For the cooks among us: What's your current favorite recipe with 5 ingredients or less?
Mine:
1. Linguine, tossed with: 2. EVOO, 3. Sun-dried tomatoes; 4. Capers; and 5. Crumbled Gorgonzola.
If you want to get fancy, you can add some basil, oregano, and pepper. Yum.
Random Recipe Thread
Number of the Day
23: The number of polls showing that a majority of USians believe tax increases should be part of the strategy for paying down the debt, rather than relying on budget cuts alone.
[H/T to @ThinkProgress.]
Imagine That
CNN has a reasonably decent article by Madison Park about two new studies published today which "suggest reframing the way medical practitioners look at overweight and obese patients. The studies question the notion that BMI and weight determine health—even when someone is severely obese."
You mean that fat and healthy are not mutually exclusive concepts?! HOLY SHIT. It's almost like all the fat people who have been saying that very thing for years as if they knew better about their own bodies than people who had simply internalized bullshit narratives about cake-devouring fatties were right after all!
I found this bit particularly sad:
The conventional wisdom is that if you're overweight or obese, you're in mortal danger because that extra weight is like a ticking time bomb ready to unleash diabetes, heart disease and other health complications.And yet fat people (especially fat women) die every year because they walk into doctors' offices with complaints that are ignored by doctors who can't see past fat. Shortness of breath? Lose weight. Whoops, that was a pulmonary embolism. Pain in your leg? Lose weight. Whoops, that was bone cancer. The first doctor I saw when I had a herniated disk in my back many years ago told me it was back pain from fat. Lose weight. I damn well knew it wasn't muscle pain, and I knew damn well it was something related to a known cyst on my spine, but I walked and walked and walked because, well, maybe if I lost weight I would feel better. That's what all my doctors told me. I went on a 20-mile hike through the Scottish Highlands, and went into shock at the end of it, because my disk had herniated so severely. By the time I went to the emergency room at Northwestern in Chicago after I got home, I couldn't even walk and had permanent nerve damage to my left foot.
But doctors have known for years that obesity doesn't affect all people the same way.
I never lost any weight, but I ended up in the hospital for a week after emergency surgery, and I lost significant mobility that my fat body had had before.
Whoops.
You Didn't Think Rick Perry Was JUST Racist, Did You?
HA HA of course he's not just racist, no doy. He's also deeply sexist, too:
"It this shirt has a few wrinkles in it, it's not my wife's fault."—Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), quoted by ABC News Radio.Don't worry—she ironed it like a good little wife should, but I'm just a big manly lug who gets my shirt all wrinkled up when I take my jacket off.
Whoooooooooooops Rick Perry you have lost track of the year! It is 2011.
Um.
With another presidential election comes a bunch of Republican candidates who say thinly-veiled racist things against Obama and then pretend that anyone who calls that shit out is a liberal hysteric.
Texas Governor and full-tilt asshole Rick Perry, in Iowa earlier today:
Perry focused his fire on President Obama, who will be in a different part of the state later Monday.He didn't mean it that way blah blah fart.
"He says he's on a listening tour," Perry said, "so I'm going to talk to him."
"Mr. President, you need to free up the employers of this country to create jobs." Perry called on Obama to "free up this country" from "stifling regulation."
"I'm a pro-business governor, I don't make any apologies about it and I will be a pro-business president."
Perry warned that a "big black cloud" hangs over the country.
Perry also sent this message to President Obama: "I think you want a president who is passionate about America—that's in love with America." So yet another Othering dog-whistle about how Obama isn't a "real American," which is truly galling when one recalls that Rick "I'm in Love with America" Perry was suggesting that maybe his state should secede from the union two years ago.
Love it or leave it, eh, Rick?
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For more fun Perry reading today, check out Matt Yglesias' "The Ten Weirdest Ideas in Rick Perry's Fed Up" and Michelle Goldberg's "A Christian Plot for Domination?"
Daily Dose of Cute
"I'm not offended; I'm contemptuous."
"The fuck? This mutt is stealing my shtick."
Seen
On a church sign on the way to the dog park (this was quite a few weeks ago now, but let's just pretend I didn't keep forgetting to post it and that I only saw it this weekend, to keep it topical):
I know that's supposed to be synonymous with, "When life becomes difficult, Christians pray," but.
Was there really no one in the entire congregation who noticed the potential problem there...?
[Previous Church Signs: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, 11, 12.]
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by owls.
Recommended Reading:
Digby: Freedom Fries Redux
Marcy: Warren Buffett: My Super-Rich Brethren Shun Work
Resistance: That Time Again
Cord: We're Next: Why America's Riots May Not Be Far Behind London's
Jeff: [TW for racism; xenophobia] David Sedaris thinks Chinese people (and food) are repulsive, which makes me sad, because I used to like David Sedaris.
