The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

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Review: Teen Angst in the Twilight

By Orlando on Sat, 11/22/2008 - 7:21pm | Arts & Entertainment

Vampires. They fascinate us. Whether it's Bram Stoker, Ann Rice, Josh Whedon or Elisabeth Kostova, writers keep finding ways to make the same old stories compelling, and we flock to bookstores and movie theaters or set our Tivos so we don't miss one gruesome detail.

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Arts & Entertainment
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Pirates? Are you kidding me?

By Orlando on Wed, 11/19/2008 - 2:37pm | Social Justice, World Affairs

There are still pirates? I mean, I figured there must still be a few if them around because every so often there would be a really stupid movie about modern-day psychos terrorizing some perfectly nice couple on their private yacht. But the news this month has brought attention to the fact that there’s a whole culture of piracy alive and well, centered in Somalia.

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Social Justice
World Affairs
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The Moment I Knew

By Orlando on Sun, 11/16/2008 - 12:43pm | Politics

I didn't grow up in a family that talked about politics. I knew that my step-dad's parents were yellow-dog democrats and that my dad and his mom were die-hard republicans. My mom voted for Reagan in 1980, so I figured she and my step-dad were republicans, too (turns out they SO aren't, thank goodness). Beyond that, I didn't think about it much. Dinner table conversation revolved around my parents' work lives and what happened in school that day. After dinner, we played board games or watched television.

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Politics
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Adventures in Microfinance

By Orlando on Fri, 11/14/2008 - 3:52pm | Social Justice

I first learned about the concept of micro-lending in 1996, when I had the opportunity to meet Muhammad Yunus of the Grameen Bank. Professor Yunus founded the bank in 1983, to provide small loans to poor Bangladeshi women who wanted to start small businesses. To date, the bank has served over seven million women and, in 2006, Professor Yunus and the Grameen bank were the recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Social Justice
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Living in a Post-Whatever World

By Orlando on Wed, 11/12/2008 - 5:29pm | Politics, Social Justice

I've always been a bit puzzled by our rush to declare something over. I suppose it shouldn't be so surprising since, as a nation, we suffer from a mad case of ADD, always enthusiastically moving on to the next new craze, be it hula hoops, cabbage patch dolls, energy drinks, or those cute boy bands made up of brothers with floppy hair.

Topics: 
Politics
Social Justice

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Biography
Orlando is a teacher and aspiring novelist, living a mysterious and reclusive life somewhere in Asia. She used to live a reclusive and mysterious life somewhere in Indiana until Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence became national figures, making it far too humiliating to continue residing there. In her spare time, she travels the world--or her small part of it--snapping pictures and writing down random thoughts to share with the dagblog crowd.

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