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The revolutionary chants on the streets of Egypt have resonated around the world, but with a popular uprising without a clear direction and an unpopular leader refusing to concede, Egypt's future hangs in the balance. Riz Khan talks to Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek about the power of popular dissent, the limits of peaceful protest and the future of Egyptian politics.

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from? With Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson pairs the insight of his bestselling Everything Bad Is Good for You and the dazzling erudition of The Ghost Map and The Invention of Air to address an urgent and universal question: What sparks the flash of brilliance? How does groundbreaking innovation happen? Answering in his infectious, culturally omnivorous style, using his fluency in fields from neurobiology to popular culture, Johnson provides the complete, exciting, and encouraging story of how we generate the ideas that push our careers, our lives, our society, and our culture forward. Beginning with Charles Darwin's first encounter with the teeming ecosystem of the coral reef and drawing connections to the intellectual hyperproductivity of modern megacities and to the instant success of YouTube, Johnson shows us that the question we need to ask is, What kind of environment fosters the development of good ideas? His answers are never less than revelatory, convincing, and inspiring as Johnson identifies the seven key principles to the genesis of such ideas, and traces them across time and disciplines. Most exhilarating is Johnson's conclusion that with today's tools and environment, radical innovation is extraordinarily accessible to those who know how to cultivate it. Where Good Ideas Come From is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how to come up with tomorrow's great ideas.

This article will allow me to evaluate the mainstream media's interpretation of the Other Campaign. Expectedly, it is full of jokes and superfluity and lacking in legitimate analysis. The NYT guy said that Marcos was vague about what the Other Campaign is about. They say Marcos "even tried to undermine" the "popular leftist candidate," the one from the PRD, who would sell out the country. "Precisely what Marcos hopes to accomplish with the meetings and with a planned national tour by a group of Zapatista representatives remains murky. He has not defined how he would change the Constitution." They say that the EZLN hasn't launched another military offensive because they were pushed back into the jungle by the military in 1995. in article: Still others say Marcos's call for a broad movement reflects a widespread disappointment with left-leaning politicians throughout Latin America, who have become enmeshed in the sort of corruption scandals they once criticized. "What they are saying represents a trend in Latin America, which is that people have lost faith in political parties," said Peter M. Rosset, an expert in agricultural policy who attended the meeting on Sunday. "The basic feeling is that the political class is all the same." That sentiment was expressed over and over here in San Miguel, a former 15,000-acre ranch that the Zapatistas seized in 1994 and divided among former Indian ranch hands. "This movement, for me, its historic," said Arturo Guzmán González, a 29-year-old singer who did a version a cappella of his protest song, "Manifestarse." "It has a moral base, this movement. They seek the words of everyone."

Chokri Belaïd, a secular, anti-Islamist member of the National Constituent Assembly, was assassinated last week. The backlash of the assassination is causing strife in Tunisian politics. His widow has accused Ennahda of playing a role in the assassination, "which sparked mass demonstrations, attacks on Ennahda headquarters and clashes with security forces throughout the country." The Prime Minister, a high-ranking official in Ennahda, has declared his wish to form a non-partisan government of technocrats to manage the socio-political crisis. He has also declared that he will resign from his position if he's not allowed to do so. So things really are deteriorating. qt: Four opposition groupings-Belaïd's own Popular Front bloc, the Call for Tunisia party (Nidaa Tounes), the Al Massar party, and the Republican Party-announced that they were pulling out of the National Constituent Assembly and called for a one-day general strike last Friday, the day of Belaïd's funeral. The principal Tunisian trade union federation, the UGTT (Tunisian General Union of Labour) backed the call, resulting in the first general strike in Tunisia in 35 years. Reportedly, over one million people took part in Belaïd's funeral procession in Tunis on Friday, many calling for the fall of the Ennahda government and a second revolution. ... Much of the bourgeoisie, both secular and Islamist, has swung behind Jebali's proposal. The business journal l' Economiste asserts that "the prime minister's initiative and his proposal to form a non-political government of technocrats is a minimum response, but salutary. The rejection of this reasonable solution by his own party is evidence of the internal divisions that are eating away at Ennahda..." ... The revolutionary uprising of 2011 was channeled into parliamentary manoeuvring and constitutional wrangling by the Tunisian bourgeoisie, with the aid of the petty-bourgeois "left" parties and the UGTT. Underlying the present

Las Vegas Shooting - A Man In A Pig Mask Opens Fire At Bellagio Hotel Shooter wearing a pig mask open fire and sends people running for their lives at Las Vegas in a popular US tourist hotspot. http://bit.ly/2n2uxMZ

Congress' approval rating has fallen to an abysmal 9% -- to put this in perspective, herpes is now slightly more popular than Congress.

