of humor . Not for me! But as you probably know, I can go in for a good dirty joke time and time again. I said, "Sex is increasing exponentially!" on CNBC last Friday night and I used to guest blog over at Wonkette before I came here (the old, sex-obsessed Wonkette, not the new anger-enslavement version), so you all know where I stand: on very shaky ground where meeting your parents is concerned. And I make no bones, for example, about loving me some Tea Party teabagging jokes! Indeed, those jokes are the only really positive thing those Tea Parties gave America. (And that's a good thing! That's one more thing than those IMF protesters with their puppets and piss-balloons and the way they busted up a local Wachovia, FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE! ) But I remember people getting all worked up about how MSNBC managed to set the land speed record for teabagging puns . (FoxNews.com actually ran a story headlined, "Cable Anchors, Guests Use Tea Parties as Platform for Frat House Humor." WHY IS THAT? Here's Tea Party sponsoring Fox Business Channel, getting down a dirty with a sex joke of their own : BOLLING: And appropriately positioned, Representative Barney Frank, catching of course. HA. See what Fox Business Channel's Eric Bolling did there, with Barney Frank? It's a wonder that more people don't watch this "Street Meat" show, your one stop shop for sodomizing the recession! PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST Fox News: Teabagging Jokes Not Funny [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .]
 
Caption This Photo, Vote For Monday's Best, See Friday's Winner! Top
Boston Red Sox's Jonathan Papelbon celebrates after striking out Tampa Bay Rays' Carl Crawford to end the baseball game Sunday, May 10, 2009, in Boston. The Red Sox won 4-3. MONDAY'S FAVORITES: FRIDAY'S WINNER: Orientation day at the Rush Limbaugh Training Academy. By -Dusso-. More on Caption Contest
 
Jim Luce: Jules Verne's Kip Brothers Translated into English after 100 Years Top
Part of "Extraordinary Voyages," Jules Verne's The Kip Brothers was never translated into English for a variety of reasons, including because of its anti-American and anti-British sentiment. Mostly it was not translated because it veered away Verne's typical science fiction tales. First published in French in 1902, it arrived in English in 2007 ( Wesleyan University Press ). Jules Verne had a passion for travel and exploration expressed in his global adventure stories. He was thought a leader on the future of science. In his early years he was forced to drop out of law school in Paris when his father cut him off. He survived as a stockbroker as he began to write his many books. The book, a crime drama, celebrates the fraternal bonds of brotherhood, written shortly after the death of Verne's brother and best friend, a French sailor. The bond between the two heroes is so close it raised the question in this writer's mind whether gay relationships could have been written about openly in Victorian France? The breathtakingly visual plot of this classic is set over the Pacific Ocean, like Verne's 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea . The book unfolds as its Dutch brothers adventure in Australian Tasmania and New Zealand, both former British colonies. The story is told in a gripping before and after. Before, Karl and Pieter Kip become castaways, shipwrecked on a barren island in the South Seas. They are rescued by the brig James Cook , which we learn has serious trouble on board. The Wesleyan University Press edition features original sketches. Shortly thereafter, two particularly unpleasant mutineers kill the kindly captain. The Kip brothers help to foil this onboard mutiny while rescuing the ship in a storm. However the brothers find themselves accused and convicted of the captain's murder when they finally reach shore. They are first framed in court, and then sentenced to death. Their only advocate is the owner of the ship that rescued them. He manages to get their sentences changed to life imprisonment in an Australian penal colony, while he continues to look for proof that will bring the real culprits to justice. After, the Kip brothers spend the novel's second part trying to escape a horrible penal colony. The good character of these Dutch brothers goes a long way to let everyone know that would never be capable of murder, but this must be proven to the courts. In this story, perhaps most interestingly, Verne interweaves an exciting exploration of the South Pacific with a tale of judicial error reminiscent of the infamous Dreyfus Affair, which continued to rock Europe in the author's lifetime. Jules Verne (1828 -1905) is the second most translated author of all time. The Dreyfus Affair was the political scandal which divided France in the 1890's. It involved the conviction for treason of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a young French officer of Jewish descent. Sentenced to life imprisonment for having communicated French military secrets to the Germans, Dreyfus was sent to Devil's Island off French Guiana on the northern coast of South America. Two years later, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major as the real culprit. However, high-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence. Word of the military court's framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, largely due to Emile Zola's expose in the French press. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial fighting that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards). Seemingly, Verne was an anti-Dreyfusard in the beginning, but through writing The Kip Brothers , he transformed into a Dreyfusard. The Kip Brothers is an extraordinary work for this reason alone. The classic was penned over 100 years ago by a brilliant leader in thought and global citizen. It remains close to my heart because the English translation is by another world thinker, a man with a doctorate from Yale in French who also translated Verne's The Mighty Orinoco and The Begum's Millions , my father, Stanford L. Luce .
 
Ana Joanes: Fresh -- New Thinking About What We're Eating Top
I'm six-months pregnant. And about to give birth to a movie, Fresh (I think the proper term is release.) I'm ready to let this baby out into the world, but I'm not so sure I'm ready for the other, the crying-pampers-changing- 24/7-for-the-next-20-years baby. Making a movie might or might not be a good preparation for motherhood (filmmakers out there: comments, thoughts?) but Fresh sure changed the way I feed myself during pregnancy and how I'll feed my baby. It's changed the way I approach life. Fresh examines the problems and consequences of our current food system, but its focus is on the farmers, thinkers, and business people across America who are coming up with alternatives. And, although, at first glance, it may seem that Fresh is about food and agriculture, it's really more about adopting a new perspective, a different understanding of our relationship to each other and the world. In short, Fresh seeks to empower us by showing how we are the creators of our reality, not passive by-standers to a world going nuts. And while being creators means taking responsibility for what's happening, it also means we can change it (yes we can!). I fist started thinking about making Fresh after reading a three-part article in the New Yorker about global warming four years ago. I had been avoiding reading the series, the way I try really hard to ignore the news. I figured I knew about global warming, and didn't want to feel scared and guilty about how little I did to combat it, or how much I contributed to the problem. The article's dire exposé of the complexity and extent of the problems we're facing left me feeling, like so much of the news, a powerless and hopeless observer, watching the world spiraling towards its inevitable destruction. And helplessness, for me at least, (almost always) translates into inaction. So I embarked on the making of Fresh to recapture a sense of agency, a belief that my individual actions do in fact matter. Initially, I intended to document the urgency of the global warming crisis, hoping to scare others and myself into action. Instead, I encountered the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives. Who knew that we already had the solutions to so many of our problems, and that some of us were already hard at work implementing them? Instead of the despair and inaction unwittingly fostered by the media, these examples of change suggested a very different perspective, that life is an indivisible network in which every node is critical, that each one of us is creating the world we are living in, and that the process of creating it is what gives us meaning and pleasure. Around the same time, I started meditating. And since I don't do things slowly, I went on 8 or so week-long silent mediation retreats over the course of that same period. And my experience on the cushion helped me understand what it was that so deeply attracted me to the people I was discovering in my documentary. Our current culture tends to take a very linear approach to life. Everything has a start and an end, everything is disposable - my morning coffee "to-go", my new living room set, my old TV. Buy and throw out. Collect and then dispose. Everything is expendable. And it sure feels, in times of plenty, that there's no end to what we can get. Problem is, in a linear model, even our lives have become expendable. It's hard to find meaning when it seems like you're just another "thing" to be used and disposed of, and when the only folks that seem to matter are those with money and celebrity power bolstering them up; the Bill Gates and Bonos of the world. When I visited Joel Salatin (a Virginia farmer made famous by Michael Pollan's "Omnivore Dilemma," and one of the main character in Fresh ), and he explained how everything has a place in nature, how nothing is wasted, I felt this combination of relief and excitement. In nature, bacteria, manure, fungus, trees, grass, sunlight, water... all play a part in the wonderful and mysterious process of creating and maintaining life. We might love to look at old solid oak trees and peaceful rivers, but no one could ever claim that they are more important to an ecosystem than the bacteria or the worms, the ants, and the birds. To realize that everything has its place, all play a role, was wonderfully reassuring. And so, through the making of Fresh , and with the support of meditation, I began to look at myself differently, to ask different questions from myself and about my life. It is not only the pig whose pig-ness we need to respect, but the Ana-ness of Ana. The essence of each one of us. By learning to respect and embrace the truth of who I am, I too can find my place and role in this world. For me, right now, it means not doubting my work, but letting my first 'baby' out into the world, and trusting it will find its audience (well, a little trust and lots of work!) It also means being a friend, a partner, a daughter. It means acting with mindfulness in my daily life, knowing that my smallest actions have an impact and that they are no less important then the biggest of my decisions. It means taking care of myself, and of the life that I am carrying. It means allowing for room for mistakes, for feeling lost, for finding myself again, and again and again. Perhaps my role or place will never be so clear as that of each element in an ecosystem, or as predetermined, but it will be, and it will have an effect. Like it or not! More on Food
 
