A.N

Dear Childfree Person,

I am writing to you to share some vital information that has only become available to me in the last couple of years, since I became a parent.

Before that, I was subjected to the same saccharine clichés from parents that you are undoubtedly hearing over and over again. You’re probably being told, like I was, that you never really love until you become a parent. You’re probably hearing a lot about how no love can compare to the love a mother has for her child. Parents might be telling you that you’ll never ever EVER understand what real love feels like unless you become a parent yourself.

Read more Loco Parentis: You Pretty Much Get It at The Toast.

This recipe is a spin off of the ever popular Quick Curried Chickpeas. It always amazes me how a recipe with so few ingredients can have such big flavor! For this version I subbed out chickpeas for lentils, added some diced carrot for color and sweetness (and because my New Year’s resolution is VEGETABLES!), and increased the curry powder. The result, although not exactly pretty, was so good that I couldn’t stop piling forkfuls into my mouth while I took the photos. Seriously, I couldn’t stop.

There are so many ways you can eat these Curried Lentils that I decided to present the recipe as the lentils them selves. They’d be great as part of a Indian platter with some creamed spinach and naan. You could stuff them into a pita as sort of a sloppy joe-like sandwich (but vegetarian, of course), or you could build a “bowl” meal with brown rice, a fried egg, and maybe even some spinach. Options, options, options!

This recipe made about four cups and depending on how you serve it, that should be at minimum four servings. Pretty stinking cheap. If you happen to have any left over, these lentils should freeze quite well.

 

Step by Step Photos

For this recipe I used brown lentils because they cook quickly and hold their shape. Brown lentils cook in about 20 minutes, whereas French or green lentils take closer to 45 minutes. Red and yellow lentils also cook quickly, but they tend to break down and turn into mush when cooked. I definitely wanted the lentils to stay whole.

To cook the lentils, bring a pot with about 3 cups of water to a boil (the amount of water isn’t so crucial, just as long as there is enough for the lentils to move about freely, kind of like when cooking pasta. It will be drained off later). Once boiling, add 1 cup of dry lentils. Let the pot come back up to a boil, then turn the heat down to low, place a lid on top, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, test a lentil to see if it’s tender. If not, let it simmer for about 5 more minutes. Drain the lentils in colander once finished cooking.

Meanwhile, prep and cook the vegetables. Mince two cloves of garlic and finely dice one medium onion and three medium carrots (about 1/2 lb.).

Add the garlic, onions, and carrots to a large skillet along with one tablespoon of olive oil. Sauté over medium heat until the onions become transparent, about 5 minutes.

Add two tablespoons of curry powder and sauté for one minute  more (this toasts the spices and helps bring out their flavor). All curry powders are a little different, so you can start with one tablespoon and increase it to your liking. 

Add the cooked and drained lentils, plus one 15oz. can of tomato sauce. Stir to combine and then heat through (about five minutes). Taste the lentils and add salt if needed. I added about 1/2 teaspoon.

Serve them hot topped with fresh cilantro (if you’re a cilantro person). 

There are a lot of different ways you can eat these Curried Lentils, this yummy bowl being one of them. I added a bed of brown jasmine rice, the lentils, a fried egg, and some fresh cilantro. SO GOOD. 

The post Curried Lentils appeared first on Budget Bytes.

Never talk about politics.

Talk about politics, but only about Nixon. Specifically, only talk Nixon’s final years post-resignation, how his pallor grew grey and his body wracked with phlebitis and his mind consumed with sad tales of the death of kings. Work on your Nixon impression. Remind yourself that real love means loving decrepit, angry failure and no one embodies this principle quite like Nixon, with the possible exception of most other politicians.

Sing your entire marriage, based on the score to John Adam’s Nixon in China.

Speak entirely in quotes from HBO’s John Adams.

Treat yourself to a manicure every once in a while!

Adopt all your partner’s tastes as your own. Better yet, adopt their memories. Laughingly describe your sister’s antics at Six Flags the summer you were ten. When contradicted, keep your face perfectly still and say “But I wouldn’t make a mistake about that, now, would I?”

Read more The Secret to a Happy Marriage at The Toast.

When I suffered my third consecutive miscarriage this past May, my mom said she wanted to help me out however she could, even if it meant being my surrogate. I laughed it off—a 60-year-old surrogate?—but it turned out that, as always, Mom had been on to something.

In 2011, Kristine Casey, 61, gave birth to her own grandchild after being surrogate for her daughter, Sara, who had delivered stillborn twins and then suffered a miscarriage after years of infertility treatment. Surrogacy isn’t typically allowed in post-menopausal women because of the need for hormone supplements and the associated health risks—but occasionally, doctors make exceptions, especially for relatives, and Casey is the oldest of an increasingly large roster of women who have birthed their own grandchildren. And in just the past year, post-menopausal surrogacy has become a seemingly mundane mode of reproduction when compared to the new frontier of infertility solutions: living donor-uterus transplants and bioengineered wombs.

In September, a 36-year-old Swedish woman gave birth to a baby boy in the first-ever birth from a transplanted uterus. The woman, whose identity remains anonymous, was born without a uterus but with functioning ovaries. She is one of nine women to participate in a transplant study led by Mats Brännström, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. The uterus was donated by the woman’s 61-year-old friend, and conception was achieved by in-vitro fertilization, after which the embryo was implanted in the woman’s newly transplanted uterus.

This unprecedented achievement was observed with keen interest by transplant surgeons and fertility experts the world over, who hope that transplants might soon become a viable option for women who lose a uterus to cancer, are born without a uterus, or who are unable to conceive or carry due to uterine defects or anomalies. While surrogacy is the more well-known method of helping women with infertility have biological children, it has drawbacks. The most obvious one is that a woman doesn’t gestate her own child, but surrogacy also carries an array of legal and ethical dilemmas, including the concerns that poor surrogates might enter the arrangement solely because of the financial incentive, or that a surrogate might become attached to the baby. Surrogacy is illegal in some European countries, including Germany and France; other countries, like Australia and Canada, permit “altruistic surrogacy,” a legal framework that permits surrogacy but prohibits payment.  

“A surrogate takes a large risk by going through a pregnancy for someone else, because pregnancy can cause various adverse medical conditions,” says Mats Hellström, an assistant professor at the Laboratory for Transplantation and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Gothenburg, and a member of the research group that achieved the birth via transplant. “The whole ethical part of surrogate motherhood is why many countries don’t permit it. The successful uterus transplants have shown that there is an alternative to surrogacy.”

Now that the hurdle of the transplanted uterus has been overcome, researchers have turned to a technology borrowed straight from sci-fi: a bioengineered uterus. Doctors in the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine produce organs and parts of organs in a few different ways. One is by taking a small number of stem cells from a patient’s blood or bone marrow, and then amplifying and shaping the growth of those cells. Another involves taking a moderate number of the patient’s own uterine cells, and then de-differentiating them, meaning that they are converted from highly specialized uterine cells back into less specialized cells to allow cellular growth (called “cellular amplification”) in the lab. The cells are then applied to a uterus-shaped scaffold. When transplanted, they re-differentiate back into specialized uterine cells.

“Once you get the correct cell numbers, you place them on the correct scaffold, and at that point you have tissue that is not immunologically different from the host,” says Dr. Roger C. Young, professor of obstetrics and gynecology and director of biomedical innovation at the University of Tennessee Health-Science Center. “This is the beginning of the era of regenerative medicine, which will, at least in some part, replace organ transplants.”

Bioengineered organs have a number of practical advantages over donor transplants, including the fact that recipients wouldn’t need to take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives, as transplant recipients typically do to prevent their bodies from rejecting the new organ. “A bio-regenerated uterus allows you to avoid immunosuppression, and you get rid of the risks of surgery for the person donating the uterus,” says Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU Langone Medical Center. “The failure rates of transplanted organs are high, and we don’t have enough organs. Bioengineered organs are definitely the long-term solution.”

But the bioengineered uterus is years, if not decades, away. Hellström’s research group at the University of Gothenburg is on the cutting edge with their recent experiments in rat-uterus decellularization, a process that involves removing cells from tissue, leaving behind only the extracellular matrix (ECM), which then serves as a 3-D scaffold for introducing new cells. Yet Hellström laughed at my suggestion that artificial-uterus transplants might be available within 10 years: “Look at how long it took my colleague [Mäts Brannström] to develop the live-donor uterus transplant: 15 years of nonstop work. Now I have the same journey to make, the only difference being that my colleagues started with perfect material to transplant. I’m constructing the material as well.”

Years ago, the theoretical possibility of an artificial uterus gave rise to the idea of gestating a baby outside the mother’s body rather than transplanting the organ. This came to be called “Baby in a Box” after journalist Natalie Angier’s widely-read 1999 New York Times Magazine article of the same title. Angier predicted that the artificial uterus was “coming, if not in 10 years, then in 15 or 50.” The introduction to a 2006 anthology of bioethics essays, titled Ectogenesis: Artificial-Womb Technology and the Future of Human Reproduction, predicted that “we might soon see the day when a woman’s contribution to the birth of a live baby will be similar to that of a man, namely, both will only need to provide or donate gametes.”

The term “ectogenesis” was coined in 1924 by British geneticist J.B.S. Haldane to describe artificial uteruses that would forge a utopian future where only pre-selected, genetically “superior” sperm and eggs would be used for reproduction. Adopting the point of view of this imagined future, Haldane wrote, “Had it not been for ectogenesis, there can be little doubt that civilization would have collapsed within a measurable time owing to the greater fertility of the less desirable members of the population in almost all countries.”

Half a century later, feminists envisioned an entirely different type of future where women, freed from the barriers of pregnancy and childbirth, would finally be on equal social and economic footing with men. In 1970’s The Dialectic of Sex, feminist writer Shulamith Firestone argued that in-vitro fertilization and gestation would free women from the “tyranny of their reproductive biology.”

Despite these lofty imaginings, regenerative-medicine researchers are more focused on the immediate problem of infertility than they are on revolutionizing society. The optimism about ectogenesis in the late 90s and early 2000s had been bolstered by the research of Dr. Helen Liu, who today is director of the Reproductive Endocrinology Laboratory at Weill Cornell Medical College. In 2001, Liu grew a human embryo for 10 days in an artificial womb, then halted the experiment because of federal law prohibiting human embryo experimentation after 14 days post-conception. In 2003, she grew a mouse embryo in a bioengineered uterus, but the baby was born was deformed.

At that juncture, Liu realized that in vivo gestation (within a living animal) would show more promising results than growing a fetus entirely in vitro. So for the next experiment, Liu grew the mouse embryos in an artificial uterus for a week, then transferred them into the abdominal cavity—not the uterus—of the mother. These babies came out anatomically normal but small for their gestational age.

