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One more night with Bruce and a rare evening with Pulp keep me away from the District for a couple of nights this week. As if we needed further evidence that concert promoters do not consult with me before plotting out tours, The Magnetic Fields will be at the 9:30 Club on Monday. With no disrespect intended to the Lisner Auditorium, missing the opportunity to see these legends perform within the safe confines of my favorite venue in town leaves my heart in ruins. With help from the Boss, and Pulp on Tuesday, this too shall pass —

Patients often believe, falsely, that when it comes to medical care, more is better. So last week, when nine medical specialty societies representing about 375,000 doctors listed 45 tests and procedures that they say are done too often, it may have caused confusion and anxiety among some Americans. This anxiety is misguided. The goal of quality patient care is and always should be the same: Health care professionals should do the right thing for the right patient in the right setting with the right resources.
In keeping with that concept, the well-considered recommendations by the medical specialists are absolutely on

An hour before her live Q&A with the Huffington Post, Sandra Fluke met with me at a Starbuck’s (even though she doesn’t drink coffee) to talk about her campaign to empower women.
The contraception debate and Rush Limbaugh’s personal insults are what placed Fluke in the spotlight, and her concerns are not over. The Affordable Health Choices Act requires all university health care plans to provide free contraception starting in August 2012. But religiously affiliated universities are allowed to request a one-year delay in providing contraception — and those requests are being made right now, often without student input.
“This is inevitable at this point — there’s no reason to deny coverage for another year and make these women wait longer when they have real medical needs right now,” Fluke said, who goes to a Georgetown Law — a university affiliated with the Catholic Church. She encourages students to find out what decisions their administrations are making, and take action to make sure contraception is on the

A Frenchmen who called himself “Lucky Pierre” opened a restaurant many years ago on New York’s West 55th Street. He claimed to have dived under an ammunition truck during the war that blew up shortly after — and survived unscathed. Alas, his restaurant did not last very long.
Enter another amazingly lucky Frenchman — Nicolas Sarkozy.
France’s presidential elections are only two weeks

The notion that eating meat might be bad for us is tough to swallow for a generation that has drunk deep of the “low carb” Kool-Aid. But even if eating meat were good for people, too much focus on it would be ill-advised for a population of 7 billion of us. The environmental costs of eating animals are an order, or even orders, of magnitude higher than eating plants.
But can it be that eating meat is truly bad for the health of the great-great-granddaughters and sons of hunter-gatherers? Yes. Because just as we “are what we eat,” so too are the animals we

(New York) – Syrian security forces summarily executed over 100 – and possibly many more – civilians and wounded or captured opposition fighters during recent attacks on cities and towns, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
The 25-page report, “In Cold Blood: Summary Executions by Syrian Security Forces and Pro-Government Militias,” documents more than a dozen incidents involving at least 101 victims since late 2011, many of them in March 2012. Human Rights Watch documented the involvement of Syrian forces and pro-government shabeeha militias in summary and extrajudicial executions in the governorates of Idlib and Homs. Government and pro-government forces not only executed opposition fighters they had captured, or who had otherwise stopped fighting and posed no threat, but also civilians who likewise posed no threat to the security forces.
“In a desperate attempt to crush the uprising, Syrian forces have executed people in cold blood, civilians and opposition fighters alike,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “They are doing it in broad daylight and in front of witnesses, evidently not concerned about any accountability for their crimes.”
Human Rights Watch called on the UN Security Council to ensure that any UN mission mandated to supervise the six-point plan brokered by the UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan would be in a position to document such

We are in the midst of a new musical era, that of electronic music. Techno songs, DJs, raves, and neon apparel have permeated not just at the performances in which these shows take place, but throughout our everyday lives. DJ Skrillex performed at the Super Bowl, the most nationally televised event of the year. “Levels,” house-music-master Avicii’s hit song, is featured in a new luxury car advertisement for a Lincoln

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Six million Jews live in Israel today, where the threat of another Holocaust grows greater by the day. But the world tells them to wait and trust.
As Iran grows closer to creating viable nuclear weapons, Israel has been criticized for suggesting that it might launch preemptive strikes on Iranian weapons facilities. We can’t know whether such strikes would prevent the nuclear empowerment of one of the world’s most dangerous

