Good Reads

[Laurel]

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/03/05/blogs/05rdv-buddha-art/05rdv-buddha-art-tmagArticle.jpg

BEIJING — Would you be offended by a toilet seat cover sporting an image of Jesus? Or Muhammad?

Some Thai Buddhists are upset that Buddha’s image is being taken in vain by “foreigners” who, they say, see it as a philosophical and not a religious symbol and don’t give Buddha the respect he deserves.

These sentiments flared anew last week after reports of a hotel in France with a “Little Buddha” room that includes a toilet cover with Buddha’s image.

The hotel, Moulin de Broaille in the Burgundy region of central France, went a step too far when it used toilet covers bearing an image of the Buddha’s head, The Bangkok Post reported last week, citing “Thai Buddhists” in a story titled “Buddhists Enraged by Toilet in France.” (The hotel didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.)

“The Thais complained through the Knowing Buddha website at www.knowingbuddha.org,” The Bangkok Post said. And the government is involved.

“These situations are becoming more frequent,” said Nopparat Benjawattananon, director of the National Office of Buddhism, according to the report. “We have to understand that foreigners often think that Buddhism is only a philosophy. We have to help them understand that the Buddha’s image is what Buddhists respect and it cannot be used inappropriately.”​

- read the full article How Not to Treat the Buddha (from IHT Rendezvous)​

 

[Saint Peter]

Your wonk is linky.

 

[Laurel]

Can't do anything about that, sorry to say. It's a genetic thing.

 

[Laurel]

An American living in Cuba discovers Havana’s black-market epicurean scene.

http://www.guernicamag.com/cuba575.jpg

Even when I moved there at the end of the summer of 2009, the Cuban government was still trying to find a way back from the economic crisis that had followed the fall of the USSR in 1991, the innocuously dubbed “special period in a time of peace.” The national economy had lost around 80 percent of imports and exports and over a third of its GDP; the country had plunged into a poverty so deep that my friends’ parents told me stories of marinating and frying banana peels and grapefruit rinds. They called these dishes “cutlets” and ate them on bread. Throughout the nineties, the U.S. embargo had been continually tightened as Washington lawmakers and Miami exiles anticipated an overthrow that never materialized. Instead, certain policies on the island had been relaxed—the use of U.S. dollars was legalized, tourism was encouraged, and farmers were allowed to buy permits and sell directly to buyers at agromercados, fresh fruit and vegetable stands. Cubans got by, even if adults lost an average of 5 to 25 percent of their total body weight between 1990 and 1995. Decades later, the embargo still limits not only travel by U.S. citizens and trade by the government, but also sanctions companies from other countries that do business with Cuba. The imported goods in supermarkets include Canadian muesli priced at $14, about as much as a Cuban on a government salary earns in a month.

Somehow, though, I ate delicious meals at friends’ houses, welcome-back dinners generously served as if people knew that I was beginning to question putting my possessions into storage in Mexico City for a year. In the week following my September 2009 move, a diplomat friend who’d been there for nearly a decade made a noodle stir-fry with strips of chicken, fresh kale, beets and sesame seeds. Fernando was an expert ceviche-maker; he and his girlfriend invited me over for tangy, fresh fish piled atop saltine crackers, accompanied by cool bottles of Heineken. The next week, when I went to see my apartment for the first time, Elaine pushed me into a chair and served a moist, basic tortilla española made of inexpensive staples: eggs, potatoes and green peppers.

These feasts took on mythic proportions in my mind. I lay in bed each night in my rented apartment, my stomach sated and my curiosity piqued, and they grew into banquet tables piled high with food that I could not find in any store. Good meals in Havana seemed like a challenge and a stand, an insistence on the importance of sensuality over utility and as such, a secondhand political statement. Perhaps as a result, it felt more decadent to eat delicious food in Havana, renowned as it is for stringy chicken and dry rice, than elsewhere. As I faced months of supermarket trips filled with canned tuna but no fresh fish, the task of discovering how these friends procured their food became imperative. I wasn’t sure what the penalties were for buying food on the black market, but judging by how prevalent it was, I wanted to risk it. I’d steer clear of buying red meat—I knew that slaughtering a cow in Cuba carried a jail sentence, since they were so scarce—but as for the rest, it seemed to me like the difference between dealing with Havana and actually living there.​

- read the full article Under the Table (from Guernica)​

 

[Laurel]

The sitcom stereotype goes like this: Guy is always horny, guy tries to have sex with girl, girl shoots him down. But as Siobhan Rosen tells it, the script's been flipped. And now there's an awful lot of young, perfectly sex-capable dudes who won't get off their asses to, well, get some

http://www.gq.com/images/entertainment/2013/03/not-tonight-honey/not-tonight-honey-1.jpg

Hey, guys, recognize these excuses for not having sex? Stomachache. Headache. Stressed. Gassy. Tired. Leg cramps. The old Maybe we should just talk some more? I do, because I've been hearing them from men—a.k.a., the supposedly sex-obsessed sex—far too much. These days, more often than you'd think, guys are begging off the one thing we women are expecting you to beg for.

