Obamacare Survives

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld President Obama's landmark domestic policy requiring all Americans to have healthcare by 2014.




Mandating that all Americans obtain healthcare will bring about sweeping reforms for insurance agencies, allowing many with pre-existing conditions to obtain much needed care. However, many of the changes are still widely unknown even by supporters of the new law.





The women's rights political action campaign, UltraViolet, wrote a short list on why Obamacare is important not only for women, but for every American.











The Affordable Healthcare Act remains almost entirely intact -- as well as opposition to it -- from its original proposal. According to Fox News, Republican candidate Mitt Romney vows to repeal the law if elected.

Making a Memery of Myself

Big Floppy Sunhats at Cracker Barrel + Meme Humor = Win.

From "My Name is Red"

I don't want to be a tree; I want to be its meaning.

Illustration from "The Sultan's Perfect Tree" written by Jane Volen, illustrated by Barbara Garrison

-Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red

Celebrating Teachers Everywhere Who Believe This

Sevgi ile İstanbul'a (To Istanbul, with Love) -- or, Why Everyone Should Study Abroad

I spent only 10 days in Istanbul.

Bazaar. Istanbul, Turkey.

The flight was exhausting, I was nauseous most of the trip because my stomach is keen enough to collect all stress I might be feeling, and because much of the beef there didn't agree with me. I never slept. My average hours of sleep per night hovered around five. Fifteen of us were constantly corralled, shuffled, directed, and collected to numerous site visits and expected to absorb endless waves of information, implications, and impacts. The blisters from wearing heels --  in a city where 90 percent of traveling two to five miles is done by walking --  have only now nearly healed completely.

Spending 10 days in Istanbul has been the most unexpected pleasure of my short life thus far, and I have every intention of going back.

Study Abroad Group -- Istanbul University.

Since I've been back and slowly returned to a regular routine, I have found that my patience and stress tolerance have increased. I still grit my teeth, make a snap remarks, or squint my eyes in impatience and sarcasm -- but it takes a little longer getting to that point at least. My neurotic tendencies take longer to surface in difficult situations.

Impossibly small details still scream at me while I genuinely try to pay attention to someone talking about an inane topic, or being rude, or taking too long to get to a point. But, even while I'm struggling to maintain focus on them after already concluding what they need from me and what other things I could be accomplishing in the time they are wasting, there is a sense of serenity that has replaced the frenetic nerves of my mind as it outpaces my stumbling tongue. I don't move immediately to do what they haven't asked yet. I smile, listen harder -- accept that even if I understand already, they still have more to say to me.

At CNN Turk.

I appreciate familiar things more, which in turn gives me more patience for them. There is a noticeable change in my outlook. Somehow, experiencing the incredible differences and expansiveness of the world has made it possible to understand how things are more similar and united; the world is larger, but society is smaller.

I am more confident, more certain of who I am. I can laugh at the past, enjoy the present, and plan for the future. Tolerance has improved, and there is a feeling -- almost of benevolence -- at being able to adjust to others; other people, other places, other situations, other wills and desires than your own. I think this feeling is very close to humility.

Study Abroad Group, Milliyet Discussion.

Details cause less irritation, less nervous worrying and fretting. Relatively small issues that had such a large impact on my life before are recalled with embarrassment. How could it have mattered so much to me when it is so trivial in relation to so much else? It is more efficient, more impactful to disregard the trivial -- to recognize the trivial. Focus has moved from the tree to the forest.

Hagia Sophia.

Observations are more keen and less assumed. Friendly curiosity has replaced skepticism and doubt. You accept a lot more after this kind of experience. You accept it because you long to know, to understand, to feel the broadening of your boundaries, and the dissolution of your limits. You grow and begin to feel the connectedness and camaraderie of others -- you grow to be a part of it.

Brand is You workshop.

You will make so many friends. People you never thought you would get along with will reach out to you, accept you, and together you will build bonds based on shared experience, tolerance of differences, and the process of learning. You will find similarities in one another, but more importantly, you will be fascinated by the differences and hunger to know more about the unknown. They will not just be your friends -- they will be your peers. Later, when we graduate and find ourselves working in our careers, I will remember the discussions we had and the questions we asked each other. If I am so lucky, we may even work together indirectly, and the friendships we built will be invaluable to our work.
                                                                     

At TV8.

You grow, and you recognize in yourself the capacity to grow. It's the odd feeling of having a birthday, and years later discovering that somewhere along the line you have matured beyond thinking an age gave you that ability. Experience, and what you do with that experience, becomes the knot -- the hard, grainy place in a tree where a new branch emerged. After leaving the things you love and going abroad to learn all the things you need to learn there -- and falling in love and leaving the place you grew to love for the place you knew you loved -- you emerge.

 I did.

Captured on Camera

Witnessing what people do when they think no one is looking is the surest way to understand their character. This is a wonderful video by Coca-Cola. I especially like the way they only show their product once and at the end of the video; it says so much more. Thanks to my friend Yuti Joshi for posting it on our study abroad facebook page. I wouldn't have found it otherwise.

If you think of me at all ....

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

- Rosemarie Urquico

If you're sad when you look back

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

-Dr. Seuss

The UK Murdoch Matter

Rupert Murdoch. Time Magazine.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch has found opposition to an expansion of his company, News International, in London politics. According to the Chicago Tribune, Britain's Labor leader Ed Miliband said he wanted reform of the United Kingdom's media policies, and “told a judicial hearing on Tuesday the government should move to cap market shares on news organizations.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Miliband spoke at an inquiry regarding the phone-hacking scandal that involved Murdoch's British tabloids in 2011.

Citing Murdoch's empirical grip on the media in the UK (and his near 40 percent share of national newspaper readership) Miliband said that legislative reforms should limit companies' news shares to near 20 percent.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the Labor party is up in opinion polls, but with elections nearly three years away, media ownership reforms are still uncertain.

Check out the Tribune's story from Reuters here.

Contrasting Ideas of the Day

Facebook post by George Takei. "Tails" magazine.

Sculpture. "Freedom" by Zenos Frudakis, Philadelphia PA.

Commas are awfully tricky. There are lots of ways to abuse and misuse them, particularly if they create fragments or splices. However, I can only imagine how many eyes overlooked the lack of commas in this graph. Even if the ideas are separated by new lines, saving the space of those two commas greatly misleads readers about Ms. Ray's intentions.... and appetites! Humor abounds.






























Real inspiration comes out of Zenos Frudakis' sculpture in curious leaps and bounds. This is an absolutely beautiful reminder of sadness, inspiration, curiosity, and delight in the battles for freedom. The exquisite detail, from the stoic beginning to the child-like abandon, pulls at the heart in a masterful way that just makes a person stop and appreciate the art and what it says to them.