Monday evening roundup

Excellent ToshGate analysis:

The problem isn't a failure of men to see rape as horrific. It's that many of them do not perceive that rape itself lies on the far end of a broad spectrum of ways in which the idea of rape, the invocation of rape or the threat of rape is used to intimidate women or to regulate their behavior...

A comedian who shoots down an audience member who objects to his rape jokes by joking about her being gang-raped on the spot isn't being funny. He's using rape to shut up a woman who crossed a boundary by speaking out of turn. That is unacceptable. Tosh was free to say what he said, of course. But that doesn't mean it wasn't morally repugnant.

I just learned about Caitlin Moran, but I think she's awesome:

“When I talk to girls, they go, ‘I’m not a feminist,’ ” she said. “And I say: ‘What? You don’t want to vote? Do you want to be owned by your husband? Do you want your money from your job to go into his bank account? If you were raped, do you still want that to be a crime? Congratulations: you are a feminist.’ ”

As usual with Room for Debate, lots of talking past each other without necessarily disagreeing (in this case, about parenting styles). Here are the two best.

Point and counterpoint.

Monday morning roundup and ramble

Reading tea leaves in North Korea's hemlines.

It's wonderful that the heat wave means less runoff to the Chesapeake, but it's sad that we're not doing more for the Bay, like reducing the farm waste and other pollution that could flow in in the first place. Oh, yeah, certain "interest groups" oppose that. You can partly go around them by avoiding animal products.

Meet the man who sings while making Metro pocket guides. In other Metro news, it sucked to be you if you tried to use the system this weekend.

Some generic language tips for tourists.

***
Forgive me for starting this ramble by (re)stating the obvious, but I have a context to set: there are a lot of misconceptions out there about veganism, ranging from the extreme but not uncommon belief that it's a cult, to the incorrect but not uncommon view that it's unhealthy. Many people who ascribe to the latter misconception focus on protein (lack thereof, inefficient sources, etc.), and I've addressed that in the past. Another--albeit one that concerns people less--is that a vegan diet is low-fat. But it needn't, and in my view, shouldn't be; fats are satiating and nutrient-rich. I consume more fat now than I did when I ate dairy products.

The third misconception is about micronutrients. At a gathering last night, someone said that she'd read that some vegans were found to have certain vitamin and mineral deficiencies. To which I responded, there are certain omnivores that have vitamin and mineral deficiencies. There are probably more such omnivores, proportionately. Absolutely you can follow an unhealthy vegan diet. You can also follow an unhealthy non-vegan diet.

By the way, if you think I'm going around inviting these conversations, you've fallen prey to another misconception: that vegans go around aggressively lecturing people about the evils of animal products and benefits of a plant-based diet. Come to a party with me sometime. I don't even tell people I'm vegan, until they ask me why I'm not eating a certain thing (often, the host or someone else will say it). And then, people ask questions, and the topic will keep returning; I do not seek it out. People who aren't necessarily interested in trying it for themselves are still curious about how it might be done. People tell me I look great, point out that I've lost a ton of weight, tell me my skin looks great (even my mother!)--tough life, I know--and ask what my secret might be. Who am I to hold back?

Another thing that came up last night--and at Whole Foods the other day--was the imagined nexus between vegan and gluten free. There were lots of samples at WF and one woman was serving samples of GF muffins. They were labeled as such, and every time someone came up to her table, she said they were gluten-free. She'd already said that once to me before I asked if they happened to be vegan. No, she said, but they are gluten free. Well, that's nice, if you have Celiac's or another gluten sensitivity, but it's irrelevant if you're vegan. It neither makes your food healthier, nor vegan. Similarly, last night people were saying, oh, how do you make a cake without flour. I pointed out, not once, that flour was vegan. The issue was eggs (and sometimes butter). This question kept popping up in variations.

The other misconception was that I was somehow depriving myself by not partaking in the pizza and cake. I'm sure they were very good, as everyone said. But no, you're not making me hungry. There was plenty for me to eat, with the guacamole and hummus and fruit. No, I'm not craving the other food. It's no effort or restraint to not have any; they're just there. They're not calling to me.

