The Explainer answers a question by yours truly

Reading the New York Times article about a woman who was paralyzed by ecoli, I was struck by the following passage:
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers [...]

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Bye bye gourmet

I am very saddened to hear that Conde Nast is getting rid of Gourmet magazine. I have so many favorite recipes from Gourmet. Some of my favorites include tarte tatin, chicken liver mousse and fondue. I used to get both Bon Appetit and Gourmet.
While the recipes in Bon Appetit were always nice, the writing in [...]

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My favorite Roman Polanski films

For someone with a long and prolific career, Polanski has certainly pulled off the difficult feat of consistently creating great movies in many genres. While I have my favorites I can’t think of any Polanski film I didn’t like. My favorite is an easy pick and requires no thought on my part: Tess. It’s a [...]

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Meaty thighs are apparently good

I’m still reeling over the New York Times article that says don’t bother exercising because nothing will make you lose weight. This article makes me feel a bit better.
That’s the word from Danish researchers who studied more than 2,800 middle-aged people for up to a dozen years, only to find that those with the slimmest [...]

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Why I don’t shop at Whole Foods

Some lefties (BTW, I’m a proud lefty) are boycotting Whole Foods because of the politics of the CEO. I have long felt that John Mackey is certainly a bit nutty. You need just check out this article from 2007 here. But is that enough reason to boycott the store?
I don’t shop at Whole Foods because [...]

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Remember the Maine

Remember how two newspapers spurred the country to war by reporting wild speculation just so they could sell some papers. I wish I could say we have progressed as a nation since then.
The explosion of the American battleship Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898, ensured that the U.S. would not be content to [...]

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I love the Russians

Such a passionate people. It’s like reading Dostoevsky.
The Louvre Museum says a Russian visitor hurled an empty terra cotta mug at the Mona Lisa.
A museum spokesman says the canvas of the Da Vinci masterpiece was undamaged in the attack last week, though the mug shattered.
He said Tuesday small cracks appeared in the glass protecting the [...]

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Headline of the day

From The Onion.

It’s kind of mean but you can’t say that Armstrong wasn’t asking for it when he declared he was returning to racing to “raise awareness for cancer.”

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Quote for the day

Amazon is being sued for deleting e-books from their customer’s Kindles when Amazon found out the e-books were pirated copies.
The lawsuit said Amazon never disclosed to customers that it “possessed the technological ability or right to remotely delete digital content purchased through the Kindle Store.”
No shit. I didn’t know that about the Kindle either. The [...]

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New regulations on health insurers

I thought this piece from Matt Yglesias was interesting regarding reforms other than the public option.
The most important part of the bills that actually exist—the part that will impact the lives of most Americans—are the new regulations on insurers.
The administration is proposing:
— A ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.
— Caps on out-of-pocket spending.
— [...]

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SC man has sex with horse

Need more traffic on your blog? You might consider creating a post with the very same title as this one. How do I know this? Danny Westneat in 2007 wrote this editorial:
As I look back at the year in news, it’s clear I should have focused more on people having sex with horses.
That’s the conclusion [...]

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I’d like to see Michael Phelps nude

With the news that FINA has banned bodysuits in competitive swimming…
FINA, the international governing body of swimming, voted today to ban the controversial high-tech, non-textile swimsuits. Not only have the suits been responsible for a rash of world records but there has been a Wild West atmosphere among apparel manufacturers and swimmers, all trying to [...]

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The police never behave stupidly

When they arrest a radio host for asking an officer “are you in line” at a local hamburger stand.
When they beat up a 70 year old woman for not watering her lawn.
When a police chief  murders his wife in front of their kids.
When they sodomize a man with a toilet plunger causing a puncture in [...]

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Not living in a post-racial America

Balloon-Juice linked to this article from The New Republic regarding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and I think it’s a good one.
Gates is Right–and We’re Not Post-Racial Until He’s Wrong
There is nothing glib to say, in any responsible sense, about Henry Louis Gates’ arrest last week, which is this week’s big race story. Its [...]

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You’ve come a long way baby

The first female gondolier in Venice.

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My precious raisin

With the sad news of Frank McCourt’s death, I thought I’d post one of my favorite passages from Angela’s Ashes. The young children in a Irish school find a raisin in their food.
I think Paddy likes me because of the raisin and I feel a bit guilty because I wasn’t that generous in the first [...]

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Steve Jobs and liver transplants

Here’s a bold article written by Arthur Caplan about the inequalities of health care in the United States. He uses Steve Jobs’ liver transplant to highlight the inequalities and to discuss the pressing problems driving health care reform.
Jobs did not have problem with the first hurdle. He has plenty of doctors watching him. They found [...]

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Iran photoshops again

DailyKos has the story of a Ahmadinejad rally photograph being photoshopped to increase the crowd size.

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Interesting photo on CNN

A picture is worth a thousand words.

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Never again?

Today we hear another case of random yet targeted violence in the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. Random, because the perpetrator didn’t know the museum security guard who he killed. But targeted, because the perpetrator, a white supremacist, chose to kill someone at a museum which documents the genocide of millions of [...]

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Quote for the day

When evangelicals on the right call President Obama a socialist, a racist, anti-American, an abortionist, not a real American, and, echoing the former Vice President, someone who is weakening America’s defenses and making us less safe, the logical conclusion is violence. If you take these words literally you might pull the trigger to “make America [...]

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Where the Russians area headed in space

Here are some of the main points in this must-read article about the future of the Russian Space program. They truly sound light years ahead of the rest of the world.

De-dock the Russian portion of the International Space Station and use that piece as the cornerstone of a new Russian space station as the ISS’s [...]

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A sucker is born every minute

There is so much going on in this story; it’s hard to keep track. An art collector is suing Louis Vitton and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art for selling him what he thought was original art, but was actually leftover material from LV handbags. If he knew that the $6,000 he paid for [...]

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One-line understated commentaries on the latest headlines

Great, the people with the most incentive to not have children can actually control whether or not they have children.

I’m getting the idea that national security had nothing to do with opposing the release of these memos; they were trying to save their asses.

Umm, yeah. Couldn’t have said it better.

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What a smile

I don’t think I’ve seen any pictures of this guy without him smiling. Weird.

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