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You’re a month into your New Year’s Resolution, everything is going great and you’re putting your friends to shame. Good for you. Your “no excuses” strategy has paid off and if you keep this up you’ll reach your goal by the end of the year. Problem is you have a last minute business trip this week and an unexpected house guest next week which is going to throw you

For women who are worried that their hope of marriage and children are fading away, I’ve got good news to share with you today.
Match.com has released results of their “Single in America” study just in time for Valentine’s Day. The study clearly revealed that 33% of both men and women want to get hitched. In addition, more single men without children under the age of 18 (24%) want to have children than the women surveyed (15%).
This isn’t just any ordinary study. Match claims it’s the largest and most comprehensive study ever done in America and that everything you think you know about singles is simply

In lauding the legislation that ended the “don’t ask, don’t tell” [DADT] policy that will allow gay and lesbians to serve openly in the American military, President Barack Obama in his second State of the Union address called “on all our college campuses to open their doors to our military recruiters and ROTC. It is time to leave behind the divisive battles of the past. It is time to move forward as one nation.” While the legislation that ended the hypocritical DADT policy was surely welcome and a step forward, and although legislation already existed (the 1994 Solomon Act) that forced universities to open their campuses to military recruiters, the president made a mistake in equating (even implicitly) an end to an opprobrious military policy with basic equal civil rights for gay and lesbian Americans.
In fact, even the DADT policy left many inequalities between gays and straight members in the

I must admit that I’m new to the world of legal ethics. I don’t practice law in the traditional sense. I don’t have clients. It never seemed to be the most exciting or important area of law to

At a time when corporate profits are through the roof, the Dow is flirting with 12,000, Wall Street paychecks are fat again, and big corporations are sitting on more than $1 trillion in cash, you’d expect jobs be coming back. But you’d be wrong.
The U.S. economy added just 36,000 jobs in January, according to today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Remember, 125,000 are needed just to keep up with the increase in the population of Americans wanting and needing

The scent of frangipani spilled from the trees like the earthy aroma of soil and sand rising from a gushing waterfall. It was July: the tip of the rainy season in southern Thailand, and early morning showers would greet us as the sun rose behind a cloak of clouds. When the storm had passed, and streams of light began to saturate the inside of my hotel room, I was lifted from bed and escorted by the seductive, balmy air to long stretches of sand that kissed the shoreline. Backed by lush rainforest, the beach was truly a tropical

JP Morgan could be “complicit”, i.e. aiding and abetting the Madoff Ponzi scheme, by omission — that is not fulfilling its duty as a fiduciary — as well as by commission, according to white collar lawyers I have consulted today.
It did not have to be an active partner in the Ponzi Scheme to be found guilty of a civil liability, lawyers say. Rather, the bank’s omission would be ignoring several red flags — troublesome signs of potential fraud — and never investigating their accuracy or meaning. The bank did not fulfill its requirement to investigate Madoff fully and so could be found to be compliant in the scam.
Nevertheless, JPM denies being a party to the fraud and tries to defend its role by insisting that Madoff was not a major client of the bank.
It apparently received many signs of trouble, but generally ignored or neglected these signs, according to the complaint filed

While the Middle East is fighting for its democratic life, Martin Fackler of the New York Times would like you to think that Japan is in a slow battle between its young and old citizens.
Writing at length about Japan’s economic woes, Fackler fell into the recurring Groundhog Day syndrome common to economics writers of repeatedly blaming a broad demographic group for ruining the fortunes of another — thus threatening the whole society.
Sometimes these kinds of “analyses” tell us that the declining fertility rate in aging nations means we’ll all sink into decrepitude unless women start having more babies — and presumably remaining barefoot in the kitchen, too (more about this later).
More often than not, it’s all those old people lurking in the baby boomer shadows, who will place modern life in jeopardy. Never mind that the increased productive capacity of today’s more educated and healthier older generation can bring its own significant contributions to national economies.
Last Friday (Jan. 28) Fackler, in his front-page article, “In Japan, Young Face Generational Roadblocks,” wrote, “An aging population is clogging the nation’s economy with the vested interests of older generations, young people and social experts warn, making an already hierarchical society even more rigid and conservative.”
Later he blames older people for Japan’s deflation because they keep the jobs but are poor consumers, spending little and not moving

