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Odds Favorite Orb Wins Muddy 139th Kentucky Derby

Sat, 04 May 2013 00:00:00 -0700

All Things Considered - By Bill Chappell - May. 04 (News Report) - Favored heavily 5-1 prior to the race, Orb has taken the title of the 139th Kentucky Derby Saturday at Churchill Downs. The win gives Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey his first victory in the race for 3-year-old Thoroughbreds.

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How Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Chris Mooney - Apr. 17 (Comment) - On February 17, more than 40,000 climate change activists—many of them quite young—rallied in Washington, DC, to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport dirty tar sands oil from Canada across the heartland. The scornful response from media centrists was predictable. Joe Nocera of the New York Times , for one, quickly went on the attack.

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Exhibit of Jews in Germany raises interest, ire

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

The Times of Israel - By Kirsten Grieshaber - Mar. 30 (News Report) - “Are there still Jews in Germany?” ”Are the Jews a chosen people?” Nearly 70 years after the Holocaust, there is no more sensitive an issue in German life as the role of Jews. With fewer than 200,000 Jews among Germany’s 82 million people, few Germans born after World War II know any Jews or much about them

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Top Chef Traci Des Jardins Thinks You Probably Eat Too Much

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Mother Jones - By Maddie Oatman - Dec. 26 (Comment) - In certain moments, Traci Des Jardins embodies the stereotype of an elite French chef: the way she glides coolly into the room, her impenetrable gaze fixed on you in a manner that makes you question why you have the right to be interviewing her in the first place. She is, after all, a two-time James Beard Award-winning culinarian, head of five Northern California restaurants , and one of the country's top female chefs who recently bought out her partner to become sole owner of the very classy San Francisco establishment, Jardinière , where the menu offers morsels like a $75 helping of White Alba Truffled Tagliatelle. So it may come as a surprise to learn that the short, muscular, sandy haired woman—who beat out Mario Batali on Iron Chef —was raised in the 70s in an immigrant farming community in California's Central Valley. Her family cultivated cotton, sugar beets, and rice—"none of it organic, lots of chemicals used"—she told an audience at a TEDx conference in ...

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Obama Honors Veterans At Arlington

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Chris Gentilviso - Nov. 11 (News Report) - President Barack Obama delivered his Veterans Day 2012 address at Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday, paying tribute to "the heroes over the generations" who served in the U.S. military.

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Welcome to Willard's World! [Fiore Cartoon]

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Mark Fiore - Oct. 02 (Opinion) - Mark Fiore is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a website featuring his work.

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Melting Greenland Weighs Perils Against Potential

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Elisabeth Rosenthal - Sep. 24 (Special Report) - As warming temperatures are upending traditional Greenlandic life, they are also offering up intriguing new opportunities.

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Mormonism’s history and meanings.

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New Yorker - Aug. 06 (Opinion) - Stereotypes and pigeonholes can, in a stable multiethnic society, act as sanctuaries as much as cells. In the heyday of urban ethnic immigration, even anti-Semites allowed that Jews were good at selling drygoods and producing movies, just as Irish Cathol

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Journalists at Cannes Asked to Pay For Interviews - SPIEGEL ONLINE

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Der Spiegel - Jul. 26 (News) - For the first time in the history of the Cannes Film Festival, a distribution firm has asked for a fee from journalists who want to interview Hollywood celebrities. Many journalists are eschewing the offer of a 20-minute interview with Brad Pitt for 2,500 euros, arguing it would set a dangerous precedent.

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Role Reversal: Why TV Is Replacing Movies As Elite Entertainment

