Liz Langley

Back to the Future: How 1980s 'greed is good' culture spawned Donald Trump

If you were a 20something in 1980something you’re probably loving the recent pop culture revival of that decade. Stranger Things, has a fourth season due out this yearAmerican Horror Story: 1984 is streaming on Hulu  and if I had anywhere to go I might rock some chunky pearls and taffeta, too, but as charming as this nostalgia is there was nothing quite like being there. The 70’s was my favorite decade aesthetically, but, truth, it was homespun, handmade, gritty and populist. The most popular TV shows were about poor and working class people, we never questioned polyester) and in 1977 President Jimmy Carter blew off riding in the presidential limo and walked from his swearing in to the White House, in part, as he wrote in his diary, to show his intention of “a reduction in the imperial status of the president and his family.”

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Pollution, anxiety, and death: How Trump is poisoning the country and literally making us sick

If youve ever said Donald Trump makes me sick,it was probably a metaphorical statement. Or was it?

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What I Learned Volunteering at America’s Largest No-Kill Animal Sanctuary

The puppies are all over us, wagging, kissing and peeing. They’re being exposed to things like doorbells, vacuum cleaners and cameras so they’ll learn to deal with novelty confidently. It’s healthy. Plus, an adaptable dog is an adoptable dog.

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5 Crazy Ideas About Female Sexual Desire in History

At 51, my sex drive is no longer the needy pest it once was, just a pleasant and regular visitor. True, it gave me some of the greatest times of my life, but it also caused a lot of problems.

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Inside the Death Cafe: A Gathering Place For People to Talk About Dying

A woman at the Death Cafe, where we’ve gathered to discuss end-of-life issues, gets up to use the restroom. The group continues to  discuss matters related to shuffling off this mortal coil, like planning ahead for your family’s benefit, do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders and living meaningfully while you can. Suddenly someone realizes the woman has been gone a long time.

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8 Ways to Deal With Anger

“My dear, you have to take control of your feelings before they take control of you” ---- Violet Grantham, Dowager Countess, Downton Abbey

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10 Most Gruesome Creatures in Nature to Spook You This Halloween

The supernatural reigns supreme on Halloween, but don’t sell Mother Nature short when it comes to the macabre. The natural world has some delightfully ghoulish creatures who don’t reserve their gruesome habits or wild looks to a single holiday.

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Navigating the World as an Atheist: 6 Helpful Reflections

“Always beware of a sinner turned saint,” my mother used to say. We’ve all suffered the boring verve of a blabby convert, whether to an actual religion, yoga, Apple, or whatever they’ve become smitten with. I did it when I decided to make the leap of no faith to atheism.

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Forget the Stupid Bucket List and Just Say 'F#@* It!" 5 Things I Will Probably Never Do

“You’re never gonna climb a mountain.”

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12 Ways to Feel Great About Your Body

What’s going on under your clothes?

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What Happens In Your Brain When You Get Mad, And How To Control It

I’m late for one of my jobs and after noting my empty gas tank and fighting with a broken car door, I pray to a god I don’t believe in to get me through the first traffic light, which is the longest light on the earth. Children have been conceived, born, and taught to read while waiting for it to turn green. I need to breeze through it. 

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10 Interesting Facts About Your Brain on Sex

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Jerry’s penis has an argument with his brain and loses? It’s a classic: we’ve all been torn between love/lust and logic. (If you haven't, check for a belly button because this isn’t your home world.) This brilliant bit of comedy is totally relatable but a little misleading in one way: the brain is the one that sends signals to the penis in the first place. It’s pretty reliably running things, IMing the other body parts like crazy, regulating chemicals, making calculations and responding to stimuli, half the time without you even knowing about it. There’s a reason “the brains of the outfit” denotes someone who is really in charge. 

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

So this week I came into one of my freelance jobs 90 minutes earlier than I should have, forgot the dates of two meetings and absent-mindedly put my key into the door of the wrong car necessitating a pricey call to a locksmith. Nobody could be happier than I to find that scientists have been able to implant memories into the brains of mice. Maybe one day they can implant some more memory in me.

