Editors' Picks The Takeaway (The Takeaway)

The Paralympics are underway in London and yesterday, the USA beat Sweden 5-1 in the preliminary rounds of Goalball. Goalball, for blind and visually impaired athletes, is played three on three. Athletes try to throw the ball into the opponent's goal while defending their own. The sport was invented in 1946 for blind veterans returning from WWII. Jennifer Armbruster, a Paralympic athlete from Colorado Springs, is competing in London as part of the USA goalball team.

In the 1900s the average life expectancy in the western world was 47 years old. Today it's nearly 80 years old, and in the future, we're set to live even longer. David Ewing Duncan is a science journalist and the author of "When I’m 164." He asked over 30,000 people: "how long do you want to live?" There were three options: A) 80 years, the current average western life span. B) 120 years, close to the maximum anyone has lived, and C) 150 years.Sixty percent of those surveyed settled for 80, with 30 percent opting for 120.While it seems we don’t want to live much longer than we do now, advanced aging is looking more and more like a reality. With improved hygiene, nutrition and medical advances, the United Nations predicts that within the next century, it could be pretty normal to live to 100 years old.

This week the London Paralympic Games have brought increased attention to people with disabilities, built upon the athletes and the artistic community represented in the Cultural Olympiad celebrations.  Artistic expression is just one part of the larger narrative of the disability culture, in which the voices of the disabled are outlets of both personal expression, and a farther-reaching means of education. Sue Austin is an artist participating in the Unlimited Festival of the Cultural Olympiad. Sue has designed a self-propelled underwater wheelchair, and has captured on film her gentle underwater movement in the chair. Phyllis Boerner is the Community Relations Director of United Disability Services, and the director of United Disability Service’s arts magazine, Kaleidoscope.

The Takeaway has been meaning to do a story on procrastination for a while — they just haven't gotten around to it. But at Stanford, philosophy professor John Perry's new book, called "The Art of Procrastination," assures us that this is not unusual. And not only that, Perry says procrastinating isn't as bad as we think. He practices what he calls "structured procrastination." For example, he wrote his preliminary essay on the topic as a way of avoiding all of his other responsibilities.

As Humvees rolled into New Orleans yesterday and officials urged Gulf Coast residents to leave their homes, you couldn’t help an eerie sense of familiarity. The details are similar: Katrina hit the gulf coast exactly seven years ago today. The fears are familiar, as well: the fears of floods, looting, and the vulnerability of a large homeless population. John LaTier was not there for Katrina. The filmmaker and photographer came from Sacramento to film the chaos two weeks after the city went underwater and he never left.

The Paralympics begin in London this Wednesday, and a commercial titled "Meet the Superhumans" is causing a lot of buzz.The commercial doesn’t just show athletes cruising to victory. In a startling flashback scene, footage of a car flipping over is interspersed with a pregnant woman in a hospital ward.Yet the overall mood is one of triumph, fitting for a summer in which blade runner Oscar Pistorius become the first double leg amputee to run in the 400 meters race in the Olympics. The UK's Channel Four is the official Paralympics broadcaster and the creative force behind a 90-second commercial. Tom Tagholm is the writer and director of Meet The Superhumans.

Historians have made careers out of examining pieces of paper — letters, manuscripts, articles — to decipher just a little bit of history, to learn someone's story. But in an age of smartphones and digital file-sharing, why aren't we letting our family members' voices speak for themselves? Why don't we record more of their advice, their stories, their lives, with a camera? When Ben Heineman, Sr. passed away on August 5, that was one of the many thoughts going through his son's mind. Just a few weeks after his father's death, Ben Heineman Jr., a senior fellow at Harvard Law School, says not catching his father on tape is one of his only regrets — and says we should take advantage of the age we're living in.  That's exactly what Takeaway listener Gigi Gerben did. A teacher and mother in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Gerben recorded her father before he died unexpectedly last year. She stresses the importance of having the recording to cherish in her family. 

Americans are becoming more and more inked. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has now confirmed that 21 percent of Americans are sporting at least one tattoo. That’s up from only 16 percent in 2003. The reasons for the upward trend aren't exactly known, but it could signal a change in the way we view permanent body art, which is still taboo in many circles. Maybe your grandpa bears a reminder of his military service, or your mom's got a flower on her ankle as a holdover from her hippie days, or a friend is working on coloring in his sleeves. Betty Rose, a New York City tattoo artist, says tattoos have become a way to fit in rather than stand out. John Stanton, Washington D.C. bureau chief for Buzzfeed.com, has also commented on the ubiquity of body art in our nationals capital, writing about inked Senators and Representatives on the Hill.

When Run DMC released "My Adidas" in 1986, it might have been the biggest celebrity shoe endorsement since James Dean made Jack Purcells the official footwear of rebels without a cause.  But that was all before Michael. Since Air Jordans debuted in 1985, the sneaker industry has been dominated by basketball's biggest stars. But how have shoes risen to this level of prominence? And where does fashion intersect with sports, race, and class? Emily Chertoff of The Atlantic says it began with a simple narrative, sold by shoe companies to specific communities. Jamilah King, sports editor at Colorlines.com, has been examining her own relationship to footwear as a self-professed "sneakerhead." The Takeaway headed to The Cage, one of Manhattan's most famous basketball courts, to hear what its players and fans thought about LeBron's new $300 pairs of sneakers — and to see which kicks they were sporting themselves. Check out a slideshow of sneakers we saw at The Cage.

