China has emerged as the world's largest market for smuggled endangered animal species. Just as some of our own environmental transgressions are born of the Western notion of man's hegemony over the natural world, China's destruction of its natural heritage is rooted in social and cultural mores that include the role of animal parts in traditional Chinese medicine. The freedom to spend currency abroad and the rise of the Chinese middle class have, despite government avowals to the contrary, increased trade on protected and threatened species worldwide. Tigers, rhinos, and bears are some of the most publicized and emblematic victims of smuggling and butchery, but there is another, nearly silent extinction epidemic underway in Asia -- the decimation of Asian turtles.

Included among these is the Giant Asian Forest Tortoise, Manouria emys, which occurs as far south as the Indonesian Island of Sumatra, and as far north as the Chinese border with Burma. Reaching as much as 100 lbs., but more typically half that, the Giant Asian Forest Tortoise -- the largest tortoise in Asia and fourth largest terrestrial turtle in the world -- is losing habitat daily, and is wantonly slaughtered for both medicine and food. Despite its bleak outlook, the species (both the smaller, southern, lowland race and the rarer, darker, larger, mountain variety) may ultimately owe their survival not to sweeping law enforcement or local fieldwork, but to the passion of unlikely conservation hero living not in Asia, but in a small town in North Florida.

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Wellington Airport announced last weekend that they were planning to erect a 26x100 foot "Wellywood" sign on the hills overlooking Wellington. The sign is meant to be a celebration of the city's strong film industry niche and a nod to the burgeoning tourist attractions related to the "Lord of the Rings" film franchise. The decision comes fifteen months after the idea was first proposed, reports the Associated Press, much to the chagrin of Wellingtonians and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Leron Gubler, president of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, is threatening legal action on the grounds that the chamber holds the trademark to the "Hollywood" sign, reports the NY Times. In a statement that details the full extent of the chamber's dealings (warning letters back and forth) with Wellington Airport, Gubler said the following:

We are not without a sense of humor, nor without legal rights. We hope that if the Wellington Airport wants to mimic our Sign in this fashion, it will proceed in cooperation with us and will recognize that the holder of the rights to the Sign and the party responsible for its continued existence is a nonprofit entity that works hard to raise funds so that the Sign even exists to be mimicked.

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At an impact investing meeting at the US State Department last week, I was probably the only one in the room who didn't know that only 3 percent of the world's assets/funds were engaged in what's often referred to as "social innovation" or "impact investing." It's apparently known as the "97 vs. 3" dilemma. But whatever you call it, it was news to me and an obvious shortcoming to driving sustainable change, I think.

Why are micro finance funds, NGOs and foundations the only ones playing big in this space? How will we ever get enough of these great ideas and programs to scale if we only approach them as philanthropic endeavors? Let me be clear: I have HUGE respect for the groups that were in the room. We are in fact already partners with many of them! But, despite the good intentions and great work, the truth is that philanthropy -- in the broadest sense -- can rarely make the long-term impact business can. I think of it this way -- as the president of the Kraft Foods Foundation, I have about $100 million in cash and in-kind we can invest each year. But as Kraft Foods INC, my company has literally billions to invest in the things we need to buy. Effectively directed, what is likely to have a greater impact -- millions or billions? I think the answer is obvious. But clearly this point isn't obvious enough or that 97 percent of assets wouldn't be on the sidelines of impact investing.

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Yesterday, the Tunisian people toppled their leader, President Ben Ali, in a historic first for the Arab world. This is still a would-be revolution, not yet a successful one. A revolution entails a change in regime, not just in leadership. Power, today, is still in the hands of those associated with the Ancien regime. As Issandr El Amrani writes: "The next 24 hours may be as crucial as the preceding 24." Elections are to be held within 60 days. Here, US and European pressure will be critical in ensuring these are free and fair, with full participation from all political forces, including the banned Islamist party -- al-Nahda led by Rachid Ghannouchi. Any post-revolutionary government in Tunisia needs to represent the widest spectrum possible of social forces in the country -- socialist, leftist, liberal, and Islamist. Tunisians will have to reassess and redesign their constitutional and institutional setup. This is where the international community (for example democracy promotion NGOs) can play a critical supporting role. For starters, under what electoral framework will new elections be held?