Andrew: [TW for homophobia; sexual assault] Lawyer for Tyler Clementi's Roomie Asks That Charges Be Dropped
Melissa: Studio - A New Film Magazine Targeted at Women Launches in the UK
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Quote of the Day
"He should go after the problem with everything he's got. He should travel the country and go where people are not employed and let the country know he cares about this in the pit of his stomach. … I don't think we've seen nearly enough. We've seen virtually nothing."—Peter Buttenwieser, a major Democratic fundraiser who is supporting President Obama's reelection bid, but wants him to pay more attention to job creation, quoted in a piece by Peter Nicholas for the LA Times, "Democrats urge Obama to be more aggressive on jobs."
Good advice.
Lady Atheists' Reluctance to Engage with Movement Atheism Continues to Be a Real Mystery
The greatest mystery of our generation, I'm sure.
[Trigger warning for misogyny; sexual objectification; dehumanization.]
Approximately five weeks after Elevatorgate, i.e. the latest round of "Where All the Atheist Ladies At?", I click through to Pharyngula at FTB to see that PZ Myers, who was rightly up in arms about the sexism directed at a woman on his team, has posted a piece about Rep. Michele Bachmann which includes a sexually suggestive picture of her from the Iowa State Fair about to eat a corndog and calls her a reptile.
That's the whole post. Rep. Michele Bachmann is a reptile, who may or may not be able to "disarticulate her mandibles at will" in order to get her mouth around a wiener. And the entire thing is set up from the main page so that the rank misogyny and dehumanization is a punchline:
You have to "Read More" to reveal the hilarity of why PZ thinks "there's good reason to be only cautiously speculative when it comes to the capacity of a reptile's jaws."
This is not how feminism works. This is how sexism works.
The sexual objectification of a woman in order to demean her is indefensibly misogynist, and it doesn't matter whether that women is likable, or kind, or herself willing to engage in sexism. If one is to be a feminist, or an ally to feminists, and if one is interested in human rights and social justice, then sexist and dehumanizing rhetoric and imagery is off the table.
And if one is authentically interested in making women feel welcome at your table, then one must stop forcing them to engage in the Terrible Bargain.
[My mistrust is] born of the multitude of mundane betrayals that mark my every relationship with a man—the casual rape joke, the use of a female slur, the careless demonization of the feminine in everyday conversation, the accusations of overreaction, the eyerolling and exasperated sighs in response to polite requests to please not use misogynist epithets in my presence or to please use non-gendered language ("humankind").PZ Myers is a smart guy, and he is capable of understanding that if he wants women to trust him and his space and the community of which he is a prominent part, then he can't continually expect them to overlook (and endorse) casual misogyny being wielded against other women.
There are the insidious assumptions guiding our interactions—the supposition that I will regard being exceptionalized as a compliment ("you're not like those other women"), and the presumption that I am an ally against certain kinds of women. Surely, we're all in agreement that Britney Spears is a dirty slut who deserves nothing but a steady stream of misogynist vitriol whenever her name is mentioned, right? Always the subtle pressure to abandon my principles to trash this woman or that woman, as if I'll never twig to the reality that there's always a justification for unleashing the misogyny, for hating a woman in ways reserved only for women. I am exhorted to join in the cruel revelry, and when I refuse, suddenly the target is on my back. And so it goes.
...I am expected to nod in agreement, and I am nudged and admonished to agree. I am expected to say these things are not true of me, but are true of women (am I seceding from the union?); I am expected to put my stamp of token approval on the stereotypes. Yes, it's true. Between you and me, it's all true. That's what is wanted from me. Abdication of my principles and pride, in service to a patriarchal system that will only use my collusion to further subjugate me. This is a thing that is asked of me by men who purport to care for me.
...Not every man does all of these things, or even most of them, and certainly not all the time. But it only takes one, randomly and occasionally, exploding in a shower of cartoon stars like an unexpected punch in the nose, to send me staggering sideways, wondering what just happened.
As long as there are "allowable exceptions" against whom misogyny and dehumanization can be wielded, any women knows, from a lifetime of experience, that the target can easily end up on her own back, if one day her alliance to the in-group who defines the boundaries of acceptable misogyny is suddenly deemed insufficient.
That's not a fair thing to do to women. And as long as that insecurity is there, that knowledge that one day it could be me, many women will respond to that injustice by simply not associating with any group or person who perpetuates it.
The only way to make those women feel welcome is to have a zero tolerance policy on misogyny.
I expect more. And I challenge PZ Myers to expect more of himself.
