Month: November 2011

"Unleashed" by Mitt Romney:

Oh, this is great—

Little bacon pieces keep falling out.

Today this is me,

Just raw and unleashed.

More unintentional poetry from Romney here.

The popular hashtag lets people lodge petty, elitist complaints while acknowledging the problems aren't a matter of life or death. Teju Cole rejects the logic:

Yes, Nigerians struggle with floods or infant mortality. But these same Nigerians also deal with mundane and seemingly luxurious hassles. Connectivity issues on your BlackBerry, cost of car repair, how to sync your iPad, what brand of noodles to buy: Third World problems. All the silly stuff of life doesn't disappear just because you're black and live in a poorer country. People in the richer nations need a more robust sense of the lives being lived in the darker nations.

Here's a First World problem: the inability to see that others are as fully complex and as keen on technology and pleasure as you are.

Catherine Rampell recalls a time when Republicans were more reasonable about the budget:

In the 1950s and 1960s, federal deficits were relatively small compared to the size of the economy, but even during those flush years, Republican leadership was reluctant to advocate tax cuts. In 1953, for example, Dwight Eisenhower said the country "cannot afford to reduce taxes, reduce income, until we have in sight a program of expenditures that shows that the factors of income and of outgo will be balanced." And when his successor, John F. Kennedy, proposed sharp tax cuts in 1963, the more conservative Republicans in Congress initially opposed them because the cuts would expand the deficit.

Dan Ariely studies a perennial pet peeve:

Think about these two ways to get your luggage: With the original airport design, you walk ten minutes, but when you finally get to the carousel, your baggage gets there a minute after you (taking 11 minutes). In the other, you walk three minutes, but when you arrive you have to wait five minutes for your luggage (taking 8 minutes). The second scenario is faster, but people become more annoyed with the process because they have more idle time. As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr. noted, “I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely.”

The "good news" is that airports quickly reverted to their former (inefficient) system, and we now walk farther to our suitcases just to avoid the frustrations of idleness.

(Photo by Neeta Lind)

Many websites, such as this one, have put out primers on what scraps to feed your dog. Biggest risks? Turkey bones and nuts:

Walnuts and macadamia nuts: These two nuts in particular are very bad for your dog. In fact, they could cause a toxic reaction called macadamia nut toxicosis. Dogblogtimes.com says, "Within twelve hours of eating the nuts, dogs can start to develop symptoms such as an inability to stand, ataxia (walking wobbly), depression, vomiting, muscle tremors, hyperthermia (elevated body temperature), weakness and an elevated heart rate. Usually the symptoms go away within 48 hours but the weakness, vomiting and fear can lead to dangerous, and sometimes deadly, shock."

Vet visits surge over the holiday weekend:

Pancreatitis claims increase by 78 percent and gastroenteritis claims rise by 27 percent. And the illnesses can be costly. The average cost for veterinary care for pancreatitis is $940, and the price tag for gastroenteritis is nearly $400.

(Photo: A holiday reminder via Reddit)

Michael Branch thinks deeply about the tradition:

[T]he National Turkey … doesn’t require our mercy in the slightest. It is we who need the bird, desperately so, for through it we are permitted to express our deep human desire to grant amnesty to those who would otherwise suffer. From where I sit it is difficult to determine whether the granting of a pardon constitutes an assertion of power or a relinquishment of it.

Justin E.H. Smith also assesses the annual practice:

Obama’s pardoning of one randomly selected bird at Thanksgiving not only carries with it an implicit validation of the slaughtering of millions of other turkeys. It also involves an implicit validation of the parallel practice for human beings, in which the occasional death-row inmate is pardoned, or given a stay by the hidden reasoning of an increasingly capricious Supreme Court, even as the majority of condemned prisoners are not so lucky. In this respect, the Thanksgiving pardon is an acknowledgment of the arbitrariness of the system of capital punishment.

Sandy Levinson reviews Obama's (not very good) record of pardoning people.

(Photo: A turkey stands in a barn at the Willie Bird Turkey Farm November 22, 2010 in Sonoma, California. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Claire Thompson celebrates the return of "real turkeys":

When it comes to turkeys, or any kind of food, the existence of multiple, diverse varieties (i.e. biodiversity) is crucial to food security. … That's the theory behind Slow Food's Ark of Taste project, "a catalog of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction." The Ark of Taste strives to preserve these endangered edibles (everything from American Rye Whiskey to Amish Pie Squash) both for their unique tastes and for the sake of the biodiversity of our food system. If we don't, said Vaughn, "we're going to do ourselves a disservice in terms of what we have access to in the future."

        One Blessing had I than the rest
        So larger to my Eyes
        That I stopped gauging–satisfied–
        For this enchanted size–

        It was the limit of my Dream–
        The focus of my Prayer–
        A perfect–paralyzing Bliss–
        Contented as Despair–

        I knew no more of Want–or Cold–
        Phantasms both become
        For this new Value in the Soul–
        Supremest Earthly Sum–

        The Heaven below the Heaven above–
        Obscured with ruddier Blue–
        Life’s Latitudes leant over–full–
        The Judgment perished–too–

        Why Bliss so scantily disburse–
        Why Paradise defer–
        Why Floods be served to Us–in Bowls–
        I speculate no more–

— Emily Dickinson.

The word is derived from the Latin word pica, meaning magpie:

Magpies and crows are well-known for their habit of collecting an assortment of odds and ends in their nests. Not so very different, the thinking goes, from the way medieval cooks assembled ingredients for their pies. 

Photo of a Cherpumple from Charles Phoenix, who invented it. What the pie cake entails:

It's a triple layer cake with a pie baked into each layer. To make the bottom layer, you bake an entire apple pie inside a spice cake. The middle layer is a pumpkin pie baked inside a yellow cake. Top it off with a cherry pie baked inside of a white cake. Once finished and frosted, it's a foot tall and packs an astronomical number of calories per slice. Diabetics and health-food devotees will run screaming.

Because we react strongly to exaggeration:

Baby chicks presented with parents with exaggerated versions of the features they’re homing in on — the color of a parent’s beak, say — will respond more strongly to an exaggerated, but artificial, version of their parent than to the real thing. In the same way, humans home in on versions of reality in which the most enticing features are enhanced. In food, that’s texture, color, and anything else we associate with nutrient density, mouth feel and general deliciousness.