Huffington Post

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This year's holiday action films can be summed up in four simple words: Seth Rogen in spandex. Ok, that's a slight exaggeration. In addition to "The Green Hornet," there are Sci-Fi thrillers like "Tron" and "Skyline" on the docket and revenge flick "Faster," but we prefer to focus on comedians in tight clothing.More...

Holiday Movie Guide 2010: Action Films (VIDEO)

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Our schools are turning millions of normal children into dropouts and failures.  This isn't because of a few bad teachers or principals, but because the natural learning behaviors of children are routinely penalized instead of praised. Initiatives like "No Child Left Behind" and "The Race To The Top" won't change this, because they don't adequately take into account research about how children learn. As Nobel prize-winning neuroscientist Eric Kandel says, children have "enormous capability that they're born with and often school takes it out of them."Our classrooms are based on outdated ideas, functioning like mid-20th century factories. Each child is offered an identical curriculum, like a car moving along an assembly line. However, children aren't units of production and this approach is failing. Since 1970, the rate of high school graduation has declined, and the United States has fallen from first to twelfth among developed nations in education.More...

Time for Schools to Stop Damaging Children

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On November 10, the Obama Administration's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform shocked the small business community with the preliminary recommendation that the Small Business Administration (SBA) be absorbed by the U.S. Department of Commerce.  The recommendation came as part of a plan that would cut federal spending by $200 billion through 2015.The Small Business Administration (SBA) is the only federal agency to assist America's chief job creators, its 27 million small businesses. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, small businesses are responsible for more than 90 percent of all net new jobs, 50.2 percent of the non-farm private sector workforce, 50 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 90 percent of exports and innovations.More...

Commerce Department & SBA Merger Could Cost Small Business Billions

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MSNBC host Keith Olbermann lashed out at ABC's former "Nightline" host Ted Koppel and the mainstream media generally in a lengthy "special comment" at the end of his program "Countdown" on Monday night.Koppel sharply criticized the rise of partisan journalists like Olbermann, whom he described as "the most left-leaning among MSNBC's left-leaning, Fox-baiting, money-generating hosts," in an op-ed published in Sunday's Washington Post. On Monday night, Olbermann launched a full-throated defense of his network, arguing that beloved anchors who are considered objective, from Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow to Koppel himself, have long exercised significant editorial judgments.More...

Keith Olbermann Fires Back At Ted Koppel Over Objectivity, 'Real News'

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Perhaps you were up till 3am studying for a test in a different class.  Or maybe you had a dinner with friends that ran late into the night.  Either way, you're tired today, and you've made the mistake of yawning in one of Professor Talbert's lectures.Well, you should have yawned quietly because Professor Talbert heard your "overly-loud yawn" and he is having none of it!  Also, if you want to anonymously tell on the person who yawned, that will be just fine.More...

Cornell Professor Talbert Freaks Out Over Student's 'Overly-Loud Yawn' (VIDEO)

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Democracy carries a great deal of weight in our country. It is so important to us that we have gone to war to protect and defend our democracy. Not only have people given their lives over many decades to protect our democracy, but we also have sent young men and women to war in an attempt to protect other countries' democracies. Taking a giant step even further, we have sent young people to war in other countries in an attempt to spread democracy throughout the world.The system that people have fought and died for is known as representative democracy. Citizens delegate authority to elected representatives and ask them to make decisions that are in the best interest of our country. If the elected officials don't do a good job with this assignment, periodic elections allow us to replace these people.More...

Is America for Sale?

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This holiday season, when you're shopping for that perfect gift for your spouse, partner, family member, or friend, consider that you might be the gift they are looking to receive. No one really needs the picture frame with its own email address, the foot bath, or the expensive bottle of wine. But I can guess that they all want you to be healthier, feel younger, and be a more vibrant part of their lives.The gift of good health means taking care of yourself now, before the so-called "silent" diseases associated with aging strike. It means taking a proactive approach to health care by identifying illness at the earliest possible stages through state of the art testing. It means losing your love handles, or those stubborn last ten pounds, so that you do not become a candidate for diabetes, heart disease, or metabolic syndrome. And it means enhancing your brain so you won't forget to continue to take care of yourself for years to come.More...

Forget Presents: Restoring Your Health is the Gift that Keeps Giving

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Turns out, John Boehner isn't the only one. A politician's image can be made or broken on the level of trust that his or her name conjures up. We Americans like our politicians to be strong, trustworthy and honorable, and the exact right cadence of a leader's name can either inspire us or fill us with doubt and malaise. But no matter how their other qualities, some politicians should have thought twice against using their real name when running for office. Here are some of the most regrettable, confusing, or just awesomely bad political names we could find. Vote for the most ridiculous!More...

11 Awesomely Bad Politician Names (PHOTOS)

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Appalled by the condition of the playground at a West Philadelphia elementary school, two local women decided to take action to makeover the space for students.One of the women, Debra Ruben, a professor of design at nearby Drexel University, enlisted a group of her undergraduate and graduate students to lend a hand.More...

Drexel Design Students Give Magical Makeover To West Philly Playground

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In the end, it was a blow out. The mother of all initial public offerings -- that of the refreshed, revitalized and revamped General Motors -- went off better than almost anyone expected. Of course, questions abounded: Could GM sustain profitability? Was its new management team up to the job? When will GM have a product slate as highly rated as Ford's?But investors wisely bought the story that the unprecedented bankruptcy and restructuring fundamentally altered the prospects of the world's second largest automaker.More...

GM IPO Increase: How They Turned It All Around