Last week, like millions around the world, I listened to President Obama give the State of the Union address and wondered how much of his challenge would be met by the 112th Congress — to work in a bipartisan way to lead the world in innovation and technology, to rebuild education and infrastructure, and to create jobs that put Americans to work. The speech balanced two visions: President Kennedy’s getting us to the moon, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s getting Americans back to work after the Great Depression.
Earlier this month, I was in Laredo, TX for an executive session on immigration sponsored by the Laredo Police Department and the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a Washington, D.C. law enforcement think tank. In attendance were executives from various state and local police and sheriff‘s departments, as well as federal agencies; Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within the Department of Homeland Security, made up the largest block of federal

Socially enlightened, singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn is back with a new project and supporting tour. The following audio track, “The Iris Of The World,” is a HuffPost exclusive taken from his upcoming studio album, Small Source Of Comfort, to be released on March 8th.
This lead track to Small Source of Comfort includes the humorously rueful line, “I’m good at catching rainbows, not so good at catching trout.” The lyrical admission serves as a useful metaphor for Cockburn’s approach to songwriting. “As you go through life, it’s like taking a hike alongside a river,” he explains. “Your eye catches little things that flash in the water, various stones and

Another Catholic priest and media figure has become the latest victim of the “celibacy crisis” in the Catholic Church. Fr. Thomas Euteneuer, former president of Human Life International, left that post abruptly in August without public explanation. He recently broke his silence and admitted that he left for “violating the boundaries of chastity with an adult female” who was under his spiritual

You can tell a lot about a person by the way he or she dresses for a football game. The cheesehead? There’s a guy who likes to have fun. The face painter? That’s an independent spirit who goes his or her own way. My favorite fan is the one holding the cardboard “D” and a matching picket fence

If you’re wondering why Dana Carvey is hosting Saturday Night Live this week, it may be because he’s the best ambassador to great comedy that the show has ever had.
Nope, this isn’t because he’s doing SNL this weekend in a Love of the Game sort of situation. (Even though he is—he has nothing to plug.) It’s because his forgotten-about self-titled show in 1996 may have been a better breeding ground for today’s most influential comedians than Saturday Night Live was in that entire decade.
And The Dana Carvey Show didn’t even last a whole season.
It was, at the time, critically panned. That’s probably a mild way to put it. It was critically

After what seems like a never ending barrage of horrific weather throughout the month of January, it’s time to heat things up a little for Valentine’s Day. Now I know, Valentine’s Day is just a little tacky. But, if you’re a guy and you ignore it the winter will be longer and assuredly, colder. For a woman, if you ignore it you’re a cold bitch with no man and pissed off you have no Prince Charming to shower you with diamonds, bonbons and

As perhaps you’ve heard, Ronald Reagan would have turned one hundred this Sunday. If he was still alive and sentient, he would surely observe that he’s not really so old because “It’s just the 61st anniversary of my 39th birthday,” and the reporters who would be there when he said it would dutifully laugh at this annually-trotted-out platitude as if it were wit worthy of Noel Coward.
There is about to be a tsunami of reverence for the memory of this grinning huckster for the avaricious, the corrupt and the callous, and it will be aided and abetted by the same media that bent over so eagerly the first time around. Throughout this centennial year we will be routinely told, as if it was a universally accepted truth, how great he

Americans have a legal right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and yet for white-collar workers that’s nice in theory but simply not the case in practice.
I am CEO of a California software company and saw this issue up close a few days ago. We are hiring right now. I and my team follow a rigorous hiring process – screen resumes, look for experience fit, interview on the phone, interview in person, discuss the candidate as a team, reference check and then hire. We look for skills, experience and values – will the candidate be a great fit for our open position and our company, will they be successful working with us?
I have been interviewing candidates over the past month and was sent the resume of an individual currently charged in the active NY insider trading

Cross posted on Hub Culture.
For five days last week I was a fly on the wall in Davos, watching CEOs and leaders discuss the planet’s major issues at the World Economic Forum. I attended the conference as a social media producer for Hub Culture, producing short video interviews of thought leaders. Hub Culture is a social network of “global urban influencers,” and in Davos we occupied a building that served as a center for work, collaboration, and evening

The Serengeti in Tanzania is the world’s greatest national parks. Each January, when 2 million wildebeest and zebra give birth amid the heroic landscape of the southern grass plains, a scene of biblical splendor unfolds. Then, in April, the animals set off on the epic Great Migration.
All this may soon come to an

