Those of you waiting to roll with Cortana’s desktop bits in Windows 10 won’t have to wait much longer. In fact – if you’re up for it – you’re going to be able to update your PC right this minute. Supposing you’re a member of the Windows Insider Program. To make this happen with Build 9926, all you’ll need to … Continue reading
Culturalist.com is the place to shape, share and debate your opinions on anything and everything through Top 10 lists. Want to join the conversation? You can make your own list of the Top 10 Best Super Bowl Halftime Shows by selecting your favorites, ranking them in order, and publishing on Culturalist.
Katy Perry and Lenny Kravitz are set to bring some halftime spectacle to the Arizona desert for Super Bowl XLIX, and Culturalist’s users are looking back at halftime shows past to see how they’ll stack up against the performances that came before them. And there are some real doozies.
Here’s a rundown of some of the weirdest, wildest, most memorable moments from recent Super Bowl halftime shows; do any of them make it on to your list?
#5 – Sketchy Andy
You may better know him as “That Dude in a Toga Who Bounced on a Rope with Madonna”, but Super Bowl halftime show afficianados know him as Sketchy Andy, the slacklining performace artist who made America sit up and ask “What is it, exactly, that we are even watching right now?” With tricks of balance and bodily control that defied both gravity and common sense, it became the you-gotta-see-this moment of a star-studded performance.
#4 – SNL at the Super Bowl
Halftime for Super Bowl XXXI in 1997 was fronted by The Blues Brothers, a 21-year-old Saturday Night Live skit. To put that in perspective, it would be equivalent to this year’s halftime show featuring Adam Sandler singing “The Chanukah Song”…which we would totally watch. Dan Ackroyd, John Goodman and Jim Belushi might not be the first names you think of when you think “Super Bowl Spectacular”, but the sheer energy they brought to their in-character performance actually managed to outweigh a good bit of the weirdness of them being there in the first place.
#3 – Frosty the Snowman
The official headline performer of Super Bowl XXVI was Gloria Estefan, which is reasonable by 1992 standards. But there must have been some magic in the Metrodome that day, because about halfway into the show a group of children wearing blue cellophane pants showed up and began to earnestly rap about Frosty the Snowman. It’s a thing you really have to watch to understand. Just soak it in.
#2 – Indiana Jones
Not everyone knows this, but every Super Bowl halftime show dating back to Super Bowl III in 1969 has an official “theme” that (theoretically) ties it all together…and in 1995, the theme for Super Bowl XXIX was Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye. Yes, for reasons we cannot even begin to fathom, Indiana Jones headlined halftime, during which he attempted to recover the Lombardi Trophy from an ancient cult of ninjas. Seriously. 83.4 million people watched that happen.
#1 – Nipplegate
C’mon, you knew it had to be here somewhere… When Justin Timberlake triggered Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the end of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show in 2004, the collective national pearl-clutching catapulted the performance to the center of a widespread debate about decency in American media (along with a record-setting fine for CBS and a hearing before the Supreme Court). The moment became the most searched term for two years, and directly led to the creation of YouTube. We take our nipples seriously.
Agree? Disagree? Come join the conversation by visiting Culturalist to see all of the most recent performances and make your own list of the Top 10 Best Super Bowl Halftime Shows now!
New York City has enjoyed a wealth of ballet this January. Russia’s Mariinsky Ballet made a visit to BAM with “Swan Lake” and Alexei Ratmansky’s “Cinderella.” The Joyce presented an exquisite program by the soloists and principal dancers from the Royal Danish Ballet, who showed off their gold standard romanticism and subdued virtuosity that has been the company’s international hallmark since the 19th century.
On the heels of both visiting companies is the winter season for New York City Ballet. Founded by Mariinsky dancer George Balanchine, his legacy has been preserved by Danish dancer Peter Martins, who serves as the current Ballet Master in Chief. Balanchine’s American neo-classical ballet is faster and bolder than its Danish and Russian counterparts, in large part due to his craftsmanship as a choreographer.