No one should underestimate what happened yesterday in Tunisia. If the revolution succeeds, this may very well prove to be one of the most important moments in recent Arab history. It will alter the calculus not only for Arab regimes -- who are watching very, very nervously -- but for Western powers that have long oriented their Middle East policy around seemingly stable, autocratic governments.

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It's silly, but I love my foursquare badges. I remember feeling a dash of pride when I checked into LAX a few months ago and unlocked the "JetSetter" badge. I got a shot of joy when foursquare recognized my zeal for Brooklyn" (I <3 BK"). I wasn't thrilled when I unlocked the "Babysitter" badge -- 10 check-ins on the "playground circuit" -- but it did make me smile and boosted my badge count to 20. This week I plan to make history when I go get tested for STDs, check-in from the health center and unlock the MTV GYT badge.

Today, MTV and foursquare announced a new partnership to encourage sexually-active youth nationwide to GYT: Get Yourself Tested. GYT is a unique public-private health campaign that includes MTV, the Kaiser Family Foundation, Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The campaign was launched to address the reality that 1 in 2 sexually-active young people will contract an STD by age 25 -- and most won't know it, as many STDs show no symptoms. When left untreated, STDs can lead to an increased risk of HIV infection, infertility and even cancer. Additionally, half of all new HIV infections in the U.S. occur among 15-25 year olds, and one in five people living with HIV in this country don't know they have it. The need for regular testing -- and open communication about testing -- has never been greater. 

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We have often honored election traditions in American politics. This is particularly true of those election cycles that fall every 4 years when The Congress and White House are at stake. Over the last few decades we have developed an unfortunate tradition of ignoring income equality and associated issues. The deafening silence on this issue has -- not accidentally -- coincided with the precipitous decline of middle and lowering earners' share of the pie. Our limping, wheezing middle and lower classes are now very angry. What separates this mighty mass of folks, is what they are most angry about. Some years social issues and coded appeals to good ol' days dominate. Occasionally millions are roused with a passion for one path forward versus another. For some, lower services are preferable to higher taxes. For others, more services and different tax burdens offer the solution. Either way, we generally elide direct discussion of income and wealth distribution.

Decision 2012 will be a $2-3 billion exercise in evasion of the distributional elephant -- no partisan reference intended -- in the national living room. We have seen accelerating upward re-allocation of income and wealth since the late 1970s. America is now 40 years into one of the world's boldest experiments with upward redistribution. The national economy is showing severe signs of strain from decades spent on the present course. Before we get to the sea change and how it will influence the election, let's take a look at the changing fortunes of higher and lower earners.

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So many depressed and lonely college students walk into my office describing the specter of eating alone in a campus dining hall as inspiring nothing short of anguish. Also bewilderment. How, they wonder could this problem even exist? There are after all, tons of kids and only a few dining halls. It was supposed to be fun. What about those lively cafeteria photos on the web site? "What's wrong with me that too many times I have to walk to dinner alone in search of a familiar face, or sit at a table feeling ignored, or worse, have to simply sit alone?" The answer is, nothing is wrong. The idea that there are a stream of dinner companions and endless bright mealtime conversations, is a fantasy. The fact that friends are not always available to eat with you, that students feel invisible during some conversations, that people you know may have made plans to eat specifically with one person or another is far more common.

On the surface it might seem the big reason for the discomfort is loneliness. After all, isn't it more fun to eat with someone? Well, yes. But that's not really the problem. It's not that you can't stand to eat alone. If you were eating in front of your computer in your room you'd be fine. That's because you know that no one is looking at you. And if no one sees what you're doing, they can't be drawing nasty, sad or embarrassing conclusions about you.

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If the world learned anything from Donald Trump last week, it's that when you feel compelled to declare that you're really smart, you're about to say something really stupid. For Trump to assert that he's "a very smart guy" before revealing to the world that he hadn't even bothered to do an "Obama birth certificate" Google search before embarrassing the birther cause with his lack of preparation is pretty astounding. It's comparable to my telling him, "I thoroughly enjoyed your interview with Bill O'Reilly, but if it were one second longer I probably would have stabbed myself in the eye with a rusty coat hanger."

