Imagine if the assumption of normal health is suddenly obliterated with a diagnosis of cancer. That's the scenario in 50/50, an excellent portrayal of what happens when someone you know suddenly becomes a cancer patient.
Men like Mitt Romney and Herman Cain so bent extending business models to solve our complex social and economic problems? Anthropologists would say that they are engaging in a kind of ethnocentric thinking.
If you look beyond the salacious headlines it is clear that the Penn State scandal is a symptom of the scourge of big money and corporate culture that have infected the social life of our universities.
The GOP presidential hopefuls' extreme ideas, none of which stand up to the most cursory examination, make Presidents Eisenhower, Nixon and Reagan look like liberals, if not "pinkish" socialists.
How can someone who has flip-flopped on so many issues still manage to garner political support in a political climate that seems to reward the aura of unshakable conviction?