And even as my hostess apologetically suggested that they were making me hungry or envious by having this apparently delicious cake in front of me, she talked about how when she doesn't eat dairy, she experiences less swelling, inflammation, and pain in her legs. But she finds dairy addictive, finds that she has to have it. Yes--see Mark Bittman's article, which I posted earlier--dairy is addictive, but you can break free (if you want; if you find that it makes you feel better). One key is to get enough fat (this friend mentioned that she craved dairy less when she ate avocado). Here are some other sources:

Soy (beans, milk, tempeh, tofu)
Nuts, peanuts, and seeds (including nut/seed butters and pastes, like tahini)
Grains (brown rice, wheat, quinoa)
Oils (olive, canola, rice bran) –controversial, some say you should stay away from expressed oil. If you have a heart condition or other condition, perhaps, but if you’re healthy, it’s all about moderation
Cacao (powder, dark chocolate)
Fruit/vegetables (coconut, avocado) 

If you're cutting back on dairy, add some avocado and tahini to your food. I'll be surprised if you go back.

Sunday morning roundup

Biodiversity is a public health issue.

People do have a thing against cyclists. A former neighbor who's a judge told me as much when he talked about a case where the driver was clearly at fault, but "juries hate cyclists." I also noticed something was up when many people, hearing that I was hit by a car a few years ago, first asked whether I was on my bike (implying, perhaps unintentionally, that I was at fault pretty much for being in the way).

If anything, I find it easier to make friends in my 30s. But it's true, it takes several rounds to cement acquaintances with friends of friends, even amid the best intentions.

This article is about the bigger issue of the income gap between most couples and most single parents, but this part stuck out to me, as "why people stay in bad relationships" has been a frequent topic of conversation, all over the place:

Ms. Schairer has trouble explaining, even to herself, why she stayed so long with a man who she said earned little, berated her often and did no parenting. They lived with family (his and hers) and worked off and on while she hoped things would change. “I wanted him to love me,” she said.

In fact, I'm going to a gathering tonight where I'll surely hear a variation on, "I thought if we just..." Sigh.

Check out this DC-after-Dark photo slide show.

Saturday morning roundup

Are coral reefs beyond hope?

Liz Gorman spoke out and so did others, in response.

WTF, mom and dad?

At 8:16, my parents left me a message. I was out (Friday night, go figure). I checked the message just now, when I got home. I am 35 years old, which, for our our purposes, means I don't feel the need to excuse myself from social situations to take phone calls or check messages. Just because I have a cell phone, doesn't mean I have to answer it. That's why God invented voice mail. I will get back to you at my convenience, unless you indicate some urgency in your message. But this message indicated no urgency; it was, "hey, we're just checking in, how are you, how's the weather?" I figured, maybe I can just called tomorrow, because I'm kind of tired and I'd like to go to bed. And I know that when I'm tired, mom irritates me without even trying, and I'm already kind of irritable, so, yeah, best wait until tomorrow.

So why do I get an e-mail from my parents at 10:16 saying, "where are you?"

Really?

Friday evening roundup

Very smart analysis of Tosh-gate. 

From the same source, very smart analysis of the Skinny Gossip post:

As long as we live in a culture that tells women that being admired and desired for the way we look is merely the normal condition of womanhood, something fundamental to our sex, it will be considered acceptable to evaluate women for their decorative value. As long as it's considered acceptable to pass public judgment on women's bodies, often negatively — to snark on and condemn and make fun of things that are truly beyond an individual's control — in public, then it's open season on all of our bodies. As long as women are in competition with one another to have the "best" body, we all lose. As long as there persists a single, narrow beauty ideal we are all instructed to live up to, none of us will live up to it. This game is rigged. There will always be some critic who can tell us where we are found lacking.

Coddling your kids does them no favors.

David Brooks disses elites, but in an intelligent way.

Look, I'm not a huge drinker (okay, the last couple of months has been an anomaly, but I've still managed to hold onto my phone). I don't need a drunk phone, but I definitely want a less expensive phone to carry around to certain places where there's a not negligible probability of loss or damage.