Soon thereafter, Liu halted her experiments. “There was a lot of pressure from the press,” Liu tells me. “Everyone was talking about it. The medical ethicists were against it. Pro-life people were against it, and pro-choice people too—both sides. This came as a surprise to me. When I started, I just wanted to help women who had implantation problems. But it turned out to have all of these social implications, and I didn’t want to deal with it.” Today, Liu instead works on improving methods of in-vitro maturation and cryopreservation.

Since Liu’s mouse experiments, the medical community has more or less abandoned in-vitro gestation. The past decade saw a renaissance in transplant technology, and advances in the burgeoning field of human prenatal epigenetics have rendered gestation outside a mother’s body a less plausible concept. Scientists are learning more about the interplay between fetal development and the mother’s whole body—not just her uterus.

“The fetus gets an advantage by developing within a maternal body,” says Janet DiPietro, associate dean for research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. DiPietro oversees the Johns Hopkins Fetal-Development Project, a 20-year endeavor that tracks how physiological aspects of the maternal-fetal bond shape development. DiPietro told me that everything from a mother’s circadian rhythms to her posture sends cues to the growing fetus.

“The maternal voice is heard very well, which probably sensitizes the baby to the sounds of their own language. Amniotic fluid develops the odor of certain foods that women eat, and so there’s a notion that cultural likes and dislikes are transmitted to the fetus via the amniotic fluid,” she says, “So the maternal context provides an environment that goes far beyond the direct circulatory-system connection.”

DiPietro explains that in the future, an artificial-uterus transplant is “far, far more likely” than in-vitro gestation, in part because the placenta, which grows from the uterus after implantation, is “one of the most enigmatic organs that we have.” Scientists can’t understand it, let alone construct it from scratch. The complex interplay between the placenta—which grows from the fetus’s own cells—and the mother’s blood flow, immune system, and circulating oxygen has been so poorly researched that Alan Guttmacher, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, recently called it “the least-understood human organ.” But with a bioengineered uterus, the assumption is that if you get the uterus right, a placenta, amazingly, will grow on its own once the transplant recipient becomes pregnant.

Even if the technology exists, however, uterus transplants—whether living-donor or artificial—might never become widely available. Funding for research is limited because a uterus, unlike a kidney or a heart, is not necessary for life. “In Sweden, people can afford this,” Caplan says. “Here we have healthcare-access problems, and transplanting a uterus would be in the bottom quarter of my priority list for what we need to spend money on. Does that mean only the rich would get it? Yes. And that’s just the reality of it.”  

Young at the University of Tennessee explains that a living-donor uterus transplant requires up to three operations—taking the organ from the donor, implanting it in the recipient, and then the possible C-section should a baby be born—all for a condition (infertility) that isn’t life-threatening. “I don’t think it will be widely accepted in the United States, and I personally don’t consider it a realistic solution to the problem,” he says. Young’s work is connected but somewhat different: bioengineering uterine tissue to repair a damaged or malformed uterus.

“Especially with the C-section rate being 33 percent in the United States, there will be more and more women with uterine defects and problems,” Young says. “There are many more people that need repair of the uterus than need replacement.” Young recently had to tell a patient that she can’t have more children due to damage from two previous C-sections; he hopes that within just five years, bioengineered uterine patches will be available.

In the case of my own miscarriages, the problem turned out to be chemical rather than anatomical: A thyroid problem was triggering an immunological response that is linked to first-trimester miscarriages. I was prescribed the requisite hormones, and I’m currently pregnant and safely in my second trimester. For women with uterine-factor infertility, the solution is not so simple, and advancements in bioengineered organs might one day prove to be a panacea.  

Young believes that even if a bioengineered uterus is many decades off, simpler fixes like uterine patches might help women within just a few years. “If we can take this step by step,” he says, “the steps allow you to climb the wall in a much more efficient manner.”

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-high-tech-future-of-the-uterus/383232/

UPDATED BELOW:

My daughter, Hailey, has been in Girl Scouts for years.  I was never a big fan of Girl Scouts but I am a giant supporter of my kid and if she likes Girl Scouts then we will be at every damn meeting while I huddle in the corner of the room, smiling at the other mothers while unsuccessfully pretending my social anxiety disorder isn’t completely obvious to everyone.

And, for the most part, it’s quite lovely.  Except for twice.  One of those things I’m still working on and will write about soon because I can’t do it without screaming a lot.  The other can’t wait because girl scout cookies go on sale tomorrow and I have serious reservations.

I contacted the CEO who told me to email the social media team, but so far I have no good answers so I’m just going to put this letter on my blog and maybe it will cause someone in head office to say, “This lady is 18 kinds of wrong.  Let’s straighten her out right now, and make sure that we answer people when they badger us because they might be psychopaths with blogs.”  Or maybe it will cause someone in the head office to say, “YES.  YOU ARE EXACTLY RIGHT AND WE CAN DO BETTER.”  Or maybe they’ll say, “Your daughter is kicked out of Girl Scouts.  Good luck starting your own club, loser.”  And that would be unfortunate but I’ve promised Hailey that if it does happen I will help her create the “What-If-Doctor-Who-Went-To-Night-Vale-and-then-the-Zombie-Apocolypse-Happened Prep Club” and she was mollified.

Now, enough preamble…here’s the letter:

Hi there. My name is Jenny Lawson and I’m having some issues I can’t seem to get answers to.

My daughter is 10 and has loved Girl Scouts for years but there are a few issues we have concerning cookie sales and I’ve been unable to get a straight answer from anyone I’ve contacted. Two issues:

1. I’ve read on the Girl Scouts website that the current pension deficit issue will cause most local councils to see a 40% increase in pension expenses starting the day girl scout cookies go on sale, and a 62% increase over the next three years. According to the girl scout.org site “For many Girl Scout councils, this means that the pension expense will suck up money that would normally go toward operating expenses such as staff salaries and benefits, camp maintenance, outreach programs for at-risk girls, scholarship support for low-income girls, and general programming.”

I know you’re currently trying to get congress to grant legislation to help you but I haven’t heard of any progress on that, so I’m under the impression that as it stands, cookie sales that previously went to scholarships and camp maintenance will now be used to pay pension debt.  I’m reading of many historic camps that are being closed or sold.  It’s a concern for many reasons, but particularly because the girls in our troop were always able to say that cookie sales help at-risk girls and support community camps. We haven’t been able to get any verbiage to respond to people who will ask why girl scout camps are being sold and whether the councils will be able to support scholarships as they have in the past.

2. The digital cookie sales that will allow girl scouts to sell online starting this year: From what I’ve read online, if my daughter sells a box of cookies to her nana online, her nana will be charged $4 for the cookies and $11.25 for shipping. So of the $15+ sale for one box of cookies my daughters troop will see about 60 cents. Is that right? Was that the most competitive shipping price available? Were there other bids?

Also, I’ve heard there is a handling fee of $1.25 if you pay online but have the girl scout deliver the cookies to you. Why is that, when the girls offer free personal delivery when ordering in person?  (I’ve also seen it called a “credit card fee” for girl scout delivery, but that number seems incredibly high if it’s a processing fee, and credit card surcharge fees are illegal in our state.)   Does the girl scout troop get the delivery fee?  Do people who buy boxes online but donate them to the official Girl Scout charity have to pay those fees as well?

I hate to be nit-picky but it seems like an extremely questionable business model and my daughter has been taught by the Girl Scouts to ask questions when you think something is wrong, and to make good financial decisions, so that’s why we’re asking you for a real response so we can make a decision on whether her time is best spent selling cookies, or doing something with a greater return to her community.

Hailey is currently working toward her Bronze Award, focusing on the Girl Scouts Journey which concentrates on stopping harmful gender stereotypes, and one of the inequities we’ve discussed ourselves is that, on average, women often accept and are paid less than their male counterparts. We looked at the breakdowns and agreed that this years cookie sales program undervalues her contribution, but we also thought it was important to voice our concerns, to work hard to make sure we understood the reasoning and facts, and to try to make this organization a stronger one by asking the hard questions. I hope that you’ll be able to answer us before cookies go on sale.

As always, good luck.

~ Jenny Lawson

UPDATED (day 2): First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Secondly, thanks for the great feedback.  It’s both relieving and disconcerting to see that so many of us have the same concerns, but I think that’s a really helpful thing for the Girl Scouts to know.   The good news is that last night the Girl Scouts twitter account said they’d touch base with us after the holidays, and this morning the CEO (Anna M. Chávez) DMed me to say they’d follow up with us tomorrow.  Hopefully they’ll have a good response explaining the details, or expounding on how they plan to improve in either deed, transparency or communications. It’s not ideal, but it’s a step in a good direction and hopefully one that will make the organization stronger.

Also, Hailey has decided to pass on the online sales thing this year, but my sweet daughter will probably be one of those excited young girl scouts manning a cookie booth outside a grocery story because she loves being an extrovert (I suspect she was switched at birth) so please keep in mind that the little girls asking for sales are not privy to -or responsible for- all of these complicated issues and should never be yelled at for their excitement. It’s fine to say “Sure, I love Do-Si-Dos” or “No, thanks” but yelling at small children isn’t really kosher. I know I probably don’t have to say this out loud for any regular reader with common sense, but just in case this gets to someone who isn’t a regular, please remember that children are children and are affected by your interactions.

If you’ve read my book you’ll know that already because my dedication page reads:

In other words, that shit sticks, so be nice to small children. That’s just basic human decency.

I’ll keep you posted on what I hear.  Also, Hailey was extremely excited to hear how many of you were interested in the Doctor Who/Zombie/Night Vale Club.  She’s designing a logo right now.  No dues.  Requirements: Be kind to one another.  And always carry a towel.  (We just finished The HitchHikers Guide to the Galaxy.  ‘Nuff said.)

PS. Some of you are saying that the shipping is for a case at a time and that you can’t order less than 6 boxes at a time, but I just checked it myself and was able to place an order for one box of cookies.  It was $11.25 shipping.  Also, it looks like if you choose to have your local girl scout deliver it or if you donate the cookies to the USO you’ll be paying a “handling fee” for online orders.

Here’s the breakdown:

 UPDATED (Day 3):  So, I don’t know what to tell you.  I was told the Girl Scouts would follow up with us today, but when I sent a tweet reminding them that we were promised a response, the Girl Scouts twitter account (very sweetly) said their Chief Digital Cookie Lead had sent me an email this morning.  I searched everywhere but turns out she sent an email to some random woman whose email is nothing like mine.  I asked their twitter person to just forward it to my email but they said the Digital Cookie Lead would have to do that and “she’s out of the office on holiday but should follow up soon.”

My response to them:

“I appreciate the thought.  Honestly though, I’m so disappointed.  Hundreds of people who are involved in Girl Scouts are on my blog asking for answers and no one representing the Girl Scouts has responded to any of our concerns, and more keep arising.