Admissions decisions for the college class of 2016 were recently released and what many anticipated turned out to be the case — acceptance rates dropped even more at many selective schools, including five of the eight Ivy League schools (where more than 240,000 students competed for 23,000 spots). The truth is, these schools are reaches for everyone!
College admission at the nation’s most selective schools has become much more competitive over the past decade. To add some perspective, keep in mind that the parents of today’s high school students likely applied to college 20 or more years ago. In 1991, the acceptance rate for the University of Pennsylvania was 47 percent and this year it is down to just 12.3 percent!
According to the Department of Education, there are 3.2 million graduating seniors in the

Across three days in early April 2012, Ohio State became a fast-paced, minute-to-minute, surge of activism, with potential for longevity, characterized by the message “stand your ground.”
Time for Action
Twenty-four hours after a candlelight vigil for social justice, Hoodies and Headscarves, on Wed. April 4 at 7 p.m., Ohio State (OSU) students began organizing to bring three minimum demands to the board of trustees regarding hate crimes and diversity, Thurs. April 5 at 7 p.m.
Next day, Fri. April 6, about 170 students and faculty marched single-file to the board of trustees meeting at the Longaberger House from the Hale Black Cultural Center, delivered their demands, joined a solutions task force reporting to the university president and the Board of Trustees, and — same day — held a sit-in in The Ohio Union until they won the first demand: hate crime alerts for the Ohio State

This isn’t going to be a short post, because the truth is we can’t solve this problem in 140 characters or less.
Let’s start here with the thing everyone’s talking about. If you haven’t by now seen or heard of the Kony 2012 video then it’s almost safe to say you’re not on Twitter or Facebook or that you haven’t checked your email or talked with your kids or co-workers.
It’s one hell of a phenomenon: an online grassroots prairie fire introduced millions – particularly young people – to the atrocities committed by Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army

In a recent op-ed, “The Republicans’ Masterful and Insidious Prey on America’s Founding Fears,” I talked about the fact that in 1988, Rupert Wilkinson published a remarkable little book. Wilkinson identified four fears that not only have been present from the very founding of the Republic, but are so basic that they are virtually synonymous with it: 1. The Fear of Being Owned; 2. The Fear of Falling Away;

We have a new participant in the Relevancy Poll. Sure, it’s more work for me, but we’re glad to have you, Kate McKinnon. And you know what? For her first show, she did pretty well. But she didn’t quite rule the

These crisp, peppery roots thrive in springtime and offer a welcome flash of color to salads, sandwiches and grains. We love them with a little butter and salt, but we also love the way they taste pickled, sauted and even roasted. Pick up a bunch at your farmers’ market today, and enjoy a week’s worth of brilliant radish recipes.
Looking for more salads? Browse some of our favorites here.
Take a peak at some other crisp spring recipes that were entered into our Celery Contest.
Got a question in the kitchen? The FOOD52 Hotline is here to help!
Sauted Radishes With Mint
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These radishes are coddled so all their sweetness comes out. Exposing much of their surface area to brown butter gives them a pretty caramel color and delicate flavor, which the mint subtly

The Masters Golf tournament was held last week, as it is every year, at the Augusta National Golf Club — a private, mens-only club.
Imagine the tournament were held in a private, whites-only club, or a private, no-jews club, or a private no-muslims club, or a private no-hispanics club, or a private no-Asians club, or a private no-Irish, or a private no-gays club, … .
People would be

On the far eastern fringes of Pasadena’s Colorado Boulevard, beyond trendy Old Town and past the impressively faaded walls of Pasadena Community College, noteworthy buildings give way to modest shops and restaurants catering mostly to locals. In this leafy, low-key neighborhood, one doesn’t expect an encounter with the handsome modern building called Shumei Hall. As part of a tranquil spiritual center, it has the lofty goal of promoting universal wellbeing with educational programs that ennoble young people through the arts, music, and environmental awareness.
I was there for a second installment of the Shumei Arts Council’s annual Clyde Montgomery Concert, named in memory of a supporter of the center’s programs. One of the loveliest way-stations in the long and arduous journey classical musicians must make to secure their futures is certainly this serene performance space, its exterior skirted last Sunday by an exuberance of spring blossoms.
Cares of the day vanished as I entered Shumei Hall from a patio surrounded by a harmonious complex of