This article is about overconfidence in the realm of finance, but we were just talking about this analogy for dating: "Overconfident lotharios who ask out every woman they see, and who aren’t fazed when they get turned down, are over time likely to do better than wallflowers who never ask anyone out."

Another topic that has permeated many conversations recently: where have all the men gone? How many times have I heard/said the plea, "man up"?

What women want, sartorially.

Thursday evening roundup

Anne Applebaum on the elite.

Cheating potential: are you part of the 98 percent?

Okay, carrageenan is officially sketchy.

Really? I know Metro's annoying, but it's better than driving.

The following statement is untrue: "Of course, no one would suggest replacing milk with wine in school cafeterias to build strong bones"? No one? Really? I would suggest that.

Have you dressed your geese today?

Tuesday morning roundup

Would anyone else love to see Disney Co. sue North Korea?

Are these signs of a nascent civil society in Russia?

Some lessons in consumer math.

I'm increasingly convinced that Lori Gottleib hates women. I started out agreeing with her, but she could have stopped after a paragraph--before descending into mean-spirited rant, full of its own double-standards. This, coming from someone who has a book chapter on how feminism destroyed her life. Take this analogy, which should offend men as much as women:

Would a man be taken seriously if he wrote a 15,000-word article stating that he's entitled to both marriage and the freedom to have sex with any woman he wants? Or would he be told to grow up and get real? In today's society, he can choose marriage and the compromises that come with it -- sexual commitment, financial commitment, emotional commitment, along with a bevy of childcare and Mr. Fix-It commitments -- or he can choose to remain single and maintain his freedom but give up the joy that marriage and raising kids might bring him. He might dearly desire both situations, but he can only have one.

 Is she really equating a woman's desire to have a thriving family as well as a thriving career with men's (alleged) desire to have a family and sleep with as many women as they'd like? Really? Even if she is, here's an article in the same publication about a man who did just that (but left other people to write about it).

I can agree with her--it's a common theme in many gender-based articles and responses to them--that some of these issues apply across genders. And I also agree that AMS's original article was annoying and entitled (I'd also call it rambling), but I acknowledge that in all that rambling, she makes valid points. LG's response says more about her than it does about the subject she so viciously maligns.

Monday morning roundup

The tradeoff between extracting and moving natural resources, and the environmental and human impact of doing so, flares in Appalachia, Burma, and Montana.

The emotions of indulgence.

Maybe the pacu is to blame for the manliness crisis sweeping the nation?

Food

I have a lot of CSA veggies this week, since my CSA-sharers are out of town. Nothing like a ton of food you didn't choose to get your culinary creativity going. Today, I combined two of the soup recipes that Martha Rose Shulman recently posted--I used fennel, garlic, and potato as well as pureed zucchini and curry. It turned out amazing. Instead of sauteeing the veggies, I roasted them first--I know it's a bit hot for roasting, but I had the oven going anyway because I had some sweet potatoes and marinated tofu I had to roast. I separately roasted the cubed zucchini, diced onion, sliced garlic, whole small potatoes, and layers of fennel. I ended up using 3 zucchini, 1 yellow squash, half a small onion, 2 cloves of garlic, just a few layers of fennel, and a quarter cup or so of cooked brown jasmine rice. Plus olive oil and water. Plus curry and paprika (and salt if it isn't already in your curry powder). Yum.

On Wednesday, the day the veggies came in, my fridge was bursting with Swiss chard. I cut up the leaves and stems and sauteed it with a little bit of onion, plumped raisins, and sunflower seeds (pine nuts will also do). Once it was soft, I added some umeboshi (plum vinegar). I usually cook chard with balsamic, but the umeboshi worked really well--it was softer and also added just enough salt.

I've also been making a ton of pesto. So much basil comes in that I make pesto once or twice a week (first world problem, I know). I used to make it without replacing the parmesan, but I've since come to love the umami that nutritional yeast adds. If we get scapes in the CSA bag, I just use those; otherwise, garlic. Oh, and I've been using pecans instead of pine nuts (toasted first)--works really well. The pesto is amazing with pasta (my favorite being Whole Foods brand organic, whole wheat linguine).

