Russian Sledges

Here's a nice analysis of why, were you actually a female warrior of olden times, you would not have wanted to wear a breastplate that showed off your breasts. Shorter version: Room for boobs is good. But outlining each boob in steel could get you killed.

Tip for all my student readers: if you’re too lazy to use a bibliography creator like NoodleBib or RefWorks, let Google generate your bibliography entries for you. All you have to do is google the article/book title in Google Scholar, click “cite” at the bottom of the search result, and copy either the MLA, APA, or Chicago cite into your word document. 

“Thirty years ago, they were wide-eyed, first-year graduate students, ordered by their iconoclastic professor, Dr. Stanley Milgram, to venture into the New York City subway to conduct an unusual experiment. Their assignment: to board a crowded train and ask someone for a seat. Then do it again. And again.”

- The New York Times > New York Region > ‘Excuse Me. May I Have Your Seat?’

I‘m publishing a little earlier than normal this week because I’m off to Melbourne for a few days. Super excited to be visiting one of my dearest friends, Missy Helgs and her adorable 4 week old daughter Fleur.

Really looking forward to both of them giving me a crash course in how to look after a newborn. An area where I have A LOT to learn! And of course it’s a great chance to try a few new Melbourne hot spots before I enter the new parent fog.

Anyway back to the normal Stonesoup programming….

One of my goals for Stonesoup this year is to spend more time talking about topics that you are interested in.

So I’ve set up a survey to capture your questions and I’ve also started keeping a notebook in my Evernote account to keep track of questions that come in via email.

One of the most common questions I get asked came most recently from John…

“Where do you get the sherry vinegar? I heard Jamie give it a plug about a year ago but haven’t been able to find it. Now you mention it.”

Now I LOVE vinegar and could happily talk about it all day, so I now have the perfect excuse to dedicate a whole blog post to my favourite vinegars. Thanks John!

My favourite vinegars

Normally I don’t like to play favourites with my ingredients but for some strange reason when it comes to vinegar I have a clearly defined hierarchy…

1. Sherry Vinegar
This is my desert island vinegar. If I could only have one vinegar, like I did when I was living in New York for a month, sherry vinegar would be it.

Why do I love it so much?

I find sherry vinegar has the perfect balance of acidic flavours without being too harsh or chemically. While I’m happy to eat sherry vinegar by the spoon, I find red or white wine vinegar overpowering and too much.

So basically it adds the right type of acidity and freshness to food without turning it into a vinegar fest.

2. Rice Vinegar (aka Rice Wine Vinegar)
Rice vinegar comes in a close second because it’s really similar to sherry vinegar in terms of adding freshness without the overpowering chemically acidity found in white and red wine vinegar.

And if you’re wondering, as far as I know Rice Vinegar and Rice Wine Vinegar are the same thing. Adding the ‘wine’ to the name is just a marketing ploy to make it sound more ‘fancy’.

3. Balsamic Vinegar
It’s sweet, it’s intense. What’s not to love about balsamic. I currently have 3 balsamics in my pantry (not very minimalist of me!). One cost more than a bottle of perfume and I use it sparingly to drizzle on things for special occasions.

The next cost about $25 and it’s my go-to vinegar when I want to make a dressing with a bit of sweetness. I usually mix up 1 tablespoon of this balsamic with 2-3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, depending on how intense I want my dressing to be. I also use this one for drizzling on less special occasions.

And then I have a cheap supermarket balsamic I use when I want to cook with it. This tends to be things like a hearty beef or lamb slow cooked dish. But I sometimes use it to deglaze a pan to make an instant sauce.

4. Cheap White Vinegar
Essential for keeping my morning poached eggs in good shape. And anytime you want a huge acid hit from an inexpensive source.

Other Vinegars
I also have a caramelised red wine vinegar which is basically a ‘poor girls balsamic’. Much sweeter and less interesting than balsamic. But fun for a change. I tend to use some soy sauce when making a dressing with this to add complexity and depth and to balance the sugar.