Late Thursday night, Lance Armstrong announced he will no longer fight charges of using performance enhancing drugs during his career brought by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. He maintains he is innocent, but is weary of the 10 years he's spent battling doping allegations. Armstrong won the Tour de France an unprecedented seven times, but the U.S.A.D.A. maintains he was using drugs and was one of the ringleaders of systematic doping on his Tour-winning teams. His decision, according to the World Anti-Doping Code, means he'll be stripped of his seven Tour titles, the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympics and all other titles, awards and money he won from August 1998 forward. "There comes a point in every man's life when he has to say, "Enough is enough." For me, that time is now," Armstrong's statement reads. "I’ve been dealing with claims that I cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I’ve been subjected to a two-year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart's unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today — finished with this nonsense." Nathaniel Vinton is an investigative sports reporter with The New York Daily News.

There's no real sound in space, but what if data could help us to predict what a dying star might sound like? After tracking a particular star for years, a team of astronomers at the University of Michigan noticed that as the star was shredded by a massive black hole, it emitted a huge flair of intense light that could be tracked. The light’s frequencies were in turn correlated with musical notes, allowing us on Earth to imagine a sound occurring nearly four billion lightyears away. Dr. Jon Miller is a professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan and part of the team that made this discovery.

Phyllis Diller’s stand up was a staple of nightclubs and television during the 1950s and early 1960s, a time when female comics were extremely rare. She passed away yesterday in her home in Los Angeles, at the age of 95. In adjective-packed obits, journalists described her as “sassy,” “outlandish,” and “tart-tongued.” Diller’s image certainly contrasted with other female television stars of her generation. Wearing lavish costumes of her own design, she belted out jokes punctuated by her own cackles. Emily Rems, the managing editor of Bust Magazine, remembers Diller.

Until recently, we thought of laughing, sneezing and hiccuping as ordinary human actions. But it turns out that these seemingly-mundane behaviors have a long evolutionary history. In fact, how we cough, laugh and hiccup says a lot about our psychology, and that of our ancestors.  Robert Provine is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. His new book is called "Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond."  Robert describes his work of "sidewalk neuroscience," or, as he writes, "a scientific approach to everyday behavior based on simple observations and demonstrations."

The shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin earlier this month drew national attention to America's peaceful Sikh community, and the violence that community has faced since the September 11 attacks. One of the most heartfelt tributes to the victims to emerge in the last few weeks comes from Zaki Syed, a Muslim-American rapper. Syed is a student mastering in Sociology at California State University, Sacramento, and has created a spoken word rap calling for tolerance in the wake of the massacre.

Banking scandals have dominated the headlines this summer. Earlier this summer, the Libor scandal rocked banks across the pond and throughout the United States. In July, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations accused HSBC of severe regulatory failures, including laundering money for Mexican drug lords and bypassing American sanctions against Iran. Finally, this week, the British bank Standard Chartered agreed to a settlement of $340 million for secretly helping the Iranian government launder $250 billion.  These scandals and more led Jim Rogers, American investor and Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interest, to tell The Takeaway, "We’ve had a long bull market, but that’s finished. Finance is now going to be a terrible place to be." That may be good news for Michael Sandel, professor of political philosophy at Harvard University and author of "What Money Can't Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets." Sandel argues that market-driven thinking has corrupted our moral code — not just on Wall Street, but in our everyday lives. 

As President Obama campaigns for reelection, as he delivers speech after speech in swing states from Ohio to Florida, there's one word that’s completely off-limits. So what is that word-which-must-not be named? It's "stimulus." The stimulus, formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in 2009. The Act is so hated, and, according to Michael Grunwald, so poorly understood by the American public, that, Grunwald says, "A year after Obama signed the bill, the percentage of the public that believed it had created jobs was lower than the percentage that believed Elvis was alive." In sum, the stimulus has become a political third rail in Obama’s reelection campaign.  Michael Grunwald is a senior national correspondent for Time Magazine and the author of "The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era." He explains why he believes the stimulus is "President Obama’s most ambitious and least understood piece of legislation."

For the first time in this country, as many as 1.7 million young undocumented immigrants will be eligible to apply for deferred action status under an ambitious immigration initiative by President Obama that goes into effect today. It will allow young undocumented people to work and live freely in the United States without fear of being deported. The program will provide two-year renewable work permits and deportation deferrals to illegal immigrants brought to this country as children. In order to apply, individuals must be 31 or younger and have been in this country since they were 16. They also must be in school, have graduated from high school, or have been honorably discharged from the military. While the deferred status is only temporary, it also offers opportunities to obtain Social Security numbers, apply for driver’s licenses, and request financial aid for college — luxuries that many American citizens take for granted. Moreover, it’s a chance for young immigrants to step out of the shadow of their undocumented status. Angy Rivera and Yohan Garcia are both undocumented and will be joining hundreds of thousands of others like them, to begin the application process today.