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

In Florida, the Halloween decorations are arriving in Target. Other parts of the country are treated to colorful fall leaves, which might be coming with surprising speed this year. Douglas Main of Our Amazing Planet says that drought conditions in the northeast might cause stressed-out trees to stop producing chlorophyll early, allowing other lovely colors to come through. 

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

1. What the hack?

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

We don’t know if it’s the biggest news because he’s got his hands over his crotch but one of the most sensational news items of this week was Prince Harry’s naked heinie; the other was Republican Rep. Todd Akin’s idiotic statement about “legitimate rape.”

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

It was one of those rare TV moments that makes a person want to jump up and down and run around the house -- I couldn’t believe what I heard. Performing in the closing ceremony of the Olympics, Eric Idle sang "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," and included the line “Life’s a piece of shit/when you look at it.” It was a golden moment. The entire world had come together to celebrate athletic achievement, glorious British culture and the spirit of the games, and then out comes that line which, after all the fireworks are over, is how lots of people feel lots of the time. I thought, "Okay, turn off the TV, it’s not going to get better." 

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

We’re watching the Parade of Nations part of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremonies (cultural crack for an Anglophile like myself) and with each passing band of athletes it’s hard not to be struck by the fabulous height of the basketball players. My friend Marcy, smoking an electronic cigarette, blows out electronic smoke and says, “Look at that guy! Imagine the size of his feet.”

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

It was champagne and top hats all around in the science world this week. First, if you were hip-deep in nerd news you’d have thought the July 4th fireworks were to celebrate the cautious announcement, which came on Independence Day, of the Higgs boson having been discovered (more on that later). Then, the very next day, dark matter was reported to have been found in strands connecting two clusters of galaxies, reports the LA Times’ Amina Khan (details in her story). The finding “catapults these filaments from sound theory to observable fact,” Khan writes. 

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10 Mind-Blowing Discoveries This Week

1. Facebook for tits

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10 New Mind-Blowing Discoveries

1. Sex on eight legs

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10 Amazing Things the World Learned This Week

Usually we’re all kinds of optimistic about the cool discoveries science has made for the world this week. Even though we start off with a truly harrowing event, we still come away impressed with the ability of researchers to give us an idea of why we’re affected the way we are by things from drugs to smiling and how researchers are improving our lives to make them less scary and more filled with wonder for the world. 

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10 Cool Discoveries You Should Know About

On Science Friday last week, Ira Flatow reported on a grassroots group of scientists and science advocates calling for a presidential science debate. After all, what do politicians actually know about scientific issues they want to be able to influence?

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10 Amazing Discoveries That Should Be Worth Millions

In all the breaking news this week, perhaps the story about how entertainment television channel E! would be renewing the Kardashian family's $40 million contract was probably the least significant. Except it got us thinking about how to better spend all that dough. 

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10 Amazing Discoveries You Missed This Week

The world is full of surprises -- here are 10 from this week. 

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10 Amazing Discoveries You Missed This Week

Here are 10 amazing things research revealed this week. 

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10 Amazing Discoveries You Missed This Week

Here are 10 amazing discoveries you may have missed this week. 

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10 Interesting Things the World Learned This Week

Here is a list of ten amazing things the world learned this week:

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10 Cool Things the World Learned This Week

Didn't see Sarah Palin on "Today" this week....didn't really care about that. Or Levi becoming a dad, again. Or Bristol moving in with her boyfriend. There are always more fascinating things found in the heavens and on earth that don't get nearly as much air time as, well, other things, and we think they deserve some more. 

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7 Ways to Get the Texas School Board Attack You for Being Too Right-Wing

My friend Bob had a brilliant idea for fixing the public school system: "You pick a year and no one has any kids that year. Six years from now there's no one in first grade. Then you fix first grade. Then the next year there's no one in second grade, so you fix second grade," and so on.

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