Poem – Streets (By Joshua Medsker)

Streets My bright pavements, you inspire my night you fed and frightened I dream about the cold down in the cracks between dark and light Anchorage nights crunching snow I was streamlined, nocturnal. Bold frost on dirty street signs And our memories, bold and shared, fraternal. I love your immortal grey, shine and cracks your shine fills my consciousness And […]

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Guatemala: A nation in the grip of depression

Guatemalans are suffering from “an epidemic of chronic pessimism,” said Jose J. Camacho. We all seem to agree that “everything is bad, nothing is certain, everyone has a price, and something evil lurks behind every good deed.” The media fuel these perceptions by covering every new incidence of violence exhaustively, lavishing special attention on the most frightening and lurid details […]

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Becoming Barbie

■    A California woman is getting plastic surgery to become a real-life Barbie—and hypno-therapy to make her as dumb as a doll. “I just want to be the  ultimate Barbie,” said Blondie Bennett, 38. “Being brainless is a big part of that.” Bennett has spent over $41,000 on plastic surgery, lip fillers, and Botox to make herself look like a […]

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Envying the lower castes

Suddenly everyone wants to be low-caste, said Badri Narayan. It used to be considered an extreme disadvantage to be in one of India’s oppressed castes or indigenous tribes. But decades of affirmative action and quota systems have changed all that. Now, many lower-middle castes are agitating to be reclassified as “more backward,” in effect “struggling to move down the ladder […]

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