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

The Hollywood Economist - By Edward Jay Epstein - May. 13 (News Analysis) - Once upon a time, over a generation ago, The television set was commonly called the “boob tube” and looked down on by elites as a purveyors of mind-numbing entertainment. Movie theaters, on the other hand, were considered a venue for, if not art, more sophisticated dramas and comedies. Not any more. The multiplexes are now primarily a venue for comic-book inspired action and fantasy movies, whereas television, especially the pay and cable channels, is increasingly becoming a venue for character-driven adult programs, such as The Wire, Mad Men, and Boardwalk Empire. This role reversal, rather than a momentary fluke, proceeds directly from the new economic realities of the entertainment business. Consider what happened to Pay-TV. Back in the 1970s, HBO provided something home viewers could not get elsewhere: movies uninterrupted by commercials. It was, as a HBO executive put it, “the only game in town,” so its subscribers paid a monthly fee, no matter how little or often they watch it, to their local cable provider who in turn forked over a share to HBO. As the cable systems grew, so did HBO. By 2010, it had (including its Cinemax unit) over 40 million subscribers, and just the monthly fees produced cash flow of over $1.5 billion a year. Getting new movies was no problem. HBO simply licensed them from a few major studios for an exclusive period (which began a few months after they were released on video and DVD) in so-called “output deals.” To continue to harvest this immense bounty, HBO had merely to stop subscribers from ending their service.

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Where Are the Women Writers? (ASME Edition)

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Mother Jones - By Adam Weinstein - Apr. 04 (Special Report) - They called it the Count, and the concept was simple: Tally up how many women get published in some of the world's top literary magazines and journals, compare it with the number of men gracing those pages, and slap the results into a pie chart. Red for men, blue for women. The result was a lot of big red pie slices . First published in 2011, they conveyed a clear fact: From Harpers to The New Yorker to The Atlantic , it's still very much a man's world. Roughly 65 to 75 percent of the space in the prestigious magazines went to male writers. The Count is the brainchild of two accomplished poets, Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu. In 2009, the duo founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts , a nonprofit that acts as part online community, part advocate and agitator for women of letters. The idea, Belieu says, came in a "moment of loathing and terror and revolutionary spark." They intended the Count to be a conversation-starter, and it certainly has been : After they published the first round, some major ...

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Hi, n00bs!

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Burning Man - By Jon Mitchell - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - Hey, don’t flinch. It’s a term of endearment. We’re hot, dusty and prickly out here. A little ribbing helps keep the spirits up, that’s all. It’s all love. So hi, n00bs. It’s ridiculous how recently I was you. Anyway, welcome to Burning Man, huh? Interesting times. Bet you weren’t expecting such radical inclusion. Don’t worry. It’s not always like this. Just recently.

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Why Bilinguals Are Smarter

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee - Mar. 17 (Opinion) - Being bilingual makes you smarter and can have a profound effect on your brain. Speaking two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

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Tucson's ethnic-studies program violates Arizona law, judge rules

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Stephen Ceasar - Dec. 28 (News Report) - The ruling affirms a decision by the state schools superintendent and could end classes on Mexican American heritage.

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Why Parents Help Tweens Violate Facebook's 13+ Rule

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Danah Boyd - Nov. 01 (Opinion) - "At what age should I let my child join Facebook?" This is a question that countless parents have asked my collaborators and me. Often, it's followed by the following: "I know that 13 is the minimum age to join Facebook, but is it really so bad that my 12-year-old is on the site?" While parents are struggling to determine what social media sites are appropriate for their children, government tries to help parents by regulating what data internet companies can collect about children without parental permission. Yet, as has been the case for the last decade, this often backfires. Many general-purpose communication platforms and social media sites restrict access to only those 13+ in response to a law meant to empower parents: the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). This forces parents to make a difficult choice: help uphold the minimum age requirements and limit their children's access to services that let kids connect with family and friends OR help their children lie about their age to circumvent the age-based restrictions and eschew the protections that COPPA is meant to provide.

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Selections from The Spoken Word

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Smithsonian Magazine - Oct. 29 (Other) - Listen to famous British and American writers talk about their work and their views on culture and society.