Chinese black vinegar or Chinkiang vinegar is something I picked up when my Irishman was going through his kung pow chicken phase. I do love the salty intensity but it’s not something I think to reach for very often which probably explains why the bottle is still quite full.

I pick up a bottle of apple cider vinegar every now and then. It has similar intensity to sherry or rice vinegar but for some reason, I can’t put my finger on, I don’t like it as much.

I can’t remember the last time I had a bottle of red, white or even champagne vinegar in the house. If they work for you, great! But I find they’re never as nice as my sherry vinegar.

How I use vinegar

If you’re only using vinegar to make salad dressings you’re in for a treat… There’s so much more you can do with vinegar.

After salt, vinegar is my second favourite ingredient to add when I’m ‘seasoning’ my food.

One of the things I learned when I was a winemaker was the importance of acidity in how things taste. Winemakers spend hours (I’m not kidding) messing around with different pH levels and different types of acid which inspired me to start using acid and vinegar more thoughtfully in the kitchen.

When I’m tasting a dish to season it, I ask myself whether it needs more salt OR does it need a little vinegar?

Salt is great for enhancing flavours but vinegar has the ability to really freshen things up and bring everything to life. If you’d like to learn more about this, we cover it in depth in my online cooking classes at the Stonesoup Virtual Cookery School.

So I’m often reaching for the vinegar bottle when I’m seasoning a stew or soup or a dish like the sausages and lentils below.

Where I buy my vinegar

My sherry vinegar and balsamic come from my favourite deli. And the super expensive balsamic comes from Fratelli Fresh in Sydney. With sherry vinegar I’ve found you get what you pay for, so choose the most expensive one you can afford.

With balsamic it’s not so simple. I’d recommend going with a mid-priced balsamic first and then branching out to more expensive if you’re up for it. Supermarket balsamic can be OK but I find it’s worthwhile getting some from a deli, especially to use for salad dressings.

My local supermarket stocks an excellent rice wine vinegar in the Asian section. But depending on where you shop, you may need to go to an Asian grocery store. The great thing is it’s very inexpensive compared to the quality.

And of course my cheap white vinegar is another supermarket buy.

What about you?

Are you willing to take my vinegar challenge and branch out and try something new?

Pickup a bottle of a new vinegar for you and share your results in the comments below. I’d love to hear what you think…

Quick Sausages & Lentils

In our house we LOVE a good sausage. And over the years I’ve learned that there is a massive difference in quality between a sausage made with excellent ingredients and love and your super cheap supermarket sausage.

So if you think you aren’t a sausage fan, I challenge you to take the time to find a butcher who makes their own and takes pride in their bangers. Trust me, it will be like discovering a whole new ingredient. And the best thing, even super fancy bangers are reasonably priced compared to most meats.

Enough for 2
3-4 good quality pork sausages
250g (9oz) cooked lentils or 1 can, drained
1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped

1. Heat a little oil in your frying pan. Remove sausage from their casings and crumble the meat into the pan.

2. Cook on a highish heat, stirring every now and then for a few minutes or until sausages are well browned.

3. Add lentils, vinegar and soy. Stir and keep cooking until everything is hot and the sausages are cooked through.

4. Remove from heat. Taste and season with extra soy or vinegar if needed. Sprinkle over parsley.

VARIATIONS
not a sausage fan? – replace sausages with ground (minced) meat. Pork, veal, beef or lamb would all be fine.

different lentils – I’ve used home cooked French-style or Puy lentils, but you could use canned lentils. Red or brown lentils will also work, just be careful you don’t overcook them as they like to turn into a mush. The best way to cook lentils is to add to a big pot of cold water then simmer until they’re tender, about 15 minutes for red or green lentils, longer for brown).

soy-free – skip the soy sauce and season with salt instead.

vegetarian / vegan – Skip the sausages and double everything else. Warm the lentils and season with the soy and vinegar. Serve with a generous handful of roasted nuts for extra protein and crunch.

Video version of the recipe.

5-Ingredients 10-Minutes BONUSES!

It’s been a white since I mentioned my new print book which is NOW AVAILABLE in good bookshops in the UK and Australia.