Facebook has forever changed our real-world interactions. Most of us have far more friends on Facebook than we do in real life, but so often, its through Facebook that we learn the latest about our peers: new partners, new babies, new jobs.  Facebook keeps us connected, but what happens with that connectivity comes at the expense of our privacy? At what point do these virtual friendships start to replace — or hamper — our real friendships? That's Katherine Losse's story, but Katherine wasn't just any Facebook account-holder — she was the company's 51st employee, and Mark Zuckerberg's ghost writer. But by 2010, she decided to jump out of the social media world and get back into the real world. Katherine quit Facebook, leaving that network of 900 million people for a small town of 2,000 people where she decided to make friends the old fashioned way: in person.  Katherine Losse now lives in Marfa, Texas. She writes about her experience at Facebook in her new book, "The Boy Kings."

You've probably heard the American tune, "This Land is Your Land." What you probably haven't heard is "When the World's on Fire," the song whose melody Woody Guthrie stole to write his patriotic ode.  Now think about the last time you did something creative. Did you have help? If the answer is no…the answer is still yes. That’s according to Kirby Ferguson, a filmmaker and creator of the four-part video series, “Everything is a Remix.” In the series, Ferguson takes viewers through a long history of artistic borrowing in film, from scenes ripped off by Star Wars to countless homages paid by Quentin Tarantino in the Kill Bill series. He's also bent on outing melody thieves like Led Zeppelin, who shamelessly took hooks and lyrics from their blues predecessors. And it’s not just in music and movies that artists steal from other artists. It’s already happened in design during the war of smartphones. What did Apple steal from Samsung and what did Samsung steal from Apple? If we’re ever going to stop clogging up our legal pipes with endless patent lawsuits, Ferguson says we have to accept the ugly truth that creativity is stealing. 

Robots have long been part of the American imagination. But as reporter Rachel Emma Silverman recently discovered, robots may soon be part of the American reality… in the workplace.  Rachel writes for the New York-based Wall Street Journal, but she lives in Austin, Texas. Rachel reports on developments in the American workplace, and recently she decided to try a new development herself. For a few weeks this summer, Rachel telecommuted to her New York offices as a robot, QB-82. "During my robot days, I interacted with co-workers I'd never met before, as well as others I hadn't talked with in years; each of them was compelled to greet me as I cruised down the hall," Rachel writes. But, of course, QB-82 also had its downside: "I also nearly careened into glass walls, got stuck in an elevator, could barely hear the discussions in story meetings and got little other writing or interview work done while botting into the newsroom," she explains.  

Her 1962 book, "Sex and the Single Girl" was an American revelation: not only did unmarried women have sex, but they liked it, too. And as the editor of Cosmopolitan magazine from 1965-1997, she laid the blueprint of the most successful women’s magazine in the world. Helen Gurley Brown died yesterday in New York, aged 90. Jennifer Scanlon, professor of the humanities in gender and women’s studies at Bowdoin College and author of "Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown." Edith Zimmerman is editor of The Hairpin and wrote the recent New York Times Magazine feature: “99 Ways To Be Naughty in Kazakhstan: How Cosmo Conquered the World.”

There is something slightly different about London's Olympic medal ceremonies: the music. This year, the London Philharmonic recorded all 205 of the world's national anthems. Composer Philip Sheppard and sound engineer Jake Jackson were in charge of the effort.  The Takeaway caught up with them recently, and they told us about some of the project's bigger challenges, as well as the complications involved in so many national anthems. 

On August 10, 1937, the Electro String Corporation was awarded the first-ever electric guitar patent. Invented by G.D. Beauchamp, the instrument was known as the Rickenbacker Frying Pan.The new sound of the electric guitar was a dramatic shift from the strum of the acoustic guitars that had been played for centuries. For the first time the guitar could hold its own in a band and it revolutionized the sound of popular music for decades to follow.  Rudy Pensa is a guitar expert and the owner of Rudy’s Music in Manhattan. He discusses the history of the electric guitar, and its evolution into modern culture. A 63-year-old originally from Argentina, Pensa started playing the guitar when he was nine or ten years old.  "In New York City, John D'Angelico [was] making violins and cellos," he says. "He realized that jazz was starting to get big, and developed this amazing jazz guitar." From there, the electric guitar began to move from the back of the stage to the front.  By the 1970s, it had rocketed to the forefront of the rapidly growing hard rock scene. Legendary guitarist Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin was one of the first to perform solos, bending the strings as had never been done before. Pensa hesitates to name him the outright greatest, as rock star Jimi Hendrix was another pioneer of the electric guitar. Gibson.com's list of the top 50 guitarists of all time has Hendrix at the top spot, but the guitar expert is adamant in sharing the top honor between the two masters.  "I will never say which one is better. I'll put two crowns on each head, the two together," Pensa says. "Hendrix was playing the [Fender] Stratocaster, and Jimmy Page was playing the [Gibson] Les Paul standard at the time." 