At this point I have to assume that the lack of a good answer is our answer and that’s very disheartening.

Also, I realize you personally are not the entire Girl Scout Organization and your hands are probably tied yourself, but if you have the ability to pass this up to someone who will listen it would be nice to know that these concerns are at least known.  Responsive and effective communications, transparency, and dialogue are so important.

Also, as a suggestion: Perhaps next year the online sales program should not be launched on the same week that the Digital Cookie Lead responsible for it is off on holiday.

I wish you good luck and I hope that these issues can be resolved in the future. I know you’ll agree that our girls deserve that.”

If any real response ever comes I’ll pass it on here.  Until then I’ll be buying Thin Mints because I like the cookies and love to see happy kids giddy over making a sale, but not necessarily because I think its a good investment in the girls.

UPDATED (Day 5):  Just got an email from the Girl Scout Social Media team.  It answers a few questions very well, is vague on others, ignores some altogether, and a few of the answers seem questionable, but frankly I’m just happy to see that someone is paying attention and responding.  I’ve also invited them to come here to respond to your questions.   Thanks for hanging in there, you guys.  And thanks for pushing for answers.  At least a few of them are here, and that feels like a small victory for all of us.  :

Response from the Girl Scouts Social Media Account (January 5th):

Dear Jenny,

Thanks for reaching out to express your concerns and apologies in the delay in repsonse over the holiday.

As you know, the Girl Scout mission is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place. It is a shared goal of our movement to maximize the dollars available to serve girls.

Girl Scouts of the USA (GSUSA) made great effort over the past year working nationally with councils on two separate relief efforts to ease the financial burden stemming from the liability in the National Girl Scout Council Retirement Plan.

In April 2014, we were able to announce that GSUSA had officially signed an agreement with the IRS as fiduciary of the Council Pension Plan to extend the amortization period by more than four years. President Obama also signed into law H.R. 4275, a relief package unanimously passed by Congress that will smooth out council contributions over the next three years by allowing council pension plans to go back under the Pension Protection Act. Girl Scout councils and supporters nationwide united to contact over 100 Congressional offices, and wrote over 1,000 letters. The legislative support for the movement is truly historic—in fact, only 0.3 percent of Senate bills (three other bills) had such a high level of support. In addition to relief efforts, GSUSA included $1M in its Fiscal Year 2015 budget for pension assistance to councils participating in the National Girl Scout Council Retirement Plan.

To share a bit about our movement’s structure, each of the 112 Girl Scout councils have their own nonprofit status, budgets, operating models, camps, programmatic offerings, and cookie selling periods. Financial decisions such as whether or not to sell or close a camp based on usage, costs, and other camp property, are made by each local council.

The Girl Scout Cookie Program has been providing girls with educational and confidence-building experiences since the first recorded cookie sale in 1917. In keeping with tradition, the revenue from cookie sales will continue to benefit individual girl scouts. While a council may at times tap cookie money for core expenses like programming or staffing, the primary beneficiary is the girls, who decide how to spend their troop cookie money to reinvest in their communities and to have new learning experiences.

As Digital Cookie is a brand new initiative, we can understand that people need to become more familiar with the ins and outs. Shipping costs are in line with established industry standards from reputable companies, and comparable to what customers would pay to ship cookies. With time, we hope that the scale of sales through this part of the program will drive down the costs of shipping and handling.

We would like to assure you that Girl Scouts is committed to bringing girls a dynamic, exciting, and, most of all, FUN Girl Scout experience—one they cannot get anywhere else.

Thanks again for seeking clarification. We’re working to update our website and hope this note has addressed your concerns. Best wishes to your daughter, we hope she has a ah-mazing year with her troop!

And so there we are.  What have we learned?  We learned that the pension issue could have been answered a month ago when our troop first sent letters asking what it meant and then I wouldn’t have written this post in the first place.  But I did, and it was good because looking at the comments you can see real issues…some that we can change and others that we can’t.  We know that often the issues we think we struggle with alone are actually far-reaching, and are worthy of addressing.  We’ve learned that a large corporation cannot be all things to all people, and that the success of your troop depends almost entirely on the skills and choices of your specific troop, leaders, volunteers and local council.   We’ve learned that no one really knows entirely what is going on.  (I suspect we already knew that.)

But the thing I learned the most through all of this is that the woman who started the girl scouts was a bad-ass who looked like she would kill you and eat you if you messed with her or her girls.

There wasn’t a commercial cookie program when she was around (aside from sporadic bake sales of homemade cookies) and I suspect if she was around now she’d be asking a lot of these same questions, and pointing to her 1917 quote on the importance of “Thriftiness” being taught to girl scouts:

“The most valuable thing we have in this life is time, and most girls are apt to be rather stupid about getting the most out of it….Money is a very useful thing to have.” ~ Juliette Gordon Low

Of course, this was a woman who found out that her dead husband willed all of his money to his mistress and she was like, “Aw, HELL NO.  LAWYER UP, Y’ALL, BECAUSE THIS BULLSHIT WILL NOT STAND.”  (I’m paraphrasing.  BTW…she won that half million dollar lawsuit, against the advice of friends who advised her to not make waves.)

But there’s another quote from her that probably fits better here, even though it’s a bit poignant for this sort of irreverent blog.

Juliette Gordon Low on Girl Scouting:

“I realize that each year it has changed and grown until I know that,
a decade from now, what I might say of it would seem like an echo of
what has been instead of what is.

The work of today is the history of tomorrow, and we are its makers.” 

This might not be what Juliette had in mind when she starting Girl Scouts, but I’d like to think that our work today to ask the hard questions and fight the good fight would have earned a small nod from her.  And possibly a raised eyebrow at all the cursing.

Probably both.

In 2006, a man walked into an emergency room in Glasgow, Scotland, complaining of blurred vision and a splitting headache that had lasted for nearly a month.

Doctors were stumped at first—the man had no history of head trauma. But after a bit of prodding, the patient copped to the root cause of his agony: He had recently consumed 60 pints of beer over the course of four days. It turns out the man was suffering from what medical science might consider the worst hangover in recent history.

This New Year's Eve, many of us might hope to avoid the Scottish man's fate. A trickier question is exactly how to accomplish that while still partaking of all the merriment of your standard New Year's Eve soiree.

One problem is that scientists don't entirely know what causes hangovers—it has a bit to do with the way the body metabolizes alcohol, but there might be an immune response and other factors at play, too. And alcohol affects everyone differently. Women, for example, get drunk faster and on less alcohol than men do because of differences in size, body water composition, and enzymes. On top of that, personal differences can also influence whether we get hangovers. The use of other drugs and even a family history of alcoholism can determine whether or not we feel the "gallon distempers" the next morning.

The limited scientific hangover research that exists is clear on one point: If you don't want a hangover, you shouldn't drink. (Or at least, don't have more than one or two drinks per day.) Still, various studies have suggested a few ways that one might minimize one's odds of developing a hangover, if one is really determined to ring in 2015 with abandon and one's boss would not give one the day off on January 1. (Sigh. Typical one's boss.)

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Hangover Severity by Drink

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  Certain compounds called congeners seem to be a factor in hangovers, according to a few studies conducted in the 1970s. Whisky, brandy, and red wine contain more congeners than clear alcohol, so make like a Real Housewife and pour yourself martinis and white-wine spritzers. In one experiment, 33 percent of people who drank bourbon experienced a hangover, compared with only 3 percent of people who drank the same amount of vodka.
• Those who stick only to beer, though, might truly be in the clear. One study found that it took up to 13 or 14 beers to produce a hangover in Dutch college students, compared to seven or so for liquor. Still, another study of Danish tourists found that 68 percent of those who drank 12 or more units of various types of alcohol the previous night woke up hungover, regardless.
• A review published in 2000 found that for men, five to seven cocktails, consumed over the course of four to six hours, is “almost always followed by hangover symptoms.” For women, it's more like three to five cocktails.
• That same review found that other factors that increase hangovers include drinking on an empty stomach, not getting enough sleep, not drinking enough water, and, interestingly, being physically active while drunk.
• Two small studies separately found that people who took vitamin B6 or tolfenamic acid, a prescription migraine drug, had fewer hangover symptoms the next morning than a control group.
• Dehydration is part of, but not the sole cause of, the hangover. Drinking water may help, but only a little. Similarly, no studies have substantiated the idea that you should imbibe "the grape or the grain, but never the twain"—it's more likely that people who start out with hard alcohols lose track of how much they're drinking more quickly. The most important factors seem to be how much you drink overall and how fast you drink it.

If you somehow manage to forget these rules after your fourth glass of champagne and eleventieth Fireball shot, just know that you're in good company. Hangovers have been documented since the dawn of time. In the Bible, the prophet Isaiah wrote, “Woe unto them that rise up early in the morning, that they may follow strong drink." Woe unto them, indeed.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/12/a-hangover-free-new-years-day/384067/

by Edith Zimmerman

I would like to salute the women who created dinosaur erotica this year. Most of the very short e-books are about cave-women-type people who engage in various sex acts with dinosaurs. Not because they have dinosaur fetishes (at least not that they know of, at first! ahhhh I love it), but because they get caught in unexpected hunting situations, etc. (putting aside that people and dinosaurs didn't live at the same time. PROBABLY). For instance, the opening of Taken By the T-Rex:

Drin!! Can you guess what happens? Haha ahhhh, I just love it so much. I love it, I love it; it deserves the Pulitzer Prize. They can rename the Pulitzer Prize the Dinosaur Erotica Prize, for ingenuity and entertainment. Maybe dinosaur erotica existed before, but there’s something perfect about Kindles for making it feel sneakier.

There’s also something feminist about these, maybe?? Because it’s not like porn is going to disappear, and if some women can get turned on by the idea of being fucked by an actual DINOSAUR, then maybe it spreads porn empathy (“Babe? I saw…on your Kindle…? Is that…what …you…?”). Presuming that everyone loves dinosaur erotica, which they should and must, right?! It’s also hilarious.

Anyway, the women who write it, Alara Branwen and Christie Sims (pseudonyms), are students at Texas A&M, supposedly, and they seem fun in this interview on The Cut. “And that is how we became the dynamic duo of monster porn!” It’s also possible they’re just dirty old men pretending to be sweet college women, and the more I look into it, the more that actually does seem like it could be the case (“Hi! I'm just a plain old, everyday Midwestern girl that lives a normal life”), but who cares! Putting joy into the world!

All right, I’m going to go read Taken By the Pterodactyl now. Wait oh my god they have AUDIBLE versions!? Hahahahah oh my god these books. Bless LITERATURE! [time passes] Okay I just read Taken by the Pterodactyl, and it is amazing. It’s about a young woman named Dianne, although sometimes it’s "Diana," who lives in a colony somewhere away from earth, and she has to protect her family’s field of sheep from the pterodactyls that fly past every afternoon. Until one day, etc. My favorite line: “Sure, she loved her parents, and she had a good life at home, but what the pterodactyl had made her feel was unlike anything she’d ever felt before.” Mmm hmm. Yup. Yes. Put that on my tombstone. Please.

