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Heard of Molly Katchpole? She’s the 22-year-old recent graduate of Roger Williams University credited with forcing Bank of America to rescind its plan to charge customers five bucks a month to use their debit cards. Enraged by the fee, Katchpole took to the Internet in October to launch a petition against the banking behemoth, reminding people that despite receiving a taxpayer bailout, making lots of money and paying no taxes, BofA was still trying to suck $60 a year out of its customers. Some 300,000 signatures and several TV appearances later, BofA dropped the plan and Katchpole became a national hero — a modern-day David who successfully took down a too-big-to-fail Goliath.
And what a David she is. Katchpole, with her Dickensian name, adorably bushy hair, saucer-like eyes and a tattoo that reads “empathy,” is something of a millennial media-booker’s

Herman Cain’s turn as the front-runner for the non-Romney division of the Republican Party’s presidential primary seems to be winding down. The candidate most likely to take Cain’s place, at least for the next few weeks, is Newt Gingrich. Gingrich will continue the back to the 1990s feel of the Republican primary, but like Cain, and Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry before Cain, Gingrich has no real chance at being his party’s nominee in the general election. Romney remains the overwhelming favorite to win the nomination, regardless of the relative positions of candidates like Gingrich or Cain.
Romney is, by the standards of most of the post-war period, a very ordinary candidate for his party’s

I first heard the term “Generation Rx” in a speech given by Allergy Kids Foundation’s Robyn O’Brien, a long-time supporter and now board member of Healthy Child Healthy World.
The idea is especially relevant this week, as I read about new study published in Pediatrics which focused on the over-prescription of antibiotics to kids.
Researchers at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City analyzed nearly 65,000 pediatric visits from 2006 through 2008 and found that doctors prescribed an antibiotic at one out of five visits, writing more than 10 million unnecessary antibiotic prescriptions each year, many for conditions like the flu and asthma, which are not bacterial and therefore not affected by antibiotics.
Another study that came out earlier this month now links these drugs, which destroy non-harmful bacteria in the intestines, to allergies, asthma and obesity, according to

Last week’s report from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) — a UN body — sent a chilling message.
Here is the central finding:
It spelled out some of those activities, including “efforts, some successful, to procure nuclear-related and dual-use equipment and materials by military-related individuals and entities” and “work on the development of an indigenous design of a nuclear weapon, including the testing of components.”
While newly reported, this information only confirms what many have been saying for years — that Iran is determined to achieve nuclear-weapons capability, if not the weapons themselves. Moreover, Tehran seeks delivery capability, as evidenced by its longstanding ballistic missile program, which it doesn’t even bother to hide.
Yet all along, Iran has been able to count on those who, for their own reasons, have rushed to defend it. They’ve claimed Iran is misunderstood, yearning only for peaceful nuclear

Stairs may not be as synonymous with French culture as wine, cheese and baguettes. However, stairs are a huge part of life in France. In the U.S., we often overlook these architectural accessories or hold irrational grudges against them for leaving us breathless after climbing only three floors. The French on the other hand, respect stairs as pieces of art that represent much more than simply a way to get from A to B.
Home to the monumental staircase, France evokes the beauty in

I have a friend who I use instead of Prozac. Whenever life feels overwhelming, I call her and ask her to lunch. Apparently, she’s the drug of choice for many people because her calendar is always heavily booked; I love that she squeezes me in when I use the secret emergency code words “It’s been so long since we’ve talked!”
I can talk to Jae Wu about anything and she hears me. Notice, I didn’t say she

I’m not so sure my colleague Mike Petrilli is right that “we have a parenting problem, not a poverty problem,” and I’m even less sure that he is right that educators should “start talking about the problem.”
I know this may sound heretical, since anyone who has spent more than a minute in an inner city school or neighborhood (see my Ed Next story on two Chicago charters) knows the intensity of the social dysfunction — and no school is immune to its effects. But parenting is not a problem that educators are equipped to handle — they have a hard enough time agreeing on curriculum. I think of a sixth-grade teacher in our small district who, on meet-the teacher-night, passed out no “parent contracts” and no “student contracts” — both were then the rage — and gave no lectures about student behavior and the role of the parent. He described what he was going to teach that year, what books the kids would be reading and then said to the assembled parents, “You don’t have to worry about a thing; I’ll take care of your kids.” And he

