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What is your favourite colour? And what does it say about you if you like magenta, mango or mauve? Metro asks if the colours we choose to surround ourselves with can impact our personalities.

A new study shows that physically strong men are more likely to have right-wing political views while weaker ones are inclined to support the welfare state.

Whether you fear it or think it will do you good, change is always in the air. And on the web. Metro charts the rise of the e-petition and asks if we can really make a difference by putting our name down under an online cause.

As a nation of spenders it’s hard to turn normality on its head and become a nation of savers, but with an aging population, diminishing pension pots and unsecure and unknown futures, it will be down to the individual to provide for themselves anything more than just a basic quality of living.
As a nation of spenders it’s hard to turn normality on its head and become a nation of savers, but with an aging population, diminishing pension pots and unsecure and unknown futures, it will

Q: What does “SAT” stand for?
A: It used to stand for Scholastic Achievement Test, but in 1947, the name of the exam was changed to Scholastic Aptitude Test. Then the folks at the College Board used their Critical Reasoning skills and came to the conclusion that a coachable exam could not be called an “aptitude” test. So officially, SAT stands for nothing, although at least one college refers to it on its website as the Scholastic Assessment Test.
Q: What time does Staples close, in case your child can’t locate his TI-183 calculator the night before the SAT exam?
A: Luckily, the Staples in our neighborhood closes at 9 p.m., as we discovered the night before our son’s exam. (Our son, who had “just had” his calculator the day before, volunteered to pay for the new one, which added up to about a week of his summer wages.)
Q: What are some good snacks for the SATs?
A: A power bar, a peanut butter sandwich and a

Mitt Romney’s sole claim to the presidency is that his business experience will enable him to accelerate job growth in America.
The GOP debates revealed that Romney was a failure as governor, with Massachusetts 47th in the nation in job growth, and only one of the four states that did not recover to pre-2001 recession job levels before the Bush/Cheney economic collapse hit.
But, let us talk less about rankings, and more about actual jobs.
What is that story? Again, for Romney it is dismal.
During Romney’s four years as Governor of Massachusetts, he added 61,000 new jobs. At the time, Massachusetts had 2.5 percent of the nation’s

By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane bound for Colombia. During my three-week trip, I plan to explore not only Bogot and other large cities, but also coastal Taryona National Park, the Colombian coffee belt and of course Cartagena, where all the Secret Service hooker drama recently went down.
But that’s not what this post is about. Indeed, as I embark on my latest adventure abroad, I’m mentally preparing myself to do without all the things I miss most when I travel.
1. The Internet
The United States has the fastest, cheapest, most reliable Internet in the

Chanclaso
What’s a parent supposed to do if their 4-year-old son starts acting like a girl? How ’bout punch him until you beat the gay out of him? That’s actually what Pastor Sean Harris of Berean Baptist Church in North Carolina wants you to do. Pastor Harris was caught saying some of the most vile and disgusting anti-gay remarks aimed at children who are perceived to be gay. You can also hear the audience clapping and giving their approval to his beat-the-gay-out-of-your-son sermon. These right-wingers are out of control and I’m not a Jesus expert, but I’m sure he would never beat a defenseless

“I love a queer immigrant!” The words, amidst colorful rainbow flags, were part of the 2012 May Day immigration march in downtown Los Angeles, and emphasize the intersection of immigrant and Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) organized groups, communities and their issues. The LGBTQ community, still entrenched in a civil rights struggle that began well before Proposition 8 won at the ballot box, is also demanding legalization for all immigrants.
In 2008, the “May Day Queer Contingent” was organized to provide a space for LGBTQ immigrants to stake their claims in the larger May Day march for immigrant rights. Although the first efforts began in 2007 and 2008, the largest turnout came in 2010 on the eve of the passage of SB1070 in Arizona, when over 500 LGBTQ community members demonstrated and ultimately became ‘out and proud’

