Chances are if you’re currently in college, you don’t remember the collapse of the Berlin Wall, but you know about it. Or should. (Stop skipping class!)

Well today, November 9th, marks the twentieth anniversary of the wall coming down; leading to the end of the Cold War.

In honor of this monumental event, artists around the world have created musical performances and art installations. There is even a Berlin Twitter Wall for people to share their thoughts on the fall of the wall and how our world has changed since then.

In case you aren’t totally familiar with the history, let me give you the Cliff’s Notes (or Leah’s Notes) version: Read More »

Starbucks has a pretty bad rap. Lately, there has been the news that the coffee giant is closing 600 stores. But even before Starbucks had these financial difficulties many people saw the chain as a sort of representation of all that was wrong with capitalism; it was the big, heartless chain store closing down locally-owned businesses.

Starbucks does make a point to open up stores next to already established mom and pop coffee shops and wants to be the exclusive coffee vendor in the area but according to Slate Magazine, Starbucks actually helps these locally-owned or small chain stores.

“Just over the five-year period from 2000 to 2005—long after Starbucks supposedly obliterated indie cafes—the number of mom and pops grew 40 percent, from 9,800 to nearly 14,000 coffeehouses”

Because Starbucks isn’t like a big box store that offers cheap products at cheap prices, it’s not really undermining the often more-affordable local coffee shops. Indeed, Starbucks coffee is notoriously expensive (A recent survey says that 76% of Americans think it’s too expensive), but people choosing to spend more for their caffeine fix at the local ‘Bux is not hurting the cheaper, local shops.

I was listening to NPR the other day and they mentioned something called the “Latte Factor”, which is basically taking all the money that you would spend on coffee and similar “unnecessary” things and spending it more wisely, or investing it. It makes sense; the math they did indicates that if you buy one coffee a day (which is a tad unrealistic) then you spend around $1500 a year supporting your coffee habit. That’s $1500 dollars that I could be putting towards my credit card debt or investing so I can have money to put a down payment on a house. Or so they said. Read More »

As you may have heard by now, the big news this week is Fidel Castro’s resignation as leader of Cuba. Castro has been in power since 1959 (we’ve had ten presidents since then!), and many thought he would continue to rule until he passed away, rather than ever resigning.

America has cut off all contact with Cuba since Castro’s rise to power, which means his announcement is a huge turning point for a country that once almost brought us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

Beginning in 1953, Castro led a guerrilla movement against the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who at the time was using violence to suppress a rapidly-growing resistance made up primarily of students and other middle and upper class Cubans. Batista had begun to suspend certain constitutional rights and censor the media, even closing the strongly anti-Batista University of Havana in 1956. Read More »