Archive for April 6th, 2012
Apr
06
Keith Harings Endangered French Legacy Jrme de Noirmont on the Race to Save a Beloved Paris Mural
Until recently, a huge, colorful Keith Haring mural featuring his loose-limbed, dancing figures was in danger of being cut into pieces or sold off. Now a major fundraising effort is underway to ensure that Haring’s only outdoor artwork in France will remain at Paris’s Necker Children’s Hospital. Gallerist Jrme de Noirmont, who represents Keith Haring’s estate in France, recently mounted an exhibition of celebrity photos by Alexandra Golovanoff, with the proceeds going to the mural restoration project. ARTINFO France spoke to Noirmont about the decision to integrate the mural into the hospital’s new design, the need for private fundraising in France today, and what the mural meant to him when he took his kids to the emergency room.
Necker Hospital’s Keith Haring mural / The Estate of Keith Haring
Why is Necker Hospital’s Keith Haring mural in such urgent need of restoration?
In 1999, I curated the exhibition “Keith Haring: Made in France” at the Muse Maillol, which covered all the artist’s shows in France (in Bordeaux, Paris, Marseille, and Le Mans) (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Has LFTB Really Been in Our Beef for 20 Years and Without Incident
Yesterday’s press conference held by Beef Products, Inc., attended by no less thanthree governors,two lieutenant governors, and the Under Secretary for Food Safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was a masterpiece of crisis management. I’m still working my way through the raw footage — you can view it yourself in real time here.
But even without having seen the entire event, one factoid from the press conference (and disseminated in earlier beef industry communications) is now getting a lot of play in the media: that lean, finely textured beef, or so-called “pink slime,” has been in our food supply “for 20 years,” with no apparent harm to the consumer. Here’s just one such use of this fact, in a statement released by South Dakota Governor Dennis Dougard:
“Lean finely-textured beef is a 100 percent beef, 95 percent lean, nutritious, safe, quality and affordable beef product eaten by Americans for 20 years.”
As I’ve articulated in many posts, but perhaps most succinctly in this one (“My Response to Beef Industry Defenses of ‘Pink Slime’”) there are many reasons to oppose the undisclosed use of this cheap filler in our school food and our food supply without even discussing food safety (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Navigating a Summer of Pain at the Pump With the ING Retirement Coach
It’s important to my wife and me that we create a memorable summer vacation each year for our three young children. Each year we openly discuss as a family what kind of adventure we would like to embark on. For 2011, we made the decision to rent an RV and drive to Yellowstone National Park. The trip overall was a cherished experience that we’ll never forget (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
The Knoedlers Meltdown Inside the Forgery Scandal and Federal Investigations
By Vanity Fair
“The works are of a five-star quality. Maybe a few are four-star, but mostly five-star, which is why they’ve stirred such attention,” Ann Freedman, former director of the Knoedler gallery, tells contributing editor Michael Shnayerson of the David Herbert collection in the May issue of Vanity Fair. Touted by Freedman as one of the great troves of unknown Abstract Expressionist works, the collection instead brought scandal to the venerable Knoedler, which shut its doors last November amid allegations it sold forgeries, including the threat of a lawsuit from Pierre Lagrange, a London hedge-fund executive. (Knoedler has said that the closing was a business decision unrelated to the Lagrange suit.) Shnayerson investigates the events that brought such a bizarre and sudden end to what was, not so long ago, one of the world’s best-known art galleries and a New York institution.
Intimate Portraits from the 2012 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Booth
According to Freedman, the paintings–attributed to painters including Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Barnett Newman–came to the gallery from Glafira Rosales, a Long Island woman virtually unknown in the art world, who claimed to represent an anonymous owner (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
A Simple Way to Trick Your Brain Toward Mindfulness
It’s important to understand that making changes in life isn’t just about sheer willpower. For most of our lives, we’re on autopilot and our brain is making rapid decisions for us. It references our history, mood and environment to come up with the most adaptive response. However, when we’re trying to make changes in our lives — being more mindful, for example — we can do a simple trick to set up our environment in a way that supports our success.
If you have The Now Effect you may have found a “5 Step Cheat Sheet” in the appendix that gives you ways to prime your mind toward the present moment and reinforce a certain way of being that you aspire to.
One of the five steps references controlling your environment (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Credit Card Breach It Can Happen to Anyone Do You Know What to Do
Joining the likes of Zappos, Michael’s, Sony, Epsilon and the New York Yankees — Global Payments Inc. is the latest company to make headlines with a data breach originally reported to have compromised more than 10 million card numbers. Global Payments is a large third-party payment processor for Visa and MasterCard, and handles a substantial number of transactions for Discover and American Express as well.