Here we are again.Hard to find even the Gallows Humor in this story, so maybe we won't even try. Maybe it's time to admit that large chunks of America are in the hands of unreconstructed racists and vulgar idiots, and that the popular election of a black man as president just might've pushed these furious, economically doomed old white people into a final rage that is going to end very, very badly. Ready? Here you go: An Arizona elementary school mural featuring the faces of kids who attend the school has been the subject of constant daytime drive-by racist screaming, from adults, as well as a radio talk-show campaign (by an actual city councilman, who has an AM talk-radio show) to remove the black student's face from the mural, and now the school principal has ordered the faces of the Latino and Black students pictured on the school wall to be repainted as light-skinned children.

"David Ray Griffin Debunks Popular Mechanics and other [9/11] debunkers."

The popular cultural representation of the U.S. media is that they are adversarial to, and independent of, state and corporate power. This well cultivated and consciously promoted image quickly dissolves under the lens of scrutiny.

The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted.No, I am not playing the popular elementary school game of  Opposites Day. It's true. Progressives won in the 2010 mid-term  elections.

Creating a laser that can melt a soda can in a lab is a finicky enough task. Later this year, scientists will put a 40,000-pound chemical laser in the belly of a gunship flying at 300 mph and take aim at targets as far away as five miles. And we're not talking aluminum cans. Boeing's new Advanced Tactical Laser will cook trucks, tanks, radio stations-the kinds of things hit with missiles and rockets today. Whereas conventional projectiles can lose sight of their target and be shot down or deflected, the ATL moves at the speed of light and can strike several targets in rapid succession.

Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, akaThe Elvis of cultural theory, is given the floor to show of his polemic style and whirlwind-like performance. The Giant of Ljubljana is bombarded with clips of popular media images and quotes by modern-day thinkers revolving around four major issues: the economical crisis, environment, Afghanistan and the end of democracy. Zizek grabs the opportunity to ruthlessly criticize modern capitalism and to give his view on our common future. We communists are back! is the closing remark of Slavoj Zižeks provocative performance. Our current capitalist system, that everyone believed would be smoothly spread around the globe, is untenable. We find ourselves on the brink of big problems that call for big solutions. Whatever is left of the left, has been hedged in by western liberal democracy and seems to lack the energy to come up with radical solutions. Not Zižek. Interview: Chris Kijne Director: Marije Meerman Production: Mariska Schneider /Pepijn Boonstra Research: Marijntje Denters/Maren Merckx Commissioning editors: Henneke Hagen/Jos de Putter

Home-school mom Susan Mule wishes she hadn't taken a friend's advice and tried a textbook from a popular Christian publisher for her 10-year-old's biology lessons. Mule's precocious daughter Elizabeth excels at science and has been studying tarantulas since she was 5. But she watched Elizabeth's excitement turn to confusion when they reached the evolution section of the book from Apologia Educational Ministries, which disputed Charles Darwin's theory. "I thought she was going to have a coronary," Mule said of her daughter, who is now 16 and taking college courses in Houston. "She's like, 'This is not true!'"

Home Fooling.

Tunisia has announced an interim national unity government days after a popular revolt ousted the president from power in the first Middle East revolution in a generation. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia on Friday after a month of unprecedented protests gripped the country. Thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against unemployment, high food prices, corruption and government repression. At least 80 people were killed in a crackdown by government security forces. We go to the capital city Tunis to speak with opposition activist, Fares Mabrouk. [includes rush transcript]

Do red-blooded, hard-working Americans pay thousands of dollars each year to send their children to college, only to have those kids turned into pot-smoking Obamacare-lovers by a pack of communist hippies? This stereotype -- professors as brainwashing left-wing ideologues -- has dogged academia at least since the Vietnam War era. But our nation's vilified professoriate isn't composed of just Marxists and Whole Foods shoppers. Let's upend five popular misconceptions about the people educating the next generation.

The "progressive tea party" has been born. Inspired by the UK Uncut movement, the popular revolutions sweeping through North Africa, and articles in the Nation and Washington Post, activists in Mississippi, Chicago, New York, California, Maine, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Washington DC and elsewhere have started US Uncut to mobilize against corporate tax cheats who are costing America billions of dollars each year and forcing the government to propose deep cuts to vital services and pay freezes for hardworking families.