When my youngest child was diagnosed with cerebral palsy, I was not initially grateful. When medical bills, losing medical insurance and the inability to buy health insurance for my children due to existing conditions led to a medical bankruptcy and the foreclosure of my first and last home ownership experiment, I was not initially feeling gratitude as my dominant emotion.
However, having a daily gratitude practice can open up new rooms in consciousness. Have you ever heard the saying, “When one door closes, another door opens”? I don’t feel another door opens on its own; gratitude is the force that opens doors.
What is instrumental for change? The Taoists don’t see anger as a negative emotion, instead they simply see it as a necessary energy. What is the energy of the sprout who needs to burst out of the seed? The Taoists define that sprout’s energy as

Key 1: Expand Your Neural Network
Studies show that the brain feeds off novel experiences. Seek them out and you feed your super-genius brain. Each time that you experience something that’s new to you, whether it’s challenges, facts or situations, your neural network will expand. Remember, for this exact reason variety of diverse experience and travel are critical.
Throughout your lifetime, your neural networks will both reorganize and reinforce themselves according to new mental stimuli and learning

The phrase “World Wide Web” literally conjures up an image of a spider web made up of 6 billion lines connecting all the people on the planet. During our lifetime, this amazing technology has emerged and can be seen as an outward manifestation of the idea that we are all one large system. Although spiritual mystics have told us for millennia that we are all one, it does seem that science and technology are starting to confirm this insight. Just a decade or two ago, it would have been much harder to describe this notion to people without it seeming

The Kindness Cab limped its way into Sin City. These were troubling times. Engine trouble. Battery

Adolescence is a time of exploration, experimentation and introspection. Teens strive to be independent while still wanting to taken care of by their parents. They are challenged by experiencing these feelings simultaneously. (In case you were wondering, yes, this is a bigger version of the push-pull experience during the toddler years.)
As if adolescence isn’t already hard enough, try adding a parent’s cancer diagnosis to the

Another super-slick global financial analysis firm has just tallied how much net worth is sloshing around in the pockets of the world’s most spectacularly wealthy. So when will the time finally come to stop the counting — and start the taxing?
In today’s astoundingly unequal global economy, banks can go either of two routes — or both — to bag ever bigger returns. They can squeeze the 99 percent with nuisance fees and penalties. Or they can cater to the richest of the rich.
But both routes have

In New York and Los Angeles, the two places I spend most of my time, there is a familiar dinner party conversation that goes something like this…
“I just don’t know about Obama”
“I agree, he hasn’t done everything he promised he would do.”
“I don’t know if I’m going to support him.”
I’ve heard variations of this dozens of times. A strange by-product of the Republican party primary is the ability for Democrats to imagine a non-existent Republican candidate — a Bloomberg, or a Huntsman before he began his right-wing pandering — who they just possibly might like more than President Obama .
Well guess what… that candidate isn’t coming.
Slowly but surely Mitt Romney has evolved as the Republican front-runner and likely nominee — not because the right wing likes him, but because Herman Cain and Rick Perry have self-destructed in a spectacular way.
Romney’s ever-evolving positions have grown increasing radical as he tries to convince Republican voters that he is more qualified than former Burger King and Godfather’s Pizza executive Herman

There was widespread outrage earlier this year when forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi fired cluster munition rockets into residential parts of the Libyan city of Misrata.
Misrata was an increasingly rare example of the use of these weapons, which are comprehensively banned by the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions. The convention has been signed or ratified by 111 nations, including most of the United States’ closest allies–but not the US itself.
Regrettably, the move to eliminate cluster munitions is under attack, with the United States leading the

“The reader should know,” writes Henry Kissinger in his lengthy coronation of John Lewis Gaddis’s “magisterial” biography of the American foreign-policy seer and remonstrant George Kennan in the November 13 New York Times Book Review, “that for the past decade, I have occasionally met with the students of the Grand Strategy seminar John Gaddis conducts at Yale and that we encounter each other on social occasions from time to time.”
What the reader should also know (and what Times editors should have considered before making this assignment) is that Kissinger’s disclosure is roughly the equivalent of George W. Bush’s informing the public that he and Tony Blair have had “a full and frank exchange of views about matters of mutual concern.” A full disclosure would have acknowledged what I reported yesterday in an essay for Dissent magazine that has just been posted by the History News Network: No one has worked longer and harder to help Kissinger justify and polish his controversial legacy than John Gaddis at Yale.
Kissinger’s review offers useful insights and information about Kennan–Kissinger’s own insights, more than Gaddis’s. And Kennan himself, in my view and that of others who’ve written about him, certainly deserves the respect both men are showing him. What rankles here is that, without being told, we’re watching the latest pas de deux in a long ballet between the once-powerful Kissinger and the power-seeking Gaddis:
The same Kissinger who calls Gaddis’s George