If you think you’ve seen The Cabin in the Woods before, well, you’re half-right.
You’ve definitely seen movies along the same lines. But I’d also wager that you’ve never seen anything like it.
Directed by Drew Goddard from a script by Goddard and Joss Whedon, The Cabin in the Woods, opening Friday, takes, as its jumping-off point, the basic set-up for contemporary horror films: Five young people leave civilization behind for an uninhibited weekend in a cabin in a secluded setting. The five include a sexually active but unmarried couple (Anna Hutchison and Chris “Thor” Hemsworth), another couple who haven’t met before the weekend starts (Kristen Connolly and Jesse Williams), and everybody’s pal, the stoner-genius (Fran Kranz).
And then bad things begin to happen.
The film actually begins in a control room for what looks like a corporate laboratory of some sort. The two head scientists are played by Bradley Whitford and Richard Jenkins, who wear ties and shirtsleeves and who seem to command (with a sense of humor) a staff of busy underlings.
At some point, the connection between the lab and the cabin is revealed but that’s all I’ll say about it – other than to say that The Cabin in the Woods never goes where you expect it

Photographer Dave Perry never expected to find himself shooting flowers. “I’m tough. I’m straight. And I do flowers constantly,” he joked in an

I write about heroes.
I spent ten years writing the books “Heroes for My Daughter” and “Heroes for My Son,” to give my children examples of inspiring people whose virtues, talents and wisdom made them such great role models.
There were some famous heroes in those books, ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Lucille Ball. There were also lesser-known “regular” people. But regardless of their fame, they all proved that ordinary people change the world.
One of those ordinary people is my former English teacher Sheila Spicer.
When I was in ninth grade, Miss Spicer came up to me and said, “You can write.” She told me, “You’re in the wrong

Sometimes we mistake murder with terrorism. Murder is to take a person’s life — plain and simple. Terrorism is something much more pernicious. It shields itself behind murder and blood, only to accomplish its ultimate goal: incredible fear and a frantic departure from strongly-held principles.
As we removed a vicious criminal from power in Iraq, and wiped out another in Pakistan, the

Dartmouth is rightly one of the most prestigious universities in the world. It is dynamic, intellectually rigorous and turns out global leaders in all industries from finance to public service and diplomacy. But now, my beloved Alma Mater is embroiled in a very public conversation about its campus culture — and it’s a conversation that needs to be had.
Last week, Rolling Stone published an expos on Dartmouth College, detailing a Greek fraternity/sorority culture that broadly tolerates and covers up extreme

Inspired by one professor’s infectious enthusiasm for Emily Dickinson, Obsessed is a new HuffPost Culture series exploring the idiosyncratic, all-consuming passions of public figures and unknowns alike. Through a mix of blogs and interviews, these pieces will highlight the elusiveness of whatever it is you just can’t live without — whether it’s blue jays, Renaissance fairs, fan fiction, or in the case of David Lynch, coffee. If you have an obsession to share, drop us a line at culture@huffingtonpost.com.
I used to think being obsessed by the banjo was weird. How could a farm boy from Iowa fall in love with an obscure African instrument? Blame Earl Scruggs and the Beverly

Throughout the course of our lives, we are subject to fail — sometimes with notice, sometimes without. More times than not, as human beings we inherently seek to do the right thing. But occasionally, because of some unforeseen turn in this superhighway called life, we fail to recognize and adhere to the signs warning us of dangerous curves ahead and plow headlong through the straw bales, catapulting off the cliff like the racer in the recent Geico pig commercial.
Regardless, the damage is done. Some of us walk away unscathed, some with scrapes and bruises, while others of us wind up in an emotional intensive care unit for months or even years trying to heal the carnage left in our

The 93-year-old yoga master Tao Porchon-Lynch was recently named “oldest yoga teacher” by the Guinness World Records. I’ve had the pleasure of studying with Tao and spending time with her over the last few years. She is one of my inspirations and certainly an example of what I call “Power Living.” Her journey provides insights to crafting an amazing life. Here’s just some of what I’ve learned from Tao:
Play Your Cards Right
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Tao’s Indian mother died in childbirth, and her French father left Tao to be raised by his brother’s family in