Global Payments has since confirmed that the breach was limited to their North American systems and believes that “fewer than 1.5 million card numbers may have been stolen.” An investigation is currently underway but we won’t fully know how many cardholders were impacted, or how extensive the breach, until the dust settles and the investigation is completed — which could take weeks, or even months.
Are You Protected Under Federal Law?
The good news for cardholders, if you can call it that, is the theft was limited to credit card numbers and did not include names, Social Security numbers, or addresses. This means the information that was stolen is limited to fraudulent credit card charges, which consumers are protected from by federal law.
On credit cards, the Fair Credit Billing Act limits the liability for fraudulent charges to $50, and if a card number is stolen — and not the actual card — cardholders are not responsible for any of the fraudulent charges.
For debit cards, consumers are covered under the Electronic Funds Transfer Act and are not be liable for unauthorized charges if the card was not physically lost or stolen (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Thank God For My Single Friends
A few years ago my writing partner, Emma, and I were taken out to lunch by a woman who had just had her first baby in her early forties. She had already hired and fired several nurses and was lamenting (really whining — technically, it was whining) that she didn’t have anyone to ask advice of because in her thirties, as her friends had become parents, she had “cut them out of her life.”
When my daughter was a few months old a friend, who had recently reclaimed me, told me quite proudly that she had no space anymore for her friends without children and made no time for them.
As the recent film “Friends With Kids” so spectacularly documents, yes, there is a real divide between the Rested and the Great Underslept, as I will refer to the parenting class. We have lost hours of our days, and all of our free time, to running a daycare for one (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
ADDitions to Teaching Parenting Learning and Caring
What if we took some of Albert Einstein’s words to heart and as more than a cool quote or a greeting card: Specifically I am referring to his having allegedly said that it was not so much that he was he was so brilliant per se, but more importantly he possessed a fierce combination of curiosity and a passion. In fact, those who invent, who thrive intellectually and often, in work and play, have a persistent curiosity; they are inspired and they are motivated.
I learned of my own ADD only in 2006, which made more sense of my quest to understand, keen capacity for intuition and empathy, as well as a fair dose of oppositionalism and sensitivity to rejection as well. It was also a turning point as I found respect for my own non-linear and at times dancing mind, my own styles of discovering.
Our being tuned on to discover and to collaborate and to learn and to invent, is seriously compromised by both the uber distracting cultural influences and by quickly changing standards and an often cruelly competitive bent. The standards come and go so quickly, one can hardly keep up and many of us don’t — we numb ourselves to the likes of our ADD friends or selves, we rush into the one focus or cause only, losing track of the connection that may be a buzzword but often stays in that status (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
A Passover Seder for Dults
Passover — the ancient Hebrew exodus from Egypt — has been a rallying cry for freedom for thousands of years. In our own country, even though the Declaration of Independence proclaimed “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as “unalienable rights,” it was the the Passover story about slaves who found freedom because of divine intervention that inspired the African-American exodus from slavery and gave courage to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Capitalisms Dirty Secret Corporations Dont Create Good Jobs Anymore They Destroy Them
Corporations are not working for the 99 percent. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special five-part series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and a leading expert on the business corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?
For the last four decades, U.S. corporations have been sinking our economy through the off-shoring of jobs, the squeezing of wages, and a magician’s hat full of bluffs and tricks designed to extort subsidies and sweetheart deals from local and state governments that often result in mass layoffs and empty treasuries (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Major League Cocktails
After many long, cold months, it’s finally time for the start of the new baseball season. We hope you’re as excited as we are for its return.
But to toast your team’s upcoming season, you need something more than just a cold brewski.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com
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Apr
06
Why Obama Must Come Out of the Closet on Gay Marriage
We all got a laugh when Van Jones, asked if President Obama would lose some support in the black community if he came out for marriage equality, quipped that the president wouldn’t lose such support even if he “came out as gay” himself.
“I don’t understand this strategy,” Jones said. “It’s not a hard-core issue for many African-Americans.”
Jones not only got it right in alluding to the fact that there’s really not one constituency among Obama supporters in the Democratic base, or among independents, that would vote against the president on this one issue; he was also right to conjure up the closet.
Obama is very much in a closet on gay marriage even though he’s been outed several times. Like others who’ve been outed, his past came back to haunt, in his case when a a questionnaire surfaced from 1996. The White House spin and denials have been as comical as former Senator Larry Craig trying to explain he had a “wide stance.”
