Cooking, kids, movies, cleaning, bunnies - mostly women's things

I don't understand why they're called "while you were sleeping" except as a ploy to lure me in!

here's one for the other side of obamacare. of course, i think given the facts, it could totally be possible that she was hit with a $6,000 charge in the first month - so even though it may even out, it does seem unaffordable. also, there's something to be said about the hassle of being required to look for new insurance while you're battling cancer. in any case, she doesn't appear to be saving money so much as breaking even. I don't know why they couldn't use someone who was a definite out-and-out loser from the plan though.

cleanliness is next to .......

i feel like i need this

all you need to know about the oscar best picture nominees. i hope you don't see that mixology ad on the left with its terrible grammatical error!

there are some pros and cons here

hey look it's the president of that lawyers of color org - right? isn't that what it's called?

the opposite of friendzoning although i wonder if this is taking it too far.

leave the rabbits alone!!!!

Spa-ing

maybe this book will be less irritating than the happiness one.

i miss project runway

apparently they're looking for more people like you

this show seems interesting

they did the research for me. i like tranquility day spa, the amenity day spa and the spa at equinox.

on the strange origins of PF Chang's

i really like soy with everything

Responses
1. I don't understand why they wouldn't just outlaw eating or killing animals if they're thinking about the animals' feelings. maybe you should just say that animal rights people are anti-semites.

4. $1B and i'd buy Sephora.

Out of Control

The animal rights people are out of control.

Some people think Jimmy Fallon is going to be a boon for Democrats.

Ted Cruz is back on my excrement list.

Sometimes I wish I could come up with an idea like this.  We talked about this at the cocktail party last night.  If you had $1 billion, what would you buy?  My answer was a house for my mom.  (My second answer was 125 Broad Street.)

Responses:

1. That makes me so sad.  I'm rededicating myself to getting in better shape.

3. Have you tried Daily Burn?  I think I'm going to do the 30-day trial.

4. Dave Barry is great.

R2R:

1. I suspect that you only save and submit the ones you think are legit.  That said, throwing it away is idiotic regardless.

3. I think that is the law in many places, i.e. there's a general rule against driving while incapacitated by anything from legal prescription drugs you might be taking to booze or illegal drugs.

B

Vigorous!

the most frightening part of this article is trying to define "vigorous": "For some very obese people, for instance, just general walking could be considered vigorous, he explained." True, but people don't even walk for an hour in a year?

paul from tom chef is doing ok. you can visit it when you go to austin.

because the insanity workout is just too long

i don't have enough dave barry in my life

so the reason i'm bad at improv is why i'm also bad at foreign languages?

responses

1. why would he throw away the receipt anyway? isn't he supposed to keep the receipts?

2. the takeaway is that nothing happens if the government doesn't go to work.

3. i have no problem with the legalization of marijuana but maybe they shouldn't allow driving under its influence. that seems pretty reasonable to me. 

4. ugh it's like girls but with less to talk about.

Cynicism in America

This has to be eating this guy alive.  I would cry.

The easy (though mostly inaccurate) takeaway is that federal employees are LAZY.

Speaking of lazy, there's finally some pushback on what has felt like the inevitable move to legalizing marijuana.  As always, I'm torn on this issue.

This movie is apparently about what we've been talking about.

Responses:

1. It sorta reminds me of the scene in Mad Men where Don Draper listens to the Beatles to try to get them.  That said, at least they're trying?

2. Deadbeat dads around the world are forwarding this link to everyone they know (especially the ones with multiple baby mommas).

4. I wonder if it's any good.
R2R:

6. My response is almost identical to that of the author.  It's never okay to push a fan like that, but can you really blame him that much?  For some reason, people (i.e. the media) have decided that, because we pay professional athletes so much money (money that comes in part from ticket sales but also from TV deals that require media exposure and star-making to be as lucrative as they are), we "get" to demand some higher level of behavior from athletes.  But we don't demand this from fans?  Their ticket price included the right to hurl vicious obscenities or other terrible remarks at people?  And the kicker is that this doesn't even apply to Marcus Smart because he's not even getting paid to play basketball yet.  Maybe Smart should have gone to the NBA, but maybe people shouldn't be assholes.