Still, masochist that I am, I eagerly tuned in to discover Glenn Beck's take on the situation. But the bit about Beck's discomfort with the audacity of his latest competition was hardly the most revealing aspect of his back and forth with O'Reilly. That came when Beck declared "That's the last thing the country needs is a showboat. You don't want me as President of the United States."

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Very early in my career as an anthropologist, I stumbled across a curious report about a mid-19th Century Australian Aboriginal man, a whaler called Thomas Chaseland, who was said to have extraordinary physical capabilities -- particularly eyesight. Chaseland's shipmates claimed he could see land from 30 miles out to sea, spot whales surfacing outside of telescope range and see a full mile underwater. A huge man of apparently prodigious strength, Chaseland also survived several shipwrecks at the hands of thrashing whales, on one occasion swimming six miles through freezing waters that killed his fellow whalemen. But the attribute that stands out is his vision. Could it really be true, I wondered, that this Aboriginal man's eyesight was so much better than that of his European shipmates?

It was hard to believe, for several reasons. Chaseland's reported eyesight was, for a start, better than most scientists thought theoretically possible. There was also the problem that the stories had something of the "noble savage" myth about them: the hardy native whose "wild essence" gives him superhuman powers. A little research, however, showed Chaseland's shipmates were probably right. Aboriginal men, even today, do have eyesight four times as good as men of European ancestry. A 1980s survey of Aboriginal eye health proved it. This made me wonder how many other stories about the extraordinary abilities of pre-modern men were true. And what about males in our very distant, evolutionary past? I decided to find out, starting with that most male of characteristics: physical strength.

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What we should be eating these days to stay thin is becoming more and more confusing if we pay attention to recommendations coming out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They just issued their most recent version of dietary guidelines that scolded us for eating too much fat and avoiding healthy foods like brown rice, lentils and beans. According to the recommendations, most of our calories should come from vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils and fat free dairy products. But now, like a mother who holds out a chocolate chip cookie in one hand and celery sticks in the other, the USDA is trying to get us to eat more high-fat cheese.

The newspapers recently reported the activity of a USDA-supported nonprofit organization called Dairy Management. Their mission is to get you and me to eat more cheese on our pizza, specifically a pizza from the Domino's pizza chain. In an attempt to find a market for whole milk and cream whose sales are languishing due to the public's switch to lower-fat dairy products like fat-free milk and yogurt, the Dairy Management group came up with an effective idea: They recommended increasing the amount and variety of cheese on pizza pies, because people love to eat pizza whose cheese runneth over. Domino's tried it, their pizza sales went up and the dairy people were happy because they could turn their milk and cream into a desired commodity.

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This is the first in a series of blogs I would like to offer on the question, "What is Scripture?" In each blog, I plan to summarize and briefly comment on how this question is answered by one of a number different authors from various traditions. The blog is inspired by students in my current graduate course on the same topic. Hopefully they will also enrich the blog with their comments.

The name of this series is taken from the title of a wonderful book by Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916-2000), What Is Scripture? Smith was one of the great scholars of the new academic field of Religious Studies -- gentle in judgment and voice, eager to learn about all the world's religious traditions, and not afraid to learn from his own Protestant Christianity as well. In this 1993 book Smith asked a broad audience of readers what we mean when we use the English word "scripture." If one of us is, say, a Buddhist, another a Baptist, and another an atheist, what are we referring to when we apply the general word "scripture" to refer to very different books held dear or not so dear by very different people? Smith observes that most of us, in fact, do not know what we mean, and those of us who think we know tend to disagree sharply with each other's definitions. As I hear it, here is his remedy:

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The Blue America endorsement page is devoted to the best progressive House challengers plus the one incumbent-- Alan Grayson-- our donors voted overwhelmingly to support this year. But we have lots more pages than just the main endorsement page. There's one dedicated to help Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Raúl Grijalva win his reelection bid, one to keep our ads featuring orange-tinged golfer John Boehner on TV, one dedicated to getting rid of Congress' worst homophobes, and a dozen others. And among that dozen, one of the most crucial is called Senate Candidates Worth Fighting For, featuring the progressive Senate challengers Blue America is backing this year. After you watch the video below, I hope you'll be inspired to visit the page.