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Mind Your Manners: The Secrets of Switzerland's Last Traditional Finishing School

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Time - By William Lee Adams - Oct. 24 (Special Report) - If lunch at the Institut Villa Pierrefeu (IVP) often feels like a rehearsal, that's because it is. Under the watchful eye of Rosemary McCallum, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and expert on table manners, 13 female students practice the skills they've studied in courses on European etiquette and table service. As the meal unfolds in a stately dining room with corniced ceilings, McCallum gently reminds the five student servers that they must pick up champagne glasses near the bottom of the stems and offer the pear-and-Roquefort tarts from the left. Back home, four of the five women serving have live-in staffs. But the program requires them to rotate through the service role anyway so they can better train and manage their employees. Vera, a 30-year-old playing the role of hostess, steers the conversation from her work with orphans back home in Lebanon to a Mexican guest's love of horseback riding. All goes well until Vera's fondness for Toblerone mousse leads her to commit a crucial error. "Your husband is still eating, and you've already finished," McCallum says. "Remember to pace yourself." Vera glares across the table at her husband, played by a female classmate from India. "Well," Vera says, "my husband should learn to eat faster."

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10 myths about Afghanistan

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Jonathan Steele - Sep. 28 (Special Report) - In 1988, the Soviet army left Afghanistan after a concerted campaign by the western-backed mujahideen. But since then, many enduring myths have grown up about the war-torn country. In his new book, Jonathan Steele sorts the fact from the fiction 1. Afghans have always beaten foreign armies, from Alexander the Great to modern times Afghan history is certainly littered with occasions when foreign invaders were humiliated. But there have also been many cases when foreign armies penetrated the country and inflicted major defeats. In 330BC, Alexander the Great marched through the area of central Asia that is now Afghanistan, meeting little opposition. More than a millennium later, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan also brushed resistance aside. Since Afghanistan emerged as a modern state, there have been three wars with Britain. The British invasion of 1839 produced initial victory for the intruders followed by stunning defeat followed by a second victory. In 1878, the British invaded again. ...

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Nullifying the Future -- Tyranny of the Minority

Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Op Ed News - By Robert S. Becker - Aug. 09 (Opinion) - The Tea Party, like the Civil War, dramatize and test our core value -- does the majority rule when a strident obstructionist minority gets in its way? I say No when 20% trumps 80%.

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I'm starting to think that the Left might actually be right

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daily Telegraph - By Charles Moore. - Jul. 24 (Opinion) - What with the phone-hacking scandal, the eurozone crisis and the US economic woes, the corrupt few have left people disillusioned with our debased democracies, says Charles Moore.

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Argument, Truth and the Social Side of Reasoning

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Gary Gutting - Jun. 30 (Opinion) - In a recent discussion about reasoning, one point was overlooked: Knowledge of the truth is a social process. Philosophers rightly think of themselves as experts on reasoning. After all, it was a philosopher, Aristotle, who developed the science of logic. But psychologists have also had some interesting things to say about the subject. A fascinating paper by Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier has recently generated a lot of discussion.

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Gil Scott-Heron, Poet And Musician, Has Died

Sat, 28 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

NPR - By Daoud Tyler-Ameen - May. 28 (News) - The influential poet and musician is often credited with being one of the progenitors of hip-hop, and is best known for the spoken-word piece "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised."

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Overwhelmed Internet users choose to unplug — for a little while

Sun, 15 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Gus Sentementes - May. 15 (News) - Consciously avoiding using the Web may seem impossible to many in this era of information overload. Researchers on the issue say addiction to information may be similar in some ways to the effect that certain drugs have on the human brain — and some people may need to take disciplined breaks from their gadgets.

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Why the right hates Common

Fri, 13 May 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Salon - By Mary Elizabeth Williams - May. 13 (Opinion) - On Wednesday, the White House honored arts education with a Celebration of American Poetry. There was a poetry workshop for children during the day, and in the evening, performances by the likes of Elizabeth Alexander, Rita Dove, Kenneth Goldsmith. This being the administration that can turn Jay-Z references into campaign rallying cries -- and campaign rallying cries into hit videos -- there were also musical artists on the bill, including Aimee Mann and Jill Scott. And, this being the administration that never fails to provoke the outrage of that holy trinity of right-wing attention gluttons -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin – there was controversy.

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Overcoming political polarization… but not through facts

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 00:00:00 -0700

my heart's in accra - By Ethan Zuckerman - Apr. 25 (Opinion) - A recent New York Times poll suggests that Americans are in a dark mood. 70% of people think the country is moving in the wrong direction, a number not seen since the peak of the Great Recession two years ago. Their frustration may stem from higher gas p

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