Speaking of basil, I tried some home-made (not by me) basil-infused vodka last night. It was really tasty, as was the sangria. It was a really fun night in every way.

I'm become somewhat habituated to people commenting on my apparently dramatic weight loss, and I have to admit that I love it. Especially when it's phrased tactfully ("you're even tinier!"). I also love responding by telling people about my high-carb diet and its daily portions of pasta, chocolate, and wine. Those are just the most sensational sources of carbs. There's also the oatmeal, fruit, sweet potatoes and other root vegetables, and legumes.

Big Sunday morning roundup

Did the New York Times eliminate its fact-checking budget? Take this article about the International Criminal Court. Yes, like almost every other international institution, it's reach is hampered by the P5. But sloppy claims like the following can only keep the Court from getting stronger:

The United States never agreed to be subject to the International Criminal Court because of constitutional issues and worries that its citizens, especially soldiers and spies, could be brought before the tribunal. This is no idle fear, given the human rights scandals that have exploded in Iraq and Afghanistan involving United States personnel.

The constitutional issues are imagined, and so are the worries. It is indeed an idle fear, because the Court can only investigate and try crimes against citizens whose countries are unable and unwilling to to try the cases themselves. In the case of the Iraq and Afghanistan human rights scandals, the US has tried those cases.

Hu Jia sees change in China as inevitable. Argentina is attracting drug traffickers. Malian refugees have plenty to be resentful and angry about.

Kathleen Parker notes a political and interpersonal truth: "Comments offered in jest or offhandedly nonetheless can be wounding."

Scientists with PhDs are facing a tough job market.

Is uncertainty actually good for the economy?

As when I saw "Be Careful or the Sharks Will Eat You," I am amazed at the determination and resourcefulness of refugees:

In August 1967, when Col. Rustan was 20 and a student at the University of Oriente-Santiago in Cuba, he looked up from his desk in the college library one evening to see his father standing before him.

“This night we’re leaving,” said his father, who had escaped from prison through a ruse.

Col. Rustan left his textbook open on the table and fled. With his father, two sisters and a brother-in-law, he climbed inside a railroad boxcar carrying sugar cane.
They jumped from the moving train as it approached the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo and waded waist-deep through a snake-infested swamp before reaching a tall security fence topped with barbed wire. Col. Rustan carried his younger sister on his back over the fence, then scaled a second fence inside the perimeter of the naval base. After they were picked up by U.S. forces, the Rustans asked for political asylum.

Col. Rustan went on to do this:

In the early 1980s, the Air Force adopted Col. Rustan’s ideas for protecting aircraft from lightning with the installation of special strips that deflected electrical current. Since then, not a single plane has crashed after a lightning strike. 

Barney Frank gets married. This is so sweet:

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill said they began to see changes in their usually cantankerous colleague. “I should’ve known you were here,” said one leading House Republican after bumping into Mr. Ready in a hallway. “Barney was nice to me today.”

The Post's 'derecho' coverage underwhelmed. For those without power, officials' and politicians' directing people to web sites for more information added insult to injury. Here's a graphic depiction of power outages (and restorations) over the last week. See also the pretty chart of how f*ing hot it is.


This article about organic creep addresses two very different issues: to what extent are certified organic foods (1) actually organic and./or (2) marketed by small businesses rather than Big Food. I appreciate both issues, but Big Food can still produce organic food. I am more concerned about the first--the easing of standards to accommodate producers: organic should mean organic; I'll leave scientists to fight it out over things like carrageenan, but synthetic herbicides have no place in organic food. The second issue is less salient for me and others who don't by a lot of processed food; I have little risk of regularly supporting Coca-Cola, Cargill, ConAgra, Kraft, or M&M Mars because I very rarely buy packaged products. Earthbound is sort-of in the middle: do I care that it's a big, corporate entity? As for Organic Valley, it goes to show that you just can't go right with milk. And here's an example of why I just gave up on eggs:

Ms. Fuldwider has also voted to let organic egg producers give their chickens just two square feet of living space, when Cropp requires its own farmers to provide five.