A HUGE thank you to you if you’ve purchased one (or more!) copies. I really appreciate your support.

If you haven’t picked up a copy yet, what are you waiting for? Order online from amazon.co.uk and bookdepository.co.uk (my favourite book supplier because they have FREE shipping anywhere in the world!).

To make sure you don’t miss out go to:
www.5ingredients10minutes.com/

With love,
Jules x

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In 1704, Judge Samuel Sewall presided over the funeral of John Lambert, a convicted pirate who had been executed for his crimes. While murderers and victims of suicide were routinely excluded from Massachusetts burying grounds, Sewall took pity on Lambert's family:

By my Order, the diggers of Mm Paiges Tomb Dugg a Grave for Lambert, where he was laid in the Old burying place Friday night about midnight near some of his Relations: Body was given to his Widow. Son and others made suit to me.

This was not a flashy, public funeral. Sewall buried the pirate at midnight, preventing any sort of spectacle that might have dignified the proceedings. But he did bury him.

When the Winthrop Fleet arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, one of the first legal reforms implemented by the emigrants concerned the establishment and administration of "burying places." At the time, all active graveyards in England were churchyards — consecrated spaces owned by the Church of England and governed by canon law.* Religious dissenters would establish independent burying grounds in the 1660s, but, in 1630, all English subjects could expect to be buried in a churchyard. According to the most recent iteration of canon law (1604), “No minister shall refuse or delay . . . to bury any corpse that is brought to the Church or Churchyard.” Even people who had “lived and died most profanely, more like a very atheist and a gross infidel, than like any Christian at all,” were afforded sacramental burial, though Church officials permitted ministers to use their “wisdom and discretion” in tempering some of the more effusive prayers in the Common Prayer burial service.

They did allow an exception: churchyards should refuse to bury people who had been excommunicated for "some grievous and notorious crime." This usually meant suicide or murder. But it also applied to obnoxious and outspoken dissenters like the Baptist minister Samuel Howe. When Howe died in 1640, no churchyard would take his body, so “his Friends were forced to lay his Body in the High-way, as one which was numbred amongst the Transgressors.” It was an ignominious end, but the only one available to people who could not be admitted to the Church of England's sacred churchyards.

Unlike the churchyards they had known in England, graveyards in Massachusetts were municipally owned and operated. They were not formally consecrated and ministers did not lead funeral services, nor say prayers at the graveside. This rejection of the English churchyard was part of a larger effort by the emigrant generation to purge elements of Church practice that smacked of vestigial Catholicism, including sacramental marriage, burial, the practice of appointing godparents, and the custom of "churching" women after childbirth.


Massachusetts graveyards continued to exclude executed criminals and victims of suicide. This was not true 100% of the time — I have written before about Samuel Sewall's involvement with burying people who died under these circumstances.  Where the churchyard implied that the entire community belonged to the established Church, the municipal burying ground made no distinctions based on denomination (or race, or even religion, necessarily), accepting all members of the civic community. Exclusion from the common burying ground was exclusion from the body politic, not from the church membership.

It is with this history in mind that I have been reading accounts of the Tsarnaev family's difficulty in finding a cemetery to accept the body of Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev. While they have found a philanthropic funeral home director in Peter Stefan of Worcester, they have not yet been able to find a cemetery — public or private — that is willing to bury Tsarnaev. Cambridge City Manager Robert W. Healy has announced that he will not permit Tsarnaev to be buried in Cambridge's municipal cemetery:

The difficult and stressful efforts of the residents of the City of Cambridge to return to a peaceful life, would be adversely impacted by the turmoil, protests and wide spread media presence at such an interment . . . The families of loved ones interred in the Cambridge Cemetery also deserve to have their deceased family members rest in peace.

In a city like ours, where the residents share no single language, religion, or ethnic background, it seems that exclusion from municipal burial is the last way we have to excommunicate someone.