I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the final episode of Oprah’s Lifeclass, which was recorded on Friday. In the audience were fifty-two people gathered to talk about the lessons and ahas they’d experienced during the five weeks of the show’s duration. The Lifeclass had provided discussions on such topics as “Anger,” “Self-Love and Appreciation,” “Joy,” “Listening to Your Inner Voice,” Newton’s Third Law” and finally “What You Believe, You Can Achieve.”
Being the Oprah junkie that I am, I’d managed to participate in every way possible. I regularly blogged, tweeted, Facebooked, and answered Oprah’s daily

I had passed the photo in the hallway showing the smiling handsome young Naval officer in uniform literally thousands of times over the years, occasionally pausing to marvel at the fact that this was my Dad when he was in his late teens. He had told me many times of his story of being able to study at Penn’s engineering school because of the Navy’s V-12 Program, and how he had served on a ship in Pearl Harbor after the attack. But frankly I never had any real perspective on that part of his life because I just could never relate to it. What did I know about military service? With the exception of a few people, most people of my generation had not served and we had little or no direct relationship with the military.
As many people figured out (probably only when they went to try to retrieve their mail or make a deposit at the bank), this past Friday, November 11, was Veterans

More than 100 years ago, train cars were chugging across Texas powered not by the oil for which the state is famous or even by the coal that provides that storybook puff of exhaust billowing from the smoke stack. No, these trains were running on electricity. That electric trains in the United States have such a lengthy history was news to me, but at the Interurban Railway Museum in Plano, Texas that’s just part of the story.
My tour guide, Judith Oldham, was as proud of the jaunty renovated red and yellow rail car on display as if she’d built and run it herself. I think perhaps she could have, judging from her knowledgeable explanation of how high voltage alternating current was bumped down to direct current at the electric sub station behind the passenger depot.
On a sunny afternoon this fall, Judith walked me through the multifunctional rail car, stopping first at the little mobile post office in the back end where letters in big canvas bags were sorted and delivered as the train made its way along the 130 miles of track between Dennison and Waco.
Through the narrow glass door and into the passenger section, a hinged sign on the wall reading “white” was a jarring reminder of the days of racial

Have a question about air travel or airfares? We answer as many as we can, either by email to questions@airfarewatchdog.com or in our Q&A column.
Really? My Carry On Bag Was Too Heavy?
Q: Recently I flew on Hawaiian Airlines from San Diego to Honolulu and and they brought out a portable luggage scale at the gate to weigh our carry on bags. Any bag over 25 pounds had to be checked in at the gate and a checked bag fee had to be paid. You couldn’t get on the flight without a sticker showing the bag had been weighed. Is this a common practice?
A: I have to be honest, this is the first I’ve heard of this, but checking Hawaiian’s website there is indeed a 25-pound limit on carry on

Some people are runners, others climb toward the heavens on the Stairmaster and a growing number participate in classes like Zumba or kickboxing. While the elliptical is great for a quick sweat and group classes are a fun and social workout, in my opinion there’s nothing better than lacing up a pair of sneakers, grabbing an iPod and hitting the streets for a long walk.
The beauty of walking is that anyone can do it, no matter your fitness level. It’s a low-impact, accessible and free form of exercise. Why invest in a costly gym membership when you can open your front door, step outside and take a walk? The Surgeon General says fewer than one-third of Americans get the recommended 30 minutes of physical activity a day, a scary statistic at a time when 68 percent of adult Americans are overweight or

The computer lab. I was a freshman in high school. I was a late bloomer and my breasts didn’t pop until 9th grade. And when they popped, they

As we approach the holiday season, I’ve frequently been asked to share some advice for those who are mourning the loss of a loved one at this emotionally-charged and spiritually significant time of year. Today, there is also another large and growing population who find themselves facing a different challenge: celebrating holidays while simultaneously fighting a terminal or potentially terminal illness. Though not outwardly addressed we must know that the families of people like Elizabeth Edwards and Steve Jobs found themselves having to navigate these emotionally difficult waters.
Modern medicine has literally transformed the nature of death and dying (and consequently of mourning) as we have understood these concepts for centuries. What as little as 50 years ago was a relatively quick process — from terminal diagnosis to death — has increasingly been replaced by a lengthy process that may lead to remission, or at the very least to an extended

Body vs. Being
In our quest for fitness, the ideal is to feel fit both in our bodies and in our emotional lives. In yoga, my mission is to bring you an experience of both your strong physical body and your clear emotional body.
The relevance of this mission: we all need to address both our how we live in our bodies and how we live in our