The scene lasted just seconds on our screens, a brief flash, chiseled on the retina, of thousands of people protesting on the streets of Cairo. The situation was described by the pompous voice of the Cuban announcer, who explained that the crisis in capitalism had sparked discontent in Egypt and that social differences were sinking the government. Barely mentioned was that a thirty year cycle was crumbling in a single week, right there, in a country where history is measured in four-digit numbers, wedged in pieces the size of millennia.
The allusion we used among ourselves to refer to Hosni Mubarak’s long stay in power was, as the popular refrain warns: “Don’t speak of the noose in the hanged man’s house.” The insinuation is clear: five decades of authoritarianism here at home has exceeded its expiration date. Perhaps to avoid our making the comparison, the State media showed caution in dealing with the news from North

“[W]e have handed over the word [Zionism] to those who attack and distort it.” ~ Rebecca Sugar, Birthright Alumni Director on February 1, 2011
A couple of years ago I was asked how I would define the Israeli-Arab conflict in one sentence. While rarely caught off-guard I had to think about it and eventually offered that it could be described as a conflict between two national movements over the same piece of land. It is a clash between the Zionist movement, and the Palestinian national movement, as embodied by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Clearly, this is simplified and even simplistic to describe the dispute in one sentence and does not really do justice to complexities and narratives that lie at the heart of the

Cost cutting seems to have replaced “quality measures” as the mantra for all health care discussions. Not that “quality ” measures have gone away, but the focus is on trimming the cost of health care in the United States since it is about 15 percent of the GDP ( as measured in 2004) more than any other country, without commensurate superiority in outcomes measures.
So the current solution seems to be global payments! No more pay per visit/procedure/hospitalization/operation. Rather with global payments the physician receives a fixed payment per month based on the complexity of the patient i.e. how many chronic diseases the patient

How do we read coverage to date of the momentous events in Egypt?
To say that official Egyptian media have been in a time warp since the troubles began would be understating matters.
A sign carried by a demonstrator in Cairo’s Tahrir Square read: “Egyptian media don’t see, don’t hear, they just talk.”
It was right on the mark.
Watching state-run Nile TV, a viewer could easily be misled into thinking the upheaval was one-sided, simply a plot to undermine the Egyptian regime, and totally lacking in context.
At first it reported the outbreak of anti-government demonstrations as limited action by a few dozen protesters demanding social and economic changes.
It also referred to widespread popular rejection of the actions of “the few who claim to represent the Egyptian people.”
As a result, Nile TV reporter Shahira Amin walked out when she refused to continue broadcasting the official lies and was hailed for her courage.
“The state media is a disgrace,” said Laila, an Egyptian friend with whom I was chatting online despite spotty Internet service in Cairo.
She believed the army would settle the standoff with President Hosni Mubarak by Friday at the latest to end his 30-year hold on power.
Meanwhile, Arab and international media were tripping over themselves and each other to cover, and comment on, the unfolding story, whose end remains unclear while a tottering sclerotic regime desperately tried to hang on.
The visuals have been gripping: bloodied demonstrators, journalists scurrying about to report (and keep safe), pro-government secret police accused of attacking unarmed civilians adding fuel to the fire, and, an army observing from the sidelines at this writing.
It’s the “war of the channels” wrote Malek Alqaaqour in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat, criticizing unnamed Arab news outlets of unprofessional and unfair coverage.
Nevertheless, the Arab media’s effort is “immense and deserves admiration, as the professional compass sometimes goes off-course during storms,” he

This is the segment I did with someone who walked away from his mortgage, his home, and his $120,000 down payment after wrestling with the bank for months. It’s powerful, and it’s hopeful.
“It feels great,” Burton said without hesitation. “I’m starting again. I’ve still got my talent; I’ve got my

Co-written by Julia Choucair
The astounding events in Egypt this week, coming on the heels of the fall of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, create unprecedented excitement about the spread of democratic change across the Arab world.
Skeptical observers caution against such optimism (or wariness, depending on one’s vantage point) and highlight unique features of each country. Before January 25 most of these voices would have bet against what we are now seeing in Egypt. But the escalation of Egypt’s protests, the protesters’ rejection of Mubarak’s “concession” to step down in the future, and the spread of demonstrations to Algeria, Jordan, Sudan, and Yemen lend credence to the possibility of sweeping change.
The position the United States should take depends critically on understanding how and why the uprisings spread. A focus solely on the domestic conditions surrounding them is not