Speaking of milk, Mark Bittman cured his life-long heartburn by giving it up. He writes,

But the bucolic cow and family farm barely exist: “Given the Kafkaesque federal milk marketing order system, it’s impossible for anyone to make a living producing and selling milk,” says Anne Mendelson, author of “Milk.” “The exceptions are the very largest dairy farms, factory operations with anything from 10,000 to 30,000 cows, which can exploit the system, and the few small farmers who can opt out of it and sell directly to an assured market, and who can afford the luxury of treating the animals decently.”

Osteoporosis? You don’t need milk, or large amounts of calcium, for bone integrity. In fact, the rate of fractures is highest in milk-drinking countries, and it turns out that the keys to bone strength are lifelong exercise and vitamin D, which you can get from sunshine.

It took me a minute to see that these summer safety tips were a joke--largely because only half of them are.

I could give a shit about Kate Upton but this thinspiration bile is disgusting.

Is Takoma Park post-hippie?

Saturday morning roundup

When my mother argues that not all religions have the potential for violence and abuse and claims Buddhism as an example, I point her to Sri Lanka.

A DDR success story in Nigeria.

The case for preglimony.

WTF, Metro? WTF, Pepco?

Where to go if you need a hug.

Gail Collins has some political physics for us. Also, see Milbank on Walsh.

This issue of single people as unlovable lepers has been a frequent topic of discussion lately. I don't remember whether I posted this excellent rebuttal. Here's an excerpt:

The amazing thing about life is how many complete assholes manage to find someone willing to put up with their bullshit and marry them. When I was a single person, the thing that crushed me the most when I was feeling lonely wasn’t that I thought I’d never find a spouse. It was that Donald Trump did. Three times. Ben Roethlisberger? Totally married. Michele Bachmann! Married to another asshole. Michael Vick? Just spent $300,000 on his wedding this weekend. The “Real Housewives“? They are, by definition, married. I always wonder why self-help books and matchmaker shows bother shaming perfectly nice people into becoming “marriage material” when so many complete shits of human beings didn’t change a thing about themselves and still found love.

Of course, married assholes don’t have to be famous. They can be these assholes, who had a three-day wedding celebration that they made their guests cook and pay for. They could be this asshole, who dumped a bridesmaid because she was fat. Assholes get married all the time...

Friday evening roundup

Coolest evangelical preacher ever: "Homosexual activity and overeating are both sins – just like speeding, gossip, lying and cheating. I think I did all of those just today."

Sexism in the workplace begins at home.

Can you take yet another heartfelt tribute to Nora Ephron? 


Foreign Policy can be hilarious. 


This silly cookies debate just makes me angry. It really is about adapting one's family role--which may or may not be based on one's gender--on one's family's needs at the time.


On the topic of Post articles that piss me off--perhaps I should start a new label in their honor--what the hell is this? Read it and please explain to me how it's not a complete waste of space. Did anybody actually learn anything from that? Was there any (non-obvious) practical information provided therein? Am I missing out on an opportunity to get paid for writing really obvious tips on how to accommodate your vegetarian/vegan friends, like, "if you have a garden, pick some vegetables from it"? I'm sorry but if you need special advice on how to make food without meat in it, you're probably much too dependent on meat. Impromptu visits from vegetarians are probably the least of your concerns.

Friday morning roundup

Behind Haiti's poster project, unsustainable development.

This is not the day and age where you can pull corporate assholery without anyone noticing.

I am not the only one with ICS battery issues.

Thursday evening roundup

Pew finds itself in a controversy over its report on Asian-Americans.

I'm so grateful to PC World for addressing the notification bar spam issue and to the tools recommended therein to get rid of it. This is one of those cases where the sneakiness ("no consent, no disclosure") was worse than the thing; I could have lived with the ads--as annoying as they were--but they came from out of nowhere and I thought they might be malware-based (I was not the only one, according to the article). So even once I found out they were harmless, I uninstalled the source, i.e. AroundMe-World.