Today Blue America and the Americans for America PAC released a new web ad, Monday Night Teabags, featuring the final lineup for the Republican Party's teabag caucus, the people who want to dismantle Social Security and Medicare, pump up tax breaks for the wealthy and further impoverish the middle class, while shipping good paying jobs to low wage hell holes overseas and using every hot button social "issue" there is to divide ordinary Americans against each other. Ladies and gentlemen, your Republican Party of 2010:

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The political pendulum has swung far toward the Republicans, and at this point there is almost nothing that Democrats and the President can do to alter the overall course of the midterm elections. Republicans will win the House--and quite possibly the Senate--on November 2nd. Democrats had a politically devastating summer that is now stretching into the fall. Politicos talk about campaigns "winning" the day or the week; well, Democrats have "lost" the last seven months.

Scott Brown's victory on January 19th cemented what Bob McDonnell and Chris Christie started in November of 2009 and signaled the start of this terrible run. A look at the Pew Research Center's polling on the news stories "most closely followed" really tells the story. From February through April the most closely watched news story in the country was health care reform (the economy was in second place). The battle for health care reform represents the first splintering of the Obama coalition, as Independents and swing voters began to move away from Democrats and the President. The issue was divisive and it served to energize the GOP base (and fuel the Tea Party movement), creating the intensity gap that we see today: Republicans are almost twice as energized about the upcoming elections as Democrats. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll in August showed that only 43% of Americans had a favorable view of health care reform, while 45% had an unfavorable perspective.

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In attacking Park51, the Cordoba Initiative's Islamic cultural center, the Geller-Palin-Gingrich-Beck-FOX syndicate has suddenly hallowed an old Burlington Coat Factory that lies two blocks from Ground Zero. Yet it appears that Ground Zero itself is suffering their neglect. They've failed to condemn the tacky souvenir stand and Burger King across the street from it, or the porn shops closer than Park51. Of course, this sudden reverence for one spot near Ground Zero is crass political opportunism. But there are things worth hallowing that the syndicate won't mention because these things don't serve their nefarious purposes.

I was in New York in October 2001, while rubble was being cleared from Ground Zero. A minister volunteering at the site invited me to visit St. Paul's Chapel. Built in the mid-eighteenth century, it sits right next to where workers, day and night, labored to clear that vast, smoldering pile of rubble. The Chapel had been closed to the public so that it could be dedicated to providing care for the workers. Inside, the midday din of the street was replaced by whispered voices and quiet footsteps. A few people were sleeping on cots; others ate from plates of hot food provided by volunteer chefs. In a corner, medical workers waited to dispense medical aid, and nearby, a couple of massage therapists worked on exhausted bodies. Near the altar, tucked into the shadows, I saw two men in chairs talking softly; one was weeping quietly.

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Not too long ago, I had a friend who opened a new restaurant in my neighborhood. I was very proud of his accomplishment and was not only willing to dine at his establishment, but would always take a few paper menus to share with my network so they could also experience his wonderful cooking skills and great service.

One day, after only two years in business, he told me he was closing. When I asked him why he had to close he gave me a few reasons. One was the lack of business traffic. Not everyone was a regular customer like me and few people took the time to do what I did and assist him in spreading the word to their network. Furthermore, of those close "friends" who did solicit his establishment, he had a serious problem with their unwillingness to pay full price. Sure, they might bring a few friends to eat at his restaurant, enjoy the good music, order multiple drinks from the bar, and get so full from the multiple orders of appetizers they had to put the main course in a take home container. However, when the bill came they went into full "negotiation" mode. Sometimes they would coerce my friend to take as much as half from the final bill's cost. For the times that he would stand his ground on the bill the evil looks of disgust were enough to make any person cringe, but the ensuing lack of further "support" was even more discouraging.

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As the CTO of a geospatial software company, I get pretty excited when I think about all the ways that data analytics can help drive better decisions. With the explosion of open data initiatives, there's huge potential for analysis and mapping tools to turn this data into useful information, which in turn can help solve complex problems. There's no question that organizations can enhance their performance by being able to easily access, analyze, visualize and collaborate around data, and I've found this to be especially true for NGOs. With their international reach, abundance of data, and lack of access to data scientists, NGOs can benefit greatly from being able to employ easy to use data analysis and mapping technologies.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) ClimaScope project is great example of this, as the WWF is utilizing analytics and data mapping in this initiative to help communicate problems to stakeholders. The goal of the ClimaScope project seems simple: provide access to climate change information so that policy makers, defense planners and project planners can make smarter conservation plans. Why isn't this simple? Well, as many of us know, data becomes information when it helps answer useful questions. The WWF realized that it needed to do more than just provide stakeholders with a massive amount of data on climate change; they needed to provide a way for non-technical users to easily analyze and visualize the data in order for it to become useful.

