Buddhism made a bleep in the news early this month when the Times of India and other news outlets, citing an unnamed source, reported that Bill Clinton, has turned to Buddhism for mental and physical well-being. The former president went so far as hiring a Buddhist monk to teach him the arts of meditation. This may come as a surprise to some but to many others, it's only a natural course of how things transpire in the globalized world. For if Americanization is a large part of globalization, the Easternization of the West, too, is the other side of the phenomenon.
The real issue is whether the framework of the century-old patent laws, which served as the basis for the San Jose decision, has outlived its essential usefulness for inspiring innovation. The essential process of this involves building upon and improving the works of others. This was precisely the real genius of the late Steve Jobs as he converted the touch-screen computer from a colossal flop to a mainstream consumer device and invented smartphones on the basis of ideas that he couldn’t claim to be his and his alone.
Memoirs are the great equalizer of writing. In a genre utterly non-denominational, there is room for any story in any pattern of prose. The Christian Science Monitor reports that memoirs have seen sales increase from $170 million to $270 million since 1999. Most nonfiction MFA writing programs are geared substantially towards the genre; Hunter College even requires prospective students to submit a memoir proposal as part of their application.
Lance Armstrong has thrown in the towel with all the abhimaan (self-absolution) of a martyr. He has announced that he will not fight the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) on doping charges, not because he is admitting guilt, but because “enough is enough" and he is just the victim of an “unconstitutional witch-hunt." Armstrong might lose his seven titles, but he seems confident that he is in little danger of losing anything else. In his book he is still No. 1, and he is still Lance Armstrong, the great white hope of cancer survivors everywhere.
While it’s difficult to calculate the overall impact of the Bush tax cuts, the Great Recession might actually have made them less detrimental to America’s finances. Because the economic slowdown drastically reduced government revenues, gross domestic product was well below projections, and the loss of revenue was actually somewhat lower than the Congressional Budget Office initially projected. Nevertheless, the Bush tax cuts left America in a much weaker position to cope with the 2008 crash.
The spirit of John Hancock and his gang of aristocrats——optimists all who risked their lives and property as signatories to revolution——is rare. Regrettably, that optimistic spirit——that spirit that drives all American progress——has been at historic odds with an uncharitable impulse among the American people: a selfishness that paradoxically afflicts both the afflicters and the afflicted, as we see in this election season.
The report revealed that the state had spent $4 billion on the death penalty while carrying out 13 executions since 1978, when the punishment was revived. The study further projected that by 2030, death penalty expenditure will balloon to $9 billion for death-row housing, health care, legal appeals and the actual executions. In addition, today’s California death-row population of 724 inmates—already the largest in the nation--would grow to more than a thousand.
I don't know whether anyone on the NAHJ board or staff pointed out the parallels between the generous Philip Morris and PepsiCo gifts. Or whether there was even any debate about accepting the money. These are tough times, especially for the journalism industry. Yet, just like taking money from tobacco, accepting funding from the soda industry can put organizations like NAHJ on a slippery slope, with the potential to risk their values, integrity and public trust.
Rafael Correa, the president of one of South America's smallest countries with almost 15 million inhabitants is taking a dramatic stand against Great Britain, Sweden and the United States by granting political asylum to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Correa in an address to the Ecuadorian people on Saturday said, “I don't know who they think I am or what they think our government is. But how could they expect us to yield to their threats or cower before them? My friends, they don't know who they are dealing with.”
In the digital universe, social communities actualize through the grouping of users with similar interests or affiliations, forming Facebook groups, Twitter groups (often referred to as Twibes) and subreddits. While Twitter's and Facebook's traffic unquestionably eclipse Reddit's, Reddit fosters critical thinking, informed decision-making and concerted action (as opposed to sharing issues on Facebook or trending awareness on Twitter, redditors often take action).
In curating this lineup, I selected four films that all share one specific point of commonality: flawed people trying to make it through their day despite the odds being stacked against them. Some stories are more successful than others, yet these four films demonstrate a unique perspective in their search to make sense of our current American lifestyles.
Godfrey was returning to the area at the time to find inspiration for a book about the lives of the girls who live in a group home since they have nowhere else to go. There, she meets Josephine Bell, the de facto leader of the girls. Godfrey quickly learns of their harsh lifestyle and the fact that the city sees them as disposable.