B

It's all about Blair

I'm confused at who they think millenials are. it seems like the amenities are for grandparents - photos of their family? order a sandwich from the hotel deli? get picked up in a car? millenials will just hail a cab, order delivery from seamless, all the while snapchatting their ride.

not exactly related but reminds me of our talk about blair yesterday.

that other blair got married.

this is authentic chinese food. it is the only thing that can be known as authentic chinese food.

responses
1. i'm still interested in obamacare but it seems to be a disaster on wheels and all the stories are about which new wheels are coming off. i'm losing interest because the story is getting too one-sided. there used to be more positive stories. maybe i'll just troll huffpo. also, that tax on tanning is negligible.

2.I don't think there are enough details in the republican alternative for me to understand how it works. then again i didn't think obamacare had enough details but it worked exactly as i thought it did. would have helped them to have some more details.

3. i am type a. i procrastinate though (most people do) but i always make lists and i really love efficiency.

5. i heard but i don't really care about his story. i guess at least he's good and probably didn't make the announcement to get drafted unlike that basketball player.

6. do you have a problem with him being suspended or with the article? i think he should have gone to the nba. dumb kid.

8. not that it should be taken seriously, but having that anchorman graphic as the first one was confusing because that's clearly a play on romantic comedies. it seemed that this article was recounting spoofs rather than going to the romcom source material.

r2r.
yeah, i don't understand it either. people will always say, hey but you don't know how hard it is to move, yadda yadda. my parents left china to come to america- i think people can leave camden and go to non-camden. i don't know how you stay in a degrading, depressing, violent, drug-ridden area. at some point, you have to look out for yourself and your kids and say, there must be somewhere better

.

Social Policy at Work

You're probably over Obamacare, but I wanted to note 1) this unintended consequence of the law and 2) this Republican alternative.  I don't really like certain aspects of the alternative (I'm not really on board until we move away from the insurance model for basic, foreseeable health care costs), but it sounds much better than what Obamacare has given us.

That said, the insurance model exists for a reason, and that reason is problematic.  (To be sure, whereas the writer notes these flaws as an argument for universal health care (possibly provided by the state), I note them as an argument for provision of health care like any other necessary good in society, i.e. through the free market with safety nets for the poor.

You say that you're Type A. Are you?

In backlash news, Emily Yoffe wrote that, while men certainly need to stop committing crimes in the context of sexual assault, there are many things that women can do to prevent themselves from being the victims of sexual assault.  People didn't like that.  Here is her response.

In case you didn't hear, Missouri football player Michael Sam came out, and he is widely expected to be drafted to play in the NFL this coming season.

In another sports story, college basketball player Marcus Smart pushed a fan who called him a "piece of crap" and got suspended.  I kinda sorta have a problem with this.

This would make me more hesitant to talk on the phone at work, but I'm pretty sure I don't have anything to say that the government is interested in hearing.

And let's end on a lighter note.

Responses:

2. That seems spot on to me.  Talking about how to solve relationship problems is probably the best thing you can do to learn how to solve relationship problems.  In my view, communication and problem solving are pretty important to any healthy relationship.

3. What have you been resorting to?

4. I wish I still had a thermostat...

R2R:

6. I've always wondered why people keep living in terrible places when they could always leave.  I'm not talking about North Korea (where they do terrible things to you if you try to leave, or if you stay), but rather New London, or Camden or Detroit, or lots of other places.  I get being invested in your home and neighborhood, and I certainly get the situation of Suzette Kelo and the other homeowners who invested lots of money into their property only to get lowballed by the NLDC.  I think part of it is that you end up fighting for what you believe in to the point where you love your neighborhood.  The fight keeps you there.

B

it's cold! now with responses!

well i know i'm not moving here

maybe just having something neutral to talk about is what really helped? maybe if they blogged?

it's all kinda delicious - i've been resorting to the same old same old.

i clicked on this because last night i actually raised the thermostat above 70 for the first time because i was so cold. apparently that was the wrong move.

