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I had just finished my post-college graduate travels throughout Europe and the Middle East and found myself on the brink of a quarter-life crisis. Being single and without a job, I figured I could call an old girlfriend from high school, buy an iPad, search for a job that would lead to a middle management career at best, and settle down in my hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. As tempting as that sounded, I wanted to see what else was out there, so I decided to drive hell for leather to California.
There was no particular destination in mind. I had no intentions on jumping into the Hollywood

Unless we continue with government aid packages, the banking system will collapse. At least that is what you hear from the bankers themselves. Alright — we must prevent that collapse from happening. Governments must nationalize the profits that the banks accumulated with taxpayer money since the financial

It hurts to watch the mainstream media’s coverage of the debt ceiling debate. Articles like this one in the Washington Post mistakenly lead you to believe that two of the biggest expense problems are Social Security and Medicare so to balance the budget, these programs must be cut back dramatically.
What they forget to tell you is these two programs were initially funded separately from the general operations of the government with contributions from employers and employees. Social Security is in surplus currently and on a combined basis, they have approximately $3 to $4 trillion in Treasury securities that they hold in their trusts to fund any shortfalls down the

American artist Natalie Turturro unveils a whimsical collection of twenty small-scale works on paper in her first European solo show, “Pieces of Paris,” now on view at Caf des Initis.
Installed in a wall arrangement evocative of a Renaissance map room, “Pieces of Paris” presents scenes captured in watercolor and ink from each of the city’s twenty arrondissements, or districts. The individual artworks hang from the wall in correspondence with the location of their respective arrondissements relative to the Seine River, denoted in the installation by a curving blue satin ribbon.
In what she calls ‘a new map of the city of lights,’ Turturro offers street-view glimpses into the charming quarters often neglected in guidebooks, where we find the inhabitants engaged in delightful, if quotidian, activity. A father and son flee the falling rain hand-in-hand; a troupe of musicians regales passersby; a game of ping pong unfolds footsteps from an impressive monument; a lavender vendor tends his

In Cowboys and Aliens, the enemies are horror fantasy monsters with a nod to James Cameron’s classic creations down to their gooey mitts. In The Whistleblower, they can be government officials, policemen, friends and relations, evil in human form.
Based on the real life story of Nebraska cop Kathy Bolkovac, who gets a job with an international peacekeeping force in post-war Bosnia, the new movie is a thriller in which some members of the UN and U.S. State Department collude with contractors in the lucrative trade of human

Maybe it’s just penance for decades of floor wax commercials, but Madison Avenue is starting to turn its advertising power toward a slightly nobler cause: saving the world.
I’ve seen all sorts of evidence lately that brands and agencies are increasing their involvement with social causes, whether it’s Coca-Cola’s green billboard; Alex Bogusky’s social venture, COMMON; or even Yahoo!’s annual contest, Create for a Cause, which rewards agencies for their pro bono work.
I don’t have the data to say that it’s a true trend, but it feels real — and if it is, I’m glad to see it.
Should you embrace a social cause?
Brands — and the agencies that support them — may be under more pressure from consumers to do good, almost exclusively because of social media. Simon Mainwaring, a former creative director at both Wieden + Kennedy and Ogilvy, whose book about businesses and social responsibility, “We First: How Brands and Consumers Use Social Media to Build a Better World”, just made the New York Times best-seller list, says that with social media, consumers notice when brands do something bad and can do something about

The town where I grew up in Northern Kentucky was a haven for organized crime. My father was a bookie and professional gambler who worked in several of the area’s “hot spots.”
In a town full of hustlers, prostitutes, and gamblers, the profession they looked down on was loan sharking.
It wasn’t unusual for a loan shark to wind up floating in the Ohio River. One of the biggest names in the business, Frank “Screw” Andrews, a central character in journalist Hank Messick’s non-fiction book, Syndicate Wife, “accidentally fell” out of a fourth-floor window.
If Andrews were in business today, he would be a captain of

How do we honor the dead artistically? In some cases, we commission artists and architects to erect monuments to the memories of those we have lost. Monuments can range in size from a simple gravestone to an Egyptian pyramid.
Whether one man (Shah Jahan) creates the world’s most famous mausoleum (the Taj Mahal) to honor the memory of his beloved wife (Mumtaz Mahal) or a nation designs and erects a structure such as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the dead are most often memorialized in marble and stone. From Holocaust memorials to tombs of unknown soldiers, from San Francisco’s AIDS Memorial Grove to the memorials honoring those whose lives were lost during the sinking of the RMS Titanic, architects, sculptors, and landscapers have all designed monuments to those who died prematurely.
It’s the thought that counts.
What music honors the dead? “Siegfried’s Funeral March” (from Richard Wagner’s opera, Gotterdammerung) quickly come to mind. So does Death and Transfiguration, the magnificent orchestral tone poem by Richard