NASA reached a historical milestone on Monday, successfully landing the rover Curiosity on the face of Mars. Within hours, Curiosity was sending back pictures of the red planet, and making waves across the internet. But the internet wasn’t just looking at pictures of Mars. Many had their eyes on NASA scientist Bobak Ferdowsi, the flight director of the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Mission at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California. He’s also young, good-looking, and has a mohawk speckled with bleached blonde stars — not the typical look for a rocket scientist. From the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California, overnight sensation Bobak Ferdowsi talks about the implications of the Curiosity landing and his newfound fame. "It's really flattering, and it's cool that in some way I represent or have let people see that NASA can have all sorts of faces and all sorts of looks," he says. In the days that followed the successful landing, Ferdowsi has been besieged by marriage proposals via Twitter. Fortunately, his girlfriend has taken such requests with good humor.  The mohawk is the latest in a series of haircuts for Ferdowsi, who changes it up every time a big mission comes up on his team's schedule. "This time, [the mohawk] was voted on by my team," he says. Other options included a reverse mohawk, and one write-in ballot requested that Federowsi shave in a reproduction of Gale Crater, Curiosity's landing site on Mars. "I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out."  Despite the waves of attention that the young scientist is generating across the Internet, he says that the momentous occasion belongs to the entire team at NASA. "I think people are just surprised that there's a guy like me on this project," he says. "We have all sorts of people on this project, [but] I'm just one of them, and it's amazing to me still that I get to be a part of something so cool."  The team has been performing checkups on Curiosity's equipment, testing the rover's cameras and communication devices. So far, everything has been functioning properly, and the rover will soon be ready to collect and analyze samples of the Martian landscape.  After a month of testing, Ferdowsi says, "We'll start driving in earnest." The rover's drivers will don 3D glasses to steer Curiosity around the Martian landscape in search of samples.  As the excitement over the landing dies down, the fresh new face of NASA will be coming in at around 10 a.m. every day — on Mars time — to oversee operations. Ferdowsi  recalls how much time and effort went into the $2.6 billion operation, and says how much both the successful landing and the public reaction meant to the team members. "It's a really exciting mission for all of us, and I think the whole public was excited and engaged to see that landing, and I hope it's just the first of many to come," he says.  

Amardeep Kaleka's father was killed in the horrific shooting at the Wisconsin Sikh temple on Sunday that left seven people dead, including the gunman. His father, Satwant Singh Kaleka, was the temple president. When Wade Michael Page arrived, gun in hand, Satwant Kaleka found the only weapon he could, a butter knife, and challenged the attacker. He sustained gunshot wounds to his hip or upper leg, yet continued to defend his community until his death, buying others time to hide themselves.  FBI agents embraced his son, telling him, "Your dad's a hero." The man who had put up an American flag in his front yard, and had "lived the American Dream," his son says, died to save lives.  Amardeep continues the exploration of what the massacre means for the community of Sikhs in the United States. "I think personally I stand at a crossroads," Kaleka says. "I think the nation stands at a crossroads as well, and we continuously have these struggles or challenges come up in our society." Kaleka has identified a "unique similarity" between the shooter, Wade Michael Page, and his father. Both men had a connection with music, although it manifested itself antithetically. "In the Sikh tradition, everything we do is based on music and prayer, and that connection with the shooter['s] hate-filled music was there. I believe there was a self-brainwashing of sorts."  Both the shooter and Satwant Kaleka were members of tightly-knit, insular communities. Kaleka describes his father as "very outgoing", welcoming anyone who wandered into the Sikh temple. "In our temples we have four doors that are open to any sort of person," he says. "He was the first person to walk people through if they showed up and they were of a foreign descent, and talked to them about our traditions and make sure that he was [reaching out]."  "That, at the end of the day, is the big difference between the two lives."  Kaleka also touched on the theme of assimilation, and how he has handled his dual roles as a Sikh and as a "cheesehead," a traditional nickname for residents of his native Wisconsin. He chose from a young age not to wear his hair long or grow out his beard. For him, it is a personal choice, and while the Sikh religion suggests and encourages its members to subscribe to the traditions, the final decision is up to the individual. "In our culture, some of the first words uttered in our holy book are, 'The truth that you find to match your own god-consciousness, the little voice inside of you, that truth is the one you follow versus the external truth that people tell you,'" Kaleka says.  

When Matthew Parker found out his brother was murdered there was nothing he wanted more than revenge, and that meant the death penalty for the man responsible. The murderer, however, received a sentence of life in prison. For years, Matthew Parker dreamt about avenging his brother’s death, until he was placed in the same prison as his brother’s murderer putting him face to face with the opportunity for revenge. The possibility of him being the person who exacted revenge on the man responsible for his brothers death scared him, and this was an epiphany for Parker. No longer was he a supporter of the death penalty, no longer did he dream of the same murderous revenge that consumed him for years after his brothers death. Matthew Parker is an author and artist whose latest book is a graphic novel called "Larceny in My Blood."

With the landing of the Mars Curiosity rover on Monday, the United States is taking seriously the possibility of extraterrestrial life and human expansion into outer space. Luckily, should that day come, we won’t be leaving too much up to chance.    In fact, there is already a whole body of legal studies dedicated to protecting our interests in space. It's a field which in recent years has been growing both here and abroad. They’re called 'space lawyers' and they litigate everything from the liabilities of so-called 'space tourists,' to the legal framework for possible extraterrestrial encounter, to sovereignty rights for lunar mining. Joanne Irene Gabrynowicz is director of the National Center for Remote Sensing, Air, and Space Law, at the University of Mississippi.