1. i dunno. as much as i put off grocery shopping, i wouldn't want someone to do it for me for veggies. i would always feel like i got the worst ones.
2.coke coming out of a keurig feels weird. but hey maybe it'll catch on.
3.yum! to the boyfriend that would make those.
4. i read that article last year and i dont' think it necessarily makes things worse. as i may have told you, knowing what the other options are, i'd gladly stick to one person.
5. it doesn't even seem like they like bacon all that much so much as it's a gimmick that bacon makes everything better. if you loved bacon, you would showcase it at its best.
6. this was so sad but also why do people continue to live there?

Bringing Home the Bacon

Here's an idea.  Here are some more like it.

I have mixed feelings about this.

What would be best of all: a boyfriend who would make these.

Apparently online dating is changing society, perhaps for the worse.

There might be a such thing as taking things too far.

How about a post-post mortem on Kelo?

Responses:

5. I really don't understand how people are supposed to have an opinion on this.  We don't know for sure what happened, we don't have a respected arbiter (i.e. a criminal court) to make a determination of what happened, and there were investigations into it that went nowhere.  I know feminists get mad when people criticize alleged rape victims, and that's fair, but is the answer automatically assuming that the accused is guilty?  The author has a decent idea, but I'm not sure that it's the right move because don't (we never) have enough information to evaluate the celebrity as a human.

7. I thought that anti-ginger sentiments were all ironic and done in fun (like the way people make blonde jokes) before reading that article.  Wow.

8. There was an episode of South Park about this.  According to them, it took 22.6 years for AIDS to be funny.

9. My fear is that, with so many new restaurants and changes, people will start getting bored with Mike Isabella.  His restaurants seem like flavors of the month more than places that'll still be interesting in 10 years, and it's in part because he seems to have already moved on from them.

R2R:

1a. Yes, the school handled it poorly, but any parent who repeatedly sends his child to school with no lunch and no lunch money is being a negligent parent.  The same thing would happen if you went to Chipotle and didn't have any money - they would scowl at you and toss your burrito in the garbage.  I'm not saying that the school's reaction wasn't terrible, but public schools are notorious for reacting poorly to life's ups and downs (see, e.g., zero tolerance), and if I'm going to be dumb enough to leave my child's lunch fate up to them, then I should make triply sure that I've done everything I can to make sure nothing goes wrong.

1b. That said, I do think kids in public schools are often punished for their parents' shortcomings because it's often the only way to get some parents' attention - it's kinda like the kids are the deep-pocketed defendant.  When I lived with my dad, we were late to school all the time becuase he drove us and often had no interest in trying to get us there on time.  As a result, I sometimes got in trouble.  This is the main reason I want to send my kids to private school.  In a public school, the funding mechanism is indirect, so the administrators and teachers do not have the same incentives to respond appropriately, but in private schools, they stand to lose my tuition checks if they do their jobs poorly.  Our difference of opinion on this matter probably has a lot to do with the fact that you went to nice public schools and I went to terrible ones.

B

bunnies and bears

I never know what to think when composing a landscape shot. Here are some thoughts.

a heartwarming story about a lost bear

just don't use the gummy bears you showed me

that 24 trailer was the hit of the superbowl

cosmo defends woody allen, surprisingly

they should give these lists out to high schoolers so they know all that they can be

his terminology is suspect but the article was interesting

did you hear the one about scientist who wanted to be a stand-up comedian?

are they all successes or does he just get bored?

i also enjoy that this is part of a series where psychiatrists analyze other tv show characters

.<==bunny demonstrates stop drop and roll

 <==the polar vortex

responses!
1. what? that incident is all the school's fault. i mean, the fact that the parents hadn't paid was the parents' fault but the problem was the handling. let's embarrass the kids for wanting food. Let's waste food that could just as well be given to the kids.
2. my work pants are made of scuba fabric and they are the best. maybe get those pants in black though? i'm also glad you don't have $100+ sweatpants. yet.
3. disgusting is right. but hey, the poor get to stay in their food desert! (are the poor-advocates just hoping that some grungy supermarket will move into town instead?)
4. yeah, never followed that story. i thought it was about anthony wiener.
5. that was what the al sharpton monologue was referencing.
6. maybe it's just a smaller crater than we had thought.
9. maybe jamie casino is the sole reason the law industry is a small crater.
r2r