[We defend Michele Bachmann against misogynist smears not because we endorse her or her politics, but because that's how feminism works.]
Whoooooooooops Your Presidential Campaign!
After coming in third in the GOP king/queen-making Iowa Straw Poll over the weekend, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty has dropped out of the presidential race.
"We needed to get some lift to continue on and have a pathway forward," Pawlenty said this morning in an exclusive interview on "This Week." "That didn't happen, so I'm announcing this morning on your show that I'm going to be ending my campaign for president."Pawlenty received only 14% of the vote behind winner Rep. Michele Bachmann (!) and Rep. Ron Paul, who received 28% and 27% of the vote, respectively.
"I'm very, very grateful for the people of Iowa," Pawlenty added. "I wish it would have been different, but obviously the pathway forward for me doesn't really exist, so we're going to end the campaign."
Watching a report on the straw poll results yesterday, I said to Iain, "That Michele Bachmann won is terrifying," to which he replied, "Yep. She's so our next president."
Shiver.
Stage Collapses at Indiana State Fair
Over the weekend, there was a terrible incident at the Indiana State Fair, which is one of the biggest state fairs in the country. During bad weather, a huge gust of wind blew over the rigging on the main stage just before the band Sugarland was set to perform, and the entire thing collapsed into the audience, killing five people and injuring dozens more.
Below is video of the incident, which may be upsetting, but shows how quickly it really happened:
There were terrible storms all through the state Saturday night: About two hours before this happened, Iain was out when a fierce storm kicked up so quickly that he had to pull over, because he couldn't see to drive from sheer force of the driving rain. Indiana State Fair officials were concerned about the weather, and warned the crowd of bad weather a few minutes before the collapse, but, naturally, told them they hoped the show would go on, too, which made a lot of people stay put in anticipation of the concert.
It's too soon to know exactly what happened, i.e. whether the collapse can really be attributed exclusively to the weather, to what Indiana State Police First Sgt. Dave Bursten called "a unique wind," which might have been a microburst. But certainly it's concerning, as architect Paul Harding pointed out to CBS News Chicago, that there did not appear to be any lateral supports in the structure.
The company responsible for the construction of the temporary structure, Mid-America Sound Corp., is being investigated by the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but Indiana State Fair Executive Director Cindy Hoye is already publicly defending them, and Governor Mitch Daniels has already concluded that the entire thing was a "freakish accident." One hopes I-OSHA is more interested in ascertaining some actual facts before making conclusive pronouncements.
My profound condolences to the friends, family, and colleagues of the people who died: Alina Bigjohny, 23, of Fort Wayne; Christina Santiago, 29, of Chicago; Tammy Vandam, 42, of Wanatah; and two Indianapolis residents: 49-year-old Glenn Goodrich and 51-year-old Nathan Byrd.
You can read more here about Santiago, who worked for Chicago's Howard Brown Health Center, to which many local Shakers have close ties.
Open Thread
This week's open threads have been brought to you by delicious cheeses.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
(Don't forget to tip your bartender!)
Daily Dose of Cute
[Please note that Dudley and Zelda bare their teeth at each other in this video. They're just playing, but if seeing dogs bare their teeth is triggering or otherwise problematic for you, you should skip this video.]
Video Description: Dudley and Zelda play-fight, "biting" at each other's necks, ears, and general head area. I tell them to try not to eat each other's faces off. They look at me and go back to the Bitey Game.
The two of them will do this for ages, until they're both so tired that they're just lying on their sides with their heads bumped together, nudging each other's noses.
Earlier, they were playing between the door of my office and my desk, and Sophie came up and mewed at them while they were playing, as if to say, "Pardon me." They paused and looked at her, then she walked right between them toward me, and they waited until she'd passed before going right back to it, lol.
Just Like Jesus Would Do
[Trigger warning for clergy abuse; rape culture.]
Priorities! The New York State Catholic Conference has them! And they are terrible!
According to reports filed with the Commission on Public Integrity, the Conference hired three lobbying firms in the first six months of 2011. Two firms worked exclusively opposing legislation that would give child sex crime victims more time to bring lawsuits or criminal charges. The third firm spent most of its time on such legislation.Emphasis mine.
Collectively, the Conference paid the three firms just over $111,000 in fees and expenses. The firms lobbied the governor, the State Senate, and the Assembly. The Church is concerned with limiting its financial liability in lawsuits resulting from allegations of sexual abuse of children by priests.
The Church is, of course, concerned with protecting its own ass, but the laws they are lobbying against apply to all survivors of sex crimes. They'd sooner see every child who has been sexually abused and silenced until the statute of limitations runs out denied justice than be accountable to the children their employees abused. Unconscionable.
[H/T to Shaker CarolV.]