Balanchine strung steps together and phrased them to music that demanded a different approach to the classical vocabulary. It was his choreography that created an aesthetic that developed a technique — a key reason his work has survived beyond his death. New York City Ballet opened their season with three Balanchine classics: “Serenade” (1935), “Agon” (1957), and “Symphony in C” (1947). Balanchine famously said that “Ballet is Woman,” and that could not have been more true on opening night, which featured the women of the company at their best.
“Serenade.” Photo by Paul Kolnik.
The first work Balanchine created in America, “Serenade” is seen as an important stylistic link between Balanchine’s earlier work for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes and his fully-realized neo-classical masterpieces. “Serenade” was created as an exercise for students at the new School of American Ballet, as Balanchine said, “to teach them how to be on the stage.” Two years ago, I was lucky enough to see students from the Manhattan Youth Ballet perform this work (and on a much smaller stage), which only solidified my respect for Balanchine as a master craftsman. Even on pre-professional dancers, the structure and attention to the music that is in the steps serves as a guide to bring out the best in the dancers who perform them. The crispness and speed of the Balanchine technique is on full display in a work like “Serenade;” principal dancers Sterling Hyltin and Teresa Reichlen led the corps with clarity and presence, both confident veteran dancers with long flaxen hair who exude Balanchine romanticism.
Teresa Reichlen in “Serenade.” Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Where Tchaikovsky’s music for “Serenade” washes easily over you, Stravinsky’s score for Balanchine’s “Agon” requires a little more active listening. The first twelve-tone ballet, it is a plotless work for twelve dancers in twelve movements. Costumed simply in black and white practice clothes, the dancers perform Balanchine’s take on 17th century French court dance. Blaring trumpets signal the start of each new section, an urgent call to the stage for each fresh grouping. With the retirement of Wendy Whelan last season, Maria Kowroski is now the most senior ballerina in the company, joining the company in 1994, and still has what choreographer Christopher Wheeldon once said, “the best legs in the business.” In the central pas de deux, Kowroski is pushed to dangerous extremes; in the opening moments, she plunges her body forward, her leg snaps behind her, and the music stops. Kowroski continues to contort in full standing penché splits, revealing lush and commanding extensions.
Maria Kowroski and Amar Ramasar in “Agon.” Photo by Paul Kolnik.
Where a penché step is an expression of the extreme in “Agon,” it is a gesture of reverence in “Symphony in C.” Sara Mearns, in a glittering tutu and tiara, bowed her head to her standing knee as her back leg reached behind her, bringing a cool refinement to the second movement. “Symphony in C” is also a black and white ballet, but this time the dancers are embellished with thousands of glittering Swarovski crystals. There were three successful debuts in “Symphony in C,” — all women — Ashley Bouder, Lauren Lovette and Brittany Pollack in the first, third and fourth movements respectively. The strength of “Symphony in C,” also lies in the brilliant work Balanchine gave to his supporting corps de ballet dancers. The corps gave a sharp display of classical bravura and uniform style that is the direct result of Balanchine’s famous quote from 1933 when he first arrived in America, “But first, a school.” He meant that a strong, shared foundation of style and training is critical to performing his work at the highest level. That year, he founded the School of American Ballet with Lincoln Kirstein, and began his work on “Serenade” and the investigation into a new uniquely American style of dance.
Sara Mearns and Jared Angle in “Symphony in C.” Photo by Paul Kolnik.
The opening night audience was the first to see the freshly installed installation by Brooklyn-based visual artist Dustin Yellin as part of its third annual Art Series. Fifteen 3,000 lb. glass sculptures on display on the Promenade and six smaller works on the orchestra level create the illusion of three-dimensional dancers encased underwater. Yellen calls the series “Psychogeographies,” as they “feel like maps of the psyche.” Every step a dancer takes is a colorful collage of past experiences and muscle memory, taking a two-dimensional concept and making it three-dimensional, and the figures in Yellin’s sculptures are similarly constructed. The series overall has been a boon for the company; during the first two years of Art Series, nearly 90 percent of single ticket buyers attending Art Series performances were new to New York City Ballet. If the high level of dancing on stage continues, the company should expect a very robust and popular season.
