Steve Jobs wasn’t the Thomas Edison or Henry Ford of his time, but some future American business visionary may be known as the Steve Jobs of his time, writes Michael Hiltzik. Jobs—a “master of bare-knuckled business strategies from the old school”—wasn’t known as an inventor the way Edison…
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The Creative Impact award aims to honour those film-makers whose documentaries bring burning issues to our attention. But just how effective are they? Movie people are forever telling the rest of us that movies can change the world – but they would say that, wouldn’t they? It justifies the outrageous salaries, the decadent lifestyles and the grandiose awards acceptance speeches. Certainly, if James Cameron could point to figures detailing a fall in ocean-liner/iceberg collisions following Titanic’s release, his “I’m the king of the world!” Oscar proclamation might have been more forgivable. But beyond the bluster of Hollywood and the joy of escapism, what kind of real-world impact can cinema really have? The creators of the Puma Creative Impact award believe it can be massive. Its stated aim? “To honour the documentary film creating the most significant impact in the world.” As the documentarist Morgan Spurlock , a juror for the award, says: “There’s real power in a documentary, and there’s real power in movies to begin with. Movies transcend culture; they transcend countries, and to
Continue reading …Here’s an example of a bad idea: You’re a famous actor with more than 54,000 followers on Twitter , so when you decide you can no longer keep your cat, you give her away … on Twitter. That’s what Chris Pratt did, and he’s now facing the wrath of cat lovers…
Continue reading …President Obama delivered another plea for his jobs bill today, and said he approved of the 5% surtax on millionaires the Senate came up with to pay for it. “I’m fine with the approach they have taken,” Obama said at the press conference, though the New York Times notes he…
Continue reading …GOP candidates love to talk about “securing” the border, especially Rick Perry. “It is not safe on that border,” the Texas governor said recently; last year, he even claimed, without any evidence at all, that bombs were exploding in the streets of El Paso. But “those of us who actually…
Continue reading …Hang your head in shame, Crimson alums: After eight years on top, Harvard sank to a lowly second on the Times Higher Education ’s list of the world’s top 400 universities. Harvard was displaced by the California Institute of Technology (aka Caltech), thanks to its “consistent results across the indicators…
Continue reading …Aren’t Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren supposed to be debating the social contract and other lofty things? Their Senate race just took a low detour: Warren made a point during a debate Tuesday to take a jab at Brown’s old Cosmo cover , saying that when she was a college student,…
Continue reading …The newest member of the Obama administration is … Shakira. Yes, the hip-shaking singer will be appointed to a position on the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics because of her education reform activism, the Huffington Post reports. Shakira started a foundation in 1995 to fund schools in Haiti,…
Continue reading …Elderly patients are stunningly likely to have surgery in the last year, month, or even week of their lives, according to a new study from Harvard researchers, who looked at 1.8 million Medicare recipients over the age of 65 who died in 2008. According to publicly available records, nearly…
Continue reading …Something weird is happening in Ohio’s Amish country. Police are probing several incidents in which groups of Amish men allegedly forced their way into the homes of other members of the Amish community and cut off the hair and beards of the people inside, the Wheeling News-Register reports—the victims…
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