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In hard times I’veoften found comfort from Mick Jagger crooning, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you just might find, you get what you need.” Thanks, Mick! You are so right, man. Everything’s gonna be just fine.
Those words soothed me when an audition I really wanted didn’t come through. I’d trust I’d land the next one — with an even bigger paycheck — which I really needed.
I’d hum that tune as I scoured Designer Shoe Warehouse only to find nothing I wanted in my size. My pulse would steady and I’d leavecontent with a pair of much-needed socks instead.
These days, however, I’m finding The Stones’ lyrics less

Catherine Deneuve was not, at the outset, my favorite French actress. Not as playful or sexy as Brigitte Bardot or soulful and Everywoman as Jeanne Moreau, she seemed much harder to connect with in her icy perfection. It was impossible to imagine acquiring Deneuve’s carefully constructed beauty even though you might tint your hair gold or buy a well-seamed dress: in the end, it was no more obtainable than Moreau’s pouting lips or Bardot’s belle poitrine.
Today, Deneuve is being honored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center for her long and distinguished

Over the weekend, New York Mets manager Terry Collins officially named Johan Santana, the Opening Day starter when the Mets take on the Atlanta Braves Thursday afternoon at Citi Field. Not having pitched a game since September 2, 2010 due to shoulder surgery, the beginning of the 2012 season will clearly be transition time for Santana as he adjusts to pitching in Major League situations again. However, despite the strong sense of negativity I have had toward this franchise in recent days, I am truly looking forward to watching Johan pitch again in Flushing this week.
There are a lot of people who have concerns for Santana. Many people fear that his drop in velocity will cause him to underperform, as his fastball has been mostly registering in the

It started in a little town in Venezuela almost 35 years ago, made its way to cities in the U.S. and is now a global phenomenon. El Sistema, which doesn’t translate well, means simply “the system,” a system for giving young, usually poor kids, a chance on living.
At first glance it’s about music. Getting young people to play an instrument, then joining an

Most of us have a personal hero, an Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Edison. Mine is Larry David. The co-creator of “Seinfeld” is not the most lovable or charming of our comic minds, but he came up with a concept that changed my worldview.
During an early episode of the series, a network executive asked what their proposed show would be

I’ve written a couple of pieces lately that have gotten a lot of attention about why younger people tend to walk away from church. (If you haven’t seen them yet, here are the links:
“Seven Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church” and “Four More (BIG) Reasons Why Young Adults Quit Church”)
It was suggested that I might also post a piece about why young adults come back to church. Though I can’t say for sure why ALL young adults in church do so, I can share a few reasons why I, as a young adult, went back after 10 years.
I Found A Community That Defied Christian Stereotypes
I left the church as a teenager on less than good terms. My youth leader threw a Bible at me for persisting with my questions, and the only image of Christianity I saw regularly in college was the guy in the student union standing on a box with a bullhorn, yelling at passersby about how we were doomed to hell without him.
Fortunately, I found a new community in my late 20s that represented something

The name in the headlines this month is George Zimmerman, shooter of Trayvon Martin. But another Zimmerman named the phenomenon we’re witnessing almost fifty years ago, when he described the unnamed gunman who shot civil rights leader Medgar Evers:
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school …
That the laws are with him, to protect his white skin
To keep up his hate, so he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in, but it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game.
We can engage in quasi-theological debates about whether the half-Caucasian, half-Hispanic George Zimmerman is ‘white’ – but he’s certainly been taught to fear and hate the Other, the dark-skinned and hooded menace to his well-watched neighborhood. Bob Dylan (original name: Bobby Zimmerman) found the right phrase to describe shooters like George Zimmerman: ‘only a pawn in their game.’
Whose game? As it turns out, the ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws used to protect shooters like Zimmerman were written and promoted by ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council. As the Center for Media and Democracy notes, the corporate-funded right wing group behind Wisconsin

I was one of three women artists interviewed recently by TheDetroiter.com for a series on women artists in the Detroit area. The other two artists interviewed were Claudia Shepard and Kristin Beaver, both accomplished painters. We were asked some basic questions about our art practice and its progress. We were also asked three more substantive questions that I would like to talk about:

“We are now contemplating, Heaven save the mark, a bill that would tax the well for the benefit of the ill.”
That’s not a quote from oral arguments at the Supreme Court over the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act or from one of the earnest conservatives demonstrating against it outside. It’s actually the beginning of an editorial in the Aug. 15, 1949 issue of theNew York State Journal of Medicine denouncing the pernicious effects of health insurance. To be clear: not government-mandated health insurance, but all third-party health insurance.
I wrote about that editorial in a July 16, 2009 blog entitled, “GOP to Uninsured: Drop Dead.” My blog was prompted by a Wall Street Journal op-ed the previous day from