Courtney Macavinta: Self-Care: The S.T.O.P. Theory! Top
Oh, self-care. For many of us that term means "me time." You know: spa days, a good book, bubble baths, yoga, and all that jazz. Self-care is often a list in a magazine of things to surround yourself with that tend to smell fruity or can come down to a swipe of a credit card at the mall. Now, more than ever, self-care needs to mean so much more. Self-care is actually the ultimate form of self-respect. Maybe it can even save the world? Stay with me... Because here's the thing I don't always want to admit: When my self-care sucks, my integrity wanes. I cancel on you at the last-minute. I show up half-hearted. I'm more cranky and closed-minded. I don't pay attention. I make more messes. I'm not as helpful. That one really sucks because my No. 1 goal in life is to be of service. So self-care is really that important for me. Or I actually get really off track in life. And I want my partners (professional and romantic) to up their self-care too -- otherwise everything suffers. We're not fooling anyone (and neither are you). For me, honest self-care doesn't mean cramming in 50 minutes at the gym in which the whole time I'm thinking about what I'll make for dinner and that the engine light is on in my car and that she had some nerve. So if it's not just about bubble baths and hitting the gym, what does this "self-care" stuff mean? One of the definitions of care is: "watchful attention." I love this definition. This is where I smell the world-changing potential of real self-care. To this end, I've broken self-care down into a totally scientific process I call S.T.O.P. Try it! S is for savor... I can talk fast, connect the dots fast, eat fast, and launch ideas and programs fast. There is nothing wrong with that. My impatience and speed can create positive change. Savor, on the other hand, makes me think of gooey, homemade macaroni and cheese. Or breathing in salty sea air as the fog spritzes my face. Or lingering in a warm hug from my sweetie. Or letting it sink in when someone says something that really floors me at a Respect Rally (like an 11-year-old girl who said after a visualization that "her Future Self told her to respect herself today to reach her goals tomorrow." Mmmmm....) Savor is a tantalizing way to say slow down. Do I really want to rush to the bank to check my balance anyway? Do I want to rush to another birthday? Do I want to learn all my lessons today and be bored out of mind for the next 50 years? No. Savor also means I notice that the other forces besides my bright ideas are at play in the universe. Hmmm. Here's the even more challenging part, though. I'm even attempting to savor walking through my fires. Moving house, fixing busted pipes, using my resources wisely, finishing an intense training program, growing Respect Rx, dark moods, losing contracts, pitching new business, the ending of a 10-year relationship (i.e. divorce), paying taxes, conflicts in new relationships. Savor this stuff? It's worth a try. Because I want to learn my lessons really well to make room for new experiences. I also love that feeling when you look back and can say: I made it through. I was okay. I am okay. What I've heard and learned: What you resist will just persist. I.e. you could get deadly heart disease eating tons of gooey, homemade macaroni and cheese you never even had the pleasure of tasting. Bummer. For you: • What do you want to savor right now? T is for talk it out... I wish someone would start Economy Anonymous or Freaked-Out Anonymous or Worst-Mood-Ever Anonymous. As someone who's greatly benefited from the world of "anons" I think we could all use safe spaces to talk stuff out as part of our self-care. And I don't mean just calling your BF and venting. Or supposed problem-solving with your partner at the end of a long day when you're maxed out. I mean participating in a community where there is a "pact" about honest sharing and deep listening. Where you can say what you need to say; and hear what you need to hear. Whether it be your church, a conference call you set up with friends each week around a theme (my friends and I did this around money), or a support group that has a facilitator or counselor on hand. It's about leaning into others and being leaned on. For you: • What would make you feel less alone right now? • What step will you take to create that support? O is for opt-out... This one is simple. Self-care means setting boundaries. Creating a little space around you. Freeing up time to do some "resentment-prevention" work (for me this is where bubble baths, reading, sleep, and running do come in). My sweetie offers this test: If you look at your cat and think he has the best life ever and you would sell your soul to trade places with him, it's time for more self-care of the opting-out flavor. You can also opt-out of "shoulds" that hound you or beliefs that aren't working for you anymore. Whatever it takes to take better care of you. For you: • What do you want to opt out of right now? P is for pause... When I'm about to intentionally hurl myself down some stairs (or push you down them!), whoa, it's time to pause. Hot-faced irritation and generally hating on myself or others to excess means I need to pause. I'm a proponent of spreading respect after all -- my rep is on the line here! That feeling that I don't want to do my beautiful, fulfilling work because it is feeling like too much "work" means I need to pause. Pausing could be simply asking myself: What do I need right now? Water? To pee? Oxygen anyone? Pause doesn't mean to retire or not care. It means be where you're at. Or let some stuff marinate before you make the next move. Celebrate for goodness sake. Maybe you need to pause to shine your flashlight on an area of your life that needs more of that watchful attention. After I do a lot of fun, empowering work with people, I've learned to pause. The Google Calendar needs to be color-block free. Then I can resume regular programming with some presence. Savor and Pause are obviously good friends. Most often, I need to pause before I attempt to go fast again. Because I like going fast. That's me. Fulfillment can't wait! So that's why for me P is for pause because I don't want to reach for another P instead--like Pull the Plug. For you: • Where do you need to pause? Self-care has grown up for me. Bubble baths are nice, but too many dry out my skin, and they are pointless if I'm just soaking in my worries. Self-care now means self-respect. And it requires daily recommitment. And some days I fail miserably. And that's just another time to S.T.O.P. When I'm paying "watchful attention," it means I show myself through my actions that I'm a valuable resource. It means I have a healthy respect for what can really be accomplished in a day by this imperfect human being. At its simplest, self-care to me now means that I truly see, smell, chew, taste and give gratitude for my plate of gooey, homemade macaroni and cheese. And life. For you: • What would our world gain if you STOPped to take real care of you? • And how would your world change?
 
Victoria Gotti FORECLOSED On By JP Morgan Top
JP Morgan is foreclosing on the Long Island mansion owned by Mafia daughter Victoria Gotti. The 46-year-old reality star owes a whopping $650,000 on the property, according to the New York Post . The daughter of John "Dapper Don" Gotti hasn't made a mortgage payment since September 2006. The latest court ruling reversed a decision in 2007, when the court determined it was too early to move forward with foreclosure proceedings against the former star of Growing Up Gotti. The New York Post quoted her mother saying, "She's not in the mood to talk to anybody." In reference to her ex-husband, Carmine Agnello, whom Gotti divorced in 2003, her mom said, "The creep that he is, he took out a mortgage behind her back. She can't afford to pay." According to the blog The Real Estalker , Gotti and Agnello bought the home for just $175,000 in 1989. Gotti tried selling it for $4.8 million, then lowered it to $3.2 million in January.
 
Mike Stark: For McAuliffe, a Shot Across the Bow Top
Non-DC denizens may not have even heard of the DC Examiner , but, probably because it is free, it is omnipresent in and around the capital. It's also important to note that it draws upon many of the same models employed by Fox News to maintain its relevance: exploit white racial fears? Check. Owned by far-right religious conservative billionaire? Check. Mouthpiece for Republicans? Check. Corrupt business model? Got that one too... twice actually... Anyway, I'm not blogging today because I want to bring attention to an also-ran rag that barely even merits mention as a bit part in the Republican noise machine... To me, if a tool like Anschutz wants to throw good money after bad into a money-pit in support of the all-but-irrelevant Republican Party... well, somebody needs to feed Byron York. If he's shameless enough to collect his wingnut welfare check, I won't begrudge the arrangement... But... It isn't smart to completely ignore these marginal shills either. Often enough, these small-time players serve as a seed-bed... they test the waters, so-to-speak, and lay the groundwork for the big guns that are sure to come blazing in later. And that's why I sat up and noticed this article: "Official who gave 'troubling' testimony on McAuliffe now fundraising for him". A former Democratic Party official who a decade ago described in a federal criminal trial an illicit fundraising swap he said Terry McAuliffe tried to arrange with the Teamsters Union is now raising money for McAuliffe's campaign. Richard Sullivan, the Democratic National Committee's former finance director, was a witness in the 1999 trial of a top union official under Teamsters President Ron Carey, the result of a broader investigation into the funneling of union money into Carey's re-election campaign. During the trial, Sullivan testified that McAuliffe -- then President Bill Clinton's head of fundraising -- repeatedly pushed a plan in which a Democratic donor would bankroll the union chief's struggling campaign in exchange for the promise of a much larger gift from the Teamsters to Democratic campaign committees. I could be wrong, but it looks to me as if the slumbering beast that is the Republican slime machine is about to grind into gear. We've reached a critical point in the campaign: the opposition has settled on their target. They think McAuliffe will walk away with the Democratic Party's nomination for governor in Virginia. I think they are wrong; I have confidence in Virginia's electorate. They'll refuse to be bought off by the money McAuliffe will dump into the race. Instead, they are going to take a long look at stories like this one and fit them into the larger context of McAuliffe's seedy career. They'll look at the Pinocchio Report ... at The Real Terry McAuliffe ... And some of the other reporting that's been done . And then they are going to realize that McAuliffe is the very embodiment a Republican wet dream. Within minutes of McAuliffe (god-forbid) clinching the nomination, sleaze like Roger Stone and Karl Rove and Mary Matalin will be crawling through McAuliffe's long, long record of mixing business and politics in oftentimes seedy fashion. The article in the Examiner ? Child's play. Anything I've written? All part of the record for a long, long time... My critics are right about one thing: I've reported nothing "new." But McAuliffe's history involves a lot of "across the aisle" business; he's worked with an awful lot of Republicans. We should assume that these people know things. And do you trust them to prioritize their personal loyalties to Terry McAuliffe above their loyalty to party? You don't think any of them will leak "off the record" to stenographer reporters? Bob McDonnell and the Republicans are absolutely desperate. They need a win and badly. Giving them McAuliffe to toy with would be an abominable error by Virginia Democrats.
 