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Are the birthers dangerous, wacky, or simply distracting? President Obama has chosen the third option. His press conference in which he released his long form birth certificate was an exercise in tut-tutting. Acting the part of adult-in-chief, he reproached the press for indulging in the "silliness" of promoting the birther issue over serious challenges like the national debt and dealing with entitlements. No doubt he realizes that the lecture was futile. Reading about Donald Trump and his outrageous grandstanding is the moral equivalent of rubbernecking as you drive by a fatal accident on the highway. Everyone does it; nobody feels proud when they do.

But there may be a serious undertone to raising the ceiling on shamelessness. When Trump repeatedly said how proud he was to be playing his part in the birther nonsense, when he said of the birth certificate that he "hoped it was true," and then capped his moment in the sun by denigrating Obama's credentials for attending Columbia and Harvard, the shameless ceiling was pushed up too far for comfort. Moral viciousness isn't something to brush aside. For a century after the Civil War, the Democrats turned a blind eye to racism, Jim Crow laws, inequality in education between whites and African-Americans, and even lynching. Silence in the face of immorality is itself a kind of immorality. But Democrats redeemed themselves by passing the civil rights laws of the Sixties, while Republicans often sat on their hands and eagerly accepted the shift of the South to their party.

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Oh, how I love a virgin piña colada on a beach. I always order one (usually just one a year) on my first day of vacation in a warm place. It's a delicious confirmation that yes, I really am on vacation in a warm place. Well, I am determined to recreate that happy feeling at home, even if it is cold, snowy, icy, and dark, and spring seems years away. And I like the idea of a float instead of a smoothie because sometimes, smoothies make so much noise when you run the Vitamix that it takes all the joy out of the drink. But could I find all the ingredients to make it organic? The answer is a resounding YES.

So, the other night during American Idol, I got out the glasses and the straws and did my experiment. I used organic pineapple juice (yum!) and opened a can of organic, unsweetened, and "classic" (as opposed to light) coconut milk--which is rich and creamy and very liquid-y. I skipped the sparkling water, but would try adding it in the summertime if I were making a lighter version. And pulled out the last bit of organic vanilla ice cream.

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ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Perhaps it is patriotism, perhaps it is the remarkable professionalism with which the Egyptian Army has conducted itself, or perhaps it is the simple fact that nearly all Egyptian men serve in the military during their lives, but for whatever reason protesters have given the M1A1 Abrams tanks that appeared on Egypt's streets roughly a week ago a hero's welcome. In Tahrir Square last Sunday, I watched as anti-Mubarak protesters exchanged high fives with soldiers, climbed onto tanks to pose for photographs, and chanted, "The people and the army are one hand together."

Among those disposed to see Cairo as a potential Tienanmen situation, the military's restraint elicited a similar brand of reverence. President Obama, for his part, commended the Egyptian military "for the professionalism and patriotism that it has shown thus far..." Indeed, reviews of the Egyptian military have been so positive that one could easily forget that civilian control of the military is one of the most basic requirements for democracy. This apparently slipped the mind of one Obama Administration official who told the Los Angeles Times, "our sense is that the military, on balance, is still serving as a buffer between both sides, and they likely still hold the key to a peaceful transition."

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When not spending time at the office, at work meetings, or her son's sporting events, Marissa comes home to her apartment. Home should be a place that fosters our best energy. And yet, as I learned when I was recently at a Smart Living event in Boulder, Colorado many homes today have numerous energy "deductors" that can detract not just from our energy, but from our overall health as well.

See this month's segment on "Good Morning America Health" to learn what home energy makeovers Marissa received and why. Check back at the end of the month to see how she feels after having lived with these new items and routines. But first, here are some in-depth responses from my interview with Smart Living expert Scott Gwozdz. Gwozdz, a Harvard-trained ethnographer has researched this topic from several different angles for over 20 years. Currently, Gwozdz teaches corporate social responsibility and sustainable business at the University of Colorado, LEEDS School of Business and runs Kickstand Communications, a consumer research firm located in Boulder. At Kickstand, Gwozdz focuses on consumer insights in green and health living. Together with partner Robb Shurr, Gwozdz completed the 2010 Smart Living Research, one of the largest consumer ethnographic studies of its kind done on green and healthy living (includes 350 conversations, 17 communities around the country) to research the disconnect between what people say they want to do and what they really do.