Edith Zimmerman is the founding editor of The Hairpin.

0 Comments

Hi,

I’m sorry to be saying this, but I think Elodie owes the first letter writer on 12/19 an apology. I have a parent with a chronic pain condition, and it’s wrenching. (Eventually most of us will, as our parents age and suffer, and it’s one of the hardest things that will happen in our lives). Carrying a disabled parent up and down flights of stairs is terrible and unsafe practice, not an able-bodied daughter’s duty. Asking someone who is obviously not in a position of terrific affluence to buy a house or even a new sofa based on one dreaded yearly visit from a relative they have rocky boundaries with is … surprising, at the least. The letter writer was clearly asking for help setting a different boundary with her dad around visiting, under the clear understanding that she couldn’t meet his physical needs and was exhausted with the emotions of the situation. Instead Elodie straight-up insinuated that she didn’t love her father and then assigned her homework to examine her feelings for prejudice against all disabled people, when she was clearly already suffering terrific pain and guilt. I can’t imagine how I would have felt if someone had said those things to me when I was still freshly dealing with how my mother’s changing health was impacting her needs and my ability to meet those needs. (And yes, I had to change how available I was to her, because it was affecting my own health and ability to work, and I too would have referred to myself as a terrible daughter during that time). To be perfectly frank, I think it would have provoked a crisis. It was terrifically unkind. I appreciate that your website provides a free service, but I also think that as it is a trusted resource for a lot of people, you need to do better in the future.

Best and kind regards, and thank you for all the good stuff,

C.

Dear C, #649, and Others:

C., thanks for writing, I hear you and the others who were very unhappy with the answer to #649, and I appreciate you emailing me directly.

First, ground rules: We have a comment section partly so that people can disagree with the advice offered and offer alternate perspectives. “I think you got this wrong, this is my experience, and here is what I think the LW should do” = always within bounds. This space would not function without that sort of healthy disagreement. The LW may totally disagree with the “column” part of the advice, but if they get something good from the comments we’ve done our job.

Comments that start with “You are a terrible person, here is my analysis of the terribleness of your personality and I poop on all of your life choices, I hate your Tumblr and everything about you, oh, btw you got this wrong” = not within bounds. If you hate-read my site, or you personally dislike Elodie or any of the posters, you do you, but we aren’t obligated to host your thoughts about that here in the interest of “fairness.” Which means that the valid critiques people may have placed among the insults went away when I deleted that shit. In addition, we had people selectively skipping over large parts of the answer and then yelling that certain things were not addressed, skipping over large parts of each other’s comments, arguing with straw version of what was actually said, extrapolating madly, and dropping personal insults to a troubling degree the other day, which doesn’t mean there isn’t room to disagree with Elodie’s take on the post, but it does make moderation into a mess. Closing the thread means some egregious points might go unanswered or un-debated, or some unkind or against-the-rules comments are allowed to stand without answer, or your point might be lost to the spam filter. That doesn’t mean every un-deleted thing is okay and endorsed by the site. It just means “stop now.”

Elodie would post a follow-up of some kind if I asked her to, but some of the comments have become about her, personally this week to a point that I don’t want to put any more of her blood in the water. Please allow me to offer my own take on Letter #649 after reading Elodie’s post and others’ comments and emails:

Dear LW #649:

We’re probably too close to Christmas to make a difference, but of you don’t want your dad to come visit, ask him not to visit. There is no way to do this without hurting his feelings and resetting a lot of unspoken expectations about how your family works, which is uncomfortable.

The script is “Dad, I can’t host you for Christmas this year.”

Why? “Because I can’t.” Why? “I just can’t.” Sorry, I can’t. Nope, I can’t. No, that won’t work. Repeat it until he believes you. Get off the phone and go do something self-care-ish.

Lots of us have to deliver that kind of news to disappointed family. “I can’t make it home this year.” “We’re doing something else this year.” “Husband and I want to fly solo this year.” Reasons, if you must give them: “I’m exhausted and not up to it.” “I’d rather make a plan to visit you another time.” “We’re going to have to make other arrangements for now.” 

He will be sad. He will be lonely on Christmas. You will probably feel really guilty. He may get quite testy and argue with you about it and you may leave that conversation in a very uncomfortable place, where you have to say “But I didn’t invite you, you invited yourself.”  But it can be done, and it sounds like it has to be done. If we didn’t get to you in time this year, you have a year to think about and plan for next Christmas.

Now, let’s address the question of disability. One problem, LW #649, is that to me as well as Elodie, your letter over-justifed not wanting your dad to visit in terms of his disability.People who have walked in the caregiver shoes, like C., recognized this as exhaustion and frustration. Many other people saw that and read one more horrible message about What A Giant Burden People Like Us Are On Our Grudging, Long-Suffering Relatives (fueled by the part where you said while you feel guilty, you see him as a burden). People argued both viewpoints as if they were the ONLY possible read, with NO elements of the other position, which is one of the reasons the comments got so fucked up so fast. Looking at it again today, it looks to me like the over-justifying that is a common thing when people don’t feel like they are really allowed to say no. Whatever it is, “I want to, but it’s just too hard to take care of you right now” is probably not the way to sell your Dad on this decision. He probably can’t be sold on the decision anyway, but for your own sake it’s worth framing it in terms of your needs, and owning the decision. “We can’t because I can’t” > “We can’t because you can’t.”

The big point that I think that Elodie was making in tying this to Letter #650 was that inviting disabled people to activities that you know are inaccessible and impossible for them over time is the same as disinviting them. It makes people feel like they are being gaslighted, like, I told you I can’t climb stairs, so why do you keep inviting me to House of Stairs? (Especially when there’s been a year since last Christmas to talk about a different plan?) It’s a trap where the disabled person is put in the position of declining the invitation for their own self-care, and the non-disabled person can sort of say “Okay, if that’s your decision! We’ll miss you!” and pat themselves on the back because hey, we invited you, it’s your problem if you don’t want to come! Your exclusion is a self-selection thing and not us excluding you at all! It’s a horrible double-bind which is definitely at play in Letter #650.

Back to Letter #649: I think that this part of Elodie’s point is worth holding onto. Your dad has told you that your house is a painful and impossible place for him to stay, and one solution (arguably the best solution) is for him to not invite himself there (for sure) and for you to not invite him there (for the forseeable future). The problem is that nobody is being honest about that as a solution. He thinks he’s telling you what he needs by criticizing you for having stairs, and he’s not taking the “But it’s the House of Stairs and Lumpy Sofas!” condition as the “Maybe…don’t come?” message that it is. His plan is to martyr himself in order to spend Christmas with you and hope you’ll silently martyr yourself in return because that’s the deal you have right now, because faaaaaamily, because Christmas! It takes clarity and honesty to break out of those assumptions and renegotiate something else, but sadly, as long as the prospect of having that honest conversation is scarier than the prospect of actually hosting your dad, you will keep “enjoying” your annual grudging horrible painful visits from Dad. He’s not gonna get there on his own. You’re gonna have to say “Don’t come,” and you’re going to have to say it explicitly.

You aren’t a bad person if you don’t spend Christmas with your dad, this year or any other year. I don’t spend Christmas with my family anymore because traveling at this time of the year is too expensive and too stressful and I need my one little bit of down time the same as you, LW. When I did travel between Chicago and New England, I was bankrupting myself and spending half my break in airports as I waited out Ice Planet Hoth-related weather delays. My family hated it and gave me a lot of guilt about it for a long time but I knew they’d gotten it when I invited them for Thanksgiving last year and they said “Oh, but it’s so expensive and stressful to travel at that time of year” (O RLY?) and now we visit at other mutually convenient times. The first time you change up the family tradition is the hardest time, but it gets easier. Not being a bad person vs. Not hurting anyone’s feelings, there’s a different kettle of fish. Not going home hurt my family’s feelings. Not hosting your dad will hurt his. We’re breaking the meta-narrative of Home For The Holidays and Dutiful Daughters. Of course it hurts. But the alternative hurts, too. Traditions can be lovely, but breaking the “We will do x on the holidays because we have always done x” cycle as an adult can be powerful and taste like delicious freedom.

You are also not a bad person if you keep living in your house that suits you (BTW: NO ONE SAID BUY A DIFFERENT HOUSE, just that the house you bought was a choice, and hosting your dad is a choice, and hosting your dad in such an uncomfortable way is not a good choice, so an honest reexamination of priorities is at hand). You are not a bad person if you don’t spend money that you don’t have, if you don’t rearrange your furniture and your life to accommodate a once-a-year visit from a relative you’re not sure you want to see anyway. I think your Dad had a secret plan to move in with you or stay longer-term someday, and your choice of house messed with that plan (that he never talked about and you never agreed to), and that’s tied up in his reaction to the house. There are so many unasked and unanswered questions between the two of you that are coming out as “goddamn stairs!”

However, if you want your dad to ever visit you, something would have to change, because no real invitation is even possible at the current status quo. I think that’s the point that Elodie was seeking to make re: ableism: Make a real invitation (and invest somehow in his comfort, whether that’s a ramp or a new sofa or a hotel down the road, and don’t treat it like a burden), or make no invitation (which is okay if that’s what you need to do – emotionally, financially, etc). And if you don’t want your dad to come, tell him, because the unspoken “Okay, sure (not really, because it’s physically impossible for you, can’t you see that?)!” half-measure isn’t working for anyone. You kinda want him to disinvite himself from Christmas because of your stairs and his disability, but you don’t want to have to be the bad guy or make the choice or communicate the choice. You say “But he’s got it in his head that I should be adjusting my life to accommodate for him more.” He thinks he’s asking you for accommodations by complaining about the discomfort, and he thinks he’s showing love by visiting you despite the discomfort, and you think that telling him “nothing’s changed, tho!” should make it obvious that it’s not workable. You’re both wrong; you aren’t asking or telling, you are hinting, and as we know, hinting doesn’t work. Then you are super-mad at him for imposing and not getting it, but he can’t read your mind. As much as you are not a bad person for wanting to change it up this year, or for living in your house, he is not a bad person for assuming that “Christmas is something I spend with my kid,” since you’ve done it literally every year of your life. Inviting himself was not the answer, but if you want to change his assumption, you have to actually change his assumption. With words. There’s also a difference between “being a good person” and “never hurting anyone’s feelings, ever.” You don’t have to be a bad person to have incompatible wants with someone, or to disappoint their expectations. There is no great solution here that makes both of you 100% happy.