Arthur Agatston, M.D.: A Supreme Court Justice Can be Fat and Fit Top
Ever since a very fit President Obama announced that seemingly fit Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter had tendered his resignation on May 1, there has been much discussion about the health qualifications of the potential nominees, with a particular emphasis on their weight. Concerns have arisen that some of the candidates may not be healthy (and should therefore not be considered for such a long-term post) because they're carrying extra pounds. I am here to tell you that you can be fat and fit. Appearances can be deceiving. This idea is not new. In fact, the term "fat and fit" was originally coined by Dr. Steven N. Blair, one of the world's leading exercise scientists, who is currently a professor at the University of South Carolina. For more than 25 years Blair and his associates have been looking at how fitness, fatness, and health outcomes are related. And what they have found is that cardiorespiratory fitness is a better predictor of who will die, and when, than BMI (body mass index), a calculation of body fat based on height and weight. In other words, according to Blair, fitness appears to provide protection against the risk of early mortality posed by fatness. In fact, his research shows that the death rate for women and men who are thin but unfit is at least twice as high as for their obese counterparts who are fit. I witness the fat-and-fit phenomenon in my preventive cardiology practice every day. Into my examining room will walk a considerably overweight, pear-shaped female who will turn out to have the blood chemistry of a vegetarian marathoner because she actually gets out and walks on a regular basis. Her HDL ("good") cholesterol and triglycerides are excellent and her tests show she is at very low risk for heart disease. My next patient will be a seemingly fit, normal-weight man, who turns out to have terrible blood lipids and is at high risk for heart attack, stroke, and many other diseases. Even though he looks great at first glance, he's actually carrying his "normal" weight as fat (typically a highly inflammatory little bowling ball in his belly), not muscle, because he doesn't exercise. That's why I always go by a person's physiologic risk factors, rather than by BMIs or weight tables. This was recently backed up by a study of 5,440 adults reported in the August 2008 Archives of Internal Medicine. It found that half of the overweight and one-third of the obese participants were "metabolically healthy." This means they had few, if any, risk factors for heart disease, such as high blood pressure or low levels of HDL cholesterol. The study also found that about one-fourth of the "normal" weight people were "metabolically unhealthy" and exhibited cardiovascular risk factors. The study did not measure fitness levels, as Blair has done. This said, I don't want you to think that being fat is good. Or, conversely, that being too thin (and unfit) is fine. There is no question that our bellies have grown. Federal health surveys show that, over the past four decades, the mean waist size for men has increased from 35 inches to 39 inches; for women, from 30 inches to 37 inches. The number of people suffering from coronary heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other inflammatory conditions has also grown. And while exercise can turn the tide for some, those who don't exercise and continue to eat a nutrient-poor diet, smoke, and drink too much will continue to feed the obesity (and heart disease and diabetes) epidemic in this country. The solution for these people is to focus on making better lifestyle choices overall rather than simply dwelling on a number on the scale. I can't speak for whether our Supreme Court candidates are fat and fit or not. But I can tell you not to judge a book (or a judge) by its cover. More on Health
 
Blogger And Aid Worker Remain Imprisoned In Iran Despite Saberi Release Top
As supporters of the Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi celebrate her release from Evin prison in Tehran, campaigns to free two other, less high-profile prisoners continue online. More on Iran
 
Victoria Gotti FORECLOSED On By JP Morgan Top
Here's the reality: the Gotti's gotta go. The bank has been given the go-ahead to foreclose on Victoria Gotti's palatial estate on Long Island -- the same used in the TV reality show "Growing Up Gotti" -- saying she owes a whopping $650,000 in mortgage payments, according to court paper made public today.
 
Yoani Sanchez: Video Proof: Cuba Violates Its Citizens' Constitutional Protections Top
Saturday, May 9, I went to the Melia Cohiba hotel to check if the Internet access limitations for Cubans continue. Several friends had told me that the measure had been rescinded... but I wanted to check for myself. So Reinaldo and I went and made this little video. The "tourist" who appears to be reading the newspaper Granma is me. To see the English Subtitles put your mouse over the square in the middle of the video. Video Transcript Reinaldo - Buenes tardes joven. Para comprar una hora de internet. Good afternoon, Miss. I'd like to buy an hour of internet. Mujer (Raquel) - Me permite tu pasaporte? Por favor. May I see your passport please. R - No, yo... carta de identidad es lo que yo tengo. No, what I have is an identity card. M - No, no le puedo vender una hora de Internet, porque la conexion aqui es solamente para extranjeros. No, I can't sell you an hour of Internet, because the connection here is only for foreigners. R - Discuple, es que yo no oigo bien. Excuse me, I don't think I heard you clearly. M - Que la conexion aqui es solamente para los extranjeros. The connection here is only for foreigners. R - Desde cuando es eso? Since when is this? M - Hace un mes. Since one month. R - Yo vine la semana pasada y me conecte. I came last week and connected. M - Y quien la vendia el ticket? And who sold you the ticket? R - No se el nombre. Como mismo no la he preguntado el nombre a usted, tampoco se lo pregunte a la... I don't know the name. Just as I didn't ask your name, neither did I ask... M - Mi nombre es Raquel. My name is Raquel. R - Si, pero usted no es la unica persona que trabaja aqui. Aqui hay una muchacha rubia... Yes, but you aren't the only person who works here. There's a red-headed girl... R - Hace ocho dias. It was eight days ago. M - Ya.... Now... M - Hay una resolucion que dice que solamente es para extranjeros. Mire aqui... There's a resolution that says it's only for foreigners. Look here... R - Si. Yes R - Esta es la... This is the... M - Venga aca...y...a...ver. Come here... and... see. R - Pero esto es solamente en este hotel? But is this only in this hotel? R - Esto se esta haciendo en todos los hoteles? Is this being done in all the hotels? R - Si, porque yo me conecto frequentamente en el Nacional y en el Presidente. Because I frequently connect in the National and the President. M - Creo que en el Presidente, todavia no se ha establecido este sistema. I think in the President they still haven't established this system. R - Pero, eso es una cosa que viene... una resolucion. Usted me disculpa que le haga tantas preguntas. But this is something that comes... a resolution. Forgive me for asking so many questions. R - Es una resolucion para este hotel, para la agencia Melia, para...? Is this a resolution of this hotel, of the Melia company, of...? M - No, eso es una resolucion del MINTUR. No, it's a resolution from MINTUR. R - Del Ministerior de Turismo? From the Tourism Ministry? M - Si. Yes. R -- ... no sera del Ministerio de Comunicaciones? It's not from the Communications Ministry? M - Tengo entendido que tiene que ver con el MINTUR y con ETECSA. I've been given to understand that it comes from MINTUR and ETESCA. M - Porque de hecho, este nuevo tipo de conexion es de ETESCA. Because of the fact that this new type of connection is from ETESCA. R - Bueno y eso, como uno puedo discutir eso? Verlo con alguien? OK, and this, how can one dispute this? See someone about it? R - Vaya, no es con usted con quien lo voy a discutir, porque desde luego usted es una persona que esta cumpliendo con su trabajo. Look, I don't have an argument with you, because after all you are a person who is just doing your job. M - Si dirije alli, a la Conserjeria y alli usted refleja cualquier queja que usted quiera. Yes, you can go to Reception and lodge any complaints you like. R - Porque usted sabe que eso viola mis derechos constitucionales. Because you know this violates my constitutional rights. R - Porque esta escrito en la constitucion de nuestra Republica que esta prohibida la discriminacion por origen nacional. Because it's written in the constitution of our Republic that discrimination based on national origin is prohibited. R - Y entonces yo me siento discriminado porque tengo como origen nacional el de Cuba. And I feel discriminated against because my national origin is Cuban. R - Es como se dijeron aqui: "Esta Internet es para todo el mundo, menos para los mexicanos." It's as if they said here: "This Internet is for the whole world except Mexicans." R - Es lo mismo, no? It's the same, no? R - Me estan discriminando por mi origen nacional. I'm being discriminated against for my national origin R - No hay una sola ley o reglamento interno que puede ir por encima de los derechos constitucionales de los ciudadanos. There's not a single law or internal regulation that can supersede the constitutional rights of citizens. R - Diga yo, No? Aren't I right? M - Yo lo unico que tengo que... Bueno, pues cumplir con mi deber. I'm just that one who has to... I'm just doing my duty. R - Si claro, yo conozco eso. Yes, of course, I know that. R - Bueno Raquel, pues muchas gracias y esperamos a ver la proxima vez que venga aqui, ya seguro que derogado eso. OK Raquel, and many thanks and I hope to see you the next time I come here, I'm sure this will be repealed. M - A bueno... ojala... a ver. OK... hopefully... we'll see... Yoani's blog, Generation Y , can be read here in English Translation. More on Cuba
 
Ana Joanes: Fresh -- New Thinking About What We're Eating Top
I'm six-months pregnant. And about to give birth to a movie, Fresh (I think the proper term is release.) I'm ready to let this baby out into the world, but I'm not so sure I'm ready for the other, the crying-pampers-changing- 24/7-for-the-next-20-years baby. Making a movie might or might not be a good preparation for motherhood (filmmakers out there: comments, thoughts?) but Fresh sure changed the way I feed myself during pregnancy and how I'll feed my baby. It's changed the way I approach life. Fresh examines the problems and consequences of our current food system, but its focus is on the farmers, thinkers, and business people across America who are coming up with alternatives. And, although, at first glance, it may seem that Fresh is about food and agriculture, it's really more about adopting a new perspective, a different understanding of our relationship to each other and the world. In short, Fresh seeks to empower us by showing how we are the creators of our reality, not passive by-standers to a world going nuts. And while being creators means taking responsibility for what's happening, it also means we can change it (yes we can!). I fist started thinking about making Fresh after reading a three-part article in the New Yorker about global warming four years ago. I had been avoiding reading the series, the way I try really hard to ignore the news. I figured I knew about global warming, and didn't want to feel scared and guilty about how little I did to combat it, or how much I contributed to the problem. The article's dire exposé of the complexity and extent of the problems we're facing left me feeling, like so much of the news, a powerless and hopeless observer, watching the world spiraling towards its inevitable destruction. And helplessness, for me at least, (almost always) translates into inaction. So I embarked on the making of Fresh to recapture a sense of agency, a belief that my individual actions do in fact matter. Initially, I intended to document the urgency of the global warming crisis, hoping to scare others and myself into action. Instead, I encountered the most inspiring people, ideas, and initiatives. Who knew that we already had the solutions to so many of our problems, and that some of us were already hard at work implementing them? Instead of the despair and inaction unwittingly fostered by the media, these examples of change suggested a very different perspective, that life is an indivisible network in which every node is critical, that each one of us is creating the world we are living in, and that the process of creating it is what gives us meaning and pleasure. Around the same time, I started meditating. And since I don't do things slowly, I went on 8 or so week-long silent mediation retreats over the course of that same period. And my experience on the cushion helped me understand what it was that so deeply attracted me to the people I was discovering in my documentary. Our current culture tends to take a very linear approach to life. Everything has a start and an end, everything is disposable - my morning coffee "to-go", my new living room set, my old TV. Buy and throw out. Collect and then dispose. Everything is expendable. And it sure feels, in times of plenty, that there's no end to what we can get. Problem is, in a linear model, even our lives have become expendable. It's hard to find meaning when it seems like you're just another "thing" to be used and disposed of, and when the only folks that seem to matter are those with money and celebrity power bolstering them up; the Bill Gates and Bonos of the world. When I visited Joel Salatin (a Virginia farmer made famous by Michael Pollan's "Omnivore Dilemma," and one of the main character in Fresh ), and he explained how everything has a place in nature, how nothing is wasted, I felt this combination of relief and excitement. In nature, bacteria, manure, fungus, trees, grass, sunlight, water... all play a part in the wonderful and mysterious process of creating and maintaining life. We might love to look at old solid oak trees and peaceful rivers, but no one could ever claim that they are more important to an ecosystem than the bacteria or the worms, the ants, and the birds. To realize that everything has its place, all play a role, was wonderfully reassuring. And so, through the making of Fresh , and with the support of meditation, I began to look at myself differently, to ask different questions from myself and about my life. It is not only the pig whose pig-ness we need to respect, but the Ana-ness of Ana. The essence of each one of us. By learning to respect and embrace the truth of who I am, I too can find my place and role in this world. For me, right now, it means not doubting my work, but letting my first 'baby' out into the world, and trusting it will find its audience (well, a little trust and lots of work!) It also means being a friend, a partner, a daughter. It means acting with mindfulness in my daily life, knowing that my smallest actions have an impact and that they are no less important then the biggest of my decisions. It means taking care of myself, and of the life that I am carrying. It means allowing for room for mistakes, for feeling lost, for finding myself again, and again and again. Perhaps my role or place will never be so clear as that of each element in an ecosystem, or as predetermined, but it will be, and it will have an effect. Like it or not! More on Food
 