Libor, HSBC, Standard Chartered: Banking scandals have been a mainstay of news headlines for the last few months, damaging the public's perception of high finance. Politicians still eschew specific action against the banking culture that brought on the crisis, and Washington continues to deepen the national debt.  Jim Rogers, an American investor and chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interest, saw this in 2002. And in 2008. And he says the cyclical pattern of economic downturns will almost definitely produce one in the next year or two. And with the debt so high and rising, this one is sure to be far worse. As a solution, Rogers believes that investors should turn to hard goods and commodities in place of stocks.  "Every few decades throughout history, we've had periods when the financial types were the masters of the universe, followed by decline, and then when the drawers of water and the hewers of wood, the people who produce goods, were the masters of the universe," Rogers says.  The recent recession on Wall Street is a sign for Rogers that the economy is turning away from shares and mutual funds, and towards those tangible goods. "The stock market has done nothing since 1999," he says. A reported 54% of Americans held stocks in 2011, which is the lowest since Gallup began recording individual stockholders in 1999.  "We have a huge shortage of farmers developing," Rogers says. "The huge fortunes are going to be made by the producers of real goods, and that's where young people should go, and that's where investors should go." For those of us without green thumbs, the investor suggests going into the production of goods and services that support farmers — like selling farm equipment, or opening a chain of restaurants in the Midwest.    The investor himself has done well in recent weeks due to the rising price of corn brought on by the recent drought that has had a chokehold on the American Midwest for much of the summer. His index, the Rogers International Commodities Index for Agriculture, has risen by 18 percent.    "The place to have been and still is in in real assets," Rogers says. "Commodities [have] done 500 percent better than stocks." He lists materials like rubber, zinc, steel, and copper as the safe bet for investors due to their frequent use. On a larger scale, the investor is particularly concerned about the national debt. He recalls the United Kingdom going from the richest nation in the world in 1918 to being bailed out by the International Monetary Fund in the mid-1970s.  "The United States is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world," Rogers says. "No nation in history that's gotten itself into this kind of situation has woken up one morning and said, 'Oh well, that's behind us now, let's move on.' It leads to problems, and unfortunately, most people don't seem to understand [that]." 

Sunday’s shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, is not the first act of violence perpetrated against the Sikh community in recent years. In the wake of September 11, Sikh communities have suffered increased violent incidents in addition to countless incidents of general discrimination. While the exact motives of Sunday's shooter is still unknown, hatred towards Sikhs has previously been caused by misinformation over the Sikh identity, religious beliefs, and greater role in terrorism. Livleen Singh, founder of the Sikh Youth Federation of North America, came to the United States when he was six-years-old. Kavitoj Singh, a student, is his son. They discuss the Oak Creek shooting from their point of view as American Sikhs, and what their experience has been like in post-September 11 America.  "One of the fundamental concepts of our religion is that we accept other faiths," Livleen Singh says. "That is a very key aspect of whatever we teach, because the reality is, we're not going to teach our children [to say that] 'Hey, [the Muslims] are right around the corner."  "What we want people to understand is that an act by an individual does not necessarily portray an entire community." Livleen expresses this open view when it comes to the problem of assimilation. Immigrant communities are often caught between maintaining tradition and trying to fit in American society, but he believes that both are possible.  "We look to take the best of both worlds," Livleen says. "For example, we will absorb what is good in this culture, [and] we absorb what is good from the Sikh Indian culture." Kavitoj echoes his father's sentiment, and says that he has a "pure motivation" to educate others about Sikhism. "[I want to] educate others about our religion, and about the fact that you can't judge an entire community based on an individual's actions or a small group," he says. "That's where a certain level of maturity and wisdom comes in, and then you have to really look at it from all angles and think, 'Am I acting impulsively or am I acting with proper knowledge and proper justification?'"  Livleen plans to discuss the Oak Creek shootings at the camp that he runs for Sikh children. "It is very critical, and we are going to be discussing it," he says. "It is something that we're going to talk about. It's something we're going to address in terms of how they should be responding when they go back to school in August and September, and we'll help them with it."

According to Alasdair Blackwell, everyone should be bilingual. He's the director and co-founder of Decoded, a company that offers workshops that teach people to code in one day. He proposes that computer coding be a mainstay on elementary school curricula from now on, as computers become a more integral part of our lives and as our relationship with them grows deeper. Professional programming is difficult, Blackwell says, but learning the basics can be a huge asset to children who want to make the web work for them, instead of standing by as a passive user. Decoded is beginning to host pop-up workshops across the world, spreading the gospel of code to any willing participants. 

Every ten years, the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine polls nearly one thousand international film critics to find out what they consider the greatest movie of all time. For the past 50 years, the answer has always been the same: "Citizen Kane.” But this week, everything changed. Instead of “Citizen Kane,” the critics chose Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo." This means that, for the next ten years, “Vertigo” will be known as the greatest movie of all time. And “Citizen Kane” will be number two. Rafer Guzman is just fine with this decision. In fact, he likes it quite a bit. But Kristen Meinzer thinks mistakes were made. Rafer and Kristen make up The Takeaway's Movie Date team. In addition to hosting the podcast, Rafer is film critic for Newsday and Kristen is culture producer for The Takeaway.  [View the story "What Modern Films Should Be on BFI's 50 Top Films List?" on Storify]

Throughout the summer, The Takeaway has covered parenting and the notion of “having it all” from a number of approaches — from women, from men, and from those who think having it all is the wrong thing to shoot for. How do children fit into this equation? How do they feel about parents who want everything — not just for themselves, but for their kids? Do parental high expectations get kids excited for a future of academic and personal achievement, or lead to other issues? Madeline Levine is a psychologist and the author of “Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success” and “The Price of Privilege: How Parental Pressure and Material Advantage Are Creating a Generation of Disconnected and Unhappy Kids.”