Summer is a time for state fairs and carnivals. Not every town, however, is satisfied with corndogs and Ferris wheels. These intrepid communities celebrate quirky bits of history and time-honored traditions that that make simple petting zoos seem boring. While some of these festivals might look bizarre at first glance, they serve the same purpose as the more run-of-the-mill gatherings: get a bunch of people together to have

A charming and funny film about a rather cantankerous group of seniors (played by Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and others) who relocate to Jaipur to live out their twilight years, opened Friday. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel feels a bit like a beautiful photo book, bursting with richly colored photographs from India. A convincing argument to visit.
The retirees in question move into The Marigold Hotel, an establishment run by an affable young Indian man (Dev Patel, Slumdog Millionare) eager to please despite the failures of his surroundings. The hotel itself is played by the beautiful and tranquil Samode

Claudia Gomez is a petite Latina with big earrings and even bigger dreams for the future. But her future wasn’t always this bright.
Despite being the valedictorian of her eighth grade class, Claudia was expelled from her high school as a freshman because of a fight with another student. She attended several other schools across town where she was suspended numerous times for being tardy and engaging in verbal fights with other students who teased

Like a black velvet reproduction of Guernica, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the movie, takes one of the landmark works of art of the twentieth century and renders it shallow, pointless and silly. Included in its list of crimes: entrusting the Beatles’ most innovative work to the likes of the Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, Steve Martin and Alice Cooper, among an almost infinite roster of incomprehensible casting choices; and placing the whole mess in the hands of a director who was clearly incapable of telling a coherent story (the magical musical instruments need to be stolen because why? And how exactly does that lead to the charming town of Heartland, U.S.A. being turned into Pottersville?), but never met a cheapjack, circa seventies special effects trope he didn’t

I met Adam Yauch only once. It was during a bathroom break, which came at the end of a heated session in a Tibet-China conference at Harvard in 2002. I rushed to the bathroom and found myself standing next to Adam Yauch, who was using the urinal to my right.
We greeted each other in

With the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death and accelerating plans to draw down troops in Afghanistan, it’s a natural moment to look back at the decade-long “War on Terror” and consider how far we’ve come. Are we safer now than we were before the launch of our massive counterterrorism effort?
Those who argue that we are safer point to the killing of major al Qaeda leaders, destruction of the group’s logistic and financial capabilities, the success of drone attacks against terrorist targets, as well as the Arab Spring movements that — hopefully — represent an alternative engine of political change in places like the Middle East.
Critics note these victories, but focus on the struggle ahead. They point to the continued and, according to some, improved ability of al Qaeda and its affiliates to recruit young Muslims worldwide. This wave of radicalization has already led to dangerous plots and bombings in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and in Europe, and potentially in the United States as well.
In other words, our “kinetic” efforts to defeat the terrorists have been successful, but radicalization and extremism continue to spread

On International Day of the Midwife on May 5, our short film “What I Want Is Simple”, is airing on national television and radio in Tanzania.
For every 100,000 women who give birth in my country, Tanzania, almost 800 die (compared to 24 in USA ). This is an absolute scandal, as almost all of these deaths could be prevented if women had access to skilled health workers.
Yet there is a dire shortage of health workers with midwifery skills in my country, and half of women still give birth with no one to help them except neighbours or relatives. What’s more, the numbers of nurses trained in midwifery is shrinking with some training schools reporting less than 25 students in classes which used to have 300.
The White Ribbon Alliance in Tanzania (WRATZ) is working hard to reduce maternal mortality and to bring the issue of the shortage of midwives to the forefront of the political agenda. As part of this work, WRATZ is working to promote midwifery as a profession and to improve the status and working conditions of

Financial media mavens were quick to accuse Bloomberg Businessweek of a bait and switch when its April 30 issue hit the street. There on the cover was a photo of a menacing, slickly dressed businessman wielding a chainsaw behind the headline “My Life in Private Equity.” Inside, however, was a positive story about how a small private equity shop was using the much-celebrated Toyota Production System to improve efficiencies at manufacturing companies it owned. “Bloomberg Businessweek should be ashamed of itself,” scolded Fortune.com’s Dan Primack. He said that in the name of selling magazines, the rival publication went with a cover that’s “a direct misrepresentation of what Businessweek put inside its own