Dustin Yellin’s Psychogeographies for New York City Ballet’s 2015 Art Series, on the Promenade of the David H. Koch Theater. Photo by Andy Romer Photography.
They were young and in love in America, and it doesn’t get much better than that.
— President Barack Obama, January 20, 2015
If you’ve ever been young and in love in America, you know that’s true. As President Obama told the story of Rebekah and Ben, the story of America, who fought joblessness and debt, but ultimately “made it through some very, very hard times,” you could feel the nation’s blood pressure calm.
But for young adults, the very, very hard times are still upon us.
The crushing weight of the Great Recession fell on everyone, but young adults suffered the worst blow. And we’re still scraping to get out of the hole.
Our generation faces unemployment rates that are higher than the national average — 7.9 percent of 18 to 34 year olds are unemployed, compared to 5.6 percent of all ages.
More alarmingly: young, black adults are unemployed at a rate that’s 2.5 times higher than their young, white peers.
The best ticket to a job is higher education. Knowledge and skills, the kind you can develop in college, are more necessary to compete in our churning job market than ever before.
Unfortunately, affording a college degree is harder today. Tuition costs are soaring, and perhaps not surprisingly, so is student loan debt. Student loan debt has piled high to more than $1.2 trillion across the country. It’s why the President rightly has been pushing for more affordable pathways to community college and flexible student loan repayment methods.
If you’re reading this and think that young adults should simply work their way through school with a summer job or forgo higher education entirely, know this: That is not how our economy works anymore.
Gone are the days of paying a year’s tuition with a summer’s worth of scooping ice cream or building houses.
Gone are the days of one of the greatest financial awards for low-income students — the Pell Grant — covering half the cost of college to make a higher education affordable (today, it covers a meager third).
Those with no education after high school don’t have it much better.
Wages have dropped 10 percent for our generation since the Great Recession hit across the board and the lowest-paying sectors typically require the least education. To make ends meet, a higher education — or technical training — is key to financial security.
Last year, Senators Tim Scott (R-SC) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) introduced a bill that would give more young people job training through registered apprenticeship programs — appropriately coined the LEAP Act — but it’s up to the new Congress to bring it back and secure votes.
We hope President Obama’s State of the Union address serves as a wake-up call for Congress and the country to act, or, shall we say, leap!
2015 brings historic leadership change to the District of Columbia, with a new mayor and three new council members taking office in January – and two more to be elected soon.
Here’s one thing I hope they will keep top of mind: the future of our growing, vibrant city depends on making the District better for all children.
There are more than 100,000 children who call DC home. While that number has grown as our population has, new research confirms that many parents still leave the city once their children reach school age. And, many of the families who stay are struggling to afford the housing, quality schools and safe neighborhoods their children need to thrive.
How can DC’s new and returning leaders move forward? The questions to answer are: what does a child-friendly city look like? And, what specifically can the government do to make more progress for all children?
There is some good news to build on. Our schools have made slow but steady progress for children, especially at the elementary school level. There are fewer children today in foster care than ever before. Because of our Medicaid program, more children than ever have access to a pediatrician – meaning, among other things, that we have a better chance of catching childhood illnesses and developmental delays early.
Still, tens of thousands of children are being left behind.
A third of our children live in neighborhoods with deep poverty. More than 2,000 District children are homeless. Over 1,000 children are still living in foster care without a permanent, loving family to raise them. And, far too many children have been traumatized by violence at home or in their neighborhoods. These are the children we see every day at Children’s Law Center.
Where do we go from here?
