Luiz Henrique’60s Brasil crooner/guitarist and composer extraordinaire Luiz Henrique was born in 1938. A proud Manezinho (descendant of Portuguese Azores Islanders) with seven sisters, Henrique cut his teeth in local radio before launching his 1961 debut into the heart of the bossa nova explosion. Following his 1963 release, he relocated Stateside and recorded with Oscar Brown Jr. Henrique’s 1967 Verve solo project Barra Limpa became an instant
June is the month when students finally launch themselves on their books, serious scholars review their notes, and we parents jeopardize our wallets to pay for private tutors. For years, the existence of these informal teachers has been undervalued when taking stock of Cuban education, but those of us with children in the middle grades know well their importance. Right now, if a teenager doesn’t receive extracurricular attention from a private tutor he has few chances — or none — of being accepted into college. Teaching — paradoxically — has been privatized, but without public acknowledgement.
Demand is so high that in these last weeks of classes the houses of freelance professors are
Last week a 15-year-old girl, Sarah Benkiran, was told she could no longer referee for the Lac St. Louis Soccer Association. It wasn’t because of her age, her qualifications as a referee or because of anything she did wrong. It was simply because she wears a
Thanks to Christopher Mitchell, Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance for his contributions to this article. You can follow his reporting on public networks at www.muninetworks.org.
Conservatives would have us believe the public sector can’t compete with the private sector. The private sector itself knows better. Nowhere is this more evident than in the telecommunications sector.
People hate their telecommunications
Like motels and Twinkies, the drive-through window is a distinctly American invention. Sure, other countries have embraced the simple pleasure of ordering a meal without so much as unbuckling your seatbelt, but it was America’s mid-20th-century convenience-obsessed car culture that gave birth to this now global phenomenon.
The drive-through’s origins are in dispute. Some say it was California’s beloved In-and-Out Burger in 1948 that first allowed customers to order from the comfort of their front seat. But the Iowa-based restaurant chain Maid-Rite also claims to have opened the very first drive-through window, in Springfield,
Last Wednesday’s presidential address made clear that all U.S. troops “surged” into Afghanistan in 2009 will be withdrawn by next summer. Yet President Obama was equally clear about something else: Pakistan must crack down more forcefully on extremism within its borders.
“So long as I am President, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us,” Obama said on
On Monday Michele Bachmann officially launches her presidential campaign in Waterloo, Iowa, the town where she was born. It’s not likely that she’ll be the next president of the United States. But it’s entirely conceivable that this wingnut whack job — who believes she was divinely chosen by Jesus to run for office — could become the next vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency. Don’t
The terrifying thing about Memory Lane is how far back it goes. What were you wearing in 1973? I’d bet: Pampers. Me? I was out and about, listening to Garland Jeffreys.
Maybe, along the way to adulthood, you heard the song:
In the heat of the summer
Better call up the plumber
and turn on the street pump
to cool me off
With your newspaper writers
and your big crime fighters
You still need a drug store
to cure my cough
Running wild in the streets….
Ring no bells? Put it together with the music, and what you get is one of those classics that joined the Immortals the first time a DJ played it.
Whatever happened to the guy who made that record? Good question. Garland Jeffreys’ real fans hung around for decades of thoughtful, hard-hitting
A small plane crash in Canada in 2010 that killed four people was probably caused by drunk passengers interfering with the pilot, a report says.
Investigators think one passenger kicked the pilot's seat, jamming his body into the controls and causing the plane to dive 500ft (152m) into water.
The three British Columbia residents had chartered a Cessna for a six-minute flight in May 2010.
They had been drinking and arguing and carried liquor and beer aboard.
"The passengers were intoxicated at the time they boarded the aircraft, and had previously been argumentative," investigators with the Canadian Transportation Safety Board wrote in a
In grade school I was taught that the United States is a melting pot. People from all over the world come here for freedom and to pursue a better life. They arrive with next to nothing, work incredibly hard, learn a new language and new customs, and in a generation they become an integral part of our amazing nation. Although it requires some adjustment by those already here, immigration has made the
If a drunk driver crashed his speeding rental car into your house and killed your spouse, you would be outraged if law enforcers took bribes and refused to give the driver a blood test. If the judge then gave the killer a small fine and ordered you to pay the fine and pay for all the damages, you’d be outraged. If the government then handed the drunk-driver keys to a bigger faster rental car, handed the drunk driver an even bigger bottle of whiskey, and then gave you the rental bill; you’d storm Washington, blizzard elected officials with protests and organize friends and associates to vote these malefactors, the elected officials that betrayed your trust, out of office.