When it comes to the Olympics, there are some words we all know — namely gold, silver, and bronze. But the vocabulary of the Olympics goes far beyond the winning medals. For example: Can you define the word “fletching”? Do you know what the branches are called in the ancient Olympians’ crowns? And for that matter, did you even know what dressage was before Anne Romney’s horse began competing in it? Paul JJ Payack is the president of The Global Language Monitor walks us through some of the language and terminology that visits the world every four years. loadSurvey( "quiz-how-well-do-you-know-language-olympics", "survey_quiz-how-well-do-you-know-language-olympics");

'Having it all.' It's the phrase of a generation who fought for equal rights in the workplace. Earning an income, raising a family, and maintaining a social life became the ultimate standard of balanced success in the modern era. But who's to say when you have it all? What standard are we measuring against? And who says there's an ideal life, anyway? In June, Anne-Marie Slaughter spoke to The Takeaway about her piece in The Atlantic called "Why Women Still Can't Have It All." Within a week, it had garnered over a million views online, and is now the most-read piece in the magazine's history. But Marie Myung-Ok Lee thinks we're missing the point. In a world that throws so many curveballs, uniquely challenging each of us, why are we comparing our lives to anyone else's? Her family history, her son who has a variety of medical problems, her career, and her observations on modern culture make her wonder who, exactly, ever promised us 'it all.' "The way society works, we have to have a judgment with [anything]," Lee says.  Lee sees how people could look at her experience as a mother of an autistic child with severe behavioral problems and wonder how she could ever cope. For her, however, her experience is just that — hers and hers alone. From her perspective, she has everything that she needs in life. "I definitely have enough, and I'm grateful," Lee says. "I have more than enough."  "America is founded on this self-help, 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' [mentality]," Lee says. "You can always improve yourself, you can always improve your life." Lee thinks that people are pulled along by societal demands and expectations to be more successful in every aspect of life.  "It's the inwardness that we're losing," Lee says. "Instead of taking a moment to sit in your garden or do whatever you want to do, it's sort of like, 'Oh, I could go on Twitter, or there's something [else I could do]. [People ask themselves], 'What can I worry about next? What's missing for me? What am I missing out on?'"

Twenty-seven hospitals in New York City have signed on to participate in the Department of Health’s new initiative Latch on NYC, a program that encourages breastfeeding for new mothers by limiting access to formula. Ninety percent of mothers begin by breastfeeding, but two-thirds incorporate formula to some degree after two months.  The program, which will roll into effect September 3, will also require that infants not be supplemented with formula unless it’s indicated on their medical records. But not every mother is on board with the new initiative.  Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is the author of a new article in The Atlantic entitled "A Woman’s Right to Choose (Not to Breastfeed)." She criticizes the policy as both an infringement on personal rights and an invasion of mothers' privacy.  Under the new initiative, participating hospitals will be removed from maternity wards to encourage women to breastfeed. Breast milk offers numerous nutritional benefits, and the program is designed to educate mothers and families about those benefits. In Lemmon's opinion, however, 'Latch on NYC' is pursuing the right goal in the wrong way. "Education is terrific; giving parents choices is terrific, but I think dictating choices and shaming new parents isn't helpful, and I don't think it actually achieves the end goal," Lemmon says. Having formula locked away, and requiring that parents give an explanation as to why they want to choose formula over breast milk, seems counterintuitive to Lemmon.  "I do think that offering formula as an option in the hospital, and easing parents into this transition of becoming parents without judging them and without stigmatizing them, but continuing to educate them is entirely different than making them feel guilty or shamed."  "I think the key to helping more moms to breastfeed is helping and encouraging, and not judging them," Lemmon says. She fears that the initiative will add guilt, shame, and discomfort to new parents who make the decision to feed their newborns with formula for whatever private reason.

As cities like San Francisco, Boston, and the already crowded New York, are considering lowering the minimum apartment size, we ask: How small is too small. And what are the challenges of tiny living? Erin Boyle shares a 240 square foot apartment with her fiancé in Brooklyn. Her blog is a guide to survival in a small-scale place.   We asked you to share your house or apartment size and where you live. Here's a map of your responses.   

Spaciousness could become a thing of the past in urban areas as we continue to contract ourselves into smaller and smaller spaces. In September, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will vote on a proposal to reduce the minimum apartment size to 150 square feet. In Boston, there are plans to reduce minimum unit size from 450 to 350 square feet, and in New York, Mayor Bloomberg has launched a contest to design compact apartments to accommodate an expected influx of new residents. It all begs the question: Are dreams of mansions resigned to claustrophobia?   Felice Cohen became a YouTube sensation in 2010 for a video showing how she managed to squeeze into a 90-square-foot apartment in Manhattan. She was evicted this past winter after her landlord found out that she was living there even though she was not on the lease. "I realized that you don't need so much stuff," Cohen says. "So many of us have so much stuff that we don't even use or wear, and I think at some point you realize that you're happier with less stuff."  Jay Shafer is the designer and founder of Tumbleweed Tiny House company. He’s lived in a 100-square foot house for a decade. "Everything seemed to be about the McMansion, at least outside of the city, and a lot of people are thinking about living with what they need rather than with a lot of extra space that they're not using," he says. Shafer says that one of the benefits of living with just the bare necessities means that he has "outsourced" his life — without a large living space to fall back upon, he goes out to eat frequently, and spends more time out in public.  "We're always out," Cohen says. "Since my video came out, I've had emails from people all over the world asking where they can find these small units." We asked you to share your house or apartment size and where you live. Here's a map of your responses.   

