Latest news with #WaltWhitman
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Best Amazon deals: I browsed thousands of sales and found rare discounts on Shark, Waterpik and more
With a signpost national holiday just barely in the rearview, how nice that this weekend kicks off with another important "memorial": the birthday of that most American of poets, Walt Whitman. Herewith, some of his most oft-quoted lines:Give me the splendid, silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling. Stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others. Happiness, not in another place but this place … not for another hour, but this hour… ... which have got me thinking about the best Amazon sales this see, as splendid as that sun is, you'll want to get protected come late afternoon, and this stylish cover-up is marked down to just $26. And hey, what with graduations and Father's Day on the horizon, there isn't a better time to devote some income to others, with stupid-low prices on a four-pack of Apple AirTags for your fave student to use during their summer vacation, a rare $75, or a high-tech pair of Sony noise-canceling headphones for Dad for their lowest price all year. As for happiness in this (meaning, your) place, things will feel more harmonious if bulky winter linens aren't hogging space in your closet; store 'em in these editor-approved clothing bins (a six-pack's just $10). You'll need a little R&R after all of that organizing, so kick your feet up and wind down with some bestselling under-eye masks ($16 for 24 pairs).Don't put your shopping off for another hour, at another place, pounce on it this hour! Because some of these markdowns won't be in stock forever, and, well, there are so, so many of them to peruse. Seriously: Amazon's weekend sale contains multitudes. In this guide: Rare Amazon deals | All-time low prices | Best beauty and wellness deals | Best home deals | Best outdoor deals | Best kitchen deals | Best tech deals | Best fashion deals If you have Amazon Prime, you'll get free shipping, of course. Not yet a member? No problem. You can sign up for your free 30-day trial here. (And by the way, those without Prime still get free shipping on orders of $35 or more.)
New York Post
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
Badminton deserves more than a shrug from colleges
This article is one of the winning submissions from the New York Post Scholars Contest, presented by Command Education. I've spent the past year waking up at 6 a.m. to practice badminton swings in my backyard before school. Throughout the days, I've blasted YouTube tutorials on footwork and begged friends to rally with me in the junior atrium outside the gym. This was all done between homework assignments, meals, and sleep. Badminton meant everything to me—until my counselor circled the mention of the sport (I'd listed it as an interest on a survey) and wrote, 'Maybe pivot to a more 'serious' extracurricular?' Advertisement His words stung worse than any missed smash. Here's the truth: Badminton is serious. But American colleges, clinging to a dusty playbook that values football stadiums over cultural relevance, seem unwilling to see it, despite the fact that Badminton is a sport embraced by 220 million globally. 3 Aiden Tsang is advocating for Badminton to be taken more seriously in colleges and universities Badminton is a sport that is deeply woven into my culture, as it's a sport that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and is widely considered traditional in China for recreational activity and family gatherings. Advertisement In my culture, it is often seen as a symbol of national pride due to the high level of competition and success Asian players achieve in the sport. The Rigid System that Fails Passion I know about rigid systems. Last fall, I dropped American Lit not because I hated Walt Whitman's poems, but because my teacher graded like a robot, confined to strict rubrics and his own interpretation of the text. Anything that didn't fit his format or his opinion on the texts we read in class received a mediocre grade. This thinking is not unlike billion-dollar TV deals for big sports. For those in the know, badminton doesn't need ESPN highlights. It's long been in the world's second-most popular participatory sport, with 220 million players globally. Yet in the U.S., it's treated like a garage-sale Ping-Pong set—something to dust off for PE class, and when not needed, it's put out near the mailbox with a sign 'free'. Advertisement 3 'Badminton is a sport that is deeply woven into my culture, as it's a sport that can be enjoyed by people of all ages and is widely considered traditional in China for recreational activity and family gatherings,' Tsang writes. This mindset hurts for someone like me who spends hours in practice, not