Last year, three out of every 1,000 American adults chose to start their own businesses, according to a study out this month by the Kauffman Foundation. And while that’s slightly below the entrepreneurship rate of 2010, it’s still among the highest levels of entrepreneurship over the past 16 years — a byproduct of the Great Recession’s high unemployment rates, according to the foundation.
There are, of course, many considerations to starting your own business. But if you’ve been wondering what fields might be fertile for a new business, a good place to start is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ new employment projections for 2010 to 2020.
Sageworks examined several businesses that entrepreneurs might consider as they look to tap into the trends cited in the government’s employment outlook. Based on a financial analysis of privately held companies’ results in 2010 and 2011, we’ve generated some key operating metrics that may be helpful in evaluating and planning your

This week has showcased the need for a spotlight on the money overwhelming our democracy, as reform groups, investors, state elected officials and more have demanded that Congress and federal agencies do their jobs and make elections transparent to the people voting in them.
First, on Monday morning, organizations and investors gathered to urge the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to require publicly traded companies to disclose contributions when they engage in electoral politics. Then this Thursday, the DISCLOSE Act came up for a hearing in the Senate.
Both SEC rules and congressional action are critical to close the gaping loopholes in our system left by the Citizens United decision and ineffective FEC regulations on the disclosure of political spending.
Polls show the public overwhelmingly supports

A little over three years ago Alan Graham “talked” me into visiting Austin, Texas because he knew what he was doing to help our homeless friends was so awesome I’d become an evangelist for his work. He was right, and every since that visit, I have been telling everyone about his catering trucks and how he rapid houses homeless people in RVs.
Well Alan is at it again, this time trying to create ways for our homeless friends to generate income.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

Advertisers are using online advertising in innovative ways to build loyalty.
Brands used to be built by memorable TV moments.
There was as time when your life revolved around your favorite TV series. I remember saying I will meet you at 10 p.m. — after Friends.
There were also those TV ads that when they came on, we knew Christmas was

Games are as old as human society as the image below illustrates. But as with all other parts of society, games and gaming are being profoundly changed by the computing and communication revolution.
Some of the changes are obvious, some are less so.
Computer games humans play
It is both useful and sobering to consider the enormous progress that has been made in computer technology over the past 50 years. Back in 1965 Intel co-founder Gordon Moore observed in a little-noticed article that the complexity of integrated circuits had increased at a rate of roughly a factor of two per year for several years, and “there is no reason to believe it will not remain nearly constant for at least 10 years.”
That was arguably the world’s greatest understatement: The trend of computer devices roughly doubling in complexity every 18 months or so (not quite every 12 months as originally predicted) has continued unabated for nearly 50 years, resulting in devices, such as the latest microprocessor and memory chips, that incorporate billions of components and are billions of times more capable than the primitive items that once were considered the pinnacle of modern technology. This doubling is now called Moore’s law, and when it comes to games, “the Moore the merrier.”
What are we doing with these devices? Among other things, many millions of persons worldwide hold in their hands a smartphone with features, such as voice recognition and precise GPS positioning, not available on any device at any price just a few years ago.
And, as anyone with a teenager in the house will attest, computers are indeed playing games with

By Leah Konen for Bookish
The book twitterverse is aflutter this week with discussion of the New York Times debate around the merits of young adult fiction. Author Joel Stein argues that adults should read books written for adults, and stay away from any book marketed to children and teens, while Lev Grossman offers a defense of the genre, praising its rich storytelling, descriptive clarity and more. “It’s a different experience from reading, for example, literary fiction,” Grossman writes. “Not better or worse, just different.” Five others chime in with their take on the YA explosion, its causes and

Every so often, a book comes along that reminds us that kids still love to read. Some are about wizards, others about vampires. And a few are even about post-apocalyptic civilizations infatuated with watching their youth murder each other in an annual televised national ritual.
Of course this last premise forms the foundation of The Hunger Games, the first novel of Suzanne Collins’ celebrated trilogy, whose cinematic adaptation has given us 251 million reasons (to date) to believe that novels still matter to America’s children. On the other hand, the box-office flop of Wrath of the Titans — only $34.2 million in its opening weekend to Hunger Games’ $155 million — tells us we can’t say the same of Greek mythology.
On the subject of mythology, it seems appropriate to me that The Hunger Games was released in March, the month of Mars, the Roman god of war, who would have been simply delighted by the gladiatorial death match at the heart of the