It's not like I'm trying to hump the pope's leg here. These are men who have previously made it clear that they enjoy having sex with me: boyfriends, guys I've been dating for a while, men with whom I regularly bump nethers. Yet they seem to turn me down way more than I turn them down. Or to frame it positively: I want to have sex more than they do. I don't expect laundry Sunday to unfold like Basic Instinct. But getting laid four or five times a week? That would be nice.

Lest you think I'm some sort of unreliable narrator (read: nympho), know that plenty of my female friends are having the same problem. One pal, a girl who's been living with her boyfriend for two years, told me she aims for sex only once or twice a week and still often gets denied. She'll put on something sexy and hear, I have to get up early. Another friend knows that when she sees her boyfriend putting in his retainer, she's going to bed unboinked, no matter how hard she tries.

To be fair (and painfully obvious): Men are human, too. You guys have feelings and problems and hungers that sometimes take precedence over boning. Maybe you had too many beers and are experiencing acute alcohol-related performance anxiety. Or maybe your not-in-the-moodness has to do with something bigger: the ubiquity of porn—effortlessly consumed like a drive-through value meal—or some existential male malaise that Zach Braff will surely explore in his next movie.​

- read the full article Not Tonight, Honey, I Have a Penis (from GQ)​

 

[Laurel]

If you've seen the video for David Bowie's The Stars Are Out Tonight and wondered about the dude-girl in it, here's the scoop.

Many people are blessed with beauty. Some even make a career of it. But very few can work both sides of the runway.

http://images.nymag.com/fashion/11/fall/Pejic110822_1_560.jpg

One evening in late July, a fashion model in very short shorts was walking down Lafayette Street when a *middle-aged guy in a baseball cap, pudgy and plodding, stopped dead in his tracks.

“Hey! Hey, you!” he called out in a thick Brooklyn accent, sidling up. “Are you a model?”

The model peered down at him and gamely grinned. “I am.”

Behind the Scenes at Our Fall Fashion Cover Shoot

“You’re gorgeous.” The man whistled through his teeth. “Shoot! Where are you, you know, illustrated in?”

“Oh, different places,” the model demurred.

“Well, you got my vote,” the guy said. “Man!” He shook his head in amazement and reluctantly continued down the street, completely unaware that the woman he had just encountered was not a woman at all but was in fact Andrej Pejic, a male model who has garnered much attention in the fashion world for his recent success modeling women’s clothing. That day, in addition to the shorts, Pejic was sporting a lacy black blouse over a black tank top, long blond hair, and smoky eyes. He had just come from a shoot for a Spanish magazine where he had shown to good effect a number of items generally considered to be in women’s domain: a floor-length wrap dress, a fur coat, a wide-brimmed felt hat, and, toward the end of the day, a rosy lip stain.​

- read the full article The Prettiest Boy in the World (from New York Magazine)​

 

[Laurel]

Robert Thurman is friends with the Dalai Lama and the Beastie Boys, has fought to free Tibet, and raised a Hollywood celebrity (Uma). Now 71, America's leading Buddhist scholar is still trying to rein in his overcrowded schedule – and occasionally his temper – and finish building the house he started 40 years ago.

http://assets.mensjournal.com/img/article/buddhas-power-broker/298_298_buddhas-power-broker.jpg

Approximately 375 million years after a half-mile-wide meteorite crashed into what's now the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York, a Swedish ex-model named Nena von Schlebrügge had a strange dream. In it, she and her husband, the renowned Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman – who had been living near the Catskills town of Woodstock since 1968, when they were graduate students – were in their seventies and Bob was pounding nails on an unfamiliar rooftop. The next morning, von Schlebrügge woke up rattled. "If you get any big offers, turn them down," she warned Thurman, "or you're never going to retire!"
...
Anyway, about an hour after his wife's dream, Thurman got a call from a woman who owned a lodge on Panther Mountain, the peak in the Catskills that had formed atop the crash site. The lodge had been a spiritual retreat in the sixties, founded by an Austrian psychic known for automatic writing and trance readings. Later, there had been plans to convert the place into a New Age healing center for cancer patients, but that fell through. And so the owner, via mutual friends, was considering donating the property to Tibet House, the nonprofit founded by Thurman and Richard Gere in 1987 at the behest of their friend the Dalai Lama.