Stroger Vetoing Sales Tax Repeal Top
Cook County Board President Todd Stroger today will block the repeal of a controversial sales-tax increase, spokesman James Ramos said. More on Taxes
 
Andrea Chalupa: The Upside: Cost cut your haircut Top
I have a Frederic Fekkai habit. It wasn't always like this. I used to get my hair done by a friend, for next to nothing. We'd sit in her apartment, drinking cucumber enhanced martinis--zentinis--and swap stories . It was fun until she gave me tiny black highlights that looked like bug antennas. That's when I rushed to what I always heard from my mother, who grew up on the Lower East Side, was the Holy Grail for hair: Frederic Fekkai. (She'd never been there, but always talked of it like it was some Golden Hollywood movie). Oy vey! It was like when Sid met Nancy! Fekkai is fantastic, reliable, they pamper you like you're Mrs. Dick Fuld, but it's a death blow to my budget. There is a way to get a great haircut for super cheap or next to nothing. The first way, which I haven't tried yet, but seems extremely promising, is to be a model at the Toni & Guy Academy . On Friday, I asked this striking blond who wandered into a bar full of French people dressed in '80s jazzercise getups, where she got her smart, chic, just-below-the-shoulder cut. She gets it all done for free, the highlights, the cut, at Toni & Guy, as a hair model. If I wasn't so emotionally involved with my colorist, I might try it. Now, another option is cutting your hair yourself. If you've got the steady surgeon hands of Sanjay Gupta, the eye for style like Valerie Jarrett, and cojones of steel like Wanda Sykes, this could be a good option. Marc Acito, for WalletPop , spoke with a couple of professional stylists about the best ways for men and women to cut their hair at home. Marc, an acclaimed novelist living in Portland, Oregon and regular NPR commentator, will be writing The Upside for Walletpop and looking for the silver lining in how we're living now. He thought hair was a good one because, if you can cut it yourself, that's quite an accomplishment and money saver. To read Marc's self-grooming tips, check out Walletpop. Happy shearing! More on Wanda Sykes
 
Dean Sluyter: Your Junk Drawer vs. Nirvana Top
A friend asks: "I have a garage full of junk that I can't seem to get rid of. Not just junk junk, but clingy junk: books and pictures that were once meaningful to me, trinkets and tchotchkes from old friends and lovers, notebooks and papers from when I attended college in the pre-computer age, once-snazzy electronic equipment that's now obsolete, once-stylish clothes that probably doesn't even fit me anymore, etc., etc., etc. I know I'll never use any of this stuff, and I don't feel any strong desire even to look at it, yet I somehow can't bring myself to throw it away. Any advice?" It's hard, isn't it? Each piece of sentimental junk feels like a part of your life, a part of you , so that the prospect of throwing it away feels as if you would be ripping out and throwing away a part of yourself. Most of us have that collection somewhere, whether it's in a drawer or a closet, a garage or a basement. Some people have an entire houseful of the stuff, and eventually they have to rent storage space for the overflow. Some people even have cartons full of stuff that they packed up two or three houses back; every time they move, the boxes move with them, perpetually unopened. And then, when we reach a certain age, we start to realize that, if we don't sift through this stuff, someday our kids will be stuck with it. Why does this stuff arouse such mixed feelings? Why do we at once cling so tightly to it yet long to be rid of it? I think it's because it embodies our idea of who we are, as the accumulated sedimentary layers of everyone we think we've been. It's the concrete, three-dimensional illustrations of the elaborate story of ourselves that we've been spinning all these years. At the same time, some deeper intuition tells us we're not just our stories. We're something more, or, better yet, something less than them. We're something free of them: the simple, crystalline Pure Being that is the boundless, silent space within which our varied stories arise and vanish like so many holographic movies. At a deep, intuitive level we yearn to let all those stories just blow away and leave us to marinate in that freedom. Nirvana means, literally, "blown away." So, back to your garage full of junk. Here's a reality check for you. Imagine that you get a phone call today at work, informing you that it has burned to the ground. Your insurance will rebuild the garage, but all your junk has been lost. On balance, do you feel sad or happy, deprived or relieved? If you feel more relieved -- and I'll bet you do -- that's your confirmation that you want freedom, the unspeakable lightness of being more than the weight of your old stuff. And it may be just the perspective shift you need to wade in, roll up your sleeves, and start ruthlessly chucking junk into the dumpster. Grab the first gewgaw and just do it, quick, like ripping off a Band-Aid. You'll immediately get some taste of that lightened-up sensation, and that will make it easier to throw away the next thing. If throwing everything away sounds too ruthless, you can imagine you're at home when the garage catches fire and you have four minutes to pull stuff out. Ready? Go! For that matter, some of the stuff that's just junk to you could be truly useful to someone else. That sweater that you'll never wear could be keeping a homeless person warm. The dollies and stuffed animals of your childhood could be making some other, actual children much happier. (You can keep one or two favorites. That's just human, and fine, I'm sure.) Here's some wisdom on this topic from the brilliant Advaita master Mooji : Occasionally on Sunday mornings, I enjoy going to flea markets. There you find, in heaps on the ground, objects that were once someone's treasure -- now selling for peanuts. Old family portraits, a wedding dress, a ring, an old ivory pipe, all lying about carelessly in the rain. Once of great sentimental value, now meaningless junk. Nothing you gain in this life can stay with you... Even this body you cannot take with you. Worms are waiting for it, and vultures; fishes are waiting and fire is waiting. Elements returning to elements, the elemental dance. "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust": the priest's farewell. If you are the body, what can you take with you? ... You are not merely the body; you are 100% Pure Being. But you must find this out for yourself. It must become your own discovery, happening in your innermost being. Ultimately, then, it doesn't matter whether you throw the stuff away or not. (But, at least as a courtesy to your kids, throw it away!) What matters most is that inner discovery, and nothing external can impede it, neither the absence nor the presence of this or that. As that discovery dawns, you realize that all the clutter -- even the thought-clutter of your mind and the event-clutter of your life -- is powerless to obstruct the nirvanic relief of Pure Being. And through the simple process of looking within yourself , it does dawn, and everything is experienced in its glow. Then tasks and situations that once pushed and pulled you in so many ways become frictionless flow, and things that were hard to do -- even cleaning out the garage -- become easy.
 
George Jenkins: In Support of Hedge Fund Managers Top
Having read the letter below and having festered about this issue for weeks, I can't avoid passing this along. This issue of abusing the "hedge funds" or, perhaps better said, the whole class of owners of capital as though they are criminals doing illegal and immoral things has me apoplectic. The lenders who lent to Chrysler were either "secured" or unsecured based on our legal system. We rely on that system and expect it to function. When Chrysler and its shareholders borrowed they knew the rules and that the downside was possibly liquidation for not paying your bills -- just the way it was meant to be if you lied on your mortgage application or failed to pay your personal bills. The insertion of the White House in this whole process using the "press" to label new enemies is incredibly damaging to both commerce and the perception by the uninitiated that because the Government speaks, these things are right-headed. We are potentially destroying our capitalist system by inculcating in a whole generation of young adults that this is the way things should be. This letter bears close attention and I am pleased to see that someone has both the fortitude and the willingness to cogently lay out the issues. Remember this mess when your neighbor asks you to lend him some money. Under the "old" system you were a good person who could rely on a system of laws and a set of moral/social expectations that both heralded you for being sensitive and charitable but also gave you the reasonable expectation of a legal system requiring repayment according to the terms you negotiated with your neighbor. Now as the holder of capital with a claim, you are the bad guy. What lessons are our kids taking away from this? What will be the economic and political implications of this 10 years from now? Unafraid In Greenwich Connecticut Clifford S. Asness Managing and Founding Principal AQR Capital Management, LLC The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration's bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them "speculators" who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else" and who wanted "to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout." The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a "group letter", was the superb note from "The Committee of Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders" some of the points of which I echo here, and a relatively few firms, like Oppenheimer, that have publicly defended themselves). Furthermore, one by one the managers and banks are said to be caving to the President's wishes out of justifiable fear. I run an approximately twenty billion dollar money management firm that offers hedge funds as well as public mutual funds and unhedged traditional investments. My company is not involved in the Chrysler situation, but I am still aghast at the President's comments (of course these are my own views not those of my company). Furthermore, for some reason I was not born with the common sense to keep it to myself, though my title should more accurately be called "Not Afraid Enough" as I am indeed fearful writing this... It's really a bad idea to speak out. Angering the President is a mistake and, my views will annoy half my clients. I hope my clients will understand that I'm entitled to my voice and to speak it loudly, just as they are in this great country. I hope they will also like that I do not think I have the right to intentionally "sacrifice" their money without their permission. Here's a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It's not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders' contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times. The above is how it works in America, or how it's supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler's creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse. Let's be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients' money to share in the "sacrifice", they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not. The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients' money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That's how the system works. If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could "share in the sacrifice", you would not be happy. Let's quickly review a few side issues. The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power. Let's also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing. Some useful programs, like those designed to help finance consumer loans, won't work because of this irresponsible hectoring. Last but not least, the President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying. The TARP recipients had no choice but to go along. The hedge funds were singled out only because they are unpopular, not because they behaved any differently from any other ethical manager of other people's money. The President's comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet, somehow I don't think the hedge funds will be following ACORN's lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protestors soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer. This is America. We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years. When it fails it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the oval office to be scolded for disobedience by the President. I am ready for my "personalized" tax rate now. More on Stimulus Package
 