Yet, we’ve remained largely silent in the face of the same sort of behavior by Wall Street and
A Monet painting kept out of public view for 86 years has been donated to a US gallery by a reclusive heiress.
Part of the artist's Water Lilies series, worth $25m (£15m), was left to the Corcoran Gallery by Huguette Clark, who died last month aged 104.
The Corcoran has a gallery which bears the name of her father Senator William A Clark, who died the same year the painting was created in 1925.
Ms Clark bequeathed a proportion of her $400m (£250m) fortune to the arts.
Understated lifestyle
Her father, who at one stage was the largest landowner in Nevada, was a keen art
The US economy grew at an annualised rate of 1.9% in the first three months of the year, slightly faster than previously thought, official figures have shown.
This equates to a 0.5% quarterly rise. The last estimate by the Commerce Department showed growth of 1.8%.
This compares with an annualised rate of 3.1% in the final quarter of
A performance of Broadway musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying was called off at the last minute after a stagehand was found dead backstage.
The 29-year-old man, who has not been named, is thought to have suffered a cardiac arrest.
The show's stars Daniel Radcliffe and John Larroquette apologised to theatre-goers on stage for cancellation.
The show would have been the Broadway revival's 100th
Just looking at grade school, it’s easy to think that physical dominance is the only route to social status. It seems as though bullies who use physical intimidation, coercion and fear-inducing tactics are the ones who rise in the status hierarchy.
Luckily, this isn’t the only path to social status, especially as one leaves grade school and enters other stages of life. In fact, different forms of social status arose in evolutionary history at different times and for different purposes (see “Two Routes to Social Status”). The dominant path is paved with conceit and arrogance, whereas the prestigious path is paved with accomplishment, skill and prosocial behaviors.
According to Darwin’s theory of sexual selection, people can maximize their reproductive success in two main ways: a) by having the traits that are attractive to the opposite sex (intersexual selection), or b) by derogating same-sex rivals (intrasexual
On June 16th, political pundits observed that liberals are unhappy with President Barack Obama and conservatives are displeased with GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney. If the 2012 presidential contest matches Obama and Romney, and their bases are turned off, how will this affect the outcome?
The latest Pew Research poll helps answer the question. In 2012, Pew believes that 10 percent of potential voters, mostly young people, will not vote; Pew allocates the remaining 90 percent to three groups: “Mostly Republican,” 25 percent, “Mostly Independent,” 35 percent, and “Mostly Democratic,” 40 percent. (This reflects ideology not actual Party registration.)
In 2008, the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, got 52.9 percent of the vote, and the Republican candidate, John McCain, received 45.7
One Step at a Time
A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, says the ancient Chinese philosopher Laozi.
This is how 72-year-old Mimi W.’s journey out of the grip of depression began, with a single step — that first step out of bed, which led to a few more into the kitchen, then to the front of her Far Rockaway apartment, to the local grocery store, then to regular shopping trips with her granddaughter. Her progress was thanks in large part to an unusual — and unusually successful — psychiatric team that makes house calls.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), depression affects more than 6.5 million of the 35 million Americans aged 65 or older. For those who are homebound, the prevalence is even higher, with estimates ranging from 13.5 to 46 percent. To meet the growing mental health needs of these homebound elderly, the Visiting Nurse Service of New York launched the Behavioral Health Program last year and has provided in-home psychiatric care to some 1,100 New Yorkers.
