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What do parenting and Allen Iverson have to do with each other? Bear with me.
I am not a “Tiger Mom.”
I am not a superior French parent (though I admit that my children have learned to say “please” and “thank you” from the beginning — not just because it is polite to do so, but because we want them to understand the importance of appreciating others).
I am a different parent. A parent who is different in many ways from the parent Amy Chua and Pamela Druckerman imagine. As they are writing their superior parent into being, who are they imagining as inferior? “The American parent,” yes. Indeed, if that were not the case, who would buy their books? But, what does that “American parent” look like? Underlying these assertions of preferred parenting styles is, in many ways, an American parent who is of a certain class and even, perhaps, of a certain race and family culture.
Not only that, but don’t we all know parents who do at least some of what Druckerman identifies as “French parenting” who aren’t French? Who are African-American, Latino, Native American, European, Middle Eastern, African, West Indian, Asian?
That said, what I actually object to most are the attempts to present a fully packaged parenting, one that, at least in the advertising and excerpting of these women’s fuller works, presents “Tiger Moms” and “French parenting” as commodities that can be bought and then replicated to the letter by those who consume their product (though, hopefully, not as a second snack).
In comes Allen

With the reported departure of Kristen Wiig, Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg, “Saturday Night Live” would look a lot different when it comes back for its 38th season this fall. But, this season, five shows remain in what will forever be known as “The Kristen Wiig Era.” We’ve already seen “SNL” add a new featured player, Kate McKinnon, during the show’s current three week hiatus. (“SNL” returns live this Saturday with host Sofia Vergara.) With many changes coming, Hitfix’s Ryan Mcgee and myself debate where “SNL” is now and where “SNL” should go in the future.
Mike Ryan: Though our opinions differ (frequently) on the quality of individual sketches — also: I’m sure I’m wrong and you’re right — I do consider you one of the most thoughtful Internet caretakers of this show that we both love so dearly. So, my question, before we get to the cast changes, is with only five shows remaining, what do we think about this season up to this point?
I have to say: I’m slightly

Fracking is a hostage exchange program. Only the carcinogens go free.
Why should cancer patients in the United States and Canada — and those who love or diagnose them — care about a report about looming water shortages in distant countries such as South Africa and Argentina?
The report is “Fracking: The New Global Water Crisis.” Written by Food and Water Watch, it documents the many ways in which the technology called hydraulic fracturing threatens the world’s vital water resources. That’s because fracking — when combined with horizontal drilling — uses prodigious amounts of water as a high-pressure hose to blow apart

It had to happen sooner or later.
Two years ago, colleges created waitlists that put more people on hold than Peggy the Customer Service Agent. A few people sighed, but no one really complained.
Last year, colleges ramped up the process of sending student acceptances by e-mail — in the middle of the school day. Significantly less Calculus was taught for one day, but nothing more than that.
This year, things are different. This year, people are disillusioned.
As highly selective colleges report more record highs in applications, these same colleges are (naturally) reporting record lows in the percentage of students offered

Last Sunday, April 1st, British electronic dance music DJ/producer Feed Me brought his With Teeth tour to the Royal Oak Music Theatre in amazing fashion with his full stage set-up. With a 20-foot LED light structure that looks like a grimacing evil grin, the “teeth” of his show displayed vivid colors, images, and animations that, along with the rollercoaster ride of the music, makes you feel like we are all in the middle of a story being told, but its up to our own imagination to what that story is.
The With Teeth tour is Feed Me’s first headlining tour with over 25 dates, including this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. It’s all in support of his latest release Escape From Electric Mountain, released on electronic music heavyweight deadmau5′s record label mau5trap.
Detroit’s own Matt Clarke opened the night with a great dubstep

