24 year old Chicagoan. Sociology Major. Likes to think of herself of as a global citizen. ENFP. Terrible procrastinator. Remains always and forever a optimistic. Bit of a Anglophile. Unashamed bleeding heart liberal. Pottermore sorted Gryffindor. Goes to museums on free days. Supports FC Barcelona, Liverpool FC, and Borussia Dortmund. Has faith in love & music. Weaknesses may include, breakfast food and handsome brunette bearded men.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Dortmund ist ein fantastischer Verein, den ich immer verehren werde. Für meine Zukunft wünsche ich mir jetzt aber eine neue Herausforderung.
Robert Lewandowski (via lmb15)
Byeee.
(via right-right-left)
Ich finde, der BVB bietet jedes Jahr neue Herausforderungen. Welche Herausforderung gibt’s denn bei den Bayern? Außer das Gekloppe um die Positionen.
(via fuckyeahkevingrosskreutz)
Wer hat die Haare am schönsten? Wer macht sich als Deko am besten? Wer sitzt wo auf der Bank? Ich glaube, da gibts so einiges.
(via bambule-randale)
thank you, Eric Abidal
(Source: kolbermoor)
This makes me cry again. There’s nothing to forgive you for. All of you did an awesome job this champions league season. Thank you for all the great moments we had because of you this year!
We don’t blame you at all ;_____; There’s nothing to forgive!
There’s absolutely nothing to forgive!
Rip Ray Manzarek, Feb 12, 1939- May 20, 2013 | Legends never die “I thought we were gonna open up the world of poetry and music to all kinds of things, and yet, I can’t really think of anyone who’s done anything like it since.”
Mats ist umgeknickt und sein Knöchel ist leicht dick geworden. Das bedeutet nichts Gutes. Es wird eng bis Samstag. Er [Dr. Markus Braun] hat gesagt, dass es auf jeden Fall eine Chance für Mats gibt. Aber Aufnahmen sind noch nicht gemacht
Jürgen Klopp (via fuckyeahhummels15)
(Source: derwesten.de)
Carra’s final LFC press call
After dragging 46 bodies from the streets near his hometown on the Syrian coast, Omar lost count. For four days, he said, he could not eat, remembering the burned body of a baby just a few months old; a fetus ripped from a woman’s belly; a friend lying dead, his dog still standing guard.
Omar survived what residents, antigovernment activists and human rights monitors are calling one of the darkest recent episodes in the Syrian war, a massacre in government-held Tartus Province that has inflamed sectarian divisions, revealed new depths of depravity and made the prospect of stitching the country back together appear increasingly difficult.
That mass killing this month was one in a series of recent sectarian-tinged attacks that Syrians on both sides have seized on to demonize each other. Government and rebel fighters have filmed themselves committing atrocities for the world to see.
Footage routinely shows pro-government fighters beating, killing and mutilating Sunni rebel detainees, forcing them to refer to President Bashar al-Assad as God. One rebel commander recently filmed himself cutting out an organ of a dead pro-government fighter, biting it and promising the same fate to Alawites, members of Mr. Assad’s Shiite Muslim sect.
That lurid violence has fueled pessimism about international efforts to end the fighting. As the United States and Russia work to organize peace talks next month between Mr. Assad and his opponents, the ever more extreme carnage makes reconciliation seem more remote.
Nadim Houry, the director of Human Rights Watch in Beirut, said he sensed “a complete disconnect between diplomacy and events on the ground.”
“The conflict is getting more visceral,” he said. Without concrete confidence-building measures, he said, and with more people “seeing it as an existential struggle, it’s hard to imagine what the negotiations would look like.”
The New York Times, “An Atrocity in Syria, With No Victim Too Small” (via inothernews)
npr:
The practice is denounced by human rights groups but remains popular in some rural areas, where crowds bet large sums on young boxers. For fighters like 9-year-old Chai Lorlam, the pressure to win is intense.
— As Gamblers Gather, Thailand’s Child Boxers Slug It Out : Parallels
Photo: Morgan Hartley for NPR
Related story: ‘Buffalo Girls’ Fight For Survival In Rural Thailand
Student Loan Rate Set to Rise, Despite Lack of Support
The interest rate on many student loans is scheduled to double on July 1, to 6.8 percent from 3.4 percent — just as it was last year, when in the midst of an election campaign, Congress voted to extend the lower rate.
Again this year, no one wants the increase to happen, especially since even the current rate is well above market. But once again, there is likely to be a good deal of brinkmanship before the issue is settled. This time around, though, longer-term solutions may be on the horizon.
On Tuesday, the day before the White House plans to send its budget to Congress, student advocacy groups are releasing an issue brief charging that the federal government should not be profiting from student loans, while more and more students bear a crushing debt burden.
