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Spend too much time at the big airports, as I do, and it’s easy to slip into believing that behemoth centers of people-moving is what flying is all about. It’s not.
On a beautiful, sunny summer day here in the southern hemisphere, I was reminded how wonderful it is to power down by visiting two small airfields in Chile where flying remains true to the poetic narratives of Antoine Saint Exupery, Richard Bach, Ernest K. Gann and others.
Today, I spent the afternoon at the Club de Planeadores de Vitacura in Santiago, Chile — an 82-year-old club for sailplane flying. While a steady breeze kept the windsock erect, the motorless aircraft were towed skyward where they proceeded to fly around the mountain valleys and return noiselessly to the runway with a dramatic left hand descending spiral.
I sat in the wooden stands for a long time, enjoying the aerial ballet before realizing – even sitting in the bleacher should be

This year, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic adventure novel “The Lost World,” celebrates its centenary.
Recalling the vivid and exotic images Doyle painted of South America has got us thinking about the places in today’s world that still hark back to an age of strange, unexplored lands.
For those of you who yearn to wander back in history and venture somewhere steeped in mystery and intrigue, these are our Black Tomato picks for Doyle-esque modern day adventuring. Minus the dinosaurs.
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Those who choose to venture further afield from the blissful beaches of Indonesia’s more popular holiday spots should prepare to be rewarded with views of quiet, mist-swathed lands dotted with crumbling temples and hidden deep in the island’s

In a sea full of software engineers, I stick out like a sore thumb. So much, in fact, that I often need to clarify what I’m doing in a crowd of Silicon Valley’s tech elites. The biggest red flag? I’m female.
When I explain that I’m a software engineer, people often respond with surprised expressions or snarky quips about not looking like a “typical” engineer. Most women would find these responses offensive, but these are actually the moments I celebrate

The Obama administration is facing one of the biggest tests of its commitment to promoting democracy and human rights in the Arab world since the uprisings of the Arab Spring, over one year ago.
The administration must decide, pursuant to the 2012 appropriations law, whether the Secretary of State will certify that Egypt is meeting specified human rights conditions before $1.3 billion of military and other foreign assistance can be paid over to the Egyptian government.
It is impossible for the administration to say honestly that these conditions are being met, in view of the continuing attacks and prosecutions of independent civil society organizations and human rights activists in Egypt.
Moreover, Egypt’s democratic transition remains far from complete. Now is not the time for giving Egypt’s current rulers, who are mostly holdovers from the Mubarak era dictatorship, the U.S. government’s seal of approval. That is exactly how the release of

George Clooney is one of the few celebrities whom I take seriously — not just because he’s focused his advocacy efforts on Sudan but for reasons of consistency and his ability to stay on message. In January 2011, my wife and I were made international observers for the Sudanese referendum for independence. George Clooney was there, along with ex-president Jimmy Carter, undertaking important analysis on what would become a process that ushered in the world’s newest nation.
This week Clooney proudly accompanied his father to the gates of the Sudanese embassy in Washington. Asked by authorities to move on, he refused, and in the process he was