Good luck having the “Dad, I realize that this sucks and it was not what you planned, but Christmas together isn’t going to work this year” conversation. Above all, I hope you get some rest this week.

Admin Notes:

1. Comments are turned off on this entry. I don’t have the bandwidth or time to moderate further discussion, but I certainly did not want to end the year with the last thread as the last word.

2. Questions are still closed and will stay that way for a while. This next month I have some self-care and other creative projects going on. I have plans to get back to it sometime in January. If you have something time-sensitive or that’s really weighing on you in the inbox, please, please find another outlet: a hotline, a therapist or counselor, the forums, other advice bloggers/givers. If you sent a question and the situation has resolved since then, a quick “Hey, actually, we solved this” would help us prioritize things when we come back to it. Thank you and happy holidays.

3. There’s been some interest in having an open-thread for caregivers, especially of aging parents. I think that’s a great idea. If someone wants to volunteer to take point on moderating that thread, email me and I’ll make a guest-login for you, and we’ll do this sometime in the New Year.

As 2014 comes to an end, I find myself reflecting on the past 12 months, thinking about the journey, challenges, and lessons learned but also to remind myself to be thankful and count my blessings.

2014 had so many highs for me and Skinnytaste – the top of the list was certainly The Skinnytaste Cookbook making the New York Times Best Seller's List – holy cow!!! I also challenged myself to get out of my comfort zone and face one of my fears... public speaking! Still working on that but I've had lots of practice this year with video, TV and radio.

I can't express how grateful and thankful I am for all of your support. Your comments, emails, the photos you share with me on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook mean the world to me. None of this would be possible without you, so THANK YOU!

And now the best part.... here are the TOP 25 Most Popular Recipes from 2014 as well as links to the popular posts from previous years.

Top 25 Most Popular Recipes 2013
Top 25 Skinny Recipes 2012
Top 20 Skinnytaste Recipes 2011
Top 20 Skinnytaste Recipes 2010


Top 25 Most Popular Skinny Recipes posted in 2014:

1. Crock Pot Balsamic Pork Roast
This is so easy, flavorful and practically cooks itself while you're away!

 
2. Amazing Flourless (Black Bean) Brownies
One person commented "I just made this and I have to say that I am amazed! These aren't only delicious, they may be the best brownies I have ever made!"


3. Chicken and Asparagus Lemon Stir Fry
One commenter said "5/5 stars!! delicious meal with the perfect amount of flavor. :)"


4. Three-Cheese Zucchini Lasagna Rolls
Stuffed with zucchini, ricotta and Parmesan, then topped with marinara and mozzarella cheese – delicious, kid friendly and perfect if you want to feed a crowd.


5. Easy Macaroni Casserole
Baked pasta dish made with whole wheat elbows, ground turkey, veggies, marinara sauce and cheese – a great family friendly dish.


6. Cauliflower Fried "Rice"
A delicious low-carb alternative to rice!


7. Slow Cooker French Dip Sandwiches
Slightly modified from the Recipe Girl Cookbook, my husband loves this recipe!!


8. Easy Crock Pot Chicken and Black Bean Taco Salad
Delicious, high in fiber and protein all for under 300 calories


9. Zucchini Noodles (Zoodles) with Lemon and Spicy Shrimp
2014 was the year of the zoodle! Swapping zucchini noodles for pasta is my favorite low-carb swap.


10. Skinny Buffalo Chicken Strips –
One commenter said: "I am addicted. I have made them 4 times already and cannot get enough!!"


11. Chickpea Quinoa and Avocado Salad
This protein packed vegetarian salad is loaded with fiber and healthy fats!


12. Spaghetti Squash Primavera –
Easy, low-carb, gluten-free and perfect for Meatless Mondays!


13. PB&J Healthy Oatmeal Cookies
Made with just 4 ingredients, (bananas, oats, peanut butter and jelly) these cookies are best eaten warm right out of the oven!


14. Orange Chicken Makeover
Lighter in calories, but you won't be disappointed, it's so good!


15. PB2 Flourless Chocolate Brownies
These brownies have no flour, no oil or butter, but they are amazing!


16. Kung Pao Chicken Zoodles for Two
I replaced the noodles with zoodles (zucchini noodles) and the results were fantastic for under 300 calories!!


17. Blueberry Kale Smoothie
Antioxidant rich – trust me, it tastes better than it looks!


18. Quinoa Fiesta Enchilada Bake
My favorite way to eat quinoa!


19. Spiralized Raw Zucchini Salad
Amazing and no cooking required!



20. Spiralized Greek Cucumber Salad with Lemon and Feta
Another spiralized favorite!!



21. Picadillo Quesadillo
One word... YUM!



22. Turkey Meatball Spinach Tortellini Soup
Hearty, kid friendly and delicious!



23. Skinny Garlic Parmesan Fries
Baked with garlic, a little olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper, then sprinkled with freshly grated Parmesan and parsley – to die for!

 
24. Asparagus Egg and Bacon Salad with Dijon Vinaigrette
Sometimes the simplest things can be the best – like this salad...



25. Sweet and Spicy Asian Glazed Grilled Chicken Drumsticks
Marinated overnight, grilled and finished with a yummy glaze

How stunning are these mushrooms? Nature, never ceases to amaze.

(via Hirnverbrandt)

Let's assume you knew absolutely nothing about North Korea and walked into The Interview, which after a very public and protracted to-do, is now showing at a few hundred American cinemas and streaming through a number of outlets online.

Given what's been said about the movie, would you expect it to tell you about North Korea's concentration camps? Or the complexity of the dictatorship's propaganda system in which its leaders are touted as deities? Would you expect to hear (twice) that 16 million of the country's 24 million people are malnourished?

Okay, sure, The Interview might feature North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un wondering aloud about the relative "gayness" of drinking margaritas and affirming his love of Katy Perry. But caricature notwithstanding, the comedy has a surprisingly nuanced streak in its celluloid sea of swears and weiner jokes.

The Interview centers around Dave Skylark (James Franco), a fratty, self-absorbed, and disconnected celebrity TV journalist, and his producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen), who are pushed by the CIA to turn a massive scoop (an interview with reclusive North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un) into an assassination mission. Rapoport, believe it or not, laments his station as the producer of tabloid garbage and sees the Kim interview as an opportunity to perform an admirable act of journalism.

What happens next is some of what you might expect (sex, drugs, anatomy jokes) from Franco and Rogen, whose recent projects have included Pineapple Express and last year’s This Is the End. (Franco earned a Golden Globe nomination for the former and the latter still enjoys considerable sleeper praise.).

But as Skylark preens as an impressionable outsider, his gullibility and ignorance allow him to be a useful mechanism for explaining North Korea's depravity. He falls dumbly under the sway of Kim and the North Korean rhetoric machine, which paints the regime as an honorable force against the oppressive West. A major plot point turns on the dim Skylark's realization that a lush-looking grocery store he spotted earlier is a total fake. During a live-tweeting of the film on Sunday, Seth Rogen noted, "They actually have fake grocery stores in Pyongyang."

In a master stroke (spoilers ahead), the duo decides to flout the CIA's assassination order, which they determine could bring a possibly worse replacement than Kim to power. Instead, they use the live interview with Kim to destroy his credibility by stating the facts. It's not exactly Mike Wallace's showdown with Ayatollah Khomeini, but what is?

At New York, David Edelstein says that critics of the film who reduce it to a silly and sophomoric bromance, "don't know what the hell they're talking about." He adds:

It means not just to expose Kim Jong-un as a fraud but to emasculate him, which is about the most punk thing you can do to a repressive, totalitarian, murderous, self-proclaimed god of a closed but increasingly porous state.

To that Jay McInerney adds, "Forget what you heard. #TheInterview gets my vote for best picture. Sadly I'm not a member of the Academy."

The film doesn't skate away without some problematic parts. In the end, Kim Jong Un's head does explode when a tank shell fired by Rogen and company hits the dictator's helicopter. As Uri Friedman pointed out, the decision to show Kim's death, in slow motion and while Katy Perry's "Firework" twinkles in the background, was worrisome given that "that leader's government, which presides over nuclear weapons...has described the movie as an 'act of war.'" It probably doesn't matter that Kim's death happens during a getaway battle rather than a result of an assassination.

Nevertheless, on Saturday, as if to prove the movie's point, a spokesman for the National Defense Commission, North Korea's highest governing body had this to say about The Interview, the release of which it blames on President Obama: "Obama always goes reckless in words and deeds like a monkey in a tropical forest."

After all the fuss, it's entirely understandable that many object to seeing the real, living leader of a rogue country killed onscreen. But what surprises is that The Interview also spotlights other truths that North Korea doesn't want people to hear about. Given the stakes involved, that's important too.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/the-interview-is-a-pretty-smart-movie/384082/

Within the great file of my favorite food category, Things I Can Put On Toast, I dare you to find anything easier to whirl up in the minutes before a party than artichoke-olive crostini, the terribly named but unmatched in Mediterranean deliciousness of feta salsa or walnut pesto. Lightly broil a thinly sliced baguette — and I vote for preparing a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, ready to bake off later, nobody minds — and voila: it’s suddenly a party.

This is my new favorite addition to the category. Although it takes longer to cook, it takes just as little time to throw together. This seemingly simple combination of two ingredients, roasted together, become so much more than the sum of their parts. Personally, I’m not a great fan of either on their own; I find most grocery store grapes too sweet and readily-available olives too aggressively salty and one-note. But in the oven together, these bugs become features. The briny bite of the olives tangles with the syrupy sweetness of the grapes and together, make a juicy mess that’s incredible with rosemary and sea salt, heaped on a ricotta-slathered toast.

... Read the rest of roasted grape and olive crostini on smittenkitchen.com

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to roasted grape and olive crostini | 110 comments to date | see more: Appetizer, Photo, Vegetarian

by Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Nancy Silberkleit is, by trade, an elementary school art teacher. She worked with kids in New Jersey, helped set up art education programs in schools and group homes and, according to her official biography, "was instrumental in launching the Hudson Valley Children's Museum, located in Nyack, New York." Additionally—in the parlance of those of us who have taken art classes—she emitted hella art teacher vibes. Silberkleit had long grey hair, glasses, with the air of having been a hippie at one point. Most prominently, her demeanor was kind, engendered trust; she spoke patiently and deliberately.

In 2008, when her husband Michael Silberkleit passed away from cancer, Nancy inherited his position as co-CEO of Archie Comics, the company his father Louis co-founded in 1939. In her interviews, she spoke passionately about education, against bullying, about loving words. In July 2012, in San Diego for Comic-Con, she explained to local news station KUSI that she wanted Archie Comics to "engage [children] in the love of reading." Explaining her anti-bullying foundation, Rise Above!, and the accompanying comic book, she said, "One message is, never let anyone define who they want you to be."  