Colombia Recognizing Rape As Weapon Of War Top
Amelia had spent years counseling a woman who was raped by a right-wing warlord and suffered an unwanted pregnancy. So when the woman called her for advice after the warlord threatened to return to take away the child, Amelia rushed to go see her. More on Colombia
 
George Jenkins: George Jenkins Ugly Self Top
Having read the letter below and having festered about this issue for weeks, I can't avoid passing this along. This issue of abusing the "hedge funds" or, perhaps better said, the whole class of owners of capital as though they are criminals doing illegal and immoral things has me apoplectic. The lenders who lent to Chrysler were either "secured" or unsecured based on our legal system. We rely on that system and expect it to function. When Chrysler and its shareholders borrowed they knew the rules and that the downside was possibly liquidation for not paying your bills -- just the way it was meant to be if you lied on your mortgage application or failed to pay your personal bills. The insertion of the White House in this whole process using the "press" to label new enemies is incredibly damaging to both commerce and the perception by the uninitiated that because the Government speaks, these things are right-headed. We are potentially destroying our capitalist system by inculcating in a whole generation of young adults that this is the way things should be. This letter bears close attention and I am pleased to see that someone has both the fortitude and the willingness to cogently lay out the issues. Remember this mess when your neighbor asks you to lend him some money. Under the "old" system you were a good person who could rely on a system of laws and a set of moral/social expectations that both heralded you for being sensitive and charitable but also gave you the reasonable expectation of a legal system requiring repayment according to the terms you negotiated with your neighbor. Now as the holder of capital with a claim, you are the bad guy. What lessons are our kids taking away from this? What will be the economic and political implications of this 10 years from now? Unafraid In Greenwich Connecticut Clifford S. Asness Managing and Founding Principal AQR Capital Management, LLC The President has just harshly castigated hedge fund managers for being unwilling to take his administration's bid for their Chrysler bonds. He called them "speculators" who were "refusing to sacrifice like everyone else" and who wanted "to hold out for the prospect of an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout." The responses of hedge fund managers have been, appropriately, outrage, but generally have been anonymous for fear of going on the record against a powerful President (an exception, though still in the form of a "group letter", was the superb note from "The Committee of Chrysler Non-TARP Lenders" some of the points of which I echo here, and a relatively few firms, like Oppenheimer, that have publicly defended themselves). Furthermore, one by one the managers and banks are said to be caving to the President's wishes out of justifiable fear. I run an approximately twenty billion dollar money management firm that offers hedge funds as well as public mutual funds and unhedged traditional investments. My company is not involved in the Chrysler situation, but I am still aghast at the President's comments (of course these are my own views not those of my company). Furthermore, for some reason I was not born with the common sense to keep it to myself, though my title should more accurately be called "Not Afraid Enough" as I am indeed fearful writing this... It's really a bad idea to speak out. Angering the President is a mistake and, my views will annoy half my clients. I hope my clients will understand that I'm entitled to my voice and to speak it loudly, just as they are in this great country. I hope they will also like that I do not think I have the right to intentionally "sacrifice" their money without their permission. Here's a shock. When hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds, and individuals, including very sweet grandmothers, lend their money they expect to get it back. However, they know, or should know, they take the risk of not being paid back. But if such a bad event happens it usually does not result in a complete loss. A firm in bankruptcy still has assets. It's not always a pretty process. Bankruptcy court is about figuring out how to most fairly divvy up the remaining assets based on who is owed what and whose contracts come first. The process already has built-in partial protections for employees and pensions, and can set lenders' contracts aside in order to help the company survive, all of which are the rules of the game lenders know before they lend. But, without this recovery process nobody would lend to risky borrowers. Essentially, lenders accept less than shareholders (means bonds return less than stocks) in good times only because they get more than shareholders in bad times. The above is how it works in America, or how it's supposed to work. The President and his team sought to avoid having Chrysler go through this process, proposing their own plan for re-organizing the company and partially paying off Chrysler's creditors. Some bond holders thought this plan unfair. Specifically, they thought it unfairly favored the United Auto Workers, and unfairly paid bondholders less than they would get in bankruptcy court. So, they said no to the plan and decided, as is their right, to take their chances in the bankruptcy process. But, as his quotes above show, the President thought they were being unpatriotic or worse. Let's be clear, it is the job and obligation of all investment managers, including hedge fund managers, to get their clients the most return they can. They are allowed to be charitable with their own money, and many are spectacularly so, but if they give away their clients' money to share in the "sacrifice", they are stealing. Clients of hedge funds include, among others, pension funds of all kinds of workers, unionized and not. The managers have a fiduciary obligation to look after their clients' money as best they can, not to support the President, nor to oppose him, nor otherwise advance their personal political views. That's how the system works. If you hired an investment professional and he could preserve more of your money in a financial disaster, but instead he decided to spend it on the UAW so you could "share in the sacrifice", you would not be happy. Let's quickly review a few side issues. The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power. Let's also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing. Some useful programs, like those designed to help finance consumer loans, won't work because of this irresponsible hectoring. Last but not least, the President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying. The TARP recipients had no choice but to go along. The hedge funds were singled out only because they are unpopular, not because they behaved any differently from any other ethical manager of other people's money. The President's comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet, somehow I don't think the hedge funds will be following ACORN's lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protestors soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer. This is America. We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred plus years. When it fails it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the oval office to be scolded for disobedience by the President. I am ready for my "personalized" tax rate now. More on Stimulus Package
 
Chicago Moves Toward Ban On BPA In Baby Bottles Top
The city that blazed a consumer protection trail by banning phosphates would become the first in the nation to ban baby bottles and cups containing the potentially harmful chemical bisphenol A, under a proposal advanced by a Chicago City Council committee today. More on Health
 
Kimberly Brooks: A Vigil for My Father, Leonard Shlain Top
Sunday, May 10 As I write this, my father, Leonard Shlain , is dying of a brain tumor. A couple of weeks or months ago, I might have said "living with a brain tumor." But now that is just not the case. I write from the top floor of the beautiful home in Mill Valley that he built and helped design with San Francisco sparkling to my left and Mount Tamalpais sleeping to my right. My father is in the bed behind me. I am sitting at his desk. He drifts in and out of consciousness (mostly appearing to sleep) and this is where my family is holding vigil. I was going to tell the editor that I cannot write this week or next or maybe for a while. I may still do that, I don't know. But I cannot be the only one in pain. I thought maybe if I shared this sorrow that it might make me feel better or maybe it could even make someone else feel better who is going though something similar. Also, he is an unrepentant ham and when I asked him if he would mind if I devoted this week's column to him, he squeezed my hand and grunted one of the three words that he uttered that entire day which was yes. As I write, I push the monitor to the side and keep my hands on the keyboard while I stare out the windows. I'm looking at the birds flying over the water and I can see the boats and Sausalito. What happens when we die? Is he afraid? Is he still angry for being snatched from the living so young two weeks before the birth of my sisters child with ten more books to write? Many people say that their dad is amazing. My dad is the real deal. He used to write me long letters filled with wisdom when I was at camp as a kid and in college on a yellow legal pad with his signature green pen. Sometimes they were typed. When we were young, he would entertain us and our classmates by bringing a human brain to our elementary school in a white bucket of formaldehyde during show and tell. In the backyard, instead of a swing set, he built a stained-glass geodesic dome with a hot tub in the middle (ah, Marin in the 70s). Dinner conversations typically spanned from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to politics, literature to an incredibly dirty joke. When he came home after a hard day's work as a young surgeon- saving lives for a living-, occasionally he would have dried blood spatters still on his glasses as he would diagram the operation of the day on a napkin. Later, his diagrams became more adventuresome and expanded to thought experiments that included what it would be like to sit astride a beam of light and how that corresponded with Picasso's rose period, blue period. This, and when he took me to New York to see the museums, was what inspired him to write his first book Art & Physics . Alphabet vs. The Goddess and Sex, Time and Power followed. My father sometimes described his experience of life as that of him climbing up a mountain and that there is some old guy on top throwing boulders at him. He always sought the unattainable and would achieve it. He grew up in Detroit Michigan, the son of immigrant parents, graduated high school at fifteen, medical school when he was twenty three, became a captain in the army got married and moved to Mill Valley in the late sixties. When as a surgeon he started writing a book about art and physics, he was initially met with disdain from experts in those fields who would say "How dare a surgeon should write about these two fields, neither of which he is an expert?" Oh but he was an expert and the books that line the walls of his house attest to it. One huge boulder was being diagnosed with non-hodgkins lymphoma at the age of thirty seven. He went into remission and survived. It was this first bout with cancer that in a profound way set him free. He saw every day after that as gift. He pushed himself far out of the boundaries of being a doctor by writing his books. He was hungry and greedy for life experience, never wanting to miss a thing. It wasn't until thirty some odd years later (three years ago) that he would be struck by a string of diseases, lymphatic interstitial pneumonia, mds, leukemia and then for the grand finale a stage four terminal glioblastoma brain cancer for which he had emergency surgery this fall. We, his incredible wife, Ina Gyemant, my brother, sister and I, gathered around him in horror as he awoke in the hospital and couldn't speak. "We're all big satellite dishes, dad. We can hear everything you're thinking and want to say." He eventually regained his speech and we took a huge family trip to Hawaii. Ironically, when the tumor hit he was finishing up his last book "Leonardo's Brain" based on Leonardo Da Vinci. So for the last nine months as I edited the manuscript and he gave us blow by blow details of his health, all we talked about was Leonardo's brain in some form or another. In addition to setting an extraordinary example as a person, he was an exceptional father. When I was twelve my father would repeatedly sit me down a say a version of that quote I always see attributed to Nelson Mandela or Maya Angelou-- about being brilliant and gorgeous and how dare one not be as great as he can possibly be. He would say "You have brains, beauty and talent and can do and be anything you want." He told me that a great power would come with all this and that in the coming years I would be testing it out and that I had to use it wisely. I believed him and I still do. He gave all of us Shlain kids an unbelievable confidence and daring. Anyone who knows us (my sister Tiffany, the filmmaker, and my brother Jordan, the doctor) knows this to be the case. (He also told us other truisms, such as to never trust a man with thin lips or who wears a pinky ring or who has to say more than one sentence to describe what he does for a living.) The hardest part of this experience has been bracing myself for the day I can't pick up the phone and call him. I asked him the other day while I was helping him add quotes to his newest book: "Are you afraid to die?" "No" he said." I'm not afraid to die. I just want to live." Last monday, we got the news that the Avastin (the tumor-shrinking drug he was taking) was no longer working, my stepmother told me that he said he wanted to call his parents who passed away long ago. He wanted to tell them the horrible news that he was going to die and that there were no more bullets in the chamber to fight all the diseases. When he is actually no longer here. Something I've been preparing and dreading and yet still cannot fathom, like all the most important events in my life, I know he'll be the first person I'll want to call to tell him the news. *** First Person Artist is a weekly column by artist Kimberly Brooks in which she provides commentary on the creative process , technology and showcases artists ' work from around the world.
 
