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Stress must be one of the most oft-invoked words in our modern vocabulary. It is used in relation to jobs, finances, family, health and the attempt to manage them all at the same time. I used to joke about how my business was trying to kill me until I came down with a whopping case of cancer 15 years ago, so I stopped cracking wise in that way. But managing stress is still the biggest challenge in my

We buried my Uncle Ed two weeks ago. He was 84. Having served in the Merchant Marine in World War II and the U.S. Army during the Korean War, Ed was entitled to a full military funeral, which he received.
Ed was what you would call a man’s

Anyone who grew up, as I did, in Britain in the 1960s, well remembers the arrival into the British cultural midst of Rupert Murdoch. Like an Australian cross between Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan — but without their charm and intellect. First he took over the UK Sunday-only tabloid — the News Of The World. Then he very craftily acquired a middle-market daily newspaper, the Sun — which at that point was a reasonably respected, center-left paper of middlebrow

From an exhibition of new landscape and portrait paintings by Leon Kossoff, who works for years on each canvas, to an exhibition of “Unfinished Paintings” at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) – the depth and breath of contemporary painting were evident in June.
In Unfinished Paintings, “Works-in-progress [are] offered as a point of entry into each painter’s respective creative world.” Painter/blogger Sharon Butler, in her recent essay “The New Causalists,” addressed a related topic – noting “a studied, passive-aggressive incompleteness to much of the most interesting abstract work that painters are making today… They are looking for unexpected outcomes rather than handsome results.”
The continuing tradition of American abstraction was also celebrated at OK Harris Gallery with the 75th Anniversary exhibition of the American Abstract Artists. Painter Steven Alexander writes that the show offers “a broad range of approaches to abstraction” and goes on to say that “One can sense the 75 year tradition, a seasoning and a blooming — a way of seeing, thinking, living that in many ways is no less radical now than in 1936.”
If the art world has spawned a “Generation Blank,” painting has quietly begotten an energized, vigorous, inter-generational, and international dialogue that is thriving without the spotlight.
Writing recently about Leon Kossoff’s new paintings, Franklin Einspruch notes “The artist gives us no reason to interpret [a] tree as anything but

Are we seeing the new model of Barack Obama’s presidency? Is this (in the parlance of Silicon Valley) “Obama 2.0″?
This seems to be a large point that all the overanalysis of rumors in the past few weeks has largely missed. Partisans on both sides have been kept busy having fits of the vapors over unconfirmed (and, for the most part, unsourced or anonymous) rumor leaks about what is “on the table” in the debt ceiling negotiations, while the media is content to sit back and fan the flames. In the midst of this frenzy, nobody seems to have noticed that President Obama is negotiating in a markedly different way than what we’ve seen from him in the past. Obama is at the absolute center of the showdown, he is using the bully pulpit for all its worth, and he has not (so far, unless you choose to believe this rumor or that) backed down on a few key “lines in the sand.” All of this is nothing short of a sea change from how Obama handled (for example) the healthcare reform battle.
Since there is no agreement yet — no grand “deal” has emerged from the talks between the White House and congressional leaders — I’m going to wait to discuss the particulars of such a deal until it

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has proposed a Rube Goldberg-esque debt ceiling plan that, as its core, enables the president to raise the debt ceiling. The president is given the authority to raise the debt-ceiling, Congress will vote to disapprove, and the president can raise the ceiling by vetoing the disapproval.
Strangely, after McConnell had capitulated the day before, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) thought this was an idea worth exploring and offered a $1-1.5 trillion cuts-only spending provision to accompany it.
There has been much discussion about whether section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment that reads in relevant part, “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned” renders the debt ceiling itself unconstitutional, providing the president not just the power, but the duty, to pay all the country’s financial obligations, from revenues and by issuing additional debt if