Everyone, including his enemies, knows Obama supports gay marriage, to the point where there is uproarious laughter when TV commentators are sitting around discussing Obama’s claim that he is “evolving.” It’s bordering on ludicrous (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Dont Panic Its Just Passover
By Alessandra Bulow, Food & Wine
During the week before Passover begins, on April 6, observant Jews will prepare for the eight-day holiday by removing every piece of chametz (food with leavening) from their homes. Then panic will start to take over: “Oh, no, there’s nothing to eat except matzo. I’m going to the supermarket to buy every product that’s ever been marked with a ‘Kosher for Passover’ label.” The result is often a kitchen full of packaged cookies, cakes, chips, gefilte fish and marshmallows (seriously, how did marshmallows ever become part of Passover?). For a more satisfying and relaxed Passover, without processed foods and artificial ingredients, here are some delicious and unorthodox ways to restock the pantry.
Passover Recipe Ideas
The Passover “Ham” for Easter
Having a ham in the house is like having money in the bank,” says Tina Ujlaki, Food & Wine’s Executive Food Editor (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Greece Is The World 4
Narcotics
The tragic public suicide in front of the parliament building a few days ago, of a 77 year-old man who felt he was a burden to his family after his pension was cut to nothing, has shocked Greeks even further as they continue to experience an escalating financial as well as sociological crisis. Until three years ago the suicide rate in happy-go-lucky Greece was the lowest in Europe, at 2.8 per 100,000 inhabitants, but it has now almost doubled and keeps growing; a Ministry of Health study reveals that in the first half of 2011 the suicide rate grew by 40 percent in just a year.
With widespread homeless and joblessness also on the rise, the stifling psychological climate has led Greeks of all backgrounds and of all ages to drugs. Whether they be tranquilizers, antidepressants and painkillers popularly bought over the counter and popped in the privacy of one’s home, party drugs like cocaine and marijuana easily found in bars and clubs, or heavily addictive drugs such as heroin and crack sold on the street, Greeks are increasingly turning to narcotics as a way of getting through the day (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Inside the Mitt
It’s clear that former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney will survive the GOP version of The Hunger Games and become their 2012 presidential nominee. The richest and most radical presidential candidate in modern times, Romney offers a retrograde vision for America and a surprising set of weaknesses.
Romney’s a plutocrat leading a party that dogmatically promotes the interests of the 1 percent. He’s admitted that his net worth is approximately “$200-and-some-odd million.” (In 2010 and 2011 Romney made a total of $42 million and paid less than 14 percent in taxes.) Of course, wealth alone does not determine political philosophy — FDR and JFK were wealthy — but Romney’s actions indicate he has swallowed the radical conservative ethos that defines contemporary Republican politics.
Before serving one term as governor, Romney was a vulture capitalist. He made his money running a subsidiary of Bain Capital, whose “modus operandi was to invest in companies, leverage them up with debt, and then sell them off for scrap, allowing Bain’s investors to walk away with huge profits while the companies in which Bain invested wound up in bankruptcy, laying off workers and reneging on benefits.” (Romney’s work at Bain was attacked in a 30-minute video released by an anti-Romney Republican super PAC.)
As the 2012 Republican primaries progressed, Governor Romney’s opponents tagged him as a “flip-flopper,” a politician who panders to his audience (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
An End to Found Footage Films Please
I’m declaring a moratorium on the “found footage” mock documentary.
And, while we’re at it, how about the same thing for movies shot to look like they’re hand-held documentaries, even when they’re just fiction films?
Yes, Hunger Games, I’m talking about you. I enjoyed the film, admired the way that author Suzanne Collins and writers Gary Ross and Billy Ray adapted a complicated novel written in first person. But that bogus documentary look — of jittery handheld cameras meant to give the footage a “You Are There” feeling, even when nothing is going on — is distracting (though not a dealbreaker for me).
Still, it called to mind two other films about teens already out this year: Chronicle, about a trio of friends who gain super-powers after being exposed to an asteroid; and Project X, about a group of friends who decide to throw the most epic party ever while the parents of one friend are away.
Both films ostensibly are constructed from footage shot by one of the kids and later assembled by some genius editor (who apparently watched all the raw material and instantly intuited the story, its structure and the characters’ arcs) (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
National Public Health Week 2012 Toward a Healthier Nation
By Susan J. Blumenthal, M.D.
Written in Collaboration with Daranee Yongpradit
This year’s theme for National Public Health Week (April 2-8), A Healthier America Begins Today: Join the Movement, focuses attention on five key issues for public health: 1) active living and healthy eating; 2) alcohol, tobacco and other drugs; 3) communicable diseases; 4) reproductive and sexual health; and 5) mental and emotional well-being. Each day of the week is addressing one of these critical areas and today, the spotlight is on promoting active living.