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Anti-Muslim speech has been curtailed in the U.S. since 9/11 so far as official channels go. Popular sentiment and right-wing radio are another matter. The Bush administration has been chastised for using terms like "war on terror" and "clash of civilizations" as code for an attack on Islam itself. The Obama administration has tried to erase those phrases. But words don't cause wars, not directly. They reflect the consciousness of the speaker, which is a much more potent cause of conflict. By his relative silence, Feisal Abdul Rauf is following his long-avowed policy of not getting his hands dirtied with nasty politics. Yet many moderate Muslims have tried this tactic, only to find that they are leaving a vacuum that is quickly filled by extremist voices.

Like attracts like, and in the Muslim world the most powerful magnets are extreme. You are known by the company you keep -- so the adage goes -- but also by the words you share. When Sarah Palin tweets about stopping the "mosque at Ground Zero," she knows who will take the bait. Most obviously, it will be her base, but she is also rousing the opposition, people who know that there is no mosque being planned and that the location of Rauf's Islamic center isn't at Ground Zero. Palin knows this too, but demagogues don't bother with fact-checking. They want the war of words to continue. Their aberrations are deliberate and crude, mirroring the attitudes of xenophobia and intolerance that are part of their consciousness.

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This is the season when tourists flock to museums abroad in search of inspiration or edification. Most are satisfied with registering impressions. A few submit themselves to the tutorial provided by cassette and headphone. The art student dwells on form and technique. Only over time do we stumble across the puzzles, the stories and the inner meanings that elude both casual viewing and scholasticism.

The realization that something is there that needs explication crystallizes unpredictably. One such encounter occurred while strolling through the Renaissance galleries of the Uffizi. It suddenly struck me that Jesus is invariably portrayed with the same visage and expression. His face is placid, the expression disengaged, the look that of a mild -tempered man who feels for others. Stylization to this degree is understandable in Buddhist representations of Gautama. Still they convey an inner force, a commanding silence. And, the Buddha has achieved Nirvana. Jesus, though, was of this world - whatever his emanation and spiritual essence. He acted and reacted with others. Yet little if any emotion is evident, even when involved in acts of great drama. The Jesus casting the money changers out of the Temple, the Jesus walking on the waters of the Galilee, and the Jesus taking the Last Supper in awareness of what awaited him appear no different from Jesus the pacific soul in more prosaic settings that painters have drawn for us. Of course, the Calvary is a different story - but the puzzle of why such uniformity in other scenes remains.

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This January the U.S. Supreme Court issued a shattering ruling that will intensify corporate influence in our democracy to an unprecedented degree. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court ruled that government restrictions on corporate campaign contributions are unconstitutional because such restrictions violated corporations' right to free speech as set out in the first amendment of the Bill of Rights. In effect, the Court was evoking a core civil right to advance corporate power. This is a dangerous precedent, one that will undermine the obligation of the government to respect and protect human rights by giving corporations full reign to advance their own interests in the democratic - yet increasingly plutocratic - United States.

The idea that corporations have the same rights as you and me comes from a Supreme Court decision over 120 years ago - Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886) - the focus of which was whether railroads could deduct their debts from the value of their property for tax purposes. The Supreme Court laid down a much broader ruling, effectively stating that corporations should enjoy the same equal protections under the law as individuals. Equal protection under the law was spelled out in the 14th Amendment which was adopted following the Civil War. The original motivation for the amendment had little to do with advancing corporate influence. It overturned the Dred Scott decision (in which slaves were denied citizenship) and laid the groundwork for ending segregation in the U.S. and subsequent civil rights laws.

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Bobby Dorafshar, founder of New Leash on Life, began volunteering for the Department of Animal Regulation in 1994. Realizing that he could help more animals by increasing general public awareness about shelters and rescue programs, Dorafshar developed and coordinated mobile pet adoptions throughout the city and was able to place more than 5,000 animals in new homes. Building upon his success, Dorafshar followed through on his lifelong dream of opening a no-kill shelter when he and wife, Kelly, launched a New Leash On Life in December of 1997.