Originally published on Youthradio.org, the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe.
By: Sayre Quevedo
Career and technical education may be facing deep financial cuts. A proposed federal budget could mean as much as a 20 percent reduction to funding for vocational programs in 2012, according to the New York Times. Obama instead seeks to increase funding for overall education by 11 percent.
The Times reports that these proposed cuts are a step toward the president’s goal of raising academic standards and ultimately have the highest share of college graduates of any other nation by

Longtime Chicago food writer Jennifer Olvera has written perhaps the most up-to-date and comprehensive guide to the Chicago food scene ever written. Entitled the Food Lovers Guide to Chicago, it’s a valuable resource for locals and visitors alike with its vast coverage of the city’s diverse culinary destinations. The mouth-watering content includes food trucks, festivals, butchers, ethnic markets, restaurants, distilleries, cooking classes, local food artisans and farmers and it fits as nicely on your book shelf as it will in your glove box.
I spoke with her recently about the making of the book and her own personal haunts in

With his 3-run home run in the fourth inning, Prince Fielder led the National League to a 5-1 victory in Major League Baseball’s 82nd All-Star Game on Tuesday. But Prince Fielder, Roy Halladay, Adrian Gonzalez, Jose Bautista, and teammates were not the only greats to play on Phoenix’s Chase Field this week. On Wednesday morning, before the All-Star dust could settle, a group of cancer scientists, physicians, survivors, and family members took the field to play the final games of the MLB’s All-Star Game Fantasy Camp.
Courtesy of MasterCard, MLB All-Star Fantasy Camp provided a much deserved break from the world of cancer for a number of oncology researchers, physicians, patients, and family members all of whom are involved in Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), an initiative for which Major League Baseball is the founding donor.
For Stephen Baylin, MD, deputy director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University and leader of the Stand Up To Cancer Epigenetics “Dream Team,” the opportunity was a dream come

With the August 2 deadline for increasing the debt ceiling fast approaching, the beltway media is quick to praise the “courage” of politicians who propose cutting Medicare, whether it’s Paul Ryan for proposing to turn Medicare into a voucher program, or President Obama for proposing more modest cuts like increasing the eligibility age from 65 to 67 or “means testing” benefits based on income. But there’s nothing courageous about putting more of the burden of medical care onto the backs of seniors who have spent a lifetime paying Medicare taxes in order to guarantee their medical security when they get older.
If our leaders want to show real political courage when it comes to the federal debt, they should try this statement on for size:
“The government doesn’t have a long-term debt crisis. It has a long-term health cost crisis. The solution isn’t turning Medicare into a voucher program or cutting

Obama is still pushing for free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and Korea, albeit with the thin fig leaf of demanding they be accompanied by money for so-called Trade Adjustment Assistance, a “painkiller” program designed to blunt the harm to laid-off workers.
The Republicans don’t like TAA, which has held up passage of these agreements momentarily, but both sides are still gunning to pass these agreements some time soon.
You think America has learned its lesson from NAFTA, which the Labor Department has estimated cost us 525,000 jobs? Think again.
Take the Korea agreement, for example. President Obama and the Republican leadership want it despite the fact that the Economic Policy Institute has estimated it will cost us 159,000 more jobs over the next five years.
Yes, you read that correctly. At a time when the president says that his number one economic priority is job creation, and has created an entire commission for that purpose, they’re going ahead with it

Run for the hills, everybody! Armageddon is imminent! The sky is beyond falling; it’s anvil-plummeting onto our heads so fast that the clouds are whistling the love theme from the movie “2012.” The U.S. economy is about to melt down like a popsicle left on a Palm Springs picnic table, and it’s only a matter of time before this country liquefies into Greece’s financial twin, but without the pleasant distraction of all that melodious zither music.
Seniors, sick people and soldiers are destined to be tossed into the streets to battle mutant rats for food. The three branches of the government will inevitably be deemed too expensive, and we’ll be forced to let one