unlike varsity-track athletes. Particularly, when you consider the payoff: no scouts, no scholarships, and no recognition on applications. Many colleges claim in their brochures that they want 'grit' and 'dedication.' So why does my hustle—juggling AP classes, finding time after school to practice footwork in my small apartment, and traveling an hour each way every other day to meet with my coach—get filed under 'hobby'? The Cultural Brush-Off Advertisement The impact of this mindset is huge. Walk into any badminton tournament in California, and you'll see a sea of Asian-American faces. The sport is woven into our communities, a tradition as well-known as lunar New Year red envelopes. My Chinese grandfather played in college…in China. Here? The NCAA offers zero Division I badminton programs. So when colleges post AAPi Heritage Month graphics while ignoring a sport central to my heritage, it's not just hypocritical—it's erasure. We're told to celebrate our culture, but only in ways that provide good marketing for their brochures. It's not surprising that my good friend and teammate quit last year. 'What's the point,' she asked me, 'if colleges think our passion is a joke?' The Myth of 'Revenue or Bust' Let's address the elephant in the room. Badminton doesn't make money. Neither do 43% of NCAA football programs, but they're still funded. Why? Tradition? Alumni nostalgia? Meanwhile, Gen Z is out here making badminton TikTok edits with millions of views. Proof that interest exists. And the reason for colleges to look ahead, not just behind. And don't get me started on the 'life sport' argument. Colleges love touting 'active lifestyles,' yet ignore a game people will play into their 80s. My knees will give out from badminton around the same time a football player's brain starts forgetting their kids' names. A Path Forward (that Doesn't Require a Stadium) I'm not asking for a $10 million arena, but communities and colleges can start small. Here's how. Advertisement Start your day with all you need to know Morning Report delivers the latest news, videos, photos and more. Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters First, sanction badminton: Make badminton an NCAA sport so tournaments matter and allow people to be recruited, the same way track and field athletes or basketball players are followed. Next, credit the sport. Let PE classes count toward credits if students compete. Finally, expand the game. Why stop at Badminton? It isn't the only under-represented sport in the US. The NCAA organization needs to start doing more research and include sports like table tennis as well. Advertisement 3 Tsang continues to write, saying, 'If universities truly value grit, they'd start recognizing the dedication behind underrated sports like badminton.' Getty Images Badminton is more than a hobby—it's a test of discipline, a cultural anchor, and a sport colleges refuse to take seriously. My early morning practices and hour-long commutes to training aren't just 'dedication', they're proof that admissions committees see our passion as trivial. Colleges plaster 'Celebrate AAPI Heritage' on brochures while sidelining a sport central to Asian communities. If universities truly value grit, they'd start recognizing the dedication behind underrated sports like badminton. Sanction it. Credit it. Until then, their promises of 'diversity' are just empty words. An 11th-grader at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, Aiden Tsang intends to pursue a career in the medical field.
New York Times
11-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
MAGA Needs High Art, Not Just Kid Rock
Two weeks ago a friend of mine at the National Endowment for the Humanities told me that a team from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency had arrived and was reviewing the books. Last week the hammer came down, as N.E.H. leaders told their staff members that cuts in personnel were coming, eliminating perhaps 80 percent of the agency. This is a mistake — not, however, for the reasons given by leading humanities organizations such as the American Historical Association, which argued that DOGE's actions 'imperil both the education of the American public and the preservation of our history.' That peril has been present for a long time, much of it caused by scholars entrusted with that education and preservation — and funded by the N.E.H. Many of the professors who teach the humanities in the United States, with their stifling ideological uniformity and their tiresome fixation on 'critique' and social identity, could use some bureaucratic pummeling. The N.E.H. should not grant any more awards like the $133,165 it gave to San Diego State University to develop a social justice curriculum based on comic books or the $324,418 it gave to California State