One of my first memories of comic heroes on the screen — indeed, possibly one of my earliest memories ever — comes from when I was four years old and watching syndicated reruns of TV’s The Incredible Hulk, terrified and exhilarated at the sight of Bill Bixby metamorphosing into a green-painted, fright-wigged Lou Ferrigno. So different from the comic, but hey, it was the best we had. Cut to several decades later, and as I sat watching Marvel Studios’ mammoth superhero jam The Avengers, bringing to life the kind of spectacle that was, until recently, the exclusive purview of the page, I kept thinking about four-year-old me and wondering what he’d be thinking right about now.
In that sense — in a very large sense — The Avengers doesn’t merely mark the culmination of Marvel Studios’ sometimes interminable, slow-burn plan (initiated with 2008′s Iron Man) leading toward the creation of a shared movie constellation comprised of its brightest stars. Rather, it’s the ultimate expression of everything superhero movies have fitfully built up to in the thirty-four years since Chris Reeve’s Superman stepped out of a revolving door and first took to the

If you’ve been hiding under a rock somewhere all week, you may have missed the fact that an anniversary just happened. One year ago this past Wednesday, special operations forces killed America’s “Enemy Number One,” Osama bin Laden. When it happened, it was a time for some sober reflection — and some unsober and spontaneous celebration on the streets. Whether such was a good thing or not, it is what happened.
This week, we marked the milestone in two notable

Okay, we know it’s political silly season but sorry I still don’t see the reason for the outrage! When there is an addition to the number of jobs added and a subtraction to the unemployment number… how is that a bad thing! And by the way for those not clued in to the “real America”, not everyone who falls off of the unemployment rolls is a hard luck story. Many statistics show that some people who were unemployed are now starting their own businesses, in fact I have two friends who have been out of work for over 9 months who teamed up to start their own event planning company about 8 weeks ago and both are doing just fine. But for those who say those 115,000 jobs added mean nothing, again I say, ask those 115,000 people who finally got a job last month just how much it means!
Maybe I’m way too far outside of the so-called beltway, but I still don’t get

The latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the United States supposedly “created” 115,00 jobs in April. Not even President Obama’s supporters are cheering loudly over this figure, as it indicates a slowing down of job creation — and that is if the number is accurate. As many know, BLS jobs numbers are usually a mathematical abstraction based on assumptions and inferences, not hard numbers. In any event, if there were 115,000 jobs created in April, that is below the approximately 200,000 new jobs that must be created in the U.S each month in order to keep up with population

On the subway recently, a man near me rushed to sit when someone got up. I was a little taken aback, as I’m used to men giving up seats to women. Then a man boarding the train made a quick dash to sit down. This change in etiquette was

The economic crisis began with the housing crisis, and it will only end when the housing crisis also ends. Unfortunately, the evidence of the past five years suggests that the Obama administration and Congress have never actually understood this connection. Despite massive numbers of foreclosures, the loss of almost $7 trillion in housing wealth (over one-half the nation’s home equity), and even unprecedented pleas from the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, there has been a shocking paucity of innovation or even policy activity in the housing arena.
Now there is a a very real chance that Congress will destroy the limited policies the Obama administration does have in place, prevent additional efforts, and further widen the gap between the haves and have-nots in America. Moreover, the net effect of this congressional failure could be to further undermine the weak housing market and risk sending the nation into another economic tailspin.
The administration’s signature housing policy effort is now aimed at mortgage principal

As if he didn’t have enough geopolitical crises already.
President Barack Obama got a complicated new crisis to manage this week, this one in China, where blind dissident icon Chen Guancheng — who, somehow, escaped house arrest in his village and made his way hundreds of miles to the U.S. embassy, where he received temporary sanctuary — “voluntarily” left the embassy and returned to Chinese soil.
With supposed new safeguards for his freedom, it was hailed as a diplomatic success by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Then Chen said that he had been coerced to leave the U.S. embassy by Chinese government threats to incarcerate his