1. i hadn't heard the podcast before posting it and yes the first part was quite vapid and not very economis-y. or it was using economics in the most hurtful way to people - the opportunity cost of dating this loser is not dating my dream guy!
2. i would actually like to see an article about all the "let's go after the rich!" laws actually hurting the poor (mostly because the comments to that article are all "the rich control congress and make laws that help themselves to the detriment of the poor" which is probably true but the poor are also voting for these laws). for instance, i saw one that wanted to "stop the subsidization of second mortgages on boats for the superrich" by requiring that anyone taking this deduction show that their boat could actually be a residence - have a bathroom and all that. so it seems that it's taking a deduction away from the rich but actually is only letting those with yachts keep their deductions and those with normal houseboats (which tend not to have bathrooms) aren't now allowed to deduct. so now we are only subsidizing superrich yachts and not middle class houseboats. phew! income inequality solved!

Questionably Bad Things 2

While the school was being incredibly stupid in its handling of this, I actually blame the parents.  It's something like 80/20 blame, with the parents getting 80 and the school getting 20.  That said, if the children knew about the zero or negative balances, they get 5, so it's 80/15/5.

Not sure what to make of this - they would be the most expensive sweatpants I've ever purchased or close to the most expensive dress pants I've ever purchased.

This is absolutely disgusting.

This is an interesting wrinkle to a mostly forgotten story.

MSNBC has been on a roll lately.

Perhaps the legal sector isn't cratering the way we all think it is after all.

This is the ultimate example of either a miscarriage of justice or the phrase, "You can't argue with results."

Here's something to think about next time you buy an avocado.  For the record, I think the answer is buying more, not less.

This apparently aired during the Super Bowl in Savannah, GA.  Pure awesome.

Responses:

1. That was pretty interesting.  I enjoyed the second part more than the first part - thinking in economic terms I think helps people work together better in relationships.  I didn't enjoy the first part quite as much because of my longstanding objections to reducing people to facts about their lives, interests, etc.  I think the connection that makes you want to see someone after a couple of dates has more to do with intangible chemistry than anything else.

2. It's enslavement to the narrative.  Maybe this plays a small part or a big part, but it seems like a relevant consideration.  Sometimes generally good changes lead to unforeseen bad effects.  I personally don't see inequality as a problem in and of itself, so I'm more than happy to stipulate to the thesis of the article and continue to endorse women working if they want to.  Finally, I thought this article made some good points about inequality.

R2R:

1. More on the 1996 Olympics. I sadly agree with Rembert on much of this...

2. The good news was that Tina Fey was getting a new show.  That is obviously overwhelmed completely by Margaret Cho's involvement.

Women

for my brother

the feminists are ripping this to shreds saying it encourages us to go back to the "Barefoot and pregnant" model

don't watch this! though i'm not sure why i wouldn't want you to watch it.

gaming jeopardy

responses!

1. i remember richard jewel! poor guy. he was such a hero.
2. i'm sorry - where's the good news? a potentially good show is now going to be terrible. it'd be like having david spade on Revenge. or angelina jolie on new girl. or maragaret cho in anything!! btw speaking of hated actors, i've made my peace with scarlett johansson. she was -i will say it- good in lost in translation, and ok in vicky christina barcelona, match point (kinda), iron man 2, in good company, he's just not that into you (by that i mean, that movie was so terrible, her performance couldn't even possibly register), the avengers, and apparently she's very good in "her." also she was excellent in the spongebob squarepants movie. she was terrible in the nanny diaries but that's ok. but that's quite a lot of movies that i didn't hate with her in them and that's not true of angelina jolie or jennifer lawrence.
3. i think of atlanta now when i'm on the highway and think, maybe the medians should have exits just in case people get trapped. i mean, it's totally possible anywhere that a truck/bus/something that falls off a truck will block the entire road - people should be able to get out somehow.
4. that was terrible. and kinda sad how good the effects were considering this was publicly funded.