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This post is the second in a two-part series.
We arrived at the airport four hours before our scheduled departure to find the same massive lineups, scattered groups of people camped out on blankets, and endless notices of cancelled flights…we prepared ourselves for the worst. And as if he had a warning bell for when his kitties needed him most, our hero, once again, swooped in to save the day. Yoshiki not only pulled unimaginable strings to get us on that flight that night but he actually came to the airport to personally ensure that we took off safe and sound. Our eyes lit up and our anxiety subsided as soon as we saw him walking towards

To Chancellor Walcott:
For the past nine years our schools have been run by a top-down bureaucracy that too often alienates public school parents. To your great credit, you have said that you want to engage parents and communities more than in the past. But you have also said that you plan to stay the course on the Bloomberg administration’s education policies and practices. I believe you have the background and experience to finally bring parents into our school system, but I know you will not be able to do it by maintaining the status

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This post is part five. Parts one through four are here, Syllabus is here.
Week 5 of the class
Last week the teams were testing their hypotheses about their customers (who are the users, payers, buyers, etc.) This week they were testing one of the most confusing sections of a company’s business model — customer relationships — the activities used to “Get, Keep and Grow” customers in a physical or virtual (web or mobile)

I had the privilege of attending the 2011 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards in this, a particularly special year — the 125th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty’s dedication as a gift to the people of America from France, as well as the 10th anniversary of the award. This year’s recipients were Founding Chairman of The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Lee Iococca, diplomat George Mitchell and sports champions, Martina Navratilova and Joe Torre.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Two veiled women were arrested in France as they protested a law that effective that day, April 11, 2011, banned the wearing of burqas and niqabs in public spaces. The law is considered by some — both Muslim and non-Muslim — as a direct threat to religious freedom of expression and an attack on Islam as a whole.
Coverage of the ban was reported by all of the major media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The BBC, and The Wall Street Journal. However although the reports provided the obvious facts — the passage of the law and the subsequent arrest of the women — many journalists failed to provide the reader with any historical context, making it difficult to understand why French President Nicholas Sarkozy and the government would pass this type of legislation.
The law which prohibits people from concealing their faces in public spaces, but whose verbiage does not specifically reference Islam, still serves as a blatant social referendum by the French government on the religious practice.
Security reasons were cited as one of the government’s motivations for the ban. The inability to see one’s face in public, according to some lawmakers, compromises security and is a just reason for outlawing a religious practice that is sacred to many Muslims.
In almost all media reports there appeared to be a quiet assumption that the reader would be aware of why France might be suspicious of the burqa clad women, and why we needed to get a good look at their face, and into their eyes

For the past 15 years, I have been publishing research that has demonstrated the strong statistical relationships that typically exist between the auction prices of paintings and the ages of artists when the paintings were executed. These relationships are of more than simply economic interest, for they closely track the art historical importance of the art: some great artists make their most important contributions early in their careers, while others develop their contributions gradually, and are greatest late in their lives.
For reasons I have never been able to understand, many in the art world have been hostile to these facts. So be it: ours is a free country, and everyone is free to make mistakes. But what has been more surprising, perhaps, is that leading newspapers have been willing to give a platform to the foolish statements of some of these art world

Once again, our industrial food production system has come to bite us back — this time in the form of drug-resistant staph bacteria detected in one-half of supermarket meat samples tested in one study, with one-half of the resistant samples found with bacteria that were resistant to multiple drugs.
This sad and disturbing news will come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the industrialization and consolidation of modern American animal agriculture. The american meat industry has already attacked the study as too small to be conclusive, but the take home message is clear: U.S. producers rely far too heavily on unregulated antibiotics, and it’s time to put a stop to it.
I have written extensively about the overuse of antibiotics on American factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), including in my book Animal Factory. Sub-therapeutic antibiotics promote animal growth and stave off epidemics, a constant problem when animals are crammed into confinements by the

Police arrested three men in connection with the 1969 killing of a 15-year-old boy in the US state of Massachusetts, authorities have said.
The body of John Joseph McCabe was discovered in an empty lot in the town of Lowell more than four decades ago.
McCabe was kidnapped after leaving a dance, assaulted by three teenagers and left to die of asphyxiation, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said.
Prosecutors claim the killing was prompted by jealousy over a girl.
They did not say what led to the arrests but described the development as “an incredible turn of