I understand Healy's reasoning. But, at the same time, the thing that stands out to me in these press accounts has been the compassion of Peter Stefan. He has dedicated his professional life to burying society's outcasts — people who are homeless or destitute or drug-addicted or criminals or otherwise civilly excommunicated. In the present situation, he has decided to take Tsarnaev's case because someone has to do it. ‘‘My problem here is trying to find a gravesite. A lot of people don’t want to do it. They don’t want to be involved with this,’’he told reporters, noting that he took an oath to bury all of the dead with dignity. It's understandable that others do not want to get involved — Stefan's funeral home has been inundated with angry protesters.

The impulse to excommunicate is strong. It's the last way we can condemn someone who has injured our community. But in focusing on whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev deserves a dignified burial, the protesters outside Peter Stefan's office are missing the Grace of his response. He's not burying Tsarnaev because Tsarnaev deserves it, but because Stefan is giving him the free gift of dignity that he extends to everyone. I'm not Catholic anymore, but I was raised Catholic, and I would like to see some Catholic cemetery somewhere offer to bury Tsarnaev, not because he deserves it, but because it is a powerful statement of the forgiveness that Catholics believe is an absolute mandate from God.

Samuel Sewall hated Catholics. He feared them so much that he once snuck out of a meeting because he was afraid that the others present might adjourn in order to attend a funeral where the Book of Common Prayer and its Catholic-lite prayers would be read, and he didn't want to be swept along to such an affair. But Samuel Sewall also buried John Lambert, the pirate. In the dark, in secret, but he buried him all the same. Sewall is not remembered for his role in burying Lambert — if anyone remembers his name today, it is usually because he was one of the judges who presided over the Salem Witch Trials. He was also the only one to issue a public apology, standing before the congregation of Old South Church and humbling himself for his role in perpetrating injustice. There are worse footsteps to follow.


*There was a medieval Jewish cemetery in London, but since England had expelled Jews from the country in 1290 and would not re-admit them until 1656, it was not officially recognized as an active burying place in the pre-Civil War era. There were a few non-parochial churchyards, like "New Churchyard" on the grounds of Bedlam Hospital, but these were still formally consecrated and subject to canon law.

Original Source

From Sweets

[Photograph: Anna Markow]

In the case of cooking for picky eaters at home, most parents turn to hiding vegetables in their kids' food. But in this case, I'm not trying to hide my vegetables in a breakfast sweet. In fact, when I found myself with some extra parsnips on hand, I tried to make the most parsnip-y muffins I could possibly bake.

When I bake with carrots, I always add a generous amount of both allspice and cinnamon. Allspice helps to enhance the carrot's natural sweetness, and everything is better with a touch of cinnamon. I knew there had to be an equivalent "booster" spice for parnsip, and I found it: mace. This lesser known spice has a gentler and less overtly doughnutty aroma than nutmeg. I also added a little whole wheat flour and brown butter for nuttiness, plus a handful of dried cranberries to balance the sweetness. The parsnips are grated very roughly so that they are only just cooked through and slightly crunchy—quite the opposite of hiding the vegetable.

Get the Recipe

Parnsip Muffins »

About the Author: Anna Markow is a pastry chef obsessed with doing things that no one else does and giving unusual ingredients their time to shine. You can follow her sometimes-pastry-related thoughts on Twitter @VerySmallAnna.

Get the Recipe!

In three regions – the upper Midwest, New England and the area around Washington – the job market for younger adults is considerably stronger than in the rest of the country.

“Reddit shouldn’t be grouped into the same category as media outlets. When someone on Reddit says something is suspicious, it’s no different from someone on the street saying it. There’s a big difference between journalistic integrity and the opinion of some guy on Reddit. Reddit should never ever ever be used as a source, unless there’s actually some proof there. It’s no different from a newspaper printing “a guy on the street said, ‘My mate told me that this guy is a bomber.’””

- reddit mod oops777, Reddit’s ‘Find Boston Bombers’ Founder Says ‘It Was a Disaster’ but ‘Incredible’

Updated (10:55 p.m.): Thanks to a 911 phone call and the help of an energetic neighbor named Charles Ramsey, three women who've been missing for years are now safe. Cleveland Police found all three women alive in the house of a local 52-year-old school bus driver named Ariel Castro who was arrested soon after the call. (Listen to Amanda Berry's 911 call here. Better yet, listen to Charles Ramsey's 911 call here.)

