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When Suicide is Not Enough: Killing by Economic Deficit

We have been taught since childhood that self-harm and suicide are inappropriate and never the solution to any problem.  Yet, every year, many of us still decide to end our lives by our own hand.

Why?

Do we kill ourselves because of a lack of coping skills?  Do we raise our hand against our minds because we feel helpless and lost?  Does turning on the “Off Button” somehow lead to the easing of an inexpressible pain?

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Do Not Use Twitter to Threaten a School

Twitter has done a lot of things in the last six years since it launched from giving everyone the ability to tweet about their daily tinkle routines to social revolution, but the one thing that it seems to prove is that people do not seem to ever learn that if you put something out on Twitter it is not that different from yelling it from a rooftop.

For one, a good number of people have been outright fired or otherwise lost their jobs because of posts they have made on Twitter. I would never imagine anybody other than someone who didn’t care about their employment status going onto a rooftop to announce to the world that they were going to get a job that they hated but would get a big paycheck for it.

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Remembering MCA of the Beastie Boys

The year was 1987, and I was sitting in the cafeteria of a hospital in Princeton having a snack while waiting for my mother to come down and tell me if there had been any update with the family member I had been visiting. Hospitals seemed to be a dark and gloomy place for me and I had a companion with me that brought me a bit of cheer in the form of a Walkman and a copy of the 1986 album Licensed to Ill on cassette. I loved looking at the cover of the tape and thinking about the circumstances that would cause a plane to crumple like that. I must have listened to that album half a dozen times when I was sitting in that hospital. Now I am sad to have learned that one of the founding members of The Beastie Boys, Adam Yauch (known as MCA), passed away on Friday at the age of 47, possibly related to the cancer he was treating since 2009.

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The Death of Levon Helm is the Beginning of the End of the Dylan Era

Levon Helm died yesterday in New York City of throat cancer. He was 71. Levon was a tremendous talent and an outstanding drummer. Few people understand the engine that drives any sort of live performance music is the rhythm — and in modern music, that means a live drummer. Without a proper human metronome keeping the entire band on track and in sync, the entire song falls apart. If you have a terrible drummer, the job of keeping the energy of the music moving forward falls to the bass player. If both drummer and bass player are inept, you do not have a band. Levon Helm was, The Band:

Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band’s best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan’s backup group into one of rock’s most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.

Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said Lucy Sabini of Vanguard Records. On Tuesday, a message on his website said he was in the final stages of cancer.

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The Breitbart Blowback

Radical blogger, and social infidel firestorm bomber, Andrew Breitbart, is dead at 43.  Watching the flow of internets reactions to his sudden death slowly roll into the virtual public square are telling in the portrait they create of a cunning and cruel man in life.  I won’t be shedding any tears for losing Breitbart.  I believe the divisive politics of hate will be less vicious without him knowingly and purposefully spewing predetermined lies at cultural touchstones for his sport and personal profiteering.

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Who Would Taunt a Dying Child? These People!

Proverbially speaking, it is never considered proper to kick a fellow when he is down — doing so in reality is even worse. Whether it comes in the form of ridiculing a person who is sleeping on the street or yelling cruel insults at a person in a wheelchair, it is simply not the proper way for one person to behave toward another.

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Whitney Houston: Reflecting on a Life Cut Short

When I was a child, I was a fan of Whitney Houston. Then again, it seemed like most everyone I knew was a fan of Whitney Houston. She achingly expressed pain and heartbreak and was superb at putting into words how to best communicate love to someone. By the time she was portraying a singer in need of a bodyguard in 1992’s The Bodyguard I think much of the world was deeply enamored with her.

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