Thurman, recalling his wife's warning, politely declined. Then he told Nena about the offer.

According to their friend Michael Burbank, Nena had a swift response. "You idiot!" she cried. "Call them back right away and accept! We need it for the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama!"

Thurman followed orders, and now 12 years later, here we are on Panther Mountain, at what's been rechristened the Menla Mountain Retreat – where, "true to the prophetic dream," as Burbank puts it, Bob and Nena are in their seventies, slaving away, with no retirement in sight.​

- read the full article Robert Thurman, Buddha's Power Broker (from Mens Journal)​

 

[Laurel]

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http://payload141.cargocollective.com/1/9/296973/5125341/IMG_3461.jpg

Contemporary culture means on every trip into town; you’re bombarded with gimmicks galore. Gimmicks often diminish their products to turn a profit; downgrading on the content but selling you something thats ‘50% more’. The All in One 12 course meal offers the average Joe; the chance to dine like royality without the washing up.​

- read the full article All In One (from ChrisGodfrey.me)​

 

[KRCummings]

http://payload141.cargocollective.com/1/9/296973/5125341/IMG_3425Web.jpg

http://payload141.cargocollective.com/1/9/296973/5125341/IMG_3461.jpg

Contemporary culture means on every trip into town; you’re bombarded with gimmicks galore. Gimmicks often diminish their products to turn a profit; downgrading on the content but selling you something thats ‘50% more’. The All in One 12 course meal offers the average Joe; the chance to dine like royality without the washing up.​

- read the full article All In One (from ChrisGodfrey.me)​

That's seriously disgusting.

 

[Laurel]

That's seriously disgusting.

Hey now, there's a ribeye steak with grilled mustard greens in there. Somewhere.

 

[Laurel]

http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/fa9c4ba6554c613073121e9c0c07aa13.jpg

For a skateboarder growing up on the East Coast in the 80s and 90s, Huntington Beach seemed like ground zero. Christian Hosoi, the most stylish skater of all time lived there; Jason Lee, one of the biggest early innovators in street skating was there; even my favorite skater of all time, New Jersey’s Mike Vallely moved there and teamed up with fellow street legend Ed Templeton. And when the Flip team flew over from England with Geoff Rowley and Tom Penny, who would quickly take their places in the vanguard of new street rippers, I couldn’t help but believe that Huntington Beach was the greatest place on Earth.

Then I visited when I turned 18 and it was like Hitler won the war. Blonde and blue-eyed was the norm. Not one person of color to be seen anywhere. Nazi regalia was sold in Army/Navy stores alongside Dickies and bayonets. Then I started hearing stories of teenage skinheads lynching black people like it was Alabama in the 50s. One of skateboarding’s kindest, gentlest souls and my childhood idol, Ray Barbee, was chased by a rabid pack of skinheads and barely escaped with his life. Not trying to sound racist, but I hate white people. In the immortal words of Huntington Beach’s local pro skater Jason Dill, “I don’t want to be white as much as you don’t want to be white.” I vowed that day never to return to Huntington Beach.
...
Ed Templeton, skateboarding’s most prolific artist and Huntington Beach’s hometown hero/advocate was there capturing the entire week’s festivities. I rang him up to get his take on the HB scene.

VICE: What was Huntington Beach like when you were growing up?
Ed: Downtown was surf shops, bars, and food. Quaint one- or two-story buildings. The locals ruled the place, and there were fights all the time. Skinheads hung out on one corner and said racist shit to everyone. Religious zealots would preach that we are all sinners. In many ways not much has changed.

How has it changed over the years?
Now it’s Starbucks and Jamba Juice, microbreweries, and ice cream shops. There are still surf shops, but they are bigger and more corporate. The skeleton of the past is still there, but Main Street is bigger, louder, and more geared towards tourists. The skinheads have stopped hanging out on the corner—they are all grown up and breeding families. A few racist kids still hang out down there, but they’re more stealth about it. Fights happen at night now when the meatheads who all think they are MMA fighters get their liquid courage to the right level.​

- read the full article Ed Templeton’s Huntington Beach (from Vice)​

 

[KRCummings]

http://assets.vice.com/content-images/contentimage/no-slug/fa9c4ba6554c613073121e9c0c07aa13.jpg

For a skateboarder growing up on the East Coast in the 80s and 90s, Huntington Beach seemed like ground zero. Christian Hosoi, the most stylish skater of all time lived there; Jason Lee, one of the biggest early innovators in street skating was there; even my favorite skater of all time, New Jersey’s Mike Vallely moved there and teamed up with fellow street legend Ed Templeton. And when the Flip team flew over from England with Geoff Rowley and Tom Penny, who would quickly take their places in the vanguard of new street rippers, I couldn’t help but believe that Huntington Beach was the greatest place on Earth.

