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You Love Everything!

For some reason, I tend to do a lot of street talking with my local mailmen.  After our old carrier retired last year, our new carrier is even older, and perhaps, kinder, and he is a traditional Indian gentleman Sikh who wears a Dastar that matches the pewter blue color of his official United States Postal Service uniform.  He is very proper and absolutely resolute in everything he does.

We’ll call our new mailman “Jerry” to protect his privacy.  I always run into Jerry on the street, and I warned him when he first started that I would always say “Hi” when I saw him on the street just because I’m from the Midwest and that’s how we operate and I can’t help myself to pretend I don’t see him.  Jerry seemed to be okay with that, and we often exchange pleasantries on the street and oftentimes we stop and chat a bit.

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Abuse of a Two Finger Test

When someone breaks into your home and steals from you, you have much evidence that a crime was committed — the broken door, the mess made by the criminal would make it evident. When it comes to the extremely vile crime of rape, however, it is considerably more difficult to prove that anything happened and it often comes down to the word of the victim against the person or people being accused of the crime. What seems even worse than this, however, is when the victim is forced to prove that the crime took place through humiliating tests — such as the so called ‘two-finger’ test that currently is employed in India for many women who have undergone the worst sort of abuse.

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Maintaining Midwestern Goodness in the Big City

I’ve been spending a lot of time in my local Duane Reade/Walgreens — DuaneGreens? — this week trying to suss out exactly how and why the transition between the two merged pharmacies is working in the effect of Balance Rewards.  So far, so good — but there have been a few jukes and flukes.

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The Bad Karma of Take Back Yoga

Is it Bad Karma to take back something you freely gave to the world?  The “Take Back Yoga” movement wants their Yoga back.

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Learning English via SMS in India

Nokia are doing interesting things with cellphones like providing Braille SMS on their phones.  However, the plan to teach English to poor rural children in India using cellphones seems like a bad promotional gimmick rather than an honest effort at education.

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The Loss of the Immigrant Mind

The USA is losing its immigrant mind!  The landed have traditionally helped build America into what it is today:  A great mosaic of thoughts, colors and dreams.  Today, because of punishing politics and a shrinking world, Harvard University reports immigrants are returning to their homeland instead of building a better life in the USA.  An entire generation of immigrants is giving up on their American Dream and I’m not sure if we can blame them for the departure.

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No Word for Depression

We rely on words to define us.  If we try to express a specific condition without the right words attached, we become lost and we are unable to clearly understand each other.  While teaching one of my Public Health courses, a group discussion about clinical depression led us into an examination of the word “depression” and how the home cultures of some of the students’ parents did not allow, or define, the concept of “depression” in a serious, medical, sense.

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