With modern conveniences such as computers, cars and other technological advances resulting in increased sedentary behavior as well as long hours spent sitting at a desk working or studying in school, physical activity has significantly declined in the United States (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Machiavelli and the Rough Realities of Power Politics
It is a strange urge that some people have: to rule the fates of others, to play with events in order to change the course of history, to decide who receives and who surrenders, who prospers and who falls to ruin, indeed who shall live and who shall die. And all because of one word: power.
n this heated political season in which voters in France, the U.S. and elsewhere are set to choose their leaders, now is perhaps a good moment to think of Niccol Machiavelli (1536 -1603), the author, diplomat and philosopher best known for writing what many consider the first real book of political science which examines power, The Prince (1513) (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Life on the Nothing White Diet
by guest blogger Maya Rodale,writer of historicaltales of true love and adventure
Earlier this year, my mom pledged to adopt the nothing white diet, as in no white food. I also swore off white flour, sugar, and dairy to see if this shift in diet might help with my feelings of fatigue and generally blah-ness. While I was no means perfect in adhering to it, I did notice an improvement.
Dairy. I cut out milk, half ‘n’ half, and cheese, and anything made with those ingredients such as ice cream or hot chocolate (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
Depression What You Dont Know May Be Hurting You
My wife, Carlin, and I walked tentatively into the nicely restored old building to attend the “family weekend.” Our son had been in treatment for a drug problem and we were there to learn and offer support. As part of the weekend experience, all the family members were given various questionnaires to fill out. One was a depression questionnaire. We dutifully filled it out and my wife scored “high” while I scored “low.” Carlin talked to a counselor who suggested that she might want to get evaluated for depression when we returned home.
Driving back we talked and it became clear that Carlin had been feeling depressed for some time (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
A Reporters Journey Revealing the Honor Violence Epidemic
Parvinder Matharu is in the business of saving lives. But she doesn’t spend her days in an emergency room; doesn’t charge fearlessly into burning buildings or carry a badge. She runs Kinara, a small women’s shelter on the outskirts of London, a sanctuary for women and girls desperately seeking refuge from abusive husbands, boyfriends and families. Parvinder provides a home for women who have nowhere else to go, and she gives hope to those who cannot imagine life without fear.
I met Parvinder this past August when my colleague Lisa and I were in England conducting research for a 48 Hours broadcast about honor killing in America that will air April 7 (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
A Song for Passover They Tried To Kill Us We Survived Lets Eat
Passover, which begins tonight, is an emblematic Jewish holiday, because it involves a lot of reading and talking. Each spring, as commanded in the book of Exodus, we gather for a Seder with family and friends to recount the story of how Moses led his people out of slavery in Egypt. The prayer book we use, the Haggadah, comes in dozens of different versions, even though each of them ends the same. If you read aloud the entire Haggadah, the service passes in about the same time it would take to fly from New York to Iceland, especially if you sing “Dayenu,” which has fifteen stanzas and lasts longer than a Philip Glass concert (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
The Place Where Lost Things Go
Shannon is a teen participant in Girls Write Now, a mentorship program for young female writers.
I’m searching for a bag of leafy yao choy, but my fingers just seem to fumble through the bottom drawer of the fridge without any luck.
“Mommy, it’s not here,” I call as the chilly air drifts out.
A tight voice warns from behind me, “Don’t let me find it!”
I shut my eyes. “I’m telling you, Mom, it’s not here. I must’ve checked at least three times already, and –”
I turn my head and my eyes blink open to find my mother’s figure: one hand on her hip, the other holding a bag of the fresh greens.
“Third shelf — right in front of you!” She scolds with a raised brow.
It’s times like this when she reminds me that all too often I look without seeing (continue reading…)
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Apr
06
The Pentagons Weapon Programs Delivering Less Later for More Money
The cost of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) major acquisition programs grew by $74.4 billion in the past year and now totals more than $1.58 trillion, according to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. And, this $74.4 billion is just a fraction of the overall cost growth in a DoD weapons acquisition portfolio that, on balance, is delivering fewer weapons for more money.
The defense acquisitions portfolio has been plagued by reductions in the number of weapons delivered, delayed delivery times, and enormous cost overruns. In fact, the total acquisition cost of this portfolio has grown by $447 billion, 40 percent above initial cost estimates.
More Bucks, Less Bang
Despite the cost growth, many of these programs, will deliver fewer quantities of weapons (e.g. fewer numbers of planes) (continue reading…)
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