It's okay to say you're busy, even if you're lying.

I agree, disparate communication styles are a relationship issue, and when I had a shitty phone, texting annoyed me because it was a huge effort to text back; if a response were required, it would be better to just discuss over the phone. Some texts still annoy me; "how are you?" is not a text topic; "I'm running late, be there in 5," is.

Excellent discussion of writers in John McPhee's reminiscences about his earlier days writing for the New Yorker:

The writing impulse seeks its own level and isn’t always given a chance to find it. You can’t make up your mind in a Comp Lit class that you’re going to be a Russian novelist. Or even an American novelist. Or a poet. Young writers find out what kinds of writers they are by experiment. If they choose from the outset to practice exclusively a form of writing because it is praised in the classroom or otherwise carries appealing prestige, they are vastly increasing the risk inherent in taking up writing in the first place. It is so easy to misjudge yourself and get stuck in the wrong genre. You avoid that, early on, by writing in every genre. If you are telling yourself you’re a poet, write poems. Write a lot of poems. If fewer than one work out, throw them all away; you’re not a poet. Maybe you’re a novelist. You won’t know until you have written several novels.  doesn't discriminate.

What's offensive about this headline is the same that's offensive in Tracie McMillan's anti-woman rants: it's not the content, it's the presentation. Could we please get off the "cat lady" thing? Could we expunge that label from our vocabulary? It's the double standard: men have cats; families have cats; Toxoplasma gondii doesn't discriminate by marital status. Ironically, I was just complaining to a friend about one of my recent bad dates: I said it, it shouldn't be a double-standard--neither women, nor men should talk about their cats in detail on the first date. Her response was to further reinforce the stereotype, i.e. tell me to stay away from men with cats, period. Leaving the issue of cats, here's another example of an issue--in this case, an ad--that's offensive particularly because of the double standard it perpetuates (again, against single women). I challenge Piperlime to run an ad on coffee cup sleeves that says to men, "every time you wear sweatpants, a single woman believes that there really is a crisis of manhood."
 

Thursday morning roundup

Syria's tragedy personified.

Proof that activism matters: China is actually taking environmental impact into consideration.

Pakistanis are disillusioned with democracy.

On the Fourth, two symbolic naturalization ceremonies.

Dionne on originalism.

What's more incomprehensible: the Higgs boson or campaign finance loopholes?

Locals: more fodder for directing your ire toward Pepco (the audacity)! and Metro.

Mermaids aren't real,

Wednesday morning roundup

Those who selectively read Tom Friedman know he's at his best (most knowledgeable and nuanced) on the Middle East.

Nearly half of Americans apparently live under a rock.

Che's Irish side.

Something to quantify and substantiate your hatred of Pepco, and something to feed it.

If you get a chance, do catch The History of Invulnerability before Sunday.

Now that Anderson Cooper has officially come out in terms of sexuality, he might focus on setting a good example to help others recover from the scourge of picky eating.


Slate yawns at the iPhone.

Hilary Price captures my relationship with dandelions.

Christine Frietchen feels great after her vegan marathon:

I’d always been so jealous of people who said they just cut soda from their diet and dropped 20 pounds. I wished for a similar quick fix in my own diet. (I didn’t drink soda, so that wasn’t an option.) But it dawned on me one day as I sprinkled Cheddar over my veggie tacos that hardly a meal passed that didn’t include some type of cheese. I would sprinkle Cheddar on a salad, melt mozzarella on pizza, spread cream cheese on a bagel. Turns out I’d been using cheese as a condiment. I gave myself a three-week trial: no cheese, no milk, no butter, no yogurt.

It didn’t even take three weeks for my nagging heartburn to disappear, and the needle on the scale began to creep lower. I was also having a running “honeymoon.” To my disbelief, I started running faster, down to a personal best of 7:40 a mile from 10-minute miles nine years ago.