The brief, citing a February report from the Congressional Budget Office, said the federal government makes 36 cents in profit on every student-loan dollar it puts out, and estimates that over all, student loans will bring in $34 billion next year.
“Higher education loans are meant to subsidize the cost of higher education, not profit from them, especially at a time when students are facing record debt,” said Ethan Senack, the higher education advocate at the United States Public Interest Research Group, which is issuing the brief with the United States Student Association and Young Invincibles, an organization for people 18 to 34.
“The revenue from student loans should be used to keep education affordable, and should never be used to pay down the deficit or for other federal programs,” Mr. Senack said.
While it has long been known that the government makes money on student loans, the numbers in the issue brief are surprising, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president of the American Council on Education.
“If the numbers are accurate, the government will make more money on student loans than Ford makes on automobiles,” he said. “Using student loans to create a profit center is not what anybody intended.”
Student loan borrowers graduate with an average debt of $27,000, and the scheduled interest rate increase on subsidized Stafford loans would cost almost 10 million borrowers about $1,000 more over the life of their loan, for each year of college.
According to the C.B.O. report, the government will get 12.5 cents in revenue next year for every dollar lent through subsidized Staffords, 33.3 cents per dollar in unsubsidized Staffords, 54.8 cents on each dollar of graduate school loans, and 49 cents per dollar of parent loans, for a total of $34 billion a year. (More after the link)
CPS Magnet Lottery Leaves Local Residents Scrambling
Just 5 percent of neighborhood applicants to Andrew Jackson Language Academy were offered coveted spots in the school’s kindergarten class next year, and with competition to get into two other nearby magnet schools almost as steep, many Near West Side families are pondering a move to the suburbs.
Jackson, which attracted more citywide applications than any other Chicago Public Schools magnet in Chicago, received 195 applicants for just 10 neighborhood spots, according to district data. Last year, the school gave offers to 12 neighborhood students, or 7.2 percent of the 166 that applied.
The competition at two other magnets in the neighborhood — STEM and Galileo — was also intense, with less than 12 percent of applicants winning offers late last month to about a dozen open neighborhood seats at each school.
“It’s a bummer,” said Annie Cue, whose 5-year-old daughter was not accepted into any of the Near West Side magnets, including Jackson, at 1340 W. Harrison St. , which is just blocks from her home. “It’s crazy how our lives depend on this crazy lottery.”
Though she is currently on the waitlist for the schools, Cue, a stay-at-home mom, said she and her husband are seriously considering moving to the western suburbs if her daughter is not offered a spot off the waitlist soon.
Matthew Ditto, principal at Jackson, did not return calls seeking comment.
There was 16 seats at the school offered to citywide residents, or 1.5 percent of the 1,082 applicants. The number of applicants for next fall totaled 100 more than last year.
The largest number of seats in Jackson’s two kindergarten classes, 32, was awarded to current students’ siblings, who are guaranteed admission.
While neighborhood students have preference in gaining admission to the magnets, the large number of rejections from Jackson in recent years as the neighborhood grew led residents to push for the opening of STEM Magnet at the former Jefferson Elementary School building at 1522 W. Fillmore St.
But just a year after it opened, competition is already intense for the school’s 13 proximity seats for next year.
“These seats are like winning the real lottery,” principal Maria McManus said. “It’s hard. It’s really, really hard to get a good seat.”
McManus said she has been very upfront with parents about their chances of getting into the school at open houses. The school also received 542 applications for 19 citywide spots. All other seats went to siblings. (More after the link)
Thank you. Forty-six years ago on April 3, 1967, I became the film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times. Some of you have read my reviews and columns and even written to me since that time. Others were introduced to my film criticism through the television show, my books, the website, the film festival, or the Ebert Club and newsletter. However you came to know me, I’m glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for.
Typically, I write over 200 reviews a year for the Sun-Times that are carried by Universal Press Syndicate in some 200 newspapers. Last year, I wrote the most of my career, including 306 movie reviews, a blog post or two a week, and assorted other articles. I must slow down now, which is why I’m taking what I like to call “a leave of presence.”
What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What’s more, I’ll be able at last to do what I’ve always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review.
… The immediate reason for my “leave of presence” is my health. The “painful fracture” that made it difficult for me to walk has recently been revealed to be a cancer. It is being treated with radiation, which has made it impossible for me to attend as many movies as I used to. I have been watching more of them on screener copies that the studios have been kind enough to send to me. My friend and colleague Richard Roeper and other critics have stepped up and kept the newspaper and website current with reviews of all the major releases. So we have and will continue to go on.
At this point in my life, in addition to writing about movies, I may write about what it’s like to cope with health challenges and the limitations they can force upon you. It really stinks that the cancer has returned and that I have spent too many days in the hospital. So on bad days I may write about the vulnerability that accompanies illness. On good days, I may wax ecstatic about a movie so good it transports me beyond illness.
… So on this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.