By Julie Miller, Vanity Fair
By now, you’ve likely heard that Ashton Kutcher, star of New Year’s Eve, Pop Chips commercials, and hot-tub cheating rumors, will play Steve Jobs in an upcoming biopic about the late Apple founder — and are figuring out how to best channel your disappointment with Hollywood. An angry letter? A trial separation? Keying its car? In the heat of the moment, these all seem like completely logical solutions, but unfortunately, they will not stop this independent project from being produced. Having begrudgingly accepted this point, VF.com has some suggestions for how to best channel your frustrations.
Intimate Portraits from the 2012 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Booth
First, Try to Understand
. . . which may seem hard considering that Variety — almost anticipating that the casting news about Jobs would seem like a cruel joke — broke the story on April Fool’s Day. But let’s try: Ashton Kutcher may be a Razzie Award-winning actor who has not appeared in a single film that was rated higher than 49 percent on the website RottenTomatoes.com. He may be a former Abercrombie model whose breakout movie involved him searching for his own parked car while hung-over for 80-some minutes. He may be the creator of the still-lingering trucker-hat fad and an annoying MTV series where he “punk’d” stars like Justin Timberlake and Kanye West into believing hilarious things, for example that all of their assets had been repossessed and they could not shoot a music video because they did not have the correct permits. But he vaguely resembles a young Steve Jobs and understands technology, as evidenced by his Twitter feed and the Nikon commercials in which he appears to successfully operate a digital camera in different settings that involve hot girls, the beach, and parties.
You Can’t Understand; Now What?
Immediately, probably avoid Ashton Kutcher at all costs in hopes of putting these frustrations to rest while you concentrate on more important, non-Ashton-Kutcher-related events in your life. Unfollow @aplusk. Dodge CBS on Monday nights. Strategically avoid all events that Kutcher might possibly be attending.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com

The JOBS bill being signed by President Obama today is critical to the emergence and growth of the next generation of industries as ecosystems.
Those ecosystems are made up of three layers: Platforms (Google, Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook, Kickstarter, Federal Express, Foxconn), which make it possible for entrepreneurial ventures to be built at lower cost with less capital and reduced risk at greater speed. To provide the critical mass that large corporations used to provide — to, for example, sell advertising at scale or acquire distribution or acquire goods or services at volume — sometimes these ventures need to band together in networks (Glam, YouTube, Etsy, eBay). This is how I simplistically draw it in a whiteboard:
Our economy — equity markets, regulation, taxation — has been built to support The Firm: large companies that controlled the entire chain from design to manufacturing to marketing to distribution, gaining efficiency and control as they gained

A question we are asked time and again by people who are trying to change their health and their physical appearance is this: How can I stay motivated?
Mark offers a great answer for this: create a structure. To be a six-time world champion triathlete requires systematic training–persistent, day-after-day, scheduled workouts.
We believe that achieving an ambitious fitness goal, whether it’s to complete a marathon or lose 30 pounds, is as much an art as it is a science. We say this because the human body isn’t going to work out, change unhelpful behavior patterns, and persist at something that’s inconvenient and sometimes difficult without our mind’s artful self-persuasion and reaffirmation of

I will never forget when a friend of mine, then on Weight Watchers, told me she was counting wine as her fruit points. “You know,” she said trying to justify her decision, “wine is made of grapes, so why not?”
In an effort to lose weight, dieters often lower their intake or cut alcoholic drinks from their diet — a glass of wine or a cocktail can carry not just a buzz but also plenty of calories. Recent research suggests, however, that women who consumer moderate amounts of alcohol on a regular basis are less likely to put on weight than abstainers and are at a decreased risk for obesity.
A study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine reported that researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston tracked 19,220 American women aged 39 or older who, at the start of the study, fell into the “normal weight” category based on their body mass index. About 60 percent of the women, whose drinking habits were studied over 13 years, were light or regular drinkers, while about 40 percent reported drinking no alcohol.
In an article on the New York Times “Well “blog, Tara Parker-Pope explained that over the course of the study, 41 percent of the women became overweight or obese.” Although alcohol is packed with calories (about 150 in a six-ounce glass of wine), the nondrinkers in the study actually gained more weight over time: nine pounds, on average, compared with an average gain of about three pounds among regular moderate

Photo Credit: Small Kitchen College
Even if dessert is not usually your jam, you know what it’s like to have a sweets craving. In the middle of the day between classes, at midnight when you’re putting the finishing touches on an essay, 24/7 during finals week: the need for sweets is real and unavoidable, and it often hits when there isn’t much time to be spent slaving over a souffl.
Enter: speed-desserts. Like speed-dating, only better because you get to eat everything. With a maximum of 15 minutes on the clock, use one of the following tricks to satiate your need for sugar and get back to (let’s be honest) procrastinating studying for your your

I recall a vivid passage in Kai Bird’s fine book about the Bundy brothers, McGeorge and William, when Mac Bundy was John F. Kennedy’s national security adviser. It was early in JFK’s presidency, and Bundy was being briefed by Daniel Ellsberg, then a wunderkind of the nuclear priesthood, on U.S. nuclear war making

While we have made significant progress in our country toward gender, racial and ethnic equality, women still face the challenge of bias in nearly all stages of their lives. Teachers will more often call on boys in the classroom. Women CEO’s are few and far between. However, gender-based inequity also reaches into another sector not widely discussed — health