University, Fullerton, to create and study an interactive database of a popular L.G.B.T.Q. travel guide. Good riddance to all that. But for the Trump administration to promote a culture of 'American greatness,' it cannot just eliminate what it dislikes; it must also support what it favors. During his first term, in a speech denouncing the 'left-wing cultural revolution,' President Trump called for a more celebratory attitude toward America's cultural heritage — one that proudly recalled that 'we gave the world the poetry of Walt Whitman, the stories of Mark Twain, the songs of Irving Berlin, the voice of Ella Fitzgerald.' To that end, Mr. Trump needs an N.E.H. that funds projects that embrace this heritage. To cut the N.E.H. and the National Endowment for the Arts (which may be next on the chopping block) is to lay down potent weapons of ideological contest that the Trump administration should be wielding aggressively. It is a conservative truism that politics are downstream from culture. What happens in the arts and humanities doesn't stay there; it flows into the broader society over time. Without queer theory in the academy in the 1990s, the Supreme Court's Obergefell and Bostock decisions, which extended rights and protections to gay and transgender people, might not have happened. The Trump administration needs to make sure that the right kind of culture is at the headwaters of the river today. When it comes to popular culture, the MAGA movement readily attracts kindred spirits. Hulk Hogan speaks at the Republican National Convention. Kid Rock visits the White House. Joe Rogan presides over a sympathetic 'manosphere.' But when it comes to high culture, the movement falters. After President Trump took over the Kennedy Center in February, he signaled that he would bring about a more congenial vision of the performing arts and the nation's cultural heritage. But the people and creative works that he has mentioned in connection with this ambition — Elvis Presley, Babe Ruth, the musical 'Cats' — are middlebrow at best. This is where the N.E.H. and N.E.A. would serve Mr. Trump well: not only correcting 'woke' excesses, but also providing an elite counterpart to MAGA's populist thrust. Expert critics, scholars and artists could ensure that only traditionalist projects are funded. There is precedent for this conception of the agencies, namely, when Dana Gioia led the N.E.A. and Bruce Cole led the N.E.H., both under President George W. Bush. (During Mr. Gioia's leadership I served for several years at the N.E.A. as the director of the Office of Research and Analysis.) Mr. Gioia and Mr. Cole managed to please Republicans and Democrats alike by developing programs that emphasized the legacy of Western civilization and the American tradition and were often aimed at young people. Under Mr. Gioia, the N.E.A. created Shakespeare in American Communities, which sent theater troupes into schools across the country to introduce students to the Bard. Under Mr. Cole, the N.E.H. introduced programs such as 'We the People' and 'Picturing America,' which provided teachers with resources to help them teach classic American documents such as the Constitution and artworks such as Grant Wood's painting 'The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.' That exercise in cultural conservatism is a lesson for the White House — or should be. The challenge may lie in the outlook of DOGE, which seems primarily financial and bureaucratic. The purging of fraud, waste and identity politics in the civil service is commendable, but we need to build things, too. A welcome example is the memorandum Mr. Trump issued in January concerning federal architecture, which instructed that federal public buildings must 'respect regional, traditional and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States.' Ideally, the Trump administration would do more than just revive the Bush-era conception of the arts and humanities agencies. It would also draw inspiration from even bolder, New Deal-era initiatives, such as the Federal Writers' Project, which gave jobs to out-of-work writers to document American culture, and the Federal Art Project, which funded murals, sculpture, paintings, posters and other public art. Such ambitious proposals would be anathema to small-government Republicans, of course. And it is true that state-sponsored art programs have often resulted in clumsy propaganda. But they have also given us the Lincoln Memorial, the photographs of Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange and the great comic novel 'A Confederacy of Dunces' (an N.E.A. product). If conservatives wish to halt the progressive advance in American society, they must rectify a mistake they made decades ago: focusing on law and economics and leaving the arts and humanities to the other side.