Amanda Berry, who went missing ten years ago at age 16, and Gina DeJesus, who went missing a year later at age 14 had both been subjects of a years-long missing persons cases that led to many dead ends and more than one excavation in search of a body. Little is known about what happened to the third woman, Michelle Knight. In fact, little is known about what happened inside the Cleveland house, where the women have apparently been held prison for about a decade. In an odd twist of events it was revealed not long after the rescue that Castro wrote a 2004 article about Gina DeJesus and the abductions for the Plain Press, a community newspaper serving the west side of Cleveland.

Following their rescue, Berry, DeJesus and Knight — now 27-, 23- and 32-years-old — were taken to a local hospital. A cheering crowd gathered at the house, where a joyful community was happy to have found the women after so many years of looking. Knight disappeared in 2002 and was held longest. Berry had gone missing in 2003, while walking home from her job at Burger King, while DeJesus was abducted in 2004 while walking home from school in the same area.

This brings us back to Charles Ramsey, who lives next door to the house where the women were found. Ramsey says he was "eatin' [his] McDonalds" when he heard a woman scream for help. "Help me!" she said. "I'm Amanda Berry!" He rushed outside to see what was going on and recognized the woman standing on his neighbor's porch. After police arrived, Ramsey pieced together what had happened and couldn't believe his neighbor hid such a secret from everyone in the neighborhood.

"You got to have some big testicles to pull this off, bro, because we see this dude every day. I mean every day," Ramsey told the local news reporter about his neighbor at one point. "I barbecue with this dude. We eat ribs and what not and listen to salsa music. Know where I'm coming from?" (This man's going to be an Internet meme for sure.)  

Honestly, it's better if you just watch Charles tell the story. Just watch the video, and watch it to the end. Trust us.

This interview from later in the evening is also a must see.

Warm Weather White.

Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr., and John F. Kennedy, Palm Beach, 1931.

At a time when the United States has learned to target drone strikes with increasing accuracy and direct cyberweapons at specific nuclear centrifuges, its understanding of North Korea has gotten worse.

When talking about the psychology of success, one experiment that comes up pretty frequently is the marshmallow task. Children around 4 years old were placed in front of an edible treat of some sort, and told that if they could wait fifteen minutes without eating the treat in front of them, they would get a second treat. The children were observed and timed for how long they could go without eating the present treat, and about a third of them made it the whole fifteen minutes to the reward. The experiment was conceived to study self-control, but there have been several follow-up studies that seemed to indicate correlations between how long the children could hold out on the marshmallow task and their subsequent competence, SAT scores, and brain activity in regions related to control and addiction. In short, people often refer to the marshmallow task study to support claims that willpower at a young age predicts success later in life.

But the assumption there is that waiting is the optimal, if most difficult, strategy. Because sure, waiting for an additional reward could show self-control and the ability to look ahead, when the children think they can trust their environment. A new follow-up study explores this concept further:

While volunteering years ago at a homeless shelter for families in Santa Ana, Calif., [study author Celeste Kidd] realized that all the kids around her would eat their marshmallows straight away, living as they did in an environment where anything they had could be taken away at any time. “Delaying gratification is only the rational choice if the child believes a second marshmallow is likely to be delivered,” Kidd says.

Although previous marshmallow-type studies have acknowledged that external factors might influence kids’ ability to wait for the bigger reward, none had directly tested for those factors’ effects. So Kidd and her colleagues ran a study in which they manipulated the reliability of their young participants’ environment. A researcher gave children with an average age of four years some poor-quality art materials and told them if they could wait, she would return with better supplies. In a “reliable” condition, she did exactly that, but in an “unreliable” condition, she returned to explain she did not have any better materials after all. A marshmallow test followed. Those in the reliable condition lasted an average of 12 minutes, whereas those in the unreliable condition lasted only three.