“I’m going to be the last herder of my family,” said Erdenemunkh, a nomad living in Central Mongolia. We were sitting in his cozy ger — or Mongolian yurt — drinking salty milk tea, a staple of the Mongolian herding diet.
“I’m going to do everything to send my kids to school,” Erdenemunkh continued. I glanced at his 9-year-old daughter playing with her 3-year-old

Who in their right mind could vote against a bill in Congress entitled the “JOBS Act”? The answer obviously is very few members of either house.
How many of those who voted for it knew what was in it? And how many of those who read it connected its provisions to the lessons of the last decade? The answer must be very few.
Critical provisions in the law remove SEC oversight and other obstacles to raising up to $50 million for small businesses. That is tantamount to putting up a sign saying “Swindlers Welcome.”
Everyone is properly in favor of more jobs. Apparently there are some, however, who think that more capital in the hands of smaller businesses automatically translates into more jobs. How many such jobs are likely to result and how likely are they to be good, long-term jobs?
How soon and fast we forget! Madoff raked in somewhere between $20 and $60 billion and perhaps created 20 jobs.
The core of this new cynically and cleverly named Jobs Act is to remove obstacles to securing capital for smaller

This time one year ago, the entire Mediterranean Arab world was plunged into the chaos of the Arab Spring Revolutions, and no one could quite tell the outcome. One spring later, as the countries in this region begin to settle down, I would like to analyze the political trends of this region and why, because of historical precedent, the United States has no reason to be afraid of their future or the future of the countries in the region.
First, it is important to examine the recent political trends. As we have seen particularly in the governments in Tunisia and Egypt, as they seem to be the countries that have both undergone a revolution and created a relatively stable government, the trend in the Middle East seems to be an attempt to reconcile a traditional theocracy with a parliamentary

Alex Romanov arrived in Toronto, Canada when he was eight years old wearing Lederhosen, a white shirt and yellow suspenders. Coming in from from Bremen, Germany and descended from a combination of Russian, Italian, French and Croatian backgrounds, Romanov stuck out like a sore thumb.
But look at the successful Canadian entrepreneur now (note the absence of Lederhosen):
Going from that culturally-contradicting arrival to founding and building a wireless, Bluetooth, Canadian ad tech software company, iSign was quite a journey for Romanov.
In between, Romanov was very busy. He studied engineering, “real Barney Rubble stuff,” he says; worked at ASEA more than two years and then Motorola for six years; jumped over to Motorola client Alps, building that company into a major North American electronics brand; and finally, founded iSign.
Romanov studied business at Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology and engineering at George Brown College, both in Toronto.
While working in an early job at the Swedish engineering giant ASEA (now ABB), Romanov recounted, “My colleague Mike told me that that I had ‘to learn how to speak to people,’ so I wanted to step away from the drafting table and learn how to sell.”
Taking a job which would certainly get him talking to people, Romanov then became the public relations director at Easter Seals which meant Romanov traveled around to hundreds of Rotary Clubs in Ontario giving talks to learn how to talk to the aforementioned “people.” As Romanov told me this was a transformational and necessary experience for him.
With that great gregarious experience under his wing, Romanov headed to Motorola where one of his accounts was a Japanese company called Alps about whom he says, “the Japanese loved cassettes at that time.”
Romanov then invested the first $50,000 in Alps in 1979 and ended up as a shareholder and founding CEO in Canada/North America. This superb opportunity ended well for Romanov, as it took him down a 20-year run while building the unknown Alps into Alpine Electronics which any baby boomer will know as the market-dominant car stereo of the

The president has been criticized by some for his alleged attacks on the Supreme Court, and he was ordered to explain his remarks by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The president’s remarks weren’t entirely accurate, though the reaction has been vastly overblown. Contrary to what conservatives are saying, President Obama did not go far enough. Here is what he should have said:
My fellow Americans:
The United States Constitution expressly gives Congress the authority, in Article I, to regulate commerce “among the several states.” As far back as 1824, the Supreme Court held that the Congress has full power regulate commerce “that concerns more states than one.” Almost 200 years later, Justice Scalia wrote that the Congress has the power to regulate “even noneconomic local activity if that regulation is a necessary part of a more general regulation of interstate commerce.” In the years between 1824, and 2005, with very few exceptions, the Supreme Court consistently deferred to Congress when the legislative branch tried to solve national economic