It's funny--in an article I linked to yesterday, one guy talks about how dietary restrictions can infringe on one's social life, but it doesn't have to be that way. All it takes is a little awareness and flexibility. Here's Frietchen's take: "I screen restaurants before accepting invitations. But these are all minor issues — they’re nothing compared with how good I feel." I find that I don't generally have to screen restaurants--the people I go out with are happy to defer to the people with dietary restrictions when picking a place to eat. To be sure, there are plenty of restaurants in the DC area that have nothing for vegans, and in some cases, vegetarians, but they're the ones that lose out, especially because they lose out on entire groups of people.

Tuesday morning roundup

Europe is thinking about selling its soul.

Sarah Palin is still--and now officially--full of shit.

Some things are merely very inconvenient, and some are truly unacceptable; 911 outages fall into the latter category. In other emergency issues: given the region's record--historically, and not just because it's Day 5--it's time to consider undergrounding. And also, making solar power affordable.

People are scrambling to save their more valuable perishables.

Richard Cohen's very touching tribute to Nora Ephron.

I like ICS--even though I'm a low-key enough user to only notice the most obvious changes--but man does it sap battery power the way gingerbread never did.

Monday evening roundup

A lot of Russian women apparently marry Syrians.

The oceans are in pretty bad shape.

Okay, huge sigh of relief to learn that Tracie McMillan--who here explains why your hamburger hates America--is not the Tracy McMillan who hates women.

The Times hits the nail on the dietary restrictions head with this:

“The distinction is not that people have restricted diets,” she said. “It’s their attitude about whose responsibility it is to meet their dietary needs.” More interesting excerpts: 

Unlike the diet fads of yesteryear (Atkins, Zone, South Beach and countless others), many contemporary eating styles speak directly to values and virtues, aiming to affirm your ethos rather than nuking your love handles.

 ***

But Fabio Parasecoli, a native of Rome and the coordinator of food studies at the New School, worries that diverse diets can kill the pleasure of shared meals. “For me, food is very social, and I would never show up at someone’s place with Tupperware,” he said. “It’s difficult when dietary choices prevent people from fully participating in social life.”

Yeah, I get offended if people show up at my house with animal products. Point:

“Not everyone’s going to be able to eat everything.” But with careful planning (plus a lot of recipe collecting and cross-referencing of diets), they’ve been able to ensure that, at any given meal, everyone can eat something.

Sunday morning roundup and ramble

Maureen Dowd on how times have changed. Here's what Niall O’Dowd, the editor of New York’s Irish Voice and Irish Central Web site, told her: “This will end Irish and British what-abouting,” he told me. “What about my suffering? Who suffered the most in this conflict? We must just say one death was too many and all are responsible. There’s no moral high ground here.”

It's a sad thing to say with regard to one's state Attorney General, but it's a good day in Virginia, for the country, and for the environment when Cuccinelli loses.

There's a lot to be said for ordinary (as long as you make something of it).

On a related note... I certainly, often find myself too busy in the very self-imposed way the author rolls his eyes at, and as the pages of this blog will attest, I'm the first to point out that I'm not working three jobs while raising three kids while saving the world. I don't expect sympathy or respect for my business; usually, when I bring it up here, it's to provide context for why it's especially annoying that someone is wasting my time. Sure, my busy-ness is self-imposed, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. There are things to do in this world, and I'm often willing to be exhausted to do them. Sometimes I want a break, and I'll slow down (this is one of my lay-low-and-rest-up weekends). I guess my point is, sure, there are people who think they deserve a medal for being busy, and those people are annoying, but that's not to say that it's necessarily bad to be busy.

***

Traffic lights (and other lights) were out all over the place on the walk to and from dinner last night. It looks like about a third of the region--across two states and the District--is without power, and it may take up to a week for some to get it back. The Times' tally is 2 million without power. It is hot as Hades outside--I skipped my morning bike ride out of exhuastion, wariness of the heat (combined with unwillingness to get up early enough to avoid it), and the probability of much of the trail being blocked by fallen tree branches (which are abundant in the city as well; the first thing I did yesterday was clear branches out of my front and back yards). I am so, so lucky to have power; even people just around the corner from me don't have power.