So in fact, the marshmallow task isn’t necessarily a measure of willpower, but also a measure of environmental stability, which ties into socioeconomical status, parenting type, and many other things, and it may be these variables that are contributing to success later in life. Hopefully this message about the inherent classism of the earlier interpretations filters through to psychology popularizers as well as the scientific community.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev is dead. He is not going to be any more dead if you wave some more signs. He is not going to be any more dead the louder you yell. Your made-for-TV outrage is not going to make him any more dead. Please, I'm begging you. Stop auditioning for yet another national television passion play. Stop demonstrating your willingness to be part of an ongoing freak show. No matter how much fealty you pledge on camera to The Victims or Their Families, he's not going to be any deader. Let his family bury him. Let them bury him wherever they want. Lee Harvey Oswald has a grave. Albert DeSalvo has a grave. Let them find a grave for this guy.

As a Cambridge pastor, I was deeply disappointed to learn that Cambridge City Manager Robert Healy has urged the family of Tamerlan Tsarnaev not to apply for a burial permit because it would disturb the peace of our city. If Tsarnaev’s family seeks his burial in Cambridge, we should not turn them away. Cambridge is a city of welcome. It welcomed the Tsarnaev family and educated their children, as it welcomes immigrants from all over the world. Whatever Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s crimes may have been, as a human being he deserves a decent and prompt burial. As a person of faith, I believe we are all children of God. As a Unitarian Universalist, I affirm the inherent worth and dignity of all people, no matter how heinous their misdeeds. While security considerations for Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s interment deserve careful attention, these can be addressed in due course and with federal assistance if needed. I call on religious leaders and people of faith in Cambridge to ask our city government to give full and respectful consideration to any request to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev. — Rev. Fred Small, senior minister of First Parish in Cambridge, Unitarian Universalist

Williams-Sonoma, the specialty retailer of home furnishings and gourmet cookware with over 250 stores in the United States, has pulled pressure cookers from their shelves following the Boston Marathon bombing.

"It's a temporary thing out of respect," said Kent, who is the Store Manager of the Williams-Sonoma at the Natick Mall. He referred Patch to corporate for further questions. Williams-Sonoma also has a local branch at Legacy Place in Dedham.

Pressure cookers will still be available on the Williams-Sonoma website.

Crate & Barrel is still selling pressure cookers in their stores, according to Elizabeth who is the General Manager of the location at the Natick Mall.

She noted that they hadn't sold any pressure cookers recently. Crate & Barrel will also be observing the statewide moment of silence today at 2:50 p.m., and had a floral arrangement set up. Their employees all wore Boston gear to work on Friday.

Macy's referred Patch to their corporate offices for comment.

Original Source

robespierressister:

Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet

Thanks to Bjornwild for notifying me about this picture

This is amazing. British fans proved that they're still completely bonkers, with this parade of canine cosplay. Including a Superman dog, a Darth Vader dog... and a totally adorable dog cosplaying as K-9, the robot dog from Doctor Who. (Awwwwww.)

Read more...

Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion kicked off at the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence last week (it is on display through August 18). The exhibition traces artist-dandies from Beau Brummell through Oscar Wilde and into the 21st century's “Dandy of New York” Patrick McDonald and designer Motofumi “Poggy” Kogi of United Arrows. The clothing and caricatures of artist Max Beerbohm are on view adjacent to the garments of Vogue magazine's Hamish Bowles while Charles Baudelaire is featured alongside the clothing and style of painter, New York bon vivant and RISD professor Richard Merkin.

ABC News

Erbe: Why does sexual assault in the military persist? Newsday Raise your hand if you, like me, have a hard time understanding why the military seems powerless to end sexual assault within its ranks. This week, its efforts to obliterate sexual assaults on female personnel reached an unbelievable nadir. The Air Force ... Driving the day: Benghazi hearing - Spotlight on sexual assault - Durbin's new ...Politico all 494 news articles »

NEW YORK — Adobe says it is moving to a subscription-based model for the software package it sells to designers, Web developers, video editors and other creative professionals.

Adobe Systems Inc. said Monday that it will not release new versions of its Creative Suite software package. Instead, the maker of Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat, is shifting focus to Creative Cloud, which makes its software available through a monthly subscription that starts at $50 for an individual.