A comprehensive report in late March by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution provides strong evidence that adults in as many as 200 school systems have been cheating on their students’ standardized tests.
We looked at this for NewsHour in 2011:
Because I spent three years chronicling the tenure of Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC — another city with a spate of thus-far-unexplained ‘wrong to right’ erasures on standardized tests — I am interested in this story. I’d like to know if anyone cheated in the DC schools. If so, who and why?
But a teacher I correspond with occasionally brought me up short

Sade is a teen participant in Girls Write Now, a mentorship program for young female writers.
Just because something is physically not there, doesn’t mean that it’s over. Take Occupy Wall Street — it’s still occupying our minds, even though it’s not occupying our streets.
Occupy Wall Street began as an act of civil disobedience in October 2011. Protesters, initially organized by Adbusters, began occupying Zuccotti Park in the financial district of New York

The end of Hana Shalabi’s 44-day hunger strike has produced mixed results, and has pointed out another under-reported issue — the separation and difficulty of movement between Gaza and West Bank.
Shalabi, like Khader Adnan before her, have done a great service to fellow Palestinians by exposing the undemocratic nature of administrative detention. It might be some time before it can be seen whether their struggle will reduce or totally end this kind of detention.
By choosing to reside in Gaza for three years, Shalabi exposed what few people around the world realize: Namely, that the unjust Israeli siege of Gaza also prevents 1.5 million ordinary Palestinians from the strip and over 2.5 million Palestinians from the West Bank to travel back and forth.
Much has been said about the unilaterally imposed economic siege on Gaza Strip. The Israeli land and sea blockade continues until this day. Repeated attempts to break it resulted in a marked easing of some of its aspects.
While the economic siege is meant to extract political results and effect behavioral changes from the Hamas-led government in Gaza, it is inconceivable that the travel ban between Gaza and the West Bank should continue

A film with both documentary urgency and an overwrought sense of melodrama, The Assault is a dramatization of a real-life airline hijacking from 1994.
The actual events occurred in Algiers, when hijackers, demanding the release of Algerian prisoners in France, grabbed an airplane in Algiers and demanded that it be flown to Paris (where the terrorists planned to fly it into the Eiffel Tower). I won’t tell the outcome though, naturally, it can be found in Wikipedia (search: Air France Flight 8969).
The film focuses on the preparations of the hijackers and the response of government officials (most of whom are more caught up in the international politics than in the tactical necessities of actually taking down the hijackers). In that sense, filmmaker Julien Leclercq keeps things spare and urgent, letting the details and the behavior of people – both those interested only in covering their own asses and those with a commitment to foiling the hijacking – speak for themselves.
He never goes into depth with the terrorists, who are Algerian but prepared to crash a plane whose passengers are predominately their countrymen. Their motives need no explanation; this is a suicide mission by zealots, whose cause deserves no justification.
Unfortunately, Leclercq also weaves in the story of Thierry (Vincent Elbaz), the leader of the special forces unit charged with the actual assault on the

As far back as ancient Egypt, we humans have been fascinated with psychic phenomena and the paranormal. And wherever you sit on the spectrum of believer or disbeliever, you probably grew up with a Ouija board.
Chip Coffey grew up with way more than a board game. The star of A&E’s hit television show “Psychic Kids: Children of the Paranormal,” Coffey is an internationally known psychic, medium, paranormal investigator and lecturer who has made appearances on “Good Morning America” and “Larry King Live.” In his book released this week, Growing Up Psychic: My Story of Not Just Surviving but Thriving – and How Others Like Me Can, Too, Coffey shares his personal story of discovering his psychic gifts as a child, the challenges he faced coming to terms with it and his decision to embrace

What do these women want anyway? That was the question men frequently asked when the Women’s Movement began decades ago. I was a 20-something guy and, like nearly every man I knew, acknowledged that equal pay and career opportunities for women were long overdue. We fully supported women in their pursuit of equality in the workplace. In truth, that was the easy part for

Lisa Rinna wants to show me her underpants. Really.
I met with Rinna, 48, and husband Harry Hamlin, 60, in Los Angeles this week as they kicked off the “Great American Try On” campaign for Depend, the absorbent briefs for incontinence, targeted at post 50s. The new “Real Fit for Men and Silhouette for Women” are less bulky and feel like real underwear, according to manufacturer Kimberly-Clark, which is giving away free samples on its website.
As part of the campaign, Depend donated $225,000 to a charity close to Rinna’s heart — Dress For Success — which helps provide professional clothing and career guidance to