It may seem surprising that no one person or agency is responsible for DC’s children. Instead, our agencies are siloed today. The District’s multiple education agencies think about academic achievement. The Child and Family Services Agency responds if there is an allegation of abuse or neglect within a family. The Department of Human Services provides some income support for poor families and also oversees homelessness. And the list goes on and on.
Historically, the efforts of these agencies have neither been coordinated nor comprehensive – and no one has made it a priority to step back to figure out how to help prevent children from falling into crisis.
This is a problem that can be solved.
As a start, Mayor Bowser should require every deputy mayor and agency director to report how they are meeting children’s needs. She should ask her administration officials questions like:
In addition, there are two deputy mayors who play a leading role in our children’s lives: the Deputy Mayor for Education and Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services. Their challenge is to break through their agency silos and ensure no vulnerable children are falling through the cracks.
The good news is that Mayor Bowser has recently appointed two dedicated and talented leaders in these positions. They should avoid the trap of thinking in terms of agency bureaucracy and start where the children are. For example, they should look for children whose families are chronically poor but are not yet homeless or being neglected. And, the teenagers who have dropped out of school and are at risk of sex trafficking. The deputy mayors should examine their agencies from this perspective and ask: who is responsible for providing support to these children? These are the kids who haven’t touched a system but are at risk.
The truth is, the District remains a tough place to grow up for far too many children. And, if we leave these vulnerable children behind, we lose the opportunity to take advantage of their potential – not to mention, to give them a happy, stable childhood.
Fortunately, there are many District reforms and programs that are starting to work for our children but just need a more focused, sustained effort. Children’s Law Center has many recommendations on how to move forward in the areas of child welfare, special education and children’s mental health – and I will share some of these in part 2 of this blog.
In the meantime, I have high hopes that with renewed leadership, DC can make vulnerable children a higher priority. The cost of failure is too high for our families – and for all of us.
And, the District’s children are waiting.
January 24th is the 50th anniversary of the death of British prime minister and statesman Winston Churchill, who had the most ferocious wit of any politician in history.
To wit: Churchill had been drinking heavily at a party when he bumped into a political rival, Bessie Braddock. “Mr. Churchill, you are drink,” Braddock said harshly.
Churchill responded, “And Bessie, you are ugly. You are very ugly,” and then after a pause, added, “I’ll be sober in the morning.”
This anecdote provided the inspiration for the book of political comebacks I edited, I’ll Be Sober in the Morning: Great Political Putdowns, Comebacks, and Ripostes (Frontline Press).
Here is a sample of Churchill’s wit on the anniversary of his death:
Early in his career, Winston Churchill left the Conservative Party to join the Liberals and grew a moustache, hoping to look older and more distinguished. One day, a female constituent ran into Churchill on a London street and disdainfully remarked, “Mr. Churchill, I approve of neither your politics nor your moustache.”
“Don’t worry, Madam,” Churchill replied, “you are unlikely to come in contact with either.”
American-born Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons, was a frequent sparring partner of Churchill’s. During an exchange in Parliament, Lady Astor told Churchill, “Winston, if you were my husband, I would put poison in your coffee.”
“If you were my wife, Nancy,” Churchill replied, “I would drink it.”
Playwright George Bernard Shaw invited Churchill to the premiere of a new play, enclosing two tickets: “One for yourself and one for a friend — if you have one.” Churchill wrote back, saying he couldn’t make it, but could he have tickets for the second night — “if there is one.”
Churchill was approached by an admirer who said to him, “Doesn’t it thrill you, Mr. Churchill, to know that every time you make a speech the hall is packed to overflowing?”
“It is quite flattering,” Churchill replied. “But whenever I feel this way I remember that if instead of making a political speech, I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big.”
When staying at the White House as a guest of President Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill was coming out of his bath when FDR entered Churchill’s room. Startled upon seeing the naked Churchill, FDR hurriedly reversed his wheelchair, but he was stopped by Churchill: “The Prime Minister has nothing to hide from the President of the United States.”