TRACY & HEPBURN: THE DEFINITIVE COLLECTION ($59.98; Warner Bros.) — So what's your pick for the greatest screen team of them all? William Powell and Myrna Loy? (I do love The Thin Man.) Bob Hope and Bing Crosby with their nutty Road movies? Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor? Laurel and Hardy? Focus on actors who made at least a few movies together. Think all you like about it — my money is on Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. This boxed set makes the case. They made nine films together: two are pretty dull (Sea of Grass and Keeper Of The Flame) and one is well-intentioned and very dull (Guess Who's Coming To

Earlier this month eager students applying to Ivy League colleges were informed of their fates. Ivy League schools reported more applications this year than any year in history, along with more rejections than ever. This week the remaining portion of the estimated 1.5 million American students who applied to college this year rushed to their mailboxes and tried to guess whether or not they had been admitted by the thickness of those famous college envelopes, before tearing them open to read the letter. With so many applications, it’s likely that this year will see more disappointed high school seniors than

Leave it to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). With
President Barack Obama expected to deliver a major speech outlining a new (or,
at least, revised) Middle East peace strategy soon, Cantor decided it was time
to invite Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to deliver a speech before
a joint session of Congress.
This is one of the benefits of having a Republican House at
the same time that a Likud prime minister is in office in Israel. The two
right-wing parties can work together to thwart any Democratic president’s
attempt to advance U.S. national security by brokering Middle East peace.
The last time this happened was in the 1990s, when Bill
Clinton was president, Newt Gingrich was speaker, and the self-same Netanyahu
was Israel’s prime

In Judaism, it’s a sin to utter hateful speech. It’s one of the things for which we apologize in the Al-Chet prayer on Yom Kippur. In fact, the mea culpa is repeated several times, albeit with different wording.
Why bring this up now, on the figurative eve of Passover? Because LA Lakers star and future Hall of Famer Kobe Bryant chose to curse out an NBA official by using a phrase that is offensive to the gay and lesbian community.
The networks and sports shows “black-screened” his mouth, but if you can read lips at all, you can figure out what he said here (assuming the powers that be don’t force the removal of the video from YouTube).
Of course, all the pundits raised their eyebrows and hands in horror, as if the use of such language is all of a sudden shocking. And, of course, NBA commissioner David Stern fined Bryant, as he is wont to do any time anyone says something he doesn’t want, or doesn’t want the public, to hear (such as the $75 Gs he liberated from Lakers coach Phil Jackson for opining about the potential lockout next season.) Reminds me of the lines in

Last week, British researchers released the results of a study suggesting intriguing differences in brain structure between liberals and conservatives. The study found that the anterior cingulate, the part of the brain dealing with complexity and uncertainty was larger in liberals than it was in conservatives. Conversely, the amygdala, the part of the brain associated with fear and raw emotion was larger in conservatives. One can’t draw definitive conclusions from one study, of

Volunteering is the right thing to do — we all know that. And studies show that it boosts happiness; those who work to further causes they value tend to be happier and healthier, experience fewer aches and pains, and even live longer. And it’s not just that helpful people also tend to be healthier and happier; studies show that helping others itself causes happiness. “Be selfless, if only for selfish reasons,” as one of my happiness paradoxes

The House Republicans’ attempt to significantly weaken the Clean Air Act’s scope through the budgetary process was recently thwarted in the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate, but environmentalists can ill afford to breathe easier. An assault on the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) enforcement authority is sure to continue, and no small wonder. Consider whom you are dealing with.
Of the 238 Republicans constituting a majority in our House of Representatives, 237 could not even bring themselves to vote for an amendment that would merely have required them to acknowledge that global warming was a reality, human activity had something to do with it, and there was a possible risk to public

The other day, I downloaded a Fandango movie app. It was easy, quick, and didn’t cost anything. Then I went about my business, not giving it another thought.
It was just another day in a quiet revolution that has taken place in our lives — we’ve been so busy, we hardly noticed.
First came connectivity: A rapid evolution from the desktop to mobile devices — buying products, reading email, watching movies, playing games, and yes, even talking to someone — anytime, anywhere — in the palm of your hand.
Then came cloud computing: It’s replacing proprietary, in-house, traditional computing resources with scalable, open-source IT services “in the cloud.” Businesses can buy or “rent” all sorts of IT infrastructure services — scaling up or down as needed and paying only for what they use.
Why is this important? How does this affect the average person? Small and medium businesses? Large enterprises? Society in general?
Combining ubiquitous connectivity with the cloud changes everything.
Benefits to consumers
The app I downloaded likely came from the cloud, where it was also probably created. The cloud makes it easier and cheaper for Web developers to get the necessary tools to do their work — no need to buy hardware, software or space in a data center.
And the cost-savings in developing the apps are passed to people like you and me — a free movie