The Oslo attacks should prompt a rethink of the terrorist threat and how we approach it. For the bloody mayhem produced by a single Norwegian has no resemblance to the threat perception that has launched a thousand reports, military action across three continents and the massive invasions/occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Nor is it in any way related to the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the West’s intelligence machinery.
The strenuous efforts at counter-terrorism since 9/11 have all been predicated on the fundamental and unquestioned assumption that the great danger took the form of a clandestine, tightly organized group of fanatical Islamist jihadis dedicated to lethal assaults on the United States and Western Europe. That is what has driven the ‘war on terror’ in all its

The Iron Man (John Irons) makes an important point here: economic inequality doesn’t grow just because folks at the top do better. It also grows because folks at the middle and bottom do worse.
This figure from EPI shows the fanning out of real hourly wages, indexed to 100 in 1973, over the last few decades. Clearly, the top continuously pulls away from the pack, as can be seen by the lines for the 90th and 95th wage percentiles.
But the slide also shows ways in which the shape of inequality, at least regarding wages, has changed over these years.
Real Hourly Wages, by Wage Percentile, 1973-2009
There was little wage inequality in the 1970s, but in the 1980s, the bottom was falling, the middle flat, and the top rising — a basic fanning out of the wage distribution.
The latter 1990s were once again different. The high end continued to rise but low and middle real wages grew together, and at a pretty decent

Labels are useful. They’re shorthand for what we want to communicate and yet, they often obscure what is really being said. We say things like, “oh, he’s schizophrenic,” “she’s bipolar,” “he’s an alcoholic,” “she’s anorexic,” “he’s blind” and the meaning seems to get conveyed, but does it? After all, that’s not all the person is. It’s something they have been diagnosed with, perhaps struggling

An Interrogation of Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope
Mike Ragogna: So, who the heck’s on the phone?
Violent J: This is Violent J! The Duke of the Wicked.
Shaggy 2 Dope: What’s stranglin’, it’s Shaggy 2 Dope. I believe the festival you’re talking about is the highlight of our life every year, which is known as the Gathering Of The Juggalos.
MR: Let’s get some details, when is this happening?
S2D: It’s happening August 11th, 12th, 13th, and

Each day brings seemingly dozens of updates on the budget negotiations surrounding the debt ceiling debate. Over the last few weeks, there have been major addresses to the nation by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner; the progress and then dissolution of Vice President Joe Biden’s negotiation group; various iterations of plans proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Boehner, the Gang of Six, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Reid and McConnell combined; and the passage of House Republicans’ “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill. President Obama has pushed for a “big deal” — at one point calling for deficit reduction of $4 trillion over 10 years.
The debate has been exhausting and at times too confusing. It has put a dent in the approval ratings of all

There were a few interesting articles written over the last several months about the unusual amount of ass-kicking (or at least take-charge) young female roles being written into mainstream cinema. Whether it was Chloe Moretz in Kick-Ass, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone, or Saoirse Ronan in Hanna, the last 18 months or so has seen a mini-wave of genre pictures where young females were basically the lead characters (or in the case of Kick-Ass the star attraction), ‘strong independent character’ (god, I hate that cliche) who not only could fend for themselves but were not defined in any way, shape, or form by their male love interest (not a one of them had a boyfriend). Yes, I would include Sucker Punch in this category, as it was basically a satiric examination of whether ass-kicking young women in pop culture were automatically sexualized by virtue of the salacious nature of such imagery (stop whining and read THIS). The somewhat negative undercurrent of this trend is that these actresses were generally under 18, often barely passed

You know that moment we all look forward to at a wedding — when the bride comes down the aisle and, for the first time, we get to see that beautiful white dress? How magical that moment always is.
Well, it’s even more magical when there are two white dresses.
I experienced this for the first time when my niece, Tracy, married the love of her life, a woman also named Tracey (only hers has an “e”). At that moment, as I looked at their radiant faces, I remembered seeing Tracy, age 8, singing along to the record of Free to Be…You and

c. 2011 Religion News Service
(RNS) When ABC recently announced it had ordered a season’s worth of a new show based on the novel “Good Christian Bitches,” I’m not sure which surprised me more — that the network planned to run a show with the word “Christian” in the title, or the derogatory “bitch.”
A dramedy set in Dallas, the show follows the character Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) who moves back to her hometown (and her mother, played by Annie Potts) after her marriage ends in scandal. In high school, Amanda was the quintessential mean girl. “Oh darlin’, you were a bitch with teeth,” her mother says in a clip from the show’s pilot.
Back home in Texas, Amanda encounters a gaggle of her old “frenemies” from high school, led by the mean-girl-turned-Sunday-School-teacher Carlene (Kristin