At a White House luncheon in 1943, Churchill was angrily confronted by Helen Reid, wife of the anti-British owner of the Chicago Tribune. Mrs. Reid assailed Churchill for the British treatment of Indians during the colonialization of India.
Churchill coolly responded: “Before we proceed further, let us get one thing clear. Are we talking about the brown Indians of India, who have multiplied under benevolent English rule? Or are we speaking of the red Indians in America who, I understand, are almost extinct.”
When Churchill delivered his famous Iron Curtain Address at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. in 1946, a ceremony was held to dedicate a bust of the wartime prime minister. After the ceremonies were over, a buxomly woman approached Churchill and gushed, “Mr. Churchill, I traveled over a hundred miles this morning for the unveiling of your bust.”
Churchill replied, “Madam, I assure you that I would gladly return the favor.”
Queen Salote Tupou of Tonga was present during the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. The ceremonies dragged on and on. When the rotund Queen Tupou passed by where Churchill was sitting, she was followed by a small boy.
Churchill was nudged by a companion who pointed to the small boy and asked, “Who’s that?”
“Her lunch,” Churchill grumbled.
A speaker was well along in his boring speech on the floor of the House of Commons when he observed Churchill napping.
“Must you fall asleep while I’m speaking?” the speaker demanded.
“No,” said Churchill, eyes remaining shut, “It’s purely voluntary.”
The conservative Churchill was often at odds with Clement Attlee, leader of the Labor Party, which advocated a greater role for the government in economic policy. Churchill once entered a men’s room to find Attlee standing at the urinal. Churchill took a position at the other end of the trough.
“Feeling standoffish today, are we, Winston?” Atlee asked.
“That’s right,” Churchill responded. “Every time you see something big, you want to nationalize it.”
When someone said to Churchill that Clement Attlee was a modest man, Churchill agreed, adding, “But then he does have a lot to be modest about.”
WASHINGTON — A group of mayors led by New York’s Bill de Blasio and Los Angeles’ Eric Garcetti are coming to the defense of President Barack Obama on immigration.
Twenty-eight mayors have signed on to file an amicus brief this coming Monday in support of Obama’s recent executive actions on immigration, which are currently the target of a lawsuit from 25 states, led by Texas. The suit aims to block the president’s deportation relief policies that will apply to some undocumented young people as well as undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents — specifically, allowing them to stay in the country and work legally. Republicans in Congress are likewise seeking to block the programs.
During remarks at the United States Conference of Mayors meeting on Friday, de Blasio said that the coalition of mayors wants to “support our president who, as we all know, is under attack on this issue.”
“We think it is crucial that when the administration is trying to help us address these core issues and they come under attack, that mayors stand up and say, ‘No, in fact the executive action will help our people and we think it’s crucial to move forward,'” he said.
The states’ lawsuit contends that Obama overstepped his presidential power in a manner that violates the U.S. Constitution, and that his actions will “exacerbate the humanitarian crisis along the southern border, which will affect increased state investment in law enforcement, health care and education.”
The first hearing on the lawsuit took place last week at a U.S. district court in Brownsville, Texas. Attorneys for the states argued that Obama’s executive actions should be blocked pending a decision on their legality.
The Obama administration has argued that the president’s policies fit within his legal authority under the principle of prosecutorial discretion, because they will allow immigration authorities to focus on deporting people deemed a higher priority, such as criminals, national security risks and people who have more recently crossed the border.
Obama is backed by a dozen states and the District of Columbia, all of which filed an amicus brief earlier this month in support of the executive actions on immigration. The states in that brief were California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, along with the District of Columbia. Their amicus brief argues that the policies are legal and will have a positive impact.
The mayors’ defense will be similar, arguing that Obama’s executive actions serve the public interest, according to a press release from de Blasio’s office. They will ask that the policies be allowed to move forward despite the lawsuit against them. Along with de Blasio and Garcetti, mayors from Washington, D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, San Francisco and St. Louis were among those who signed on.