There is no template for the type of woman accused of workplace sexual harassment, although if modern fictional media is to believed, it is not Nancy Silberkleit. Only 16 percent of all charges are filed by men, who are also the most commonly accused. But in fictional media, women sexual harassers tend to be portrayed through a misogynistic lens: they're vixens, or voracious career-mongers. Wuornos types. Think of Sandra Bullock's character, in the 2009 rom-com The Proposal; lithe in power suits, she wields her position as a publishing executive to force a lesser employee, Ryan Reynolds, to marry her to avoid deportation. (Spoiler: they end up falling in love.) Or Jennifer Aniston, America's sweetheart, who plays a conniving sex maniac in 2011's Horrible Bosses: a toned, ferocious dentist who blackmails her charges into sleeping with her, or else. They are feckless male fantasies of sexual harassers by whom some brohams out there would, in theory only, "want" to be approached. Women who are just out there for some action, whose only true crime is their ambition, but who will either pack it in for lurve or eventually get their slapstick comeuppance.

Nancy Silberkleit, the former elementary school art teacher, has been accused by male employees of Archie Comics for sexual harassment, accusing her of referring to them not by their government names, but as "penis." The $32.5 million lawsuit was initially filed in July of 2011, and led to a restraining order against Silberkleit and countersuit in which Silberkleit and co-CEO Jon Goldwater—son of another Archie co-founder, John Goldwater—battled for the future of the company. In 2012, the restraining order was lifted, but this October, the original harassment lawsuit was reinstated.  

The details are labyrinthine, but the pull quote is writ large: as reported in 2011 by TMZ, the lawsuit stated that in 2009, Silberkleit "barged into a meeting, 'pointed to each [attendee] and said, 'PENIS, PENIS, PENIS, PENIS' and then walked out.' Nancy allegedly pulled the same 'penis' stunt again in 2010—but this time she also screamed out, 'My balls hurt.'"

Silberkleit is accused of all sorts of other sordid and dramatic behavior in the lawsuit, including allegedly dispatching a member of the Hell's Angels motorcycle gang as well as a former NFL player to hit up company headquarters and intimidate employees; and various other "destructive, dangerous, and at times deranged behavior"; and telling one employee that, "All you penises think you can run me out."

The complaint is not without its own flair, however; drawing on Archie Comics' squeaky clean image, it reads, "While World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did not stop the publication of Archie Comics. The war-like attitude and approach of Defendant may destroy Archie Comics unless this Court intervenes." All hail the greatest fucking generation. Silberkleit has filed her own sexual harassment charges; her lawyer responded to the Archie employees' suit by saying that it has no weight since "white men aren't part of a protected class."

If the accusations against Nancy Silberkleit are true, it's pretty appalling and untenable. No one deserves to be treated poorly in the workplace, especially fearing for their personal safety. And yet. There's something about Silberkleit's story that resonates, a kernel of something under there we can understand. It's not just that her alleged "Penis! Penis! PENIS!" moment sounds like a scripted montage from a feminist movie that counters the mainstream image of the glamorous woman sexual harasser—a sort of workplace answer to Teeth. Silberkleit's story resonates with women because we have seen so much of the behavior that, one suspects, might lead up to an outburst like the "Penis!" incident. Those of us who have been subject to workplace discrimination, harassment or otherwise, have felt the pressure of having to work triply hard and clock longer hours and be eminently smarter than our male counterparts, only to watch them receive the peach appointments and assignments and paychecks. We have felt the humiliation of our ideas being discounted and of being spoken over in meetings; one in five of us has been subject to unwanted advances, to objectification, and other forms of sexual harassment. It culminates into a kind of fury that can bring us to our basest, most animal instincts, the echo of "PENIS! PENIS! PENIS!" resonating in our brains—if not out of our mouths.

While many of the stories on the Archie suit are more than happy to cast her Silberkleit as the crazed villain, objectivity demands imagining the other side of things. For the sake of speculation, imagine the hypothetical alternate scenario: art teacher is widowed and inherits deceased husband's high-end position at male-dominated company; male co-CEO Goldwater doesn't like sharing his job; woman does her best to apply her experience with children to elevating comics geared to children; male employees don't like being bossed around by a woman, who—this part is real—they accuse of aspiring to be their "Dictator." (Fill in your own penis joke here.) Silberkleit's countersuits have barely been reported, perhaps because plain old, man-on-woman sexual harassment doesn't grab the same kinds of headlines until it's large-scale and undeniable, a la the US military. But the statements in her court affadavit are telling: 

Mr. Goldwater insults me both privately and in the presence of others. He has called me 'stupid,' a 'moron,' and 'despicable.' He has told me and others that I am hated by everyone in the company…. Mr. Goldwater long ago and repeatedly has told some employees and also people within the industry that he would get rid of me one way or the other.

And, according to Comics Bulletin: "Silberkleit maintains that Goldwater refused to seek her advice in company matters, that he 'hates the requirement.' Her affidavit goes on to say Goldwater 'chauvinistically seeks to undermine, exclude and not engage in any meaningful consultation with me.'"

Midway through 2013, Silberkleit launched an unsuccessful bid for mayor of Rye, N.Y., against two city council members. The only woman on the mayoral ballot, and with no prior government experience, she was inspired to vie for the position after speaking to residents who went without electricity long after Hurricane Sandy. She ran under the dual platforms of environmentalism and government transparency. In November, she told the Rye Patch, "I am a creative thinker, love people and respect one’s personal perspective. Further, as a teacher I naturally understand one's thinking and am adaptable to all kinds of situations."

 

Photo via tom1231/flickr.

Previously: Hard Out Here for a White Feminist

0 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

• A lot of this mess is your husband’s job to clean up, and when you say that he handles this “on your behalf,” it sounds like he’s generally trying to do it.
• He seems to be the one concerned about the consequences of stepping back from the family –  possibly because he’s more informed than you about what the fallout will be? Because the catching point here seems to be his anxiety about the possibility of “DRAMA” and “FRICTION,” which seems to override his apprehension about the pain/exhaustion that will definitely happen. (I’m a pretty conflict-avoidant person myself, but I’d have to be VERY anxious about people’s feelings before I drove for twenty hours for them, and I am able-bodied. I am feeling like there is some stuff happening in your husband’s head, there.)
  • It is slightly possible – I don’t know your exact situation so I’m just spitballing here – that setting boundaries with your family makes your husband feel terrible. It takes at least two surfaces to make Friction.
• I think you know all of this, and I bet you’re being a really supportive spouse.
• His family may never GET IT.  And your husband probably knows this on multiple levels.
• The thing that you have to do, Excluded, is figure out exactly how much of the Household Energy Budget is going to be spent on this, and how much of your portion of the Energy Budget you can commit.
• Because all members of the household contribute to the Budget and draw upon it, you have some say in how your husband spends/uses his portion of it. But if he’s genuinely saying to you that “I have to spend a lot of our Budget this week on my family, because the alternative is spending all of the Budget to cope with my resulting anxieties” then that could actually be something that is Best For Your Husband … even if you hate every second of Catering To His Alien Family.
• If he decides to spend his Budget on his family, it is totally okay for you to say “hahaha have fun with that (you won’t), but I have to sit this round out.”

 

Right. Scripts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a straightforward idea that can often work well.

Isolate and repeat a variety of relevant pictograms.

Use the resulting patterns as backdrops for print items.

Not every project needs an elaborate outcome.

Designed and sent in by Philipp Bochkov.

In the past 12 months, the number of movie trailers you've seen is probably greater than the number of actual movies you've seen. Now that the Internet means you don't have to show up to a theater to watch them, previews are more widely available—and widely discussed—than ever. Which means the good ones really deserve to be appreciated.

Like the movies themselves, trailers can be exceedingly formulaic. The best ones either break from that format in one way or another (which is why movies with multiple-trailer campaigns often feel free to get creative with their early clips) or embody that formula so well that you gain a newfound appreciation for why that formula works.

I've put together this list of the year's best trailers as an act of appreciation. Yes, they're crass. Yes, they're advertising at their core. Yes, it's outrageous that you have to watch other advertising on YouTube before you can even watch one. But when they're good, they're good.

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Best Multi-Spot Teaser Campaign

Some fans found the final trailer for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay: Part 1 underwhelming, but part of that reaction may have been due to the fact that the earlier teasers were just so good. In a one-two punch of unnerving creativity, we got propaganda messages from President Snow (Donald Sutherland) warning the population of Panem against rebellion. In the first clip, the camera pulls back to reveal a stoic, almost complicit Peeta standing at Snow's right hand. Honestly, the look on Peeta's face in that clip (the loyal clenched jaw, the trapped haunted eyes) shows up any of the acting Josh Hutcherson does in the actual film.

The second clip sees Peeta again on Snow's right, this time joined by Johanna Mason (Jena Malone), and much like Hutcherson's best work in the previous clip, Malone's quietly defiant hand-on-hip was quadruple what she was asked to do in Mockingjay Part 1. At the end of this second clip, the narrative advances, with Beetee (Jeffrey Wright) breaking into the communication and sending out a message from District 13. And with those two clips, the story and tone of the film were put on display in an attention-grab that didn't even have to play the Jennifer Lawrence card.

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Best Single Element of a Multi-Spot Campaign

Foxcatcher's trailers appeared to hopscotch around, chasing the pre-release buzz emanating from festivals. First there was an initial trailer that laid out the basics of the movie, or at least the general unsettling themes of the movie. After some of the Cannes reviews singled out Channing Tatum, a Tatum-specific trailer was cut. And then, with the studio perhaps worried about muddying the waters of a Best Actor Oscar campaign for Steve Carell, a third trailer put the spotlight back on Carell's spooky transformation into the eccentric John DuPont. But it was just that second, Tatum-heavy clip that impressed. It didn't manage to say very much about the plot of the film, but the dark, grunting intensity Tatum exhibited in those scenes inspired tidal waves of curiosity.

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Best Single Image from a Trailer

This clip doubles as the best single sequence of Godzilla itself: an artful, eerie, gorgeous moment of skydivers, free-falling into the middle of Godzilla-ravaged San Francisco, trailing red streaks of smoke flares behind them. The clip cuts between POV shots of the skydivers and extra-wide shots with the red streaks descending from the clouds. It's utterly gorgeous and sells Godzilla as a cut above your normal brainless blockbuster, though the patented Godzilla shriek promises tried-and-true thrills as well.

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Best Single-Scene Trailer

Because the movie-trailer formula usually entails pulling together clips from all across the film and shaking them up into a propulsive montage, one of the best ways to snap the audience to attention is to reject that format altogether and just deliver one scene from the film. It doesn't have to be a scene that spells out the plot. It doesn't have to be a scene that includes all the major characters. It just needs to make the audience want to see what comes next. We've seen this work effectively for movies like The Devil Wears Prada or even early contender for 2015's best trailer, Tomorrowland. This year, the trailer that did this best was for Big Hero 6, Disney and Marvel's fun kiddie superhero flick. What the scene at the heart of this teaser smartly accomplished was to step out of the way of its best selling point: huggable puffy robot Baymax.