In 2006, I attended the annual meeting of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society in Austin, Texas and listened to E. O. Wilson — the founder of sociobiology and one of the greatest biologists since Darwin — deliver the keynote address. Wilson, about 75 years old at the time, didn’t come to Austin to play the grand old

Long life and lots of experience have taught me that nobody ever
changes their mind about abortion. But to put a face, or at least a
name, on the subject, here’s a story:
Fifty-three years ago when I was 16 I sat in the family doctor’s
office in Wheaton, Illinois, while my father, who was wearing a suit and
tie and his Kiwanis button, told the doctor that “we think Linda might
be pregnant.” Brief examination demonstrating that was indeed the
case, the doctor asked me what I wanted to do. I wanted to die, but
that didn’t seem like a reasonable answer, so I said I wanted to get
married. It never occurred to me there was another option.
The doctor, who had seen my mother through a few miscarriages and had
delivered my younger sister, proposed abortion, said he knew a surgeon
who had injured his hands and was now performing them in a nearby, and
seedier, suburb of

On March 27 the Technology, Informational Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and Procurement Reform Subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing, “Labor Abuses, Human Trafficking, and Government Contracts: Is the Government Doing Enough to Protect Vulnerable Workers?”
This is a subject of more than passing interest to me because last year I wrote a report, published June 14, and commissioned by the Project on Government Oversight, on the exploitation and abuse of the workers of a KBR subcontractor. I subsequently testified at a Nov. 2, 2011 hearing about that report before this very subcommittee.
That hearing, by the way, left me with a lingering sense of surrealism, even after five months, if only because it was revealed that the Pentagon official who had responsibility for this subject had never been to Iraq and Afghanistan.
And sadly, as was noted back then, there has virtually never been a prosecution on this charge, even though it was a widespread practice in both Iraq and Afghanistan with contractors, or subcontractor. And there have only been a very few debarments or suspensions of contractors even though it was well known as a widespread practice.
So, you can see why this might be a subject of

Great efforts are underway both locally and nationally to keep secret the identities of people and organizations paying for local political advertisements. But Americans can still do something, even when broadcasters shirk their responsibilities. Here’s what you can do to reveal who’s paying for — and hiding behind — misleading political ads on your TV.
ON DEMOCRACY: Let’s Stop Big Media’s (B)AD Behavior
by Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Over the years we’ve been reporting on how power is monopolized by the powerful. How corporate lobbyists, for example, far outnumber members of

A trio of governors and a duo of lieutenant governors last week dined on pink slime burgers and pronounced them mouth-wateringly-delicious-and-nutritious as TV cameras rolled on their barbecue in a Nebraska factory that manufactures the stuff.
Shoppers have reacted somewhat differently to pink slime secreted into their hamburger, so much so that three national supermarket chains stopped using it, and an Iowa grocer now offers both slimed and unslimed burger.
The politicians insisted that identifying slimed beef is not necessary, or even wise, because the fabricated-sans-fat-smashed-meat-scraps-seasoned-with-ammonia mixture is more nutritious. It’s so great that announcing its presence on the burger label is unnecessary, the politicians insisted.
The governors and lieutenant governors chose to champion not consumers but slime producers. The reason is obvious. Iowa

The World Water Council, the convener of the World Water Forum, sure knows its market. At their recent global gathering held in Marseille, France, they tapped into the thirst of governments, development agencies and banks, NGOs and private water operators for a conversation about water services and managing the growing water crisis — as well as a shot at lucrative contracts. Exhibition booths included desalinization companies and private firms like Suez and Veolia, the biggest in the industry. The event had the feel of a trade show and the price tag of the Superbowl, dissuasive to thousands of water justice activists who set up a parallel, alternative peoples’ water forum in a dock-side warehouse.
Where is UN leadership on water? A Crisis of Water Governance
The first World Water Forum was held in 1997; the Sixth concluded in March

I’ve always been a fan of secret societies like fraternities, sororities, Freemasons, Illuminati, and… The Elephant Room Society? Okay, perhaps you haven’t heard of the last one, but in a magical “room” propped up on cinder blocks at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Louie Magic, Daryl Hannah and Dennis Diamond have brought their secret society to the audience in the show Elephant Room. These three characters (in all senses of the word) have created a production unlike anything I’ve ever seen or experienced

When we think Nevada, our minds often go to Las Vegas. But not everything happens in Vegas. The Silver State offers way more than just Vegas and unlike Sin City, what happens in Nevada doesn’t always stay in Nevada.
Such is the case with the annual Burning Man