“Our cities cannot afford delays to immigration reforms that will strengthen our economy and help families,” Garcetti said in a statement. “This isn’t a blue or red issue, but a human and economic one.”
The amicus brief comes after a summit de Blasio hosted last month to discuss implementation of Obama’s executive actions.
Nisha Agarwal, New York’s commissioner of immigrant affairs, told The Huffington Post in an interview Friday that the executive actions will help cities because people will get work authorization and become more economically productive. She also said that undocumented immigrants may be more likely to report crimes to police if they are no longer afraid it could lead to them being deported.
“From the perspective of cities, this next round of executive action, both for the kids and for their parents, is potentially transformative,” said Agarwal. “It’s not the long-term reform we all need, but it will be hugely important for us and for our cities economically and in terms of public safety.”
Here’s the full list of mayors, according to a press release:
The following Mayors have signed on to the amicus brief:
Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York, New York
Mayor Eric Garcetti, Los Angeles, California
Mayor Kasim Reed, Atlanta, Georgia
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore, Maryland
Mayor Byron Browm, Buffalo, New York
Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Chicago, Illinois
Mayor Steve Benjamin, Columbia, South Carolina
Mayor Nan Whaley, Dayton, Ohio
Mayor Michael Hancock, Denver, Colorado
Mayor Muriel Bowser, Washington, D.C.
Mayor Pedro Segarra, Hartford, Connecticut
Mayor Annise Parker, Houston, Texas
Mayor Steven Fulop, Jersey City, New Jersey
Mayor Paul Soglin, Madison, Wisconsin
Mayor Ras Baraka, Newark, New Jersey
Mayor Michael Nutter, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Mayor Bill Peduto, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Mayor Charles Hales, Portland, Oregon
Mayor John Dickert, Racine, Wisconsin
Mayor Tom Butt, Richmond, California
Mayor Lovely Warren, Rochester, New York
Mayor Ralph Becker, Salt Lake City, Utah
Mayor Ed Lee, San Francisco, California
Mayor Gary McCarthy, Schenectady, New York
Mayor Ed Murray, Seattle, Washington
Mayor Francis Slay, St. Louis, Missouri
Mayor Marilyn Strickland, Tacoma, Washington
Mayor Mike Spano, Yonkers, New YorkThe following mayors have expressed their support and will sign on to the brief, pending final local approvals:
Mayor Karen Majewski, Hamtramck, Michigan
Mayor Virg Bernero, Lansing, Michigan
Mayor Tom Barrett, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Mayor Betsy Hodges, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Mayor Greg Stanton, Phoenix, Arizona
Beyonce threatened a company that came perilously close to using her name to hawk mugs … and guess what you can’t buy anymore?
She’s baaack, and it’s not good news for science literacy, farmers and food-minded Hawaiians.
I’m referring to Vandana Shiva, the Indian anti-GMO crusader who kicked off a five-day blitz through Hawaii with a talk-and-music fest at the Capitol Building on Wednesday.
It’s a grand tour, marked by private fund-raising pitches to wealthy locals and wannabees from the mainland who view the limited role of biotechnological research in modern agriculture as an anathema–Hawaii is a world center because of its favorable climate.
Campaigns like this tour aimed at shutting down nursery centers, most based in Maui, could send the seed giants fleeing to Puerto Rico or the Philippines, costing Hawaii hundreds of millions of dollars and hurting the cause for sustainability in the process.
Shiva’s tour caps off with a Sunday afternoon rally at the Seabury Theatre on Maui with headlined demands for what the prime organizer–Washington, DC-based Center for Food Safety (CFS)–calls “home rule.” While polls show a majority of Maui farmers and residents oppose the effort to shut down the seed nurseries and research labs, anyone but diehard opponents of modern agriculture will be personae non grata at this rally.