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Best Red-Band Trailer

Neighbors has an unfair advantage in this category, perhaps, as it had two red-band trailers. But its first one was especially impressive. Most red-band trailers feel almost duty-bound to cram in every bit of R-rated raunch and nudity and bad language in order to make the best of their opportunity. Sure, Neighbors announces its presence with McLovin sexing a coed up against the porch. But neither that moment, nor any of the partying frat boys or overcompensating Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne, feels like it's straining to meet some standard of look-at-me raunch.

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Best Use of Dumb Ol' Pop Music to Sell a Fancy Art Film

Xavier Dolan's Mommy is already full to bursting with delightfully odd pop songs like Oasis's "Wonderwall" and Counting Crows' "Colorblind," so it ends up being completely perfect that this French-Canadian mother-son drama is being sold to American audiences via some equally odd pop selections. One Republic's "Counting Stars" could be found on about half the TV ads and network promos in 2014, and Ellie Goulding's "Anything Could Happen" was notably used in the trailers for Girls season 2. The impression given was that Mommy was an incredibly familiar, commercial, sellable movie. Now if someone would just up and release it in the United States already.

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Best Use of Actually Old Pop Music to Sell a Giant Superhero Film

You have only one place to put the blame for the reason you've had "Spirit in the Sky" and "Hooked on a Feeling" in your head for the better part of the year. Instantly, Guardians of the Galaxy went from an anonymous cog in the Marvel machine, full of characters you've never heard of even a little bit, to the clearly defined oddball cousin to The Avengers that it was always meant to be.

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Best Trailer for a 2015 Movie

This list is restricted to trailers for movies that came out in 2014. We have to abide by the calendar or else all is lost and chaos reigns and other things that have to do with Robert Redford and Lars Von Trier movies come to pass. That said ... there was a new Star Wars trailer this year, and it'd be foolish not to mention how much pull that franchise still has. Even after disastrous prequels and countless jokes about midichlorians, that one shot of the Millennium Falcon streaking across the (Tatooine?) skyline still has the power to wrap mass audiences around the little finger of, in this case, J.J. Abrams. Celebrate, America! You now have a capacity for disappointment again!

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Best Trailer of 2014, Second Runner Up

It took four tries to get it right, but the final trailer for Interstellar finally hit all the right buttons, balancing the script's more yearning, poetic tendencies with the space footage fans had been waiting to see. And all wrapped was up in "Final Frontier," composer Thomas Bergersen's trailer-ready piece of music that has a huge impact here.

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Best Trailer of 2014, First Runner-Up

Attempting to explain Under the Skin, Jonathan Glazer's dreamscape-like, sci-fi body thriller in the span of an entire film proves difficult. In the span of two minutes? Impossible. So rather than try to lay out the particulars of Scarlett Johansson's extraterrestrial walking tour of chilly Scotland, the trailer instead lay out a rapid-fire collection of some of the most provocative images put to screen in 2014. The eye! The goo! That fur coat!

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The Best Trailer of 2014

It might actually turn out that Birdman will win the Academy Award for Best Picture this year, and if so, you can say it started with a trailer that demanded attention from its very first second, with the single-continuous-take aesthetic, saturated backstage colors, and deranged Michael Keaton all adding up to something that looked quite novel. Then kicked in the perfectly off-kilter music choice, with Cee-Lo Green's slow-burn version of "Crazy" guiding us through a series of quick clips that feature comets, drumlines, and Michael Keaton in his underwear, striding through Times Square like a maniac. It's an unforgettable first impression.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/12/the-best-movie-trailers-of-2014/383975/

Google invited me down to Mountain View to preview the latest generation of their self-driving cars.

View

“I know they’re called fingers, but I’ve never seen ‘em fing.”  — Otto, The Simpsons.

 

I can’t be sure, but I think these two misshapen, detached fingers are indeed “finging.”

Thanks for snapping a picture of this sign and sending it to us, Sara!

The post Urgo: Two Fingers Finging appeared first on PSD : Photoshop Disasters .

May we all find ways to be as happy as this guy.

Read more Look At How Happy This Guy Is To See A Shark at The Toast.

Need an awesome last-minute gift they're sure to love? Try one of these eight super-easy homemade gifts you can make with only one day's notice.


Time is running out and you still need a couple of last-minute gifts, don't you? Well, put down the car keys and stay the freak away from the mall, peeps. The Ninj has got you covered with eight different ideas for last-minute homemade gifts that you can make with only 24 hours notice.

Snacks, condiments, even chocolate treats -- heck, some of them take less than 20 minutes.

Yeah, you heard me right, friend: a homemade gift people will actually want in less than 20 minutes.

Let's get gifting!
Continue reading >>

 

“Witty Meeting Comebacks that Indicate Your Displeasure While Concealing the (Professionally Discrediting) Whirling Dervish of Your Rage”

“Throwing Money at Problems: A Justification”

“Is This Sex Position Degrading or Just Uncomfortable?”

“Age-Concealing Procedures: Talking to Someone While Pretending They Haven’t Had One, or, Injectables: Agreeing to Disagree”

“Strangely Funny Moments in The House of Mirth”

“Women Who Take Care of Too Many People and the People Who Take Care of Them, i.e. Other Women”

“How to Get your Eyebrows Done Without Feeling Weird About It”

“Rules for Wearing ‘Challenging’ Clothing Items, Ankle Boots Specifically”

“I Don’t Know Why I Asked You if You were OK a Third time, Perhaps Because I am Dissatisfied with Your Answer of [Shrug]?”

“Am I the Only One Not Enjoying Delightful, Airy Chitchat with my Hair Stylist? An Investigation”

“Ten Satisfying Ways of Letting Your Enemy Know That You are Ignoring Her, While Still Ignoring Her.”

“Loving Your Disco Bush in the New Millennium: Letters to my Earlier Self”

“10 Things We’d Like to Hear Virginia Woolf Say to Jonathan Franzen”

“Perfecting the Art of the Cocked Head “Really?” Response”

“Perfecting the Art of the ‘HUH’ Response”

“Perfecting the Art of the Inflectionless ‘what.’ Response”

“The Dubious Rag: What Did it Clean Up?”

“Publically Editorializing on Strangers’ Behavior: A How-To Guide”

“Sentimental As Fuck: Having Feelings Doesn’t Mean I Don’t Have Reasons”

“Separately Scrolling Through iPhones on the Couch with Your Partner as Erotic Practice”

“This Investment Sweater Will Probably Not Solve Your Social Anxiety Problems, But Then Again It Might”

“How To Cope With Your Colleague’s Excessive Self-Gratulating: Or, Shut Up Already About Your Productivity, I Have Laundry to Do”

“$80 Is Not Too Much to Pay for the Best of Something, Even A Bra”

“Facing Forward with a Straight Face but Communicating to Your Girlfriends Laterally with your Body: A Woman’s Best Revenge”

“Millenials: Nothing But Love But Also, Take a Minute and Read a Book or a Thousand”

“I Cannot Look Right Now, Sweetie”

“Public Wagon Circling: Not Actually a Useful Feminist Strategy”

“ ‘Split Skirts’ Versus ‘Culottes’ versus ‘Palazzo Pants;’ Also: ‘Wide-legged’ or ‘Wide Leg’: When to Wear?”

“I Have Thoughts About the Revolution, But I Have Not Slept and Can’t Find My Other Shoe”

“Why Have More People Not Read Villette?”

“Not Slouching and Not Wearing Oversized Clothes and Other Victories”

“The PRECISE Length of a Laura Petrie Crop Versus the Weird Mom Clam Digger”

“How to Have a Wedding in Which Nobody has to Wear Wedges”

“Why are There so Many Accidental Pregnancies in Movies when IT IS ACTUALLY REALLY HARD TO DO?”

“Belts: A User’s Guide with Notes on Resisting the Ribcage Cage.”

“How to Phrase Insincere Offers of Help in the Kitchen”

“Plans to Murder my Ex’s Now-Ex, or, Alternately, Take Her Out for Drinks”

“Meals I Won’t Cook for Boyfriends I Will Never Have”

“Margaret Fuller was Totally Right About How One Effect of The Patriarchy is that Women Can Be Such Bitches” [Part One of an Investigative Series]

“Another Effect of Patriarchy is Snack Escalation by Guilty Preschool Moms” [Part Two of an Investigative Series]

“Yet Another Effect of Patriarchy is Women Making Other Women Set out the Cheese and Crackers at Receptions” [Part Three of an Investigative Series]

“Women Explain Things To Me”

“Snacks as Feminist Practice”

 

*Specifically, we would like to see these essays written by Sarah Miller, voice of our generation.

 

–Sarah B., Hester, Claire, Sarah M., & Kyla: Team Sarah Miller

Lead Image ©Barbara Morgan, UCLA  Archives

I know, I know, we just talked about gingerbread two weeks ago, in a biscotti, hot chocolate-dipping format. It’s too soon! I completely agree with you. But this was a request; a commenter asked if there was a way to transplant the intensity of everyone’s favorite gingerbread cake into a waffle format. Asking me this is like asking a Muppet if they like to count. I live for this; I thought you’d never ask.

True enough, the so-called gingerbread waffles I browsed on the web seemed to be in name only; pale beige specimens, softly spiced, more gingersnap than gingerthud. Proper gingerbread should make an entrance, with no restraint in the ginger or molasses department. It should be dark and a little sticky. It should either be adored or reviled; there’s rarely any middle ground. Lucky for me, my family, both young and old, cannot get enough.

... Read the rest of deep dark gingerbread waffles on smittenkitchen.com

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© smitten kitchen 2006-2012. | permalink to deep dark gingerbread waffles | 207 comments to date | see more: Breakfast, Christmas, Photo, Winter

Political cartoonist Michael Ramirez has waded into the torture debate with his latest at Investor's Business Daily. See it at full size here. We can make due with a smaller version:

Notice that the man being asked the question doesn't reply, as if the answer is obvious. But given how many New Yorkers were murdered on 9/11, as well as the diversity of opinion among survivors of the attack, it's clear to me that if all the dead were given the chance to respond some of them would say something like this:

I'd be horrified if someone used my death to justify torturing prisoners–my country is better than the people who did this to us, and we shouldn't let  their values change ours.

Or imagine that the falling man was a religious Catholic. He might say:

I hope whoever did this faces justice before humankind and God–but an American asked to torture would be risking his eternal soul, which I'd never countenance.