“There’s a lot more understanding now about the prevalence and incidence of late-life depression and anxiety among the elderly, especially in the homebound elderly,” says my colleague Rose Madden-Baer, VNSNY’s Vice President for Behavioral Health and Special Projects, noting that the
By Kia Lala
Et tu, Duchamp? (detail), 2009 Black bronze 114 x 88 x 59 cm / 44 7/8 x 34 5/8 x 23 1/4 in Marble plinth: 123 x 123 x 122 cm Overall height: 237 cm. Courtesy of Hauser and Wirth
Subodh Gupta, Full moon, 2011 Oil on canvas 228 x 168 cm / 89 3/4 x 66 1/8 in
The economy of art is viewed with suspicion in a country where most still struggle with the basic necessities of survival…an onerous responsibility to bear for one of India’s top selling artists. Still, such social concern seems disingenuous looking at the media’s general ambivalence towards the fortunes spent by its own elite on weddings ($50 million extravaganzas). India’s surge in the contemporary art market is a sign of increasing luxury and leisure for its fattening middle
UNNATURAL ACTS *** out of ****
CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY
In 1920, when a one-time student of Harvard committed suicide, it sparked a secret investigation and witch hunt to weed out all “inverts” and “homosexualists” from campus, ultimately damaging or destroying dozens of lives. A series of articles in The Harvard Crimson about the files of “Secret Court, 1920,” sparked national attention in 2002 and ultimately this play by Plastic Theatre. Inspired by the articles, original documents such as the transcripts of the trial, letters written at the time, diaries and other information, Unnatural Acts is well-acted, well-directed and often thrilling for the first act, only faltering in the second when it stops presenting to us what happened and starts telling us how wrong it was. If you make a play about slavery or the subjugation of women in this day and age, you don’t really need a speech telling us how wrong it
Republican negotiators have walked out of talks with US Vice-President Joe Biden on how to reduce the country's debt.
The US treasury department has warned the US risks default if Congress does not authorise more borrowing by August.
Mr Biden said it was now up to President Obama and leaders of the Republicans and Democrats in Congress to decide on the way forward.
The Republicans are resisting Democrat proposals for tax rises in any deal.
Clock ticking
They say that such tax increases – amounting to as much as $400bn (£249bn) on corporations and the wealthy, according to the Washington Post – will stifle economic
In the midst of my five-year struggle to make my tortured on-again/off-again relationship with my ex-boyfriend M. work out, my therapist shared with me a verse written by Theodore Roethke in honor of his beloved wife:
“More than I’d hoped for; less than I’d dreamed.”
Forever the pragmatist, I embraced the sentiment expressed in this line of poetry. I thought to myself, “There’s the much-needed dose of realism that will finally get us over the hump to marriage and kids.”
Given my practical nature, what I’m going to do on Sunday morning feels out of character. I’ll hop in my Mini and make the seven-hour drive from San Francisco along the cattle and fruit tree-dotted flatlands of the I-5 to Los
A Conversation with Herbie Hancock
Mike Ragogna: Herbie, you’re doing the European jazz festival circuit this year paying tribute to Miles Davis, right?
Herbie Hancock: Yes, we’re playing the Montreaux Jazz Festival, the North Sea Jazz Festival, and several others.
MR: And you’re mainly going to be doing this with your pals, Wayne Shorter and Marcus Miller?
HH: Right, exactly. Actually, it’s Marcus’ project–it was his idea to do this–and he got Wayne and myself to agree to doing this. When we all worked with Miles Davis, we were young people that he nurtured, and that he sought out to be in his band. We thought we’d do the same thing because we’re not the youngest guys in the band
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said Washington is committed to the defence of the Philippines, amid rising tensions in the South China Sea.
She was speaking after talks with her counterpart Albert del Rosario.
She said the US would honour its mutual defence pact with Manila and offer the Philippines affordable weapons.
Several Asian nations claim territory in the South China Sea; Chinese ships have recently encroached on areas to which others have declared ownership.
Speaking in Washington on Thursday, Mrs Clinton said the US would not take sides in the South China Sea
Shining Star – P!nk
When it comes to battling the paparazzi, pop star P!nk ain’t no baby.
The entertainer took to her website this week to launch a verbal throwdown against the paps who are trying to snap the first pictures of her newborn daughter, Willow Sage.
Calling relentless photogs “aggressive” and “unsafe,” P!nk declared in a lengthy post that, “it’s one thing to harass and stalk us, the adults, the celebrity that signed up for this life, but children should be protected and safe. There should be a clear distinction between us.”
Now the new mama is putting her baby photos where her unabashed mouth is and giving pics of her bundle of joy the Brangelina treatment. Just as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt did when they sold photos of their infant twins to People magazine for a reported $14 million back in 2008 (and apparently donated much of that paycheck to charity) P!nk and husband Carey Hart plan on giving their first baby snapshots to the highest bidder.
P!nk wrote in her online post that all the money from the personal photos of Willow will be donated to good causes, such as the Ronald McDonald House and Autism
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