Shiva is reprising her 2013 tour, also led by CFS, which oversees scheduling of her $40,000-a-pop promotional speeches. A Brahmin who professes to stand with women and the poor, Shiva maintains her goal is “giving voice to those who want their agriculture free of poison and GMOs.”
On her arrival two years ago, Shiva was an exotic unknown–an “eco warrior goddess” and a “rock star in the global battle over genetically modified seeds,” in the words of journalist Bill Moyers. Here in Hawaii, she was treated as a foreign dignitary. No one dared criticize her.
Now, two years later, as more details of her philosophy and background have emerged, a darker picture has emerged. She leverages her claim as an expert at every stop. “I am scientist… a Quantum Physicist,” she claimed, until recently on her website and in many books, a claim repeated by journalists, even prominent. But she’s not. Her degree was in humanities–she’s a philosopher of science, but has no professional hard science background or writings.
To her followers? Details, Details. She is fiery and charismatic Beware of Big Ag and the health dangers of GMOs and pesticides. Take back Hawaii!
Veteran of thousands of anti-GMO speeches, Shiva has developed a polished script: with key talking points.
The Green Revolution? The introduction of modern agricultural techniques, particularly in the developing world beginning in the 1950s promoted high-yielding varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, modernization of management techniques, distribution of hybridized seeds and making available advanced nitrogen fertilizers and pesticides to farmers. It’s credited by the United Nations with saving more than one billion lives.
But Shiva believes the Green Revolution has been a sham. By 1991, she was publicly calling it “a failure,” that has led to diminishing productivity and kills farmers.
“Until the 1960s, India was successfully pursuing an agricultural development policy based on strengthening the ecological base of agriculture and the self-reliance of peasants,” Shiva has written, framing the past as an Eden-like wonderland of equality and agricultural fertility.
Facts: During the 1940s and 50s, India faced mass starvation and imported most of its grain–11 million tons in mid decade. Frail Indian children dying of malnutrition filled the pages of global magazines. 
Fifty years later India produces 250 million tons annually. The Green Revolution has increased world food production more than 300% since 1950, all on about the same amount of land. Certainly there have been some negative consequences from industrial agriculture, especially in its early years when scientists beginning to master the complex chemicals needed to jump start yields. But to call it a failure is demagogic.
What about Shiva’s claim that the introduction of GMOs in India in the early 2000s has spurred mass suicide by farmers? It’s one of her most popular applause lines, one that stirs the hearts of her dedicated followers.
“Suicides have intensified after the introduction of GMO Bt cotton [in India],” she has written again and again, a trope widely disseminated even by many mainstream and reputable sources, such as The Guardian, without fact checking, by anti-GMO sources, such as Mother Jones. “…[S]eed monopolies… the collection of super-profits …has created a context for debt, suicides and agrarian distress which is driving the farmers’ suicide epidemic in India.”
Foodie favorite Michael Pollan, who often recommends her anti-GMO factoids to his half-million Twitter followers, called the documentary Bitter Seeds, which featured Shiva promoting this notion, “a powerful documentary on farmer suicides and biotech seeds in India.”
Facts: Shiva’s claims are false. She alleges a link between farmer suicides and the adoption of Bt cotton in India when no causal link exists. The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) reviewed the government data, academic articles and media reports about Bt cotton and suicide in India in 2008 and 2010, concluding that farmer suicides predated the introduction of GMOs, reflect the broader trend in suicides in the general population and have in fact leveled off in the agricultural sector in recent years.
“[I]t is nonsense to attribute farmer suicides solely to Bt cotton,” wrote Dominic Glover, an agricultural socio-economist at Wageningen University and Research Center in the Netherlands in an article in Nature two years ago. “Although financial hardship is a driving factor in suicide among Indian farmers, there has been essentially no change in the suicide rate for farmers since the introduction of Bt cotton.”