London's Olympic Games are in full swing, the hard-won result of years spent on the Games' planning and execution. After the spectacle produced at the Beijing Games in 2008, the team behind the London Games faced a challenge, as Danny Boyle, the film director behind London's Opening Ceremonies, explained to NBC News: "You can’t compare [these Olympics], in an obvious way, to Beijing," he said. "You have to try and think differently about it — and being part of the spirit of it is to be optimistic, as well." That spirit also extended to the design of the Olympic Stadium, and the surrounding Village. As they planned for the Olympics in the midst of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, the architects behind London's Stadium did not have Beijing's budget. They couldn't compete with the Beijing Bird's Nest, built for the 2008 Games — and, because the Chinese stadium is hardly used these days, they didn't want to try. London’s Olympic Committee wanted a new kind of facility, an arena that could be completely transformed after the Games. And that was the challenge facing architect Rod Sheard, when his firm, Populous, was commissioned to design the Olympic Stadium.  "In recent Olympics, the problem has been not so much that the buildings have been transitory, but in actual fact the exact opposite," Sheard says. "They've been big monoliths which cities have felt necessary to build, and then [the] Olympics leaves town and the buildings are left with nothing to do." He says that Sebastien Coe, the Olympic chairman, wanted the buildings to be more temporary.  The challenge of building a temporary structure is daunting, as the greatest test for a building is that of time. Permanence is an architect's primary goal, and so Sheard and his team had to readjust their mindset.  "We started to see the temporary nature of the building as an asset," Sheard says. "Not something to be worried about as a hindrance, but something as an opportunity where we could use different materials and different colors and different approaches to design than we would ever do if it was going to be a fixed, permanent building that would never change."  Another challenge for the architects was to remember that the focus was not supposed to be on the building itself, but on the events that would transpire within it. "The building is, in many ways, a neutral backdrop to [Olympic] events, because the amount of work we've put in compared to the athletes dedicating the first 25 years of their life just to be the best of the world, pales in insignificance in many ways," the architect says.  The future of the building is in question, but what is certain is the stadium's versatility. Sheard's team designed it to be a modular construction, so that entire pieces can be lifted away without affecting other components. "The whole environmental sustainability agenda is incredibly important for these buildings," Sheard says. Forty percent of the 80,000-seat venue's concrete is recycled aggregate, and the stadium is one of the lightest of its size. "If you build less, you've got a smaller carbon footprint," the architect says. Built with just over 10,000 tons of steel, the stadium is far lighter than similarly sized buildings, which normally require five to ten times as much. 

Few embraced their place in American culture with such passion and relish. Gore Vidal was the ultimate man of letters who once said: "There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise." Born on October 3, 1925 in West Point, New York, Vidal's distinguished writing career began when he wrote his first novel at the age of 19. Over the course of his career, he would write over 25 novels, along with various works of nonfiction, essays, and screenplays as a contract writer for MGM Studios. Vidal helped doctor the script of the 1959 epic Ben-Hur. His third novel, The City and the Pillar, was one of the very first American novels to feature a well-adjusted gay protagonist. Published in 1948, the book generated a huge backlash of controversy for its frank and open portrayal of homosexuality.  John Nichols is a writer for The Nation and was a friend of Vidal's. Vidal, he recalls, was not afraid to argue, but valued his friends. "If he disagreed with you, you knew it immediately," Nichols says.  "[However], the fact is, he was a wonderful friend — very attentive, very caring, extremely interested," Nichols says. "He had what I will describe as the best [characteristic] in a friend — a staggering memory. When you would get together, sometimes having not seen each other for months, he would remember exactly where the conversation had broke off."  Very often, those conversations would take the form of political debates. Vidal was outspoken in his opinions, and was one of President George W. Bush's most vocal critics. "He loved politics. He adored the debate, he adored the actual game of politics," Nichols says. "He liked to imagine that he could have sat with Jefferson and Madison and the other Founders, and told them how to get it right." Vidal's constant criticism of elected officials and American democracy in general was a product of his desire to see that democracy improve. He was fascinated by what Nichols calls "explosions of democracy," like impeachment, and once called for a second Constitutional Convention to correct the document. "The funny thing is that if you know about the Founders, you would know that they would have been right with him," Nichols says.  Vidal's passion for history and politics manifested itself in his novels. One of his most acclaimed, Julian, is written from the perspective of the eponymous fourth-century Roman emperor who challenges the spread of Christianity.  "The most remarkable thing about Gore is that he spoke in perfectly written pages," Nichols says. "Those recordings of him are just one example of what I think is going to be an incredibly rich legacy."  Vidal, who died yesterday from complications with pneumonia, was 86 years old. 