It’s a common complaint among the creative class in World Class Cities, but here’s the deal, I sometimes think there might be something there. Why is SF so indifferent to music, especially the “L-word.” No, not that one. Local music.
If you talk to any band, they will almost always tell you that they aren’t appreciated back where they are from. That’s just the way it is, but the near heroic level of apathy that San Francisco seems to display absolutely baffles

Maybe you’re gonna weep at the tale of a child paying a steep price for a community’s silence. Maybe you’re gonna take heart at the thought that one voice, breaking through that silence, can rescue not just the child, but all those around her, even the ones insisting on that fearful hush. Either way, Life, Above All — the new film by director Oliver Schmitz, based on the young adult novel Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton — is a beautifully powerful exploration of a still-troubling problem of the third world. Shooting on location in the South African township of Elandsdoorn using mostly hand-held cameras, Schmitz tells the tale of a young girl, Chanda (Khomotso Manyaka), coping with the death of her newly-born sister and the incapacitation of her mother, a task made all the more daunting in a town where the word AIDS dare not be

Arianna and AOL CEO Tim Armstrong appeared at the National Press Club on Friday to discuss journalism and where they see the business going in the future.
Among other insights, Armstrong explained that in the current journalism landscape, “people aren’t transparent about what they believe in before they write things, and that’s something that we would like to see in the future is more transparency around journalists and what they believe in before stories get written.” He also explained that it’s important to create a product for an age in which many people consume news on smart phones rather than physical newspapers.
Arianna explained that that “media is in an incredible time of transition.” In reference to the recent scandal involving the British tabloid News of the World, she said, “it was new media that played a huge part in bringing the News of the World down so fast.”
Speaking about the new media vs. old media debate, Arianna said, “the unique ability of new media is to stay on a story and doggedly stay on a story until we have an impact.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Fed by the news media, our fascination and reverence for celebrities has reached shameless heights.
But when you add the element of royalty to the mix, celebrity worship can take off into the stratosphere, triggered even by an item as seemingly mundane as a dress.
This leaves me wondering — and angered — over what is happening to us and our priorities.
I’m referring most recently to the whirlwind North American tour this month of newly weds Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton (a.k.a. Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge), who seem to be a wonderful couple committed to fostering goodwill globally, and helping others, especially through promoting numerous charities.
But all during their tour (which sparked virtual media mayhem), U.S. news outlets seemed captivated by one thing, the type of dress Kate Middleton was wearing, pondering dutifully whether she wearing the one by Issa, Roland Mouret, Erdem, or Alexander McQueen, and which dress she may have worn

Last Saturday, I felt the elation of standing before 100,000 South Sudanese celebrating the fulfillment of their dream of an independent state. The next day, Sunday, I witnessed the tragedy of 100,000 Somali men, women, and children driven from their homes to refugee camps around Dolo Ado in eastern Ethiopia by drought, violence, and dire conditions in parts of their homeland. The sight of families — mostly women shepherding their children — stumbling into the camps after up to ten days of exodus through the bitter Ogaden desert and receiving their first nutritious meals in months is heart-breaking. They are joined in their flight by even greater numbers fleeing to Kenya in search of food, water, and security, as their crops and livestock wither around them and long-standing conflicts continue.
The number of people in the Horn of Africa affected by this tragedy is