These misrepresentations are just the tip of the Shiva fear-generating iceberg. For background, readers could check out this Forbes analysis and the award-winning profile, “Seeds of Doubt,” by Michael Specter for the über-liberal New Yorker published last summer, a scathing rebuttal from Shiva and a reply to Shiva by Specter’s editor, David Remnick.
Perhaps the most frightening consequences of this kind of misrepresentation is that it helps sow doubt about applications of agricultural biotechnology that almost everyone agrees is beneficial: tweaking crops to protect them against deadly diseases (the Hawaiian papaya) and insects (Bt crops) or adding nutritional elements, such as in cassava, an African staple, or rice, an Asian staple.
Almost 700,000 children under the age of 5 die every year from Vitamin A deficiency disease. Golden Rice, in development in the Philippines, has been genetically engineered with enhanced production and accumulation of β-carotene in the grains. It was developed independent of major corporations and patent free by Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg. Shiva calls Golden Rice a hoax, a myth and a false solution referring to it as “a blind approach to blindness prevention…..”
“The Golden Rice pushers are in fact worsening the crisis of hunger and malnutrition,” she writes on her website, Navdanya, though she provides no substantiation for such a claim.. “Promoters of Golden Rice are blind to diversity, and hence are promoters of blindness, both metaphorically and nutritionally.”
But the people who come to her events by and large are already persuaded by her anti-corporation, enviro-romantic view of the world. She holds the crowds in thrall The soaring rhetoric resonates with many in Hawaii who see themselves as idealists, Davis vs. Goliath.
In overstating her credentials and spreading an ideological agenda as if it is fact, Vandana Shiva asks the public to believe she is an expert in farming, chemicals, biotechnology, global politics and poverty. She has indeed evolved into a rock star– a major influencer and one of the central fundraisers for the anti-biotechnology cause. Vanda Shiva’s prescriptions for Hawaii and global food security deserve to be judged based upon the integrity of her arguments and the empirical evidence, not on the raw emotion that she can stir in a crowd.
More on biotechnology, genetics and science literacy at the Genetic Literacy Project
Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a Senior Fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California-Davis. Follow @JonEntine on Twitter.
ATLANTA, Jan 23 (Reuters) – One of two lawsuits involving the children of the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. has been dropped, possibly signaling a thaw in their tense relations as they continue to fight over the sale of his Bible and Nobel Peace Prize.
Bernice King said in a statement late Thursday that her father’s estate had voluntarily dropped its August 2013 lawsuit against the non-profit Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, which she heads.
King’s sons, Dexter King and Martin Luther King III, acting as majority board members of their father’s estate, had sought to revoke the center’s right to use King’s name and image unless Bernice King was removed as CEO.
According to the suit, the center had failed to protect documents and other artifacts from fire, water, mildew and theft.
Bernice King said the estate’s decision to drop the suit vindicated the King Center’s position on its licensing rights and offered a promising sign that the feud pitting the children against one another was on the road toward reconciliation.
“The dismissal is an important first step in rebuilding a long-lasting relationship between the two corporations,” she said, referring to the estate and the King Center.
Dexter King said in a statement that pulling the lawsuit was a show of good faith as the siblings were set to enter talks aimed at resolving their differences outside a courtroom.
“None of us want to see the legacy of my parents, or our dysfunction, out on public display,” he said.
Still pending is the suit between the estate and Bernice King over possession of the Bible that their father carried during the civil rights movement and his 1964 Nobel Prize.
In a 2-1 vote of the estate’s board last year, King’s sons voted to sell the items, while Bernice King opposed the sale, calling the items “sacred.”
The estate sued her, seeking return of the items, which are now being held by a court until the suit is resolved.
An Atlanta judge earlier this month heard arguments from each side in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial next month unless it is settled or dismissed.
Martin Luther King Jr. had no will when he was assassinated in 1968. According to court documents, his estate was inherited by his widow, Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006, and his four children, one of whom also has since died. (Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Susan Heavey)
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