Angy Rivera came to the United States when she was three years old. Her mother had grown up in poverty in Colombia, and she worried that would be Angy’s fate as well. So she brought her daughter to America as an undocumented immigrant. Angy's 21 now and writes the first and only undocumented immigrant advice column "Ask Angy" for the New York State Youth Leadership Council. She answers questions about driving, applying to college, finding work, and traveling without papers or ID. She also responds to questions about “coming out” as undocumented, and about love, race, and gender.  "It's open to anything," Rivera says. "Most of the questions that I've gotten have been about coming out. I've gotten questions on how to apply to college, how to drive [without] a license, going to school, [and] telling your partner, your friends, or your counselor about your status. It all comes down to coming out, most of the time."  While she was initially afraid that nobody would come asking, Rivera says that the impact of the website has been extremely positive for undocumented immigrants as a whole. Many of her readers ask about what to do once they graduate from high school, a significant crossroads for any student, but with the added pressure of not being able to legally apply for jobs or colleges.  "It's great to see how it has grown and how it has been able to connect so many people and show so much support," Rivera says. "I'm really excited that it has built that sense of community." One of the most difficult parts of coming out as undocumented is the reaction of significant others.  One of the most challenging questions she has faced came from an undocumented woman who wanted to start a family in the United States. Rivera preached caution above all else. "I don't really feel comfortable telling someone what to do, but I try to highlight the options that are out there [so that] this person can make the decision that they feel is best for them, for their family, [or] for their community."  "I know that doing this is going to bring about a lot of tough questions, so I try to do research, [and I try] to ask other people who may know so I don't have to just do this on my own, or give advice that might not be right." 

Few things in America are mandatory. It was once mandatory for young men to sign up for the draft, but there's no longer a draft in effect. Young Americans are required to get at least some level of schooling and in just a few years, health insurance will become mandatory, too. But there's something that's noticeably absent from the list of requirements for Americans: voting.  It's not a secret that voter turnout in America is low, hovering around 50 percent. But Norman Ornstein is trying to change that. He's a columnist for Roll Call and wrote the article “The U.S. should require all citizens to vote” for the Atlantic’s “America the Fixable” series.  What Orstein proposes is that attendance at the polls on voting day be mandatory, a policy that Australia uses. Citizens would not have to cast a vote, but they would be required (on penalty of a fine that would be easily excused) to head down to their local middle school, post office, or community center on election day.  "This is not something where men and women in uniform come to your house and haul you off to the 'pokey' if you don't vote, Orstein says. "It's quite a bit less onerous for people, but it works."  One of the most significant barriers to instituting some sort of penalty or incentive for voting is the argument that voting is a civic right, not a civic duty, and therefore should not be made compulsory.  In order to get around this, Ornstein brings the idea of a positive incentive to the table. Instead of charging non-voters with a fine or community service, he would like to see people's voting stubs turned into lottery tickets. "My guess is if we do that, overnight we increase our turnout by 25-30 percent," Ornstein says. One of the most appealing benefits of compulsory or incentivized voting is not simply high turnout numbers, but a critical game changer in the way that politics are conducted. Ornstein says that if politicians know that their bases will be mobilized and ready, they will not feel pressured to push divisive issues, such as gay, gun, and abortion rights. Instead of "firing up the base" with demagoguing, they'll be compelled to dial down their rhetoric and address broader concerns in order to attract moderate voters.  "In Australia, what you find is, as politicians from all sides and all stripes will tell you, if you know that your base is going to be there and their base is going to be there, your incentive is to focus on the voters in the middle who might be persuadable," Ornstein says. "There, you don't use vitriolic rhetoric, because if you scare them, you might turn them off. There, you don't turn to wedge issues, which aren't going to help you very much. You focus on the big things — the economy, jobs, education, climate."  "It alters the context of the campaign, and it alters the context of politicians when they serve in office," Orstein says. "That's what I'm aiming for, not just getting people to turn out because we like high turnouts." 

For the next two weeks, over 10,000 athletes from around the world will compete in 302 events in 26 sports. From synchronized swimming, to taekwondo, to weightlifting, each competitor will strive to exemplify the Olympic motto: "Faster, Stronger, Higher."  The Games were not always restricted to physical competitions, however. As Ashley Fetters details in her article for The Atlantic, Olympic medals used to be awarded for achievements in the arts. In 1936, the hosting Germans won five of nine gold medals for their paintings and sculptures.  As times change and new sports develop, the lineup of Olympic competitions is constantly seeing events come and go. Tug-of-war, which had a place in the Games from 1900 to 1920, is just one example.  "Probably, what contributed to it being booted from the Olympic program is just how dangerous it is," Fetters says. Hands and arms can be torn off in the schoolyard favorite. Mixed martial arts, which has enjoyed growing popularity in the United States, is not likely to become part of the Olympics anytime soon for the same reason.  In her research, one of the stranger events that Fetters found was solo synchronized swimming, an event that lasted from 1984 to 1992. "That's kind of the go-to weird sport," she says. Other past events include motor boating, cricket, rope climbing, and even horse long jumping in 1900. The world record was set in Paris by a horse named Extra Dry, who leapt 20 feet and a quarter of an inch. More mainstream sports like rugby, golf, and lacrosse all enjoyed time as Olympic competitions. Whether or not sports stay is up to the governing body, the International Olympic Committee.  "It's actually not a terrifically mysterious process," Fetters says. "Seven years in advance, the Olympic committee gets together, takes the slate from the [previous] Olympics, and votes on every event individually. Whichever sports receive a majority vote stay on the program."