I was feeling pretty low, so I watched Takeshi Miike’s Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai. A movie about ritual self-disembowelment was a fitting end to the week I had. So I was more than happy to sit there drinking in the whole slow, stately, highly composed meditation on samurai codes punctuated with carefully placed scenes of bloody agonizing seppuku. In these troublous times, it’s just what the doctor ordered.

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This article is cross-posted from In These Times

Since its inception, the Huffington Post has relied heavily on unpaid bloggers. Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer said in 2007 that a key part of the plan of the website was to not pay these bloggers.

“That’s not our financial model,” Lerer told USA Today. “We offer them visibility, promotion and distribution with a great company.” (more…)