Yahoo
09-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Grant High School junior wins state Poetry Out Loud competition
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A junior from Grant High School in Portland is Oregon's 2025 champion. Bena Rodecap received the top score at Saturday's contest, organized by the Oregon Arts Commission in collaboration with the National Endowment for the Arts. Rodecap memorized and performed 'A Noiseless Patient Spider' by Walt Whitman, 'Say Grace' by Emily Jungmin Yoon and 'How to Write a Poem' by Laura Hershey. Trail Blazers to host tribute night for Bill Walton at Sunday game 'Each of the poems I chose I innately recognized a little piece of myself in,' she told KOIN 6 News. 'I think that's one of the really special things abut this competition is it allows a 16-year-old girl from Portland, Oregon to connect to the words of Walt Whitman, written over 100 years ago.' As far as future plans, Rodecap said she wants to be an environmental lawyer. But for now, she will represent Oregon at the in Washington D.C. in May. Gio Calandrella, a Grant High School freshman, was named runner-up. He would be invited to represent Oregon in the national competition should Rodecap be unable to attend. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Independent
31-01-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Rejoice! Trump's tariffs will force Brexit Britain back into the EU
Your great article on the 'popularity' of Brexit points out the glaringly obvious (' Number of Britons who think Brexit was right decision hits new low, new YouGov poll shows', Wednesday 29 January). But all the while, the government remains fearful of the political backlash if it changes its Brexit position, nothing will change. What might cause a shift is if President Trump imposed tariffs on the UK along with the EU. That will demonstrate very clearly the weakness of the UK trying to stand alone. This could provide the opening needed to change direction. This leaves those of us supporting a new agreement in a conundrum. Tariffs could actually be good if we want a renewed relationship with the EU. Amsterdam, Netherlands 'Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself.' May we remember these lines from America's cherished poet, Walt Whitman, and congratulate our new ambassador (' Peter Mandelson backtracks on 'ill-judged' Trump criticism after being appointed US ambassador', Wednesday 29 January). Duncan Mayor Huddersfield, West Yorkshire Fifty million dollars for condoms? (' Trump doubles down on '$50m condoms for Gaza' claim', Wednesday 29 January). If only Fred Trump had spent a single dollar for one. Dennis Fitzgerald Melbourne, Australia 'How much should we really be spending on defence?' asks Sean O'Grady (Tuesday 28 January). Well, this depends on what and who is regarded as a threat to our security. It certainly cannot be what President Trump seems to think it should be, which, if conceded, will inevitably mean an increase in US sales of weapons to the UK. Repeating the mantra that the threat to our security comes from the East is wearing thin. It is pure fantasy to think that Russia – a state that is unable to subdue a country around one-thirtieth of its size, a third of its population and a fraction of its GDP – has the capacity to conquer neighbouring countries. This echoes the same discredited attitude that prevailed among the British elite in the thirties when the Soviet Union was seen to be the imminent threat to Europe when, in fact, it was Nazi Germany. This is poignant today, with Donald Trump back in the White House and his declaration of war on the world: the threats of high tariffs to subdue other nations and force them to succumb to US interests, his claims to other countries' lands (the Panama Canal and Greenland), his ethnic cleansing of Gaza plan and his demands for increased expenditure on 'defence' by Nato members not to mention his second-hand man, Elon Musk, interference in the internal affairs of other countries, including the UK. This is a new danger that must be considered seriously in evaluating the risks to our national security. Today, the threat comes not from the East, but from the West. Fawzi Ibrahim London NW2 A safe way in is not a way out John Rentoul is quite wrong to say 'The only way to stop the small boats coming across the Channel would be for Emmanuel Macron to allow the British to return their occupants to France' (' Yvette Cooper has given up trying to stop the boats', Thursday 30 January). All refugee agencies say the same thing: create more safe routes. That wasn't even mentioned in Rentoul's piece. Martin Heaton Gatley, Cheshire Trouble at the terminal Heathrow's major problems (' What would be the impact of a third runway at Heathrow?', Wednesday 29 January) could be alleviated by situating the new airstrip in between the two existing ones. This would mean knocking down and reconstructing some airport buildings and generally reorganising the space, of which there is a vast amount. In fact, there is enough to consider seriously the possibility of positioning the third runway to allow for a fourth in due course. Peter Rutherford London NW6 I am looking forward to Boris Johnson keeping his promise to lie down in front of the bulldozers if Heathrow's third runway goes ahead. Or should I get the pigs fed, watered and ready to fly? Bob Sampson Sayers Common, West Sussex We should be grateful to Rachel Reeves for making clear to us that, with her support for a third Heathrow runway, when the choice is between growing the economy and saving the planet, the economy wins (' There's another reason Rachel Reeves is so keen to talk about Heathrow', Thursday 30 January). It makes me wonder for how long the Labour Party thinks the planet will still be good to live on. Probably until the next election, so that's okay… Dennis Leachman