Generally speaking, political arguments that draw on powerful emotional imagery for their resonance are suspect. But even setting that rule-of-thumb aside and judging Ramirez's cartoon on its own terms, the takeaway is not nearly as clear as its creator seems to imagine, particularly now that we know the "enhanced interrogations" perpetrated by the CIA included the torture of innocents.

How would the falling men feel about that?

One more thought on Ramirez's cartoon and the weakness of its implied logic. Let us imagine a different cartoon. A Pakistani woman is covered in blood and dust outside her home, which was just reduced to rubble with her now-crushed infant daughter inside. A U.S. drone is overhead. A radical cleric asks her, "How do you feel about the attack on Fort Hood?" I presume that Ramirez would reject the logic implied in that cartoon, and yet it is exactly the sort he has drawn on in his cartoon.

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/a-reply-to-michael-ramirezs-torture-cartoon/383880/

Sorry I murdered everyone at your party, but as an introvert, I prefer one-on-one interactions to group gatherings.

I'm really sorry that everyone is dead. I prefer animals to people.

Sorry I killed everybody! I just really need my alone time.

Read more Sorry I Murdered Everyone, But I’m An Introvert at The Toast.

A few years back I started a family tradition that would serve to both delight me and mock me for years to come. The Thanksgiving Bakeoff. Sounds innocent enough, right? And it really should be, unless you have inherited the “competiveness gene,” which apparently everyone in my family has firmly encoded in their DNA chain. Let’s just say that each year seems to up-step the last in terms of both masterful entries and sore feelings. There will always be someone whose molten-chocolate lava cakes wasn’t as molten as it should have been, and we’re never going to hear the end of it. Anyway, I have never won this family competition. Not because of my failed black bean brownies in ’09, but because there are allegiances and biases that run too deep for even THESE spectacularly delicious chocolate-covered cookie sticks to penetrate. Take last year for instance, when our first place winner received sympathy votes for getting dumped by her boyfriend the day before the Bakeoff. Tears in the batter do not make for a superior apple cake, people!

In case you still think the Bakeoff is all fun & games, see our elite panel of judges with their complex scoring system.

Unfortunately, they’re system is not foolproof because, truth be told, I should have won this year. There, I said it. These cookies sticks score high on originality, presentation, and overall taste. Crunchy cookie coated in chocolate, almonds, and sea salt. AND, then I did a second version with dark mint chocolate drizzle that was said to give Pepperidge Farm’s Mint Milano cookie a serious run for its money. This should have been my year. Not letting it go…

Okay bitterness aside, and on to the full recipe and details for my 2014 Bakeoff entry—so that you too can come in 2nd place at the holiday dessert table!

The cookie is the key. You need it firm enough to dip and hold, while crumbly enough to fall right apart in your mouth. I think it’s all in the bread flour. I’d never used bread flour for cookies until these, and I’m pretty certain it was the main differentiator. The batter actually comes together very easily (just the bread flour, baking powder, sugar, egg, butter, water, almond extract.) Use a pastry bag to extract the batter neatly on to a line baking sheet for baking. I didn’t have a pastry bag or tip on-hand, so I improvised by cutting the corner off of a zip-top bag. You fill the zip-top bag with the batter and just compress it right out of the tip of the bag the same way you would with a pastry bag. Sorry no pics of that step! I baked the cookie sticks off two trays at a time for about 20 mins (flipping the trays after 10 mins). This recipe makes about 40 sticks.

The chocolate chips are simply melted using a double boil method. Use a double boil pot or improvise again by placing a heat safe bowl in a pot of simmering water like seen here…

Once the chocolate is nice and melty, you can transfer it to a jar that’ll be the right depth for dipping your cookie into. Test the jar before transferring over the chocolate…

Then start dipping! Let any excess chocolate run back into the jar and lay cookie on the parchment to set.

You’ll need to add the chopped almonds and sea salt to the chocolate-covered cookie stick before the chocolate dries. I recommend doing it immediately after each cookie is dipped.

The steps are the same for the mint-chocolate drizzle variety, except for that you’ll need to add the peppermint oil (do not use extract, it must be peppermint oil) to the chocolate during the melting stage. Stir it in evenly and add peppermint to taste. I like it really pepperminty, but some prefer less.

Note: If you want to make both varieties, simply do the almond ones first with the plain chocolate, and then reheat the remaining chocolate and add the peppermint oil to do the rest.

I used a fork for the drizzling. Have fun with it. Go as heavy or light as you want…you can’t really mess it up.

Let them dry for about 2 hours before serving or moving around. You want that chocolate to really harden into a nice shell over the cookie.

Once the chocolate has hardened, you can gently snap off any excess chocolate drizzle that might be popping off the sides of the cookie stick.

What do you do when you draw the Secret Santa name of a guy that has two dogs and loves to hike? You make a dog biscuit wreath...

And find the most perfect book to go with it! Surpreme Secret Santa Success this year.

UPDATE: Secret Santa Success!

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's coalition to bring the Internet to the entire world, a global project known as Internet.org, was recently the subject of a lengthy Time magazine story by Lev Grossman.

Grossman does a superb job of summarizing the many criticisms that have been leveled at the effort: that the Internet is largely irrelevant to people without running water and basic education; that there are dangers to trying to solve human problems with an engineering mindset; that Zuckerberg’s intuitions of the developing world are based on stage-managed, helicopter-facilitated visits to remote villages; that, like a sci-fi nightmare, Facebook’s business model harvests and profits from the captive attention of its users; that Internet.org is a form of colonialism that whitewashes Facebook’s techno-imperialism under a cloak of doing good. At one point, Grossman cries out, “There are still people here on God’s green earth who can conduct their social lives without being marketed to. Can’t we for God’s sake leave them alone?”

These are all damning critiques, but what’s strange about the article is that after carefully lining them up, Grossman finds himself being talked out each one, mostly by Facebook executives. All his protests are for nothing. By the end, he seems taken by the sheer size and apparent inevitability of the vision and calls Zuckerberg one of the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” Zuckerberg himself gets (almost) the last word: “I’m pretty confident we can do it. I’m pretty confident it’s going to be a good thing.”

This is not just a problem of false equivalence, in which journalists cover both sides of an issue without taking a stand on hard facts. Rather, Grossman, like so much of the public sphere on both the political left and right, simply finds himself unable to resist the grand ambitions of Silicon Valley late capitalists. After run-ins with Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, a Deloitte report commissioned by Facebook, and an anthropologist studying Facebook in Tonga, Grossman pretty much gives up: “Zuckerberg can be both enriching himself and other people, both expanding and consolidating Facebook’s dominance and saving lives, all at the same time.”

Saving lives is a stretch, but Grossman’s conclusion touches the heart of the issue. The larger problem is that we, as both American society and as global elites seem unable to put up any substantial opposition against large corporations and gazillionaires fortifying their skyscrapers of inequality as long as they can make even the flimsiest case that they’re contributing to the public good. Sandberg says, “The next decade is helping connect the people who are not yet connected and watching what happens” [emphasis mine]. We have no meaty critical response to this—no defense against powerful people running hobby experiments that affect millions of others, and “watching what happens.”

“Watching what happens” fits right in the sweet spot of the secular, pluralistic, do-as-you-please individualism that the Western world has so long clamored for, and from which politics—American politics, in any case—is singularly unable to escape.
Yet, secular, pluralistic, do-as-you-please individualism is exactly the problem. Internet.org is development without representation. As Grossman notes, “It’s not as if anybody asked two-thirds of humanity whether they wanted to be put online.” Actually, if you do ask some of them, as I have done many times as part of my research in various parts of South Asia and Africa, what you hear is confusion. Most dollar-a-day people will tell you over and over that what they most want is better earning opportunities for themselves, healthcare for their families, and education for their children. Yet time after time, they will also spend what little income they have on mobile phones and value-added services such as “caller tunes,” in which you pay a fee each month so that the people who call you hear the music of your choice while they wait for you to answer. Meanwhile, many local cultures and church communities oppose the Internet because so much of the dominant use is by young men playing video games and watching porn.

Here again, knee-jerk post-neoliberal kicks in: Well, isn’t that people using the Internet as they please? Who are we (or any religion) to tell them what they can’t do with it? Yes, of course, individual freedoms should be honored, but freedom is the wedge by which the entire machinery of what author Jonathan Franzen calls “neotechnofeudalism” enters in. Freedom is the basis by which corporations seduce unsuspecting consumers so long as it isn’t causing them biological harm. I’m not suggesting that we should forbid poor people from using the Internet if they want to, but not forbidding something is a very different thing from pushing it into their lives unbidden. As those of us who are already online serfs in the developed world know, once all your friends have Facebook, it takes active discipline to avoid it.

Wherever Facebook is used, people get hooked. Hooked, like on tobacco or crack cocaine. And while Facebook’s negative effects might not be as significant as those of narcotics, they are there. In the United States, studies increasingly show correlations between time spent on Facebook and depressed mood. At many successful IT firms in India, the management prohibits Internet use for most employees. You might think that being disconnected from the world’s largest information source would be lethal for knowledge workers, but what these companies have found is the opposite—when you give your employees unfettered access to the Internet, productivity goes down. Could it be that they were spending too much time on Facebook?

Zuckerberg, incidentally, should be praised for his private efforts to boost education. He has made at least two $100-million donations to public education in America, but if he’s truly devoted to education, why not lobby for more egalitarian education in America, in addition to immigration reform? And why not make universal quality education the rallying cry for his world-saving efforts? Why not start Education.org? (And, just in case you think universal Internet access is the path to education for all, think again.) It’s because, after all, Internet.org is just another bid in Silicon Valley’s land grab for the world’s virgin eyeballs. As Facebook’s $22 billion acquisition of cash-bleeding What’s App shows, if you’re willing to acquire 450 million users at $50 per head, what’s a few more bucks to buy the rest?

This article was originally published at http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/12/the-problem-with-the-plan-to-give-internet-to-the-whole-world/383744/

These flour-less almond butter cookies are SO good, and made with only 3 ingredients (almond butter, raw sugar and an egg)! They are so easy to make you don't even need a mixer, so these are perfect for any beginner baker.

I participated in The 4th Annual Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap to raise money for Cookies For Kids Cancer, a wonderful non-profit organization that raises money to help kids with Cancer. I swapped cookies with three bloggers, all of which requested a cookie made with no white flours or white sugar and that could handle shipping without the need for refrigeration. These cookies came to mind because they use no flour and can last for weeks in a cookie tin. They are also naturally gluten-free. I tested them a few times to see how little sugar I can get away with using and found 6 tablespoons was perfect.


I've been making peanut butter cookies for years using these same three ingredients, but this was my first time trying them with almond butter instead. I love Justin's Maple Almond Butter so I used that and they turned out wonderful. Honestly, you can use any type of nut butter you like, try it with cashew butter, pistachio butter, or you can just stick with natural peanut butter.




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