Chairman Ryan’s budget is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Preying upon genuine concern for our fiscal future, this budget takes direct aim at student aid programs that help job-seekers get the skills, training, and credentials they need to re-enter the recovering workforce.
Chairman Ryan’s budget would cripple the Pell Grant, cutting off access to college by slashing the maximum award of $5,550. Pell Grants are the cornerstone of our nation’s student aid program currently enabling over 9 million students to get the higher education and post-secondary job training they and our nation need.
See how much your congressional district receives through Pell Grants.
In the 1980s, the maximum Pell Grant covered most of the cost of attending a four-year public college. By 2007, it covered less than one third the cost of a public college–the lowest share in

The Gaza strip must cope with a drug shortage, even though Israeli and Egyptian officials talk about easing the blockade that has left this crowded enclave effectively isolated since July 2007. A political rift between Hamas in Gaza and Fatah in the West Bank hinders communication and coordination between the two Palestinian health ministries — adding to the hardships already faced by medical patients inside Gaza.
A remedy is needed for the time lag between placing orders to authorities in the West Bank and the delivery of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants, who have lived under siege for years. In the Lancet medical journal I reported that Norwegian diplomats hope to initiate negotiations between Gaza and Ramallah in order to solve this medical crisis through better logistics and monitoring.
Dr. Tone Hegna and

Coming out of the closet is so last week. The new hot media trend is “outing” 5,000-year-old skeletons from the apparent sexual confusion of their caves.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

The United States Postal Service doesn’t seem to know where the Statue of Liberty is. Case in point — they printed three billion stamps commemorating the Statue of Liberty, she who invited the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses into the bosom of New York’s harbors. Only, it was the wrong Statue of Liberty.
As famed stamp news service Linns pointed out, the one they printed was based on the replica in Las Vegas’ fake New York, Lady Libery.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger
In Washington, the environment is under attack. The cost-cutting deal that the House passed yesterday stripped the Environmental Protection Agency of $1.6 billion, which made up 16% of the agency’s budget. Funds for clean energy were cut. Republicans put in a provision that would keep the Department of the Interior from putting aside public lands for conservation and one that killed the nascent climate center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
These choices represent a deeper antipathy toward nature and environmental health than the run-of-the-mill climate denialism that’s become au courant among congressional

I started my college teaching career as an adjunct back in the 1970s. I was a summer composition instructor in New York at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus and I didn’t mind the small salary because I was living at home.
I’d attended Fordham and in my senior year had been mentored by two dedicated, gregarious, hard-working professors, unofficially inducted into the club. My mother and her father had been teachers, so being in the classroom was as much a dream of mine as becoming a published author.
I was thrilled as an adjunct to be doing every single thing connected to teaching, including grading papers. Even grading papers, I should say, since that’s what most teachers complain

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Postal Service in Statue of Liberty stamp photo mix-up
The US Postal Service regrets issuing a stamp featuring a photo of a Las Vegas casino's replica Statue of Liberty rather than the original in New York harbour, a spokesman has said.
But the postal service printed three billion of the first-class stamps and will continue to sell them, he said.
And the agency would have selected the photograph anyway, he said.
A stamp collector discovered the mix-up after noting discrepancies between the stamp image and the copper original.
The mix-up was first reported by Linn's Stamp News, a publication for

A note is scribbled over the pile of highlighted topographical maps: “A silence made from a mighty sound is still a sound.”
Rattana Vandy knows silence well. He grew up during the era of Cambodia’s silence, the deafening echo of that followed the Khmer Rouge regime.
Vandy’s exhibition Bomb Ponds examines the remains of America’s secret 2,756,941-ton bombing campaign in Cambodia during the Vietnam War: craters left in the countryside that, during the rainy season, fill with still-toxic water. In nine landscape photographs and a one-channel documentary, Vandy documents this unspoken history and challenges the culture of silence–both America’s too-quiet recognition of the bombing and Cambodia’s reluctance to educate its youth about their history.
Like most of the so-called “new generation,” Vandy