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The Brits are in a tizzy. “What on earth do they know about cricket and curries?” sniffed Tory MP Peter Bone when he heard France’s Dassault had emerged as the lowest bid for India’s $10 billion jet fighter contract. India is sampling the world, looking for the best bargain on offer.
Had Penn State football coach Joe Paterno not been embroiled in a child sex abuse scandal at the time of his death, would his passing have brought about the same deluge of media coverage? If his death did not come just 74 days after his hasty dismissal by the Penn State board of trustees, would the story suddenly be reduced to the single dimension of mourning?
I am a 27-year-old transplant from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I run a creative arts program in Richmond, California, live with my best friend in Oakland and have a wonderful group of friends. I like to think that I have reached a point where I am super comfortable with myself and secure in who I am. Despite all of this I find that I am obsessed with checking my Facebook. It’s like a sick addiction, this need to stay updated on everyone's lives, including people I barely know or care about.
In Asia, there's an ongoing irony that deepens as the natural world dwindles to the size of a parking lot. Wild animals, once revered and assigned all kinds of spiritual meaning, are increasingly ending up as the main entree. But nowhere is the irony as deep as it is in Thailand, where the regal elephant is now being served up alongside the tiger: on a fanciful diner's plate.
People in China traditionally head home for the lunar New Year holiday, marking one of the largest annual human migrations on the planet. This year, however, a growing number are opting to travel abroad, bringing in new streams of tourism revenue to destinations in the Bay Area and across the country.
Colorblind racism is the new normal in American conservative political thought. Well after the election of the nation's first African-American president, in 2012 Republican candidates are using egregious signals and dog whistles to incite racial divisiveness as an effective tool for political gain. But when confronted about the nature of their offensive rhetoric, the answer is either an innocuous denial or dismissive retort.
“America is back,” President Obama said in his 2012 State of the Union address. That sounds muscular, very Schwarzenegger-sque. But America’s new avatar is a little different from old Uncle Sam. In 2009 in his first State of the Union, President Barack Obama said “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before … It is time for America to lead again.” What a difference one term in office makes.
Tareq, a Syrian American graphic designer living in Silicon Valley, says his life has “completely changed 100 percent over the past year,” a change he credits to protests in Egypt’s Tahrir Square exactly one year ago today. That date has since been enshrined as the beginning of the Arab Spring. That singular event launched a wave of protests, beginning in Tunisia and rapidly spreading across the region, culminating in an 18-day rally that drew on Egyptians of all stripes and from all corners who descended on Tahrir and eventually succeeded in ending Mubarak’s 30-year rule.