Akbar Ahmed: Will My Books in Swat Survive? Top
Oscar Wilde, Bernard Shaw, P.G. Woodhouse, Fredrick Barth, Ibn Khaldun, and Rumi. These were some of my constant companions through the ups and downs of my life in the civil service of Pakistan. From lonely postings in Waziristan to challenging ones in Baluchistan, I enjoyed the wisdom and humanity of these books. I took literally the Prophet of Islam's admonishment that the "ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr." Knowledge or ilm, after all, is the second most used word in the Quran. So when Zeenat, my wife, and I were deciding where to leave our possessions as we prepared to go to Cambridge in the UK, without hesitation we said Saidu, the capital of Swat. Zeenat's grandfather, the legendary Wali of Swat, had ruled the state from here. So we left behind all of our belongings, including some 2-3,000 books, in the Wali's old palace. The books were my pride and joy and today all I possess in Pakistan. I heard recently that the chaos created by the Taliban had allowed people to break in and steal our other possessions. No one as far as I know has taken the books. But these are just material things. Lives have been lost. The people of Swat have been killed by the Taliban and now many are dying as a result of the massive army assault; bombs and missiles don't distinguish between Taliban and ordinary citizens. Zeenat's first cousin, a government minister, was blown up because he was determined to fight religious extremism. He was a dynamic young man and had studied at my old school so his death was a blow to both of us. Then the Taliban came for another cousin who they shot. They also killed two of his four sons in front of him. The other two managed to escape to a neighboring farm, but those who had given them shelter were also killed. Dozens more of her relatives have lost houses and property and barely escaped with their lives. They join over half a million people displaced in refugee camps in Pakistan. Half a million is a large number anywhere but when it is almost half of the total population of an entire area, then the loss is devastating. Swat has a dense population living along the Swat River in the valley and rich irrigated lands. With battle raging, it is now unrecognizable. Swat was world famous as a tourist location situated in the foothills of the Himalayas. The Wali of Swat took pride in administering justice and promoting education. He had created hundreds of girls' schools, the first in the region, and sent his grandchildren to the Jesus and Mary girls' boarding school. He had even invited the nuns to open a school in Swat. These girls' schools were the first target of the Taliban. Under the Wali there was sense of pride as Swatis felt they had a special status even in Pakistan. Today they are between a rock and a hard place; the Taliban are attacking them from one side and the Pakistan army from the other. The scourge of modern terrorism has converted their paradise into a twenty-first century nightmare. As for my books, neither the Taliban nor the Pakistan army soldier is known for cultivating a love of books. I don't think many in either camp would have much time for the humor of Wilde, Shaw, or Woodhouse; they would probably think that Rumi was too subversive. So I fear for my collection whoever gets to it. The thought of my books with their pages fluttering in the wind and rain in rubbish heaps breaks my heart. In the face of the scale of the tragedy my mourning for my books seems selfish and petty. But my loss is not a personal one. I mourn the fact that knowledge itself is lost and it is that loss that has caused the present anarchy. More on Afghanistan
 
Bus Junction: New Site Lets You Compare Bus Prices Top
Intercity bus travel has taken off in the last few years. Now a new Web site makes it easier for riders to find their routes. BusJunction.com works something like Expedia or Orbitz in the way it helps travelers find their way in a crowded market. But unlike those two popular airfare Web sites, BusJunction doesn't sell tickets; it steers its users right to the online ticketing on the bus companies' home pages. It's an aggregator of data, like Kayak.com, not a booking site. This is a critical difference, according to Arthur Frommer, the venerable travel writer and a strong supporter of BusJunction. That way, the company stays independent from all its bus lines, and doesn't favor any bus company at the expense of customer choice, he said. "They simply perform a journalistic function; they simply tell you what's available," said Frommer in a phone interview. "I find it reassuring that they have no axe to grind, they get no money out of the sale of their ticket." BusJunction searches 12 premium bus lines, including Megabus, Boltbus, Vamoose, DC2NY, Fung Wah, and Greyhound. According to founder Matthew Keller, the DC-based company serves 31 cities in the East and Midwest and will find users an average ticket price of $25. The most popular destinations are Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. Before buying tickets, users of can see which routes have amenities like onboard Wi-Fi and power outlets. The company focuses on premium lines and steers clear of lesser-known mom-and-pop operations that might not offer reliable service, said Keller. http://www.busjunction.com "We wanted to get the bus lines that offer the most amenities, so that's the ones we're focusing on," said Keller. "There are a handful of (lines) who offer no amenities. There are certain bus lines that have questionable reputations. We're trying to steer our passengers away from those lines just to serve them better." "Some of these companies are a little scary," agreed Frommer. "You wonder with some of these totally unknown firms whether they have insurance, whether they're hiring qualified bus drivers, whether they're going to go bankrupt." Bus travel has grown significantly in the last few years after declining for about four decades, according to a recent study from DePaul University. The study said scheduled bus service grew 9 percent between 2007 and 2008. Much of the traffic is focused on the crowded corridors of the East Coast, where parking is an especially large headache in the major cities, and where many urban dwellers don't own cars. And it's not hard to see why bus travel is more attractive in the current economic downturn. A quick search of weekday fares on BusJunction yields a price of just $15 for a one-way, four-hour trip between New York's Penn Station and Boston's South Station. Through Orbitz, round-trip flights between those two cities on the same day cost between $199 and $1,134. "Especially on the East Coast and in the Midwest, where companies like Megabus are flourishing under the banner of low cost travel, BusJunction will become an indispensable tool for comparing the fares," said Cynthia Drescher, an assistant editor at the travel Web site Jaunted.com. More on Travel
 
Diane Francis: Hockey brawl: owners not players Top
The Phoenix Coyotes hockey team should move to southern Ontario and BlackBerry billionaire, Jim Balsillie and the NHL commissioner Gary Bettman should both head for the showers. The two have had three slug-fests over what to do about money-losing U.S. hockey franchises and now it's time for cooler heads to prevail. Bettman opposes any move -- which is unjustifiable. And Balsillie has been high-handed and has attempted to make this a patriotic issue to stir up Canadian public opinion. Neither man is behaving appropriately. This is not about patriotism. Hockey is a game that lots of North Americans love but not all North Americans watch, support or follow. Expansion into the U.S. has been beneficial overall, but I believe that the league must also be run like a business. Stop squabbling now Bettman has done a good job for 16 years and met the owners' mandate which was to expand for profit. Annual revenues have grown to US$2.2 billion from US$400 million. That said, the world is changing and all business models must be tweaked or reconstituted. The facts are that an NHL franchise in Phoenix does not make sense and the team has never turned a profit in 12 years despite a generous owner, community good will, a nice arena and the involvement of the best brand name in hockey, Wayne Gretzsky. Bettman argues that absence of a team in the southwest U.S. and moving it to a small market in southern Ontario will hurt the league. I disagree. The world's richest league is the NFL and it has not had a franchise in America's second-largest city, Los Angeles, since 1995. Conversely, the NHL's franchise in tiny Green Bay Wisconsin (population 300,000) is a winner thanks to a loyal fan base and community ownership. Franchises should be where they should be, no matter how humble or clustered. The NFL doesn't have to be in every city or region and neither does hockey. In addition, the move will improve the league's image. A successful team in Kitchener-Waterloo or Hamilton will enhance hockey but retaining a failing franchise in Phoenix won't. A cold game for northerners Besides, hockey attracts customers who live in "Nation Hockey" - or cold-climate regions. More kids play hockey every year in Connecticut, New York, New Hampshire or Canada than will ever play in Arizona or New Mexico and it is these kids and their families who buy tickets to games or watch them on television. Even so, some argue that Balsillie's proposed move will lead to a landslide of others moving to smaller markets in Canada, stunting audience growth in the states. But the league controls whether money-losing franchises move or not. This happened to the Quebec Nordiques, Hartford Whalers and Winnipeg Jets. No one, nor can any court, argue that the league should not have the right to govern itself on a case by case basis. Bettman is correct in fighting ad hoc moves, but he is going too far by insisting that Phoenix must stay there when there's a viable alternative. Balsillie is correct in making the business case but damages the sport by whipping up patriotic sentiment against American owners and Bettman. Both should be sidelined and the decision made by other participants, such as the other owners, who will end up subsidizing Phoenix, as well as the NHL's players who are partners now with interests aligned financially with owners through profit sharing. This is a business situation. Bettman should make a case or get off the puck. Sports leagues are no different than retailers with chains of stores. If Macy's, like the NFL, doesn't have to be in every big city, or spread around, then neither does the NHL. Diane Francis blogs http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/francis/default.aspx at Financial Post
 