Ever look at or listen to a “star” and assume he/she had it “easier” than you? Check this out.
If you believe you are too busy, or feel frustrated by the time it takes to view this, imagine what 22 year old Choi Sung-Bong from Korea must have endured, the patience it must have taken, the persistence to believe in life, when all seemed lost. His story is a golden reminder that the story of transformed suffering — that endeavor to turn what is asleep and leaden in our lives into what is fully alive and golden — is global and cross-cultural. The instinct to bring forward what is within our hearts is embedded into our very cellular structure, pushing for expression regardless the odds.
Perhaps this is in part what irks us so much when we see the dysfunctional antics of politicians at

You might know a lot about Miranda July. You might’ve fallen in love with her after her first film, Me and You and Everyone We Know, which won the Camera D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005, which distinguished her as one of the freshest and most promising talents in indie film — with her excellent new film, The Future, poised to do the same. Maybe you fell for her because of her delicate but boldly exposed demeanor, or her impeccable skill/luck with vintage clothes. Or maybe it was because July is a role model to thousands (perhaps millions) of aspiring artists, proof that you can actually live out your varied creative dreams without selling out, evidenced by the fact that July has had her writing published in the New Yorker and Harper’s, her projects displayed at places like New York’s Guggenheim Museum, and her live pieces performed around the

This post was co-authored by Jocelyn Brooks, who is an Ella Baker associate at the Center for Constitutional Rights, based at the Bureau des Avocats Internationaux (BAI) in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
We watch an aged man pull his cart out of Sylvio Cator Stadium’s back gate, maneuvering it precariously between a parked car and a steep gutter. His cart is heavy and stacked high with wood, tarp, and the bare essentials of his life. He pulls the cart behind him, muscles and bones protruding from the

When I came to France I had to learn quickly to live in a classless
society without a king. Or even a duke. On my first Bastille day I kept
asking myself why on earth are we celebrating the demise of the
beautiful cultured people.
UK like it or not is still very much governed by social layers. Public

Twenty years ago, I was living in Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), when the civil war erupted there. Realizing that an attack on Zagreb was a distinct possibility after Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia, I thought it wise to consider an exit strategy. However, by the time I decided to leave, the airport was closed and the only option out was a train to Budapest. I left Zagreb with a small group of Americans who had either been employed at the American Consulate in Zagreb or were family of employees there.
Once I was settled in a lovely hotel room in central Budapest, it was time to consider the next

Sherley vs. Sebelius, a lawsuit threatening stem cell research, was thrown out today.
What does this mean?
My paralyzed son Roman Reed and I were in the room when President Obama signed a declaration reversing the Bush doctrine, which had so severely limited stem cell research.
What a shining moment that was, filled with hope, after the repressive policies of the previous White House occupant. The disability community had a friend in the White House now!
But then the lawsuits came, unmistakably ideological in origin, from the Christian Medical Association and others.
Two plaintiffs were acknowledged as having standing: James

Let’s talk about sexism.
Now I know the word “sexism” carries baggage. But no matter what you call it — gender bias, systemic inequity, inequality or discrimination — the belief that a woman is not as capable as a man simply because she is a woman is at the root of many challenges we face.
Spectacular examples of sexism and harassment get front and center attention — Anthony Weiner is merely the latest in a long line. But insidious day-to-day sexism often goes unchecked, unnamed and tolerated.
I’m talking about sexual harassment from men on the street in the form of “hey baby” or “sweetie,” scantily clad models who give out product samples in public spaces, or advertisements that pander to the lowest stereotypes around homemaker wives or dumb, oafish dads.
When broadcast messages or the language we use everyday reinforce sweeping generalizations about women, it’s hard to make real progress in the workplace or across society. Sexism reinforces a notion that women are valued less.
And this has a real impact.
In industrialized countries, women working full-time earn, on average, 82 cents to every dollar earned by men working

Back in the 1920s, American correspondents based in Europe were writing about a new phenomenon. “The Americanization of Europe proceeds merrily apace,” Karl von Wiegand wrote in The Washington Herald on June 14, 1925. “Half in wonderment, half in protest this tired old group of nations is falling under the magic sway of that babulous ‘dollar land’ across the ocean.” Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News added: “By the early twenties signs of Americanization were appearing all over Europe.” He pointed to the introduction of mass production, mass entertainment and, in general, the opening up of the old continent to new economic and social trends pioneered by the United States.
What passed for Americanization then is, in effect, what is called “globalization” now — the rapid spread of ideas across borders and oceans, often overwhelming national efforts to block them. But, as Americans like to say, what goes around comes