New Leash On Life is a nonprofit organization designed to "increase adoptions, reduce animal abandonment and euthanization in Los Angeles and increase public awareness on responsible pet ownership through education," according to Sean Tanner, who works with the organization. In 2002 New Leash on Life acquired a 13-acre property in Santa Clarita Valley. Other achievements include launching programs like the M.P.A. (Mobile Pet Adoption) program, the P.E.T. (Pet Education Trainers) program, which focuses on teaching children about animal awareness, care and safety, and a literacy assistance program where children build reading skills and confidence by reading to rescue dogs. Additionally, the foundation's Lend a Paw (LAP) program provides social and therapy dogs to people experiencing physical, mental, emotional or life challenges.

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As soon as CBS announced yesterday that correspondent Lara Logan had been sexually assaulted while covering the Egyptian protests, the media sprang alive in search of a scapegoat. Two disturbing lines of commentary have emerged: one that cites irrelevant details about Logan's beauty or her past sexual history, the other blaming Muslims or Egyptian culture for the assault. In the Washington Post, Alexandra Petri noted that this happened to a "known, blonde white woman." And on her blog, Debbie Schlussel wrote that "she should have known what Islam is all about." "This never happened to her or any other mainstream media reporter when Mubarak was allowed to treat his country of savages in the only way they can be controlled," opined Schlussel.

But we would be wrong to assume that in controlling Egyptians, Mubarak somehow also kept women safe. In fact, state-sanctioned violence against women was widespread and well documented. For years Egypt has been cited by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for using rape, torture, and sexual assault to threaten and intimidate female activists who criticized the regime. These tactics were also used against female family members of dissidents. There is also considerable evidence that members of Mubarak's security forces ordered the assault of female protesters during the recent demonstrations.

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Fifty years ago this week, Harper Lee's, To Kill a Mockingbird was introduced to the world, and today it is considered one of the most beloved American novels ever written. When I first read the book as a young boy, I remember having an intense emotional reaction--a reaction not unlike Jem's--"his face streaked with angry tears" after his father lost the verdict. I was absolutely staggered that the twelve white members of that Maycomb County jury had convicted Tom Robinson of rape, and I became drawn to stories, as both a reader and a writer, where heroic lawyers put their lives at risk to stand up for what's right. For the past two years, I have been researching and writing a book about Thurgood Marshall--arguably the most important American lawyer of the 20th century and one who shared much in common with the fictitious Atticus Finch.

In the years before he won the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case that ended legalized segregation in public schools, Thurgood Marshall often found himself in hostile Southern towns not unlike Lee's Maycomb, Alabama, putting himself in danger by representing powerless men falsely accused of rape or murder. At one point in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus tells Jem that courage is "when you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what." That pretty much summed up Marshall's predicament when he'd take on such cases in the South.

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I deeply embrace the opportunity Passover affords us for personal transformation; to look at what enslaves us, keeps us from being the best version of ourselves and then moving towards spiritual freedom. It would take 150 years of Passovers for me to work through all I need to work through, but step by step, right? So this year, I decided to take a big first step by inviting my ex-husband to my Seder.

I've been divorced for thirty years. It was one of those epic, custody battle-fueled divorces followed by years of acrimony and hostility. We're both happily remarried now and have other children, but my ex and I had two sons together. When our oldest was getting married and having a child, and our younger son graduating from college, I panicked: We were going to run into each other after years of avoiding sharing any actual physical space. I desperately wanted those joyous occasions unmarred by our ill will. So, after seventeen years of antagonism, I invited my ex to lunch. After the shock wore off and he recovered his voice, he accepted. We did the LA version of smoking a peace pipe and went for sushi. I apologized for my part of our marriage failing and forgave him his part. He graciously accepted, and since then our relationship has been friendly, pleasant and sometimes even nostalgic. So don't lose hope--even the most rancorous relationships with exes can eventually shift into civility. It's just the first seventeen post divorce years that are the hardest.