Chip Conley: The Happiest Place on the Planet? Top
Born in the shadow of Disneyland, I have a natural predilection for seeking happy utopias. Having founded a company named Joie de Vivre in a place described as "49 square miles surrounded by reality" (San Francisco), I'm not surprised by my fascination with Bhutan, the first country in the world to proclaim happiness as its primary civic goal. Flying into this Himalayan Shangri-La, I was immediately struck by the world's highest unclimbed mountain, the exquisite temples perched precariously on cliffs, the friendly and handsome people adorned in traditional silk attire, and a healthy dose of wafting incense and chanting mantras. With relatively strict limits on foreign travelers (about 50 a day), there were virtually no mainstream tourists to be found scurrying from holy site to spectacular vista. This is the kind of "boutique country" that could resonate with a boutique hotelier like me. I came here to learn how the world's newest democracy could be a model for a new definition of global success. But, understanding that this thoroughly un-modern place was no bulls-eye (they love archery here) for the conventional definition of a developed country, I pondered whether poverty and utopia could co-exist? Fortunately, I started my investigation dining with the Prime Minister and a collection of the leaders of Bhutan's Gross National Happiness (GNH) movement. At dinner, when the Prime Minister said his goal was "to create the conditions in which happiness could flourish," I almost fell off my seat. My happiness guide Abe Maslow suggested in life and especially in the workplace, "One can set up the conditions so that peak experiences are more likely, or one can perversely set up the conditions so that they are less likely." Having visited Zimbabwe two years earlier, I viscerally understood that "creating conditions" for a happiness habitat is one of the most profound responsibilities of any leader (as there's no better example of a set of perverse conditions than in Zimbabwe.) The Bhutanese dream big (and so did I as my week was full of lucid and vivid dreams). They don't dream in material ways, but the leaders I spoke with talked about development in such humanistic terms that I worried that their goals might remain lofty and intangible. Fortunately, Bhutan's Gross National Happiness Commission has spent the past five years identifying nine key indicators that they now measure to gauge civic well-being: environmental conservation, sustainable and equitable economic development, promotion of culture, good governance, psychological well-being, community vitality, health and wellness, accessibility of education, and how people allocate their time daily. As one new member of Parliament said to me, "Bhutan will never be a financial or military world leader, but we can be the leader in learning how to preserve our culture and live a rich life." I learned long ago in business, if you're small, go niche, and the Bhutanese have got the happiness niche down to a science. Given the civic boosterism of Bhutan's GNH movement, there were moments when I thought I was part of some Madison Avenue advertising stunt. This primitive paradise all seemed a little too perfect, even with all the rough and occasionally inconvenient edges. Clearly, those of us in the "developed" world long for a place where the grass is greener (literally, they've got green "grass" as marijuana grows uncut throughout the country), where simplicity, authenticity, generosity, and safe drinking water abound (three out of four ain't bad). Franklin Delano Roosevelt even named his presidential retreat Shangri-La (later renamed Camp David) based upon the imagination of such a far-off nirvana. But, Bhutan isn't just a Hollywood set for Lost Horizon . There's a contentment here that is real. As one observer suggested, Bhutan is "simultaneously placid and intellectually invigorating"....not a simple combination. Their Tantric Buddhist traditions (there are more monks than soldiers), the unspoiled landscape, their splendid isolation (the last country in the world to have television), their benevolent kings, and their unique history of never being colonized nor conquered, have all created the conditions for happiness to flourish. But, beyond that, in a modern world full of self-help books and shrinks on every corner, the Bhutanese don't "pursue" happiness (there's supposedly just one psychiatrist in the country). Happiness is the natural by-product of a life built on gratitude, not gratification. There may have been a time when "ignorance was bliss" in this country, but today Bhutan is well-aware of how it delightfully deviates from the world's national norms. And, there's even an Emotional Equation I cooked up that sums up their unique recipe that the rest of us could learn from: Happiness = Wanting What You Have divided by Having What You Want (credit: William Shakespeare) So, can we bottle Bhutan and distribute it to the rest of the world? No doubt, we've entered an era in which global transformation isn't just a nice idea, it's truly an imperative. But, could a little country the size of Switzerland, with a population no larger than my hometown, and a per capita GDP smaller than Haiti prove to be a leader in a new movement toward an alternative metric for success? Bhutan is ironically bordered by two countries which represent nearly 40% of the world's population (China to the north and India to the south) where the 21st century's version of "middle class values" will be borne. Will this new generation of the Jones (or Wangs or Shahs) pursue excess as their definition of success? If Bhutan plays its cards right, this country is fated to be noticed and potentially be a role model for how we measure and define happiness and well-being in the new millennium. Chip Conley is the Founder and CEO of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and the author of PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow.
 
Jordan's King Abdullah: Israel Needs Peace Now Or There Will Be War Next Year Top
America is putting the final touches to a hugely ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, aimed at ending more than 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Arabs, according to Jordan's King Abdullah, who is helping to bring the parties together. More on Israel
 
Stu Kreisman: David Feherty's Triple Bogie Top
I can't figure out why CBS golf commentator David Feherty's comments on how our troops would gladly assassinate Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid is bothering me so much. This is the kind of comment one would expect to be heard almost daily on right wing radio. But somehow this just isn't going away. I'm a golf fan. I'm a terrible player but enjoy the sport. I was also a fan of Feherty's caustic wit on the telecasts. Then he wrote for "D" magazine: "From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though. Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death." First of all, he got the joke wrong. The joke goes: If you were in a room with Bin Laden and (Your choice of someone you personally hate here), had a gun with only two bullets, what would you do? The answer? Shoot (Insert personal enemy here) first, then shoot them again to make sure they are dead. In Feherty's telling, he denigrates our troops by saying all of them would gladly assassinate elected representatives of our government. (Notice how he lets them off the hook by saying they'd also strangle Bin Laden) He also takes a shot at a supposed left wing slant in the media, which he obviously abhors. Let's discuss where David Feherty is coming from. The world of professional golf is notoriously right wing. Pro golfers for the most part, come from privileged backgrounds. Their world is country clubs and big business. According to golf publications, most professional golfers vote republican. In a Golf Digest 2004 poll, professional golfers who responded voted 100% to 0% for George W. Bush. In 1993, members of the United States Ryder Cup team threatened to snub President Clinton because he wanted to raise taxes on the wealthy. The PGA Tour has been sponsored by the likes of AIG, MasterCard, Mercedes-Benz, Verizon, AT&T, Merrill Lynch, numerous banks, lending corporations and most companies who have received taxpayer bailout money. Just two weeks ago a tournament once known as the Wachovia Open was played under it's new name "The Quail Hollow Championship." A normal tournament is played between Thursday and Sunday. On the Wednesday before the tournament begins, there is usually a pro-am round where the fat cat executives from the sponsoring companies tee off with the pros and personalities like Feherty. Undoubtedly a lot of networking goes on, feeding the right wing golfers with also minded right wing corporate mentality. Every year AT&T sponsors a pro-am at Pebble Beach. Among the more popular celebrities that show up for the "clambake" is Rush Limbaugh, who is obviously in his element at the PGA. On the off days between tournaments, people like Feherty travel the country in corporate or private jets to play rounds of golf with industry titans and republican politicians. They are rewarded handsomely for these outings, which explains why Feherty can afford to live in the upscale North Dallas area in the Peoples Republic of Texas and hang out with neighbors like George W. Bush. Here's what bothers me. Feherty shows absolutely no remorse for what he said. His half-hearted apology wasn't really meant for Pelosi, Reid or the soldiers he slandered. It was meant for the bigwigs at CBS, EA Sports and Cobra so he could continue the lifestyle he has become accustomed to in his adopted country. "The passage was a metaphor meant to describe how American troops felt about our 43rd president" said Feherty. (I seriously doubt that. Apparently Feherty has been hanging out with the private contractors rather than the grunts in the field.) He continued that he clearly "insulted" Pelosi and Reid and was truly sorry for that. Wrong. David Feherty insulted every person who puts on a uniform to fight for the United States. He cast them all as hate mongers willing to assassinate members of the government that Feherty and his pals don't care for. And for that he must be punished. Remember the Dixie Chicks? At a concert in London, lead singer Natalie Maines mentioned she was ashamed that George Bush came from her home state of Texas. For that comment, the Dixie Chicks were banned from most of the public airwaves, radio stations sponsored rallies where CDs were crushed and burned. Their career was ruined. Feherty has advanced the idea of violence against public officials and what do we hear from the patriots at the PGA? Crickets. Years ago, another CBS golf commentator Gary McCord mentioned on air that the greens at the Masters were so fast that they seemed to be "bikini-waxed." For this innocent remark, McCord was banned for life from ever appearing on another Masters telecast by the people who run the Masters, CBS and the PGA. If McCord is banished for an innocent joke, Feherty should be fired immediately. He has defended himself by saying that he supports the troops, made a trip to the Mideast and visits them in hospitals. Well good for him but guess what? Thousands of other people do the same thing without any publicity. I highly doubt any of them engage in a conversation that would cause a soldier to threaten a member of congress. Al Franken has been doing USO shows for years with minimal publicity, but Franken is probably not the type of patriot Feherty or his friends at the PGA cotton to. Visiting the troops does not give you a free pass to smear them. People make jokes like Feherty's all the time in private. It's called freedom of speech. However, those jokes are meant to be private. Everybody screws up. Verbal slip-ups like the ones McCord, Fuzzy Zoeller or Hootie Johnson uttered can be excused for lack of judgment, heat of the moment, inappropriate glibness or whatever. However when Feherty took it upon himself to become the spokesman for our troops, he did so in an article he wrote for a magazine. He surely re-read his article a few times to make sure it represented exactly what he wanted it to say. He had plenty of opportunities to remove the passage yet he chose not to. Feherty absolutely wanted the world to know that American troops are willing to kill elected officials. There is no way I can watch Feherty on a CBS golf telecast ever again without thinking of how much he disrespects the political process of his adopted country and slanders the troops. Others have been fired for less. Failure to terminate Feherty's contract will just tar everyone involved in professional golf and at CBS. This was not a slip of the tongue. It was a threat. I'm sorry for you David. You let your personal biases get in the way of your career. It's too bad. When you stuck to golf, you were very entertaining. I'm sure you'll be very happy in retirement in your beloved Texas playing rounds with your pals from AIG and George W. And you can make all the jokes you want. More on CBS
 