Though the advertising boycott of Rush Limbaugh is significant for its size and scope, it will ultimately prove ineffectual in dislodging him from his commanding perch above the talk-radio world. That kind of movement would require a different type of acquiescence, namely on the part of program directors, not advertisers. And though there is a strong case to be made for such a course correction, there are no guarantees those who determine content will stray from their current business model.
Last week, radio-trade columnist Tom Taylor reported that Limbaugh’s syndicator (Premier Networks) was circulating a list of 98 advertisers that want to avoid “environments likely to stir negative sentiments.” He said the advertisers had concerns that extended beyond Limbaugh:
“They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in . . . programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”
The bible of the talk-radio trades, Talkers, then pointed out that “no controversial programming” dictates were common and practically as old as talk radio itself, and were not a specific reaction to the Limbaugh case – although they are certainly reiterated as a result of it.
Still, the hosts identified constitute the starting rotation at many talk stations across the country. Their programs, strung together, amount to 15 or more straight hours of daily kicking the crap out of President Obama (whether he deserves it or not). The only diversity they offer is in their voice inflections.
Meanwhile, the nation seems poised for something more multidimensional. Jon Stewart nailed it when, at the Rally to Restore Sanity he cohosted with Steven Colbert in 2010, he proclaimed:
“Most Americans don’t live their lives just as Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives.” Stewart’s observation is supported by lots of recent data, including:
An August 2011 Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey that found that 40 percent of Americans who responded said their general approach to the issues was “moderate.”
A December 2011 analysis by USA Today that showed that, since the 2008 election, more than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican Parties, while the number of independents has grown. Registered Democrats are in decline in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party, and Republicans dipped in 21 states. Independents gained in 18.
In January, Gallup announced that the percentage of Americans identifying as political independents increased in 2011 to 40 percent, the highest Gallup has ever measured.
But “independents” are not a constituency cultivated by current talk radio.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Question: What are the connecting threads between these two recent Mitt Romney news items – the announcement that he’s not enrolling in Medicare, and the revelation that Bain Capital helped him make money helping the Chinese government spy on its people?
Answer: They’re both covert attacks on innocent civilians, and they’re both based on Romney’s own deceptions.
Think about it for a second:
As the New York Times reported, Bain-owned Uniview Technologies is the primary supplier for China’s system of spying on its citizens – in schools, on streets, in Buddhist temples and in mosques, and anywhere else the Chinese people gather. The Times quotes Buddhist monk Loksag as saying, “There are video cameras all over our monastery, and their only purpose is to make us feel fear.”
Thank you, Mr. Would-Be President! When Mitt Romney talks about “getting tough on the Chinese,” people didn’t realize that he meant the Chinese people, not their leadership.
It’s a blind trust! That was Romney’s defense this week, even though he called blind trusts for politicians an “age-old ruse” when he ran against Ted Kennedy in

This is part of our monthly series ‘Mission: Accepted,’ in partnership with Minds Matter, which chronicles the lives of three students as they apply for college in their senior year.
Guess what? College is expensive. Shocker, right? I’ve always known this, but the reality of it didn’t really hit me until just a few weeks ago. I thought I’d have no problem getting full financial aid because neither of my parents work, but then my cousin told me that aid is actually first-come, first-serve (for FAFSA and CSS). This terrified me because I submitted my forms in late January, and who knows how many people have submitted theirs by that

Please join the HuffPost community in “A Lenten Journey” for reflections throughout Lent, and join our online Lenten community here.
Last week the one-time global financier Allen Stanford was convicted of perpetrating a massive $8 billion fraud. What makes Stanford’s crime galling is not just the size of his thievery, but that he used his faith to attract investors. Faith was “a part of the boardroom culture,” according to a 2009 Bloomberg report, and prayer often opened meetings among colleagues. Stanford’s sales agents used religion and church networks, particularly in the South, to recruit new clients.
There’s nothing new or unique about abusing faith for selfish ends, though the hypocrisy of his firm heightens the offensiveness of his

After a winter of extensive planning, the Occupy movement will launch its own online news site later this month. Occupy.com, which has the associative meaning of “occupying the commons,” will go online in late March, according to Michael Levitin, 35, a founding editor of an earlier Occupy newspaper, the Occupied Wall Street Journal.
The lead story on the launch edition will tell the story of a recent court victory in West Virginia where retirees of Century Aluminum won a $40 million suit against the company for cutting their benefits.
“This is a national, 99% story of people in their 60s to 80s who ended up living on the

This week, March Madness extended beyond college basketball to the GOP presidential contest as former 16th-seed-turned-title-contender Rick Santorum continued his bracket-busting run by shooting the lights out in Mississippi and Alabama to win the South regional. Luckily for Mitt Romney, the GOP nomination, unlike the NCAA tournament, is not a one-and-done competition — but it’s looking more and more like the game might go down to the final buzzer, if not into overtime. Will the GOP convention actually end up being a jump ball? It might if Romney continues to babble on about all the super-rich sports team owners he knows (this week’s gaffe centered on Peyton Manning’s free agency).
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

A Chinese new wave? China’s rock scene, underground but dynamic, is loaded with bands that suggest a new, post-1990s rebellious spirit. Their names fly in the face of collective harmony: Hutong Fist, Tomahawk, Catcher in the Rye, Twisted Machine, Queen Sea Big Shark and Wild Children. Indie singers are, collectively, a huge force on Douban, China’s leading cultural and artistic website. Performers such as Jay Chou, known for nonconformist lyrics, and Hong Kong’s Edison Chen, a “real guy” despite being driven out of the city due to a pornography scandal involving several Hong Kong starlets, are embraced by the new

Some problems are so big that no one wants to take them on. Fixing Social Security. Getting privacy settings right for your Facebook timeline. Gaining top position of your Foursquare