Batman: Year One was supposed to be Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky's, big superhero project. Unfortunately the project got scrapped in favor of Nolan's Batman Begins. But new concept art shows the Lincoln Continental Batmobile that never was. UPDATED.

Read more...

Pinterest user p8ronella has collected a handy array of reference, lovingly organized.  Click to go through!

The screen cap I took of the first albums doesn’t do the vast collection justice.  You’ll see!  There’s a lot of periods and places packed in there.

Just under two years ago authorities in the United States busted one of the most important movie piracy release groups on the planet. In recent months its members have been handed some of the harshest copyright-related sentences on record but immediately after the raids something interesting happened. Instead of running for cover, pirates regrouped and the piracy situation actually got worse.

A Somerville man's lawsuit over posts on the local LiveJournal and on the local newspaper Web site went national today, in a request for legal help for Ron Newman, named in the suit.

Meanwhile, lawsuit bringer Johnny Monsaratt has been busy digging up the names behind comments he doesn't like and sending them letters warning them to take down their comments or be officially named in the lawsuit, rather than as one of the "John and Jane Does, 1-100."

One person says Monsaratt actually visited his mother's house, "in a large black trench coat, blond hair, asking all sorts of questions about me, my whereabouts, et cetera."

Original Source

INTERVIEWER: Give me one of your purely satisfying mean moments.
TINA FEY: The first thing that comes to mind is a more recent one, when Amy Poehler and I were in the airport last week in Toronto and we were getting hassled by this middle-aged businessman who was doing that thing that middle-aged businessmen do, being rude. And then Amy, in the middle of the airport, screamed, “Fuck you, you fuckin’ dick, you fuckin’ rich asshole.” And it was so satisfying—it was immediate release. She would probably be mortified that I told you. (x)

The first round of movie reviews have arrived for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby — and they are decidedly mediocre. Everyone kind of saw this coming; this was Gatsby all gussied up with lavish designer costumes, 3D, and Jay-Z, after all. We now know that Luhrmann has added the framing device of Nick Carraway telling the story as an alcoholic from a sanitarium, but many of the initial shrugging remains. The consensus seems to be that translating Carraway's first-person narration is a tricky task at which Luhrmann doesn't really succeed, and that Aussie newcomer Elizabeth Debicki deserves praise as Jordan Baker. As for the rest of it, well, let's just say these one-liners won't exactly get blurbed on posters, trailers, or any marketing material whatsoever ahead of Friday's release:

"It's as if every bit of creativity dried up the moment the deal was signed." — Drew McWeeny of HitFix

"Periodically, as if by accident, something like real emotion pokes up through the film’s well-manicured surface..." — Scott Foundas of Variety. 

"The picture is filled with an indiscriminate swirling motion, a thrashing impress of 'style' (Art Deco turned to digitized glitz), thrown at us with whooshing camera sweeps and surges with rapid changes of perspective exaggerated by 3-D." — David Denby of The New Yorker

"Finally this overproduced slimmest of narratives becomes repetitive, at two hours and 23 minutes, as we revisit the sumptuous set pieces, Gatsby looking longingly across the water toward Daisy's glowing green dock, and hear yet another iteration of the morphing Gatsby backstory until we finally reach Carraway's last words..." — Anne Thompson of Indiewire. 

"Maguire's slightly aging boyishness has become tiresome by the film's second half and a reduction of Nick's concluding commentary would have helped." — Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter

"But for all its passionate feeling and melodrama, ‘Gatsby’ is rarely moving, and that's a major flaw for a movie that drags on for two-and-a-half hours." — Rodrigo Perez of Indiewire

"Luhrmann treats the people of color here like exotic furniture, shooting his African-Americans as though he were planning to turn them into Mammy cookie jars." — Alonso Duralde of The Wrap

Vowing never to perform at Messiah College again "until they welcome, in word and deed, all members of their faith regardless of sexuality," Ritter is donating his earnings from the performance to The Trevor Project, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth advocacy organization.

Christopher Moloney's FILMography puts the film back in the location.