World Vision: World Vision Finds Condition of Refugee Camps in Pakistan "Intolerable" Top
Temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, overcrowding, inadequate toilets and a lack of electricity make refugee camps in and around the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan "intolerable," according to relief workers for the international aid agency, World Vision. "Many children and their families have walked for days to reach camps like this one in Swabi. They have fled the fighting, left behind their livelihoods, and arrived at the camps exhausted and afraid," said Jeff Hall, World Vision's deputy director for advocacy in the Middle East. "Despite the coordinated efforts of the Pakistani authorities, World Vision, and other aid agencies on the ground, we may not be able to meet the most basic needs of the refugees as quickly as they are arriving in the camps if it continues at this pace." There are just over 4,000 people currently living in Chota Lahore, the camp set up in Swabi. The majority of the refugees taking shelter at the camp are women and children. The camp is several miles from the nearest commercial area, so work isn't available, and it is difficult for people to purchase basic supplies. Many of the people in Chota Lahore have fled from the mountains of Pakistan, and they are used to cooler climates. In Chota Lahore, the sun beats down on the camp, sending the temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and shade is nearly nonexistent. The pit latrines are filling up quickly and will become unpleasant in the summer heat. There is no electricity, and health services are extremely limited. Because the fighting escalated so quickly, many people had to leave everything behind and immediately head for safety. As a result, they were forced to leave behind their crops at harvest time, and they fear that their crops and livestock have been destroyed in the fighting, nearly eliminating many families' livelihoods for the next year. Some families have also reported having to leave elderly parents behind in the conflict area because they were not strong enough to make the difficult trip to the camps. According to World Vision's assessment team in Swabi, the number of refugees arriving in the camps could increase dramatically in the coming days if hostilities are not contained, straining the already limited resources in the region, and the camps may not be able to keep providing basic services to the families as more and more people flee their homes. World Vision is working alongside the local government and other aid agencies to provide relief to an estimated 200,000 people fleeing from the violence. As the aid agency begins to scale up its efforts, the first priority will be food, water, and adequate shelter for the families. Intense fighting between militant groups and the Pakistani forces in and around the Swat valley has driven more families from their homes, adding to the 550,000 people already displaced over the past three years of violence. More on Pakistan
 
AT&T to buy territories from Verizon for $2.35B Top
NEW YORK — AT&T Inc. said Friday it will buy the assets of Verizon Wireless in 79 mainly rural areas for $2.35 billion, a deal that will affect more than 1 million subscribers. Verizon Wireless was forced to sell the service areas, which are spread over 18 states, to satisfy regulatory conditions of its purchase of Alltel Corp. The areas are mainly Alltel territories that overlap with Verizon's own coverage, but also some Verizon territories and areas covered by Rural Cellular, another carrier Verizon bought last year. Dallas-based AT&T, the country's largest telecommunications company, was the expected winner of the auction for the assets. AT&T is getting spectrum licenses, cell towers and 1.5 million subscribers in the deal. Since AT&T phones aren't compatible with Alltel or Verizon phones, these subscribers will need new phones to use AT&T's network. AT&T said the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter. After that, it will take less than a year to convert the areas to its own network technology, which will require about $400 million in investment. The states with areas included in the deal are Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming. AT&T also said it had agreed to sell five Centennial Communications Corp. service areas in Louisiana and Mississippi to Verizon Wireless for $240 million. AT&T announced plans to acquire Centennial in November 2008, and the deal is awaiting regulatory approval. AT&T said it expects that the sale of Centennial service areas that overlap with its own will boost the of approval. Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. of New York and Vodafone Group PLC of Britain.
 
Cute/Ridiculous Animal Thing Of The Day: Bulldog In A Baby Pool (VIDEO) Top
Someone is so excited about his new pool. I won't tell you who, but I'll give you a hint: He can provide all the water for swimming just by drooling. WATCH: Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on cute animal videos
 
What Your Handwriting Says About You Top
Of all the different methods out there for finding key personality traits, graphology, the analysis of handwriting, seems to make some sense. Think of how much handwriting varies from one individual to another; even the difference between signatures--legible versus illegible, signed with flourish or indistinct--suggests something about the person. Our scrawls, whether chicken scratch-like or similar to computer font in their consistent neatness, are unique to us. Not even identical twins with their identical genetic makeup have the same handwriting, so there just might be something to the argument that our writing styles are somehow tied to our personalities
 
Carbon Offset Guide: Which Are Good, Which Are Bull Top
Two words of advice for anyone looking into carbon offsets: buyer beware. In the wild and unregulated offset marketplace, one particularly inconvenient truth is that plenty of products that promise reductions to offset your own carbon emissions don't deliver. Now don't get me wrong--done right, offsets can be a pretty effective way for individuals and businesses to neutralize their climate impact (after, of course, reducing emissions as much as possible). Done wrong, and carbon offsets will get you nothing for something. More on Energy
 
Sheri and Allan Rivlin: Could Heath Care Reform's Success Bring Failure Again? Top
Without a doubt, it is good news that the major players in America's health delivery system have come together on a strategy to reduce the cost of health care by 2 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Millions of American families and businesses have been struggling to keep up with costs for health insurance that have been rising far faster than wages and prices in the rest of the economy. But is this announcement, made first by the White House, further evidence that the medicine, pharmaceutical, and health insurance industries, former opponents of changes to the health care system, are now Obama's allies in bringing about reform - or is this another effort to undermine reform? The 1993-94 Clinton health care reform effort was successful in at least one respect. The health care delivery system dramatically slowed the pace of price increases that had fueled demands for reform, until the reform failed. Then, for some reason, health care costs began rising again, fueling the renewed interest in health care reform that is driving this week's news. The Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation has compiled a great deal of data about US health care and health insurance costs and made them available here . The pattern is pretty clear. The annual rate of change in national health expenditures (NHE) per person was 10.8% in 1988 the year George H.W. Bush won the White House. This was well over the annual rate of change in consumer prices (CPI) of 4.1%. The health spending inflation rate stayed above 10% per year until it dropped to 8% in 1991, the year Harris Wofford won an upset Senate race in Pennsylvania by calling for health care reform. The rate of inflation in health spending continued to decline each year as Bill Clinton campaigned for and won the White House (1992 = 7.1%), Hillary Clinton prepared her plan (1993 = 6.1%), and Congress debated and killed the plan (1994 = 4.1%). There may, of course, be sound economic reasons, rather than political ones, to explain why the pace of increases in health care costs was more than cut in half during this period. Throughout this period, much of the discussion coming from the White House centered on ways to extend coverage to more uninsured Americans, but as we discussed here , public opinion polls revealed that the driving force of voter interest in health reform was rising costs, just as it is today. To be fair, the managed care movement was in full swing in the early 1990s and this may account for some of the reduction in the rate of health care spending inflation, but at best this is a partial explanation for why one of the most vexing political challenges of the era, double digit increases in health care costs, would simply solve itself before the government could step in with a new regime. And it was temporary. As the recent update to the chart shows, rates stayed low through the next presidential election (1996 = 4.1%) and then started creeping back upward, jumping up in George W. Bush's first year (2001 = 7.5%) and reaching a peak of over 4 times the rate of change in consumer prices back up at 8% in 2002. This time around, the health care reform battle lines are far less clear. Many of the 1993 adversaries have come to the White House for "stakeholder meetings" and announced their support for reform in principle, while reserving the right to differ over specifics. The greatest area of difference has been over the question of whether the plan will include a "government option," a health insurance plan offered by the government that competes with private plans that some opponents see as a gateway to a government takeover of all of health care. Many veteran Washington watchers are starting to assume that there will be some health care reform this year, but the real question is whether it will include a government option or not. It remains an open question whether the recently-announced concern from hospitals, doctors, drug makers, and insurance companies about the rates they charge represents, on the one hand, a new spirit of coming together to solve national problems, or on the other hand, the smartest way to undercut public demand for inclusion of the "government option" in the reform proposal. More on Barack Obama
 
IG Report: Waterboarding Was Neither "Efficacious Or Medically Safe" Top
An inspector general report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House will almost certainly disprove claims that waterboarding was only used in controlled circumstances to effective results. On Monday, the Washington Post reported the impending release of a May 7, 2004 IG report that, the paper added, would show that in several circumstances the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects "appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture" and did not produce desired results. It is difficult, the report will conclude, "to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks." A fury of speculation ensued among a host of reporter-bloggers , who viewed the forthcoming information as the strongest proof to date that proclamations of waterboarding's usefulness were overblown. But there is no need to wait for the report's declassification. Information from its pages was already made public in the footnotes of the Office of Legal Counsel memos written by Steven Bradbury in 2005 and released by the current administration less than one month ago. And the conclusion seems pretty clear: Not only did interrogators, for a period of time, use waterboarding that was deemed by U.S. officials to be more frequent and intense than was medically safe, it did so to apparently limited results. As the Huffington Post reported back in mid-April, on a footnote on Page 41 of the Bradbury memo, it is written that "Agency interrogator[s]" had "in some cases" used the waterboard in a manner different than the way "used in the [the Marine Corps' Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape] SERE training." "The difference was in the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed," read the footnote, citing the IG report. "At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency interrogator... applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose." Medical personnel at the detention facility protested the use of the waterboard in that form, stressing that "there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.'" The important things to take away from the footnote seem clear: for a period of time interrogators were using the waterboard with a "frequency and cumulative use" that had to be toned down. Moreover, they were doing it in a way that was determined to not be "efficacious." The officials tasked with crafting and implementing the interrogation methods adjusted the techniques to fit within the legal parameters set forth by the Bush Department of Justice. But for a period of time, they were operating in excess and outside those bounds. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 

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