“How do we understand this president and his time in office?” asks actor Tom Hanks in his narration for the documentary The Road We’ve Traveled, which the president’s reelection campaign released Thursday evening. “Do we look at the day’s headlines or do we remember what we as a nation have been through?” Well that all depends on your political point of view.
For supporters of President Obama, the documentary is a well-crafted 17-minute story about a man who has achieved an enormous amount despite difficult challenges. “Not since the days of Franklin Roosevelt has so much fallen on the shoulders of one president,” Hanks says. It tells the story of a man who is consistently doing what he believes is best for the country rather than what may be most

Reading any article based on statistics is a lesson in interpretation, and the latest global temperature statistics provide an opportunity for some differing opinions on the topic of the climate: While the United States had an exceptionally warm winter (fourth warmest) and global temperatures remained above average in February, global land areas were the coolest since 1994.
In other words, just as cold winter in the U.S. during the previous two years did not mean that it was cold globally, a warm U.S. winter this year didn’t mean that it was warm

“Good guy” — the description of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales by neighbors that is headlining in the American media — is pretty much the way ordinary Germans saw other Germans who brutalized people in extermination camps in WW2 (See Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust). “Good guy” is how most family, friends and neighbors in the USA described John Demjanjuk, the Ukranian-born Nazi extermination camp guard who was deported to Germany for war crimes and who died Saturday, convicted of his crimes but living free in a German nursing home. And “good guy” is how family, friends and neighbors described Ander Behring Breivik, judged by his countrymen to be “mentally unfit” when he massacred dozens of young people in Norway because his government tolerated Muslim immigrants.
Imagine an Afghan who came to the USA and murdered 16 people, mostly women and children, and burned their

Dear Governor Palin:
I called the White House to see if the president might be available to debate you. Alas, I was told he was busy running the country and trying to make peace in the world.
So, I was kinda thinkin’, you wanna debate, don’tcha? (Mitt Romney is training me on Alaskan dialect, so don’t hold it against me). Well, I am no President Obama. I am also no Jack

Just yesterday, a New Jersey jury found the spying by Dharun Ravi of Tyler Clementi a hate crime. Many feel this will be a message to youth about how serious Internet maliciousness can be. My worry is it will only push people to be more devious. Here’s some of why.
The week of Tyler Clementi’s suicide I remember very well because I was in Denver preparing to teach a few classes on “Bullying from the Inside out” at the University of Denver’s Professional School of

Today we are seeing obese 6-month-old babies! Why? It sure isn’t because they are asking mom for the keys to the car so they can go grab another cheeseburger. It may seem incredible, but environmental toxins have been proven to lead to weight gain and imbalanced blood sugar. Find out how that happens and what to do about it in this video.
For more on the Blood Sugar Solution Challenge, see the full archive here.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

March marks the start of the housing season. Prices peak in May, sales in June, and inventories in July. In colder regions, seasonal swings are bigger, and the market peaks later.
The housing market rides the seasons. Year in and year out, market activity has predictable ups and

The massive surveillance program implemented by the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in coordination with CIA officials is shredding the Constitution, putting at risk the rights and freedoms of Arab Americans and American Muslims. If left unchecked, their behavior will weaken the foundations of our democracy and seriously compromise our values as an open and inclusive society.
Revelations by the Associated Press have established that the NYPD, working with a few CIA officials, has been monitoring Arab and Muslim-owned businesses, mosques, and “mapping” areas of the city where high concentrations of Muslims and Arab immigrants are known to live. In order to accomplish these objectives, the NYPD has coerced and entrapped Muslims to act as

Earlier this month, Tina Brown, News Week & The Daily BEAST hosted the third annual Women In The World Summit. The agenda was fully packed — Tina doesn’t fool around. This was about sharing as much critical information with the Summit attendees from the stellar group of speakers and moderators she’d gathered, in as short a period of time as was possible – a mere 3 days, and not full days at that. No

Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general once known as a diplomatic rockstar, is trying to start meaningful talks to end the brutality in Syria that has claimed at least 8,000 lives over the past year.
Chosen as an envoy by the United Nations and the Arab League, Annan may offer the last chance to rescue negotiations, which might entail Syrian President Bashar al-Assad excluded from the process so the many Syrian opposition groups could work out a deal.
(The Arab League also chose Nasser al-Kidwa, a Palestinian diplomat and nephew of Yasser Arafat as his deputy. But Syria would not allow him to enter the country, presumably to express its opposition to the Arab League’s condemnation of Assad, diplomats said last