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The latest Pew Research Center survey found a lot of things that should cheer President Obama. Voter anger against government even among those that identify as Tea Party backers is down, the Wisconsin union standoff hasn't stirred any widespread anti-labor backlash, and there's more tolerance than ever for same sex marriage. But the poll also found a troubling note, a continuing troubling note for the White House, and a happy one for the GOP. White males still by big margins either disapprove or strongly disapprove of the president's job performance. The continued high disapproval ratings among this group are even more glaring since it comes at the point where more Americans than in the past year say they like the job Obama's doing. That is again all except a majority of white males. The temptation is to chalk the continued skepticism and downright hostility to Obama of many white males up to the stereotypical gun rack, beer guzzling, white blue collar Joe. Many of those that don't like Obama do fit that image. But many don't. A significant percent in the Pew Center survey are middle to upper income, college educated, and live in a suburban neighborhood.

Their numbers are big and their political influence potent. The current crop of GOP presidential candidates know that, and bank on them to once more be the driving force in the 2012 presidential election. There's some reason for that expectation.

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One of the most discouraging things about the last two years was seeing swing voters in focus groups, when asked what President Obama's economic strategy was, repeat different versions of "Well, I know he said we needed to save the banks. Beyond that, I'm not sure." When Obama in his first State of the Union gave a vigorous defense of bailing out the banks, saying he knew it about as popular as a root canal, and saying "I get it", it was very memorable to voters. But when his predictions about what would happen when the banks were stabilized- they would start making loans to businesses, and businesses would start hiring- didn't happen, and instead the banks gave themselves record breaking bonuses, voters turned on Obama fast. In exit polls on Nov. 2nd, when asked who was most to blame for the bad economy, voters by a wide margin said Wall St was most to blame, and the voters who said that went Republican by a 14 point margin.

Obviously, saving the banks hasn't been the President's only economic strategy. The stimulus bill, while too small, was an important job creator/saver. Saving the American auto industry was an incredibly important thing to do. Health care reform was in part a long term economic strategy. The infrastructure bank idea is a great potential job creator. Extending unemployment insurance helps keep money in the economy. And all the tax cutting going on is clearly meant to have some stimulative effect, although how much is highly debatable.

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If you fill your stomach with a gel-like substance that swells so much that very little room is left for food, will you lose weight? Researchers at Gelesis, a Boston-based company, think so. They have been testing a polymer or hydrogel called Attiva. The substance is about the size of a sugar grain, but when the grains are consumed in a capsule along with water, the grains swell into a gel-like substance. As the gel expands in the stomach, little room is left for food. The gel also stretches the stomach walls and stimulates nerve fibers that tell the brain the stomach is too full to receive any more food.

Rats given this gel stopped eating for about 18 hours. Early tests with humans produced a sensation of fullness after meals and a decrease in hunger between meals. But these particles did more than limit food intake. When they finally leave the stomach (by shrinking and going back to their granular form) they enter the small intestine where digested food is absorbed into the bloodstream. Here they swell again and trap digested sugar and fatty acids in their viscous matrix. Think of partially firm Jell-O with bits of fruit floating around in it. The polymer is the Jell-O-like substance that captures bits of sugar and fatty acids. Eventually, as the polymer shrinks again, the sugar and fatty acids are released and slowly trickle into the blood stream. The gel continues on its way through the large intestine, finally disintegrates and passes out of the body.

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In a recently published book, Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly argue that the crisis of our current age stems from the indecision and resulting nihilism that come from our having lost the system of values provided by monotheism. In the Christian age our correct course of action in all matters was clearly set forth, but now, every decision becomes a crisis. Aggregate these crises and the result is a culture of nihilism. Dreyfus and Kelly argue that the way out of this state is by taking the stance of the Homeric age in which we marvel at the surfaces of things and revel in the mystery of our world. We need to get caught up in the whoosh of the moment.

Now, in a book entitled All Things Sheening: Reading Charlie Sheen to Find Meaning in a Secular Age, Peter Ludlow and his former graduate advisor Charles Parsons* challenge the Homeric solution offered up by Dreyfus and Kelly. While Ludlow and Parsons do not take issue with the Dreyfus/Kelly critique of our current situation, they reject the thesis that the way out is found in the Homeric age. Rather, the way out of our predicament is found in the tiger-blood fueled insights of Charlie Sheen. "Forget whooshing," they argue, "it's about winning."

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