With all eyes riveted on the debt talks and efforts to avert an economy-busting government default, little attention is being paid to another debt that is similarly ballooning out of control and threatening to spur its own economic chaos:
The carbon debt.
Those pesky greenhouse gas emissions that we spew to power our businesses, drive our cars and heat and cool our homes are accumulating in the atmosphere like an unpaid bill with compounding interest.
Economists now say that the bill for all that unchecked carbon pollution is a lot bigger than previously thought — and that the longer we wait to pay it, the more it’s going to cost us.
A new peer-reviewed report released this week by the Economics and Equity for the Environment (E3) network found that each ton of carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere results in as much as $893 in economic damages, far greater than the government’s current estimate of $21 per ton.
This figure, known as the “social cost of carbon,” is used by federal agencies when weighing the costs and benefits of carbon-reducing regulations, such as appliance efficiency standards or fuel economy standards for cars and trucks. It’s an estimate of the monetary damages caused by higher global temperatures, such as extreme weather events, rising sea levels, agricultural losses and wildfires.
The government’s substantially lower social cost of carbon, which E3 calls “fundamentally flawed” and a “gross underestimate of the potential impacts of climate change,” means that it is much harder to justify more stringent regulations to limit carbon pollution.
E3′s new report further concludes that “it’s costing us more to do nothing about climate change than it would to adopt mitigation measures.”
“Investing in reducing our emissions is clearly the prudent option,” says Frank Ackerman, an economist with the Stockholm Environment Institute and a report author. “It’s the difference between servicing your car or waiting for it to break down on the highway.”
A second report released the same day by the World Resources and Environmental Law institutes similarly agrees that the government’s model for estimating a social cost of carbon oversimplifies assumptions about climate change and discounts the costs of future mitigations, resulting in an underestimate of true

GOP presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has made a career out of waging the values battle in the culture wars. A major part of that battle early on in Bachmann’s career was the battle over teaching creationism in public school science classes. In fact, Bachmann got her start in politics on the board of a charter school that got in trouble for teaching biblical principles in class. Angry over that, Bachmann then ran for the Stillwater school board as part of a group of religious conservatives that sought to take it

“It’s the best of times; it’s the worst of times,” to paraphrase Charles Dickens. Some portion of the American citizenry is experiencing lives of greater wealth than at any other time in any other country in world history. According to the latest statistics, over 8.4 million households have assets of over $1 million, a gain of 600,000 from last year.
On the other hand, in the last decade, poverty, as measured by the

New York City’s proposal for a two-year pilot to ban the use of food stamps to buy sugar-sweetened beverages is the right idea at the right time. It is a sound approach aimed at minimizing consumption of soda and other beverages stocked with added sugars at a time when we desperately need new interventions to combat the surge of obesity and diet-related disease across the country. A ban would also act as a counterweight to the soda industry’s efforts to solidify its products as part of the typical everyday diet. From our diverse perspectives — informed by a lifetime writing and teaching about food systems and policy, and decades spent helping kids in poverty beat the odds — we join together in a firm belief that this effort must be

In each Life Coaching Crash Course I’ve participated in and I have been involved in many, it seems universally true that we are all carrying around the burden of past disappointments, traumas and secrets. I believe the reason so many people feel confused and tired all the time is because of how much energy they use to keep things hidden. The beginning of the release of these “demons” is in letting them see the light of day.
We hide the truth for a lot of seemingly reasonable reasons. I’ve found that most people think they are protecting others by covering up, as if sheltering them from the truth is doing them a

The National Peace Corps Association and the SEVEN Fund are sponsoring a global competition
called “the Enterprise Solutions to Global Poverty Essay Contest” and invite submissions that
describe innovative ideas for fighting poverty. Don’t forget, there are just two weeks left to enter
to win as the deadline for submissions is July 31, 2011.
The grand-prize winner will receive $5,000, have their profile featured in WorldView magazine,
and serve as a special guest on a distinguished panel in Washington, D.C. on September 24,
2011. The winner will also receive one ticket to attend the “Promise of the Peace Corps Gala” in
Washington,

There was a lot of justified hand-wringing and tough talk in the media and in think tank and NGO-land about the unseemly use by Europe of its unwarranted voting weight at the IMF to push the election of Christine Lagarde. The appointment this week of Zhu Min, a former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, as the one of two IMF deputy directors — the first time that a Chinese official has held such a post — suggests that Beijing extracted something worthwhile in exchange for backing Lagarde. Equally important, Zhu Min’s appointment shows that China is interested in expanding its influence within the IMF. Power still matters; it’s just that power is shifting.
The appointment of White House economic aide David Lipton was no surprise and ensures that the