Then I visited when I turned 18 and it was like Hitler won the war. Blonde and blue-eyed was the norm. Not one person of color to be seen anywhere. Nazi regalia was sold in Army/Navy stores alongside Dickies and bayonets. Then I started hearing stories of teenage skinheads lynching black people like it was Alabama in the 50s. One of skateboarding’s kindest, gentlest souls and my childhood idol, Ray Barbee, was chased by a rabid pack of skinheads and barely escaped with his life. Not trying to sound racist, but I hate white people. In the immortal words of Huntington Beach’s local pro skater Jason Dill, “I don’t want to be white as much as you don’t want to be white.” I vowed that day never to return to Huntington Beach.
...
Ed Templeton, skateboarding’s most prolific artist and Huntington Beach’s hometown hero/advocate was there capturing the entire week’s festivities. I rang him up to get his take on the HB scene.

VICE: What was Huntington Beach like when you were growing up?
Ed: Downtown was surf shops, bars, and food. Quaint one- or two-story buildings. The locals ruled the place, and there were fights all the time. Skinheads hung out on one corner and said racist shit to everyone. Religious zealots would preach that we are all sinners. In many ways not much has changed.

How has it changed over the years?
Now it’s Starbucks and Jamba Juice, microbreweries, and ice cream shops. There are still surf shops, but they are bigger and more corporate. The skeleton of the past is still there, but Main Street is bigger, louder, and more geared towards tourists. The skinheads have stopped hanging out on the corner—they are all grown up and breeding families. A few racist kids still hang out down there, but they’re more stealth about it. Fights happen at night now when the meatheads who all think they are MMA fighters get their liquid courage to the right level.​

- read the full article Ed Templeton’s Huntington Beach (from Vice)​

Call me old but I think all skateboarders are the devil.

 

[Laurel]

Call me old but I think all skateboarders are the devil.

Yeah, they're often kinda dicks, but I think it's intentional.

 

[Laurel]

From March, but interesting.

http://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/life/fashion_style/2013/03/01/breathable_inglot_o2m_nail_polish_a_hit_with_muslim_women/inglot_nail_polishes.jpg.size.xxlarge.promo.jpg

The death of a Polish nail polish inventor has opened a window into a world of specialty cosmetics. Wojciech Inglot was a chemist and entrepreneur who tried to come up with a more healthful alternative to traditional nail polish. He died Feb. 23 at the age of 57.

Inglot leaves behind a market of grateful customers: Muslim women, who have flocked to his invention of a "breathable" polish that allows air and moisture to reach the nail bed. Some scholars say the cosmetic is uniquely permissible under Islamic law.
...
The nail industry is huge worldwide; some estimate it's a business in the U.S. alone. But although Inglot's O2M polish debuted in 2009, it only recently started taking off among Muslim women, who must wash their hands and arms before praying.

Gera explains:

Though the Muslim holy book, the Quran, does not specifically address the issue of nail polish, some Islamic scholars have said that water must touch the surface of the nail for the washing ritual to be done correctly.

Some Muslim women might put nail polish on after finishing the last prayer of the day before going out, and then take it off again before dawn prayers. They can also wear it during their periods, when they are excused from the prayers, but some find it embarrassing to do so because it could signal they are menstruating. Some simply don't want to take the trouble of getting a manicure that won't last long.
​

- read the full article Inventor Dies As 'Breathable' Nail Polish Becomes Hit With Muslim Women (from NPR)​

 

[islandman]

Seems as though we're losing our soul....

Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?​

- read the full article TAKEN (from The New Yorker)​

 

[gravyrug]

Seems as though we're losing our soul....

Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?​

- read the full article TAKEN (from The New Yorker)​

Oh, don't even get me started on that shit. I've been reading those stories for over a decade now. Legalized shakedowns, that's all that is.

Also making me angry today:

http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/index.ssf/2013/08/serial_rapists_terrorized_clev.html

Spurred by media reports of thousands of untested rape kits across the state, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine issued an open call in 2011 for law enforcement agencies to send the decades-old evidence to state labs for testing. Cleveland police had begun sending their thousands of untested kits earlier that same year.

Results began rolling in late last year.

Among the most stunning revelations from the testing is that at least 12 serial rapists, responsible for as many as 50 attacks were on the prowl in Cleveland in the early 1990s. But because some cases were ignored or quickly abandoned, more women and children were raped.

 

[Laurel]

Seems as though we're losing our soul....

Under civil forfeiture, Americans who haven’t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we’re losing?​

- read the full article TAKEN (from The New Yorker)​

Wow.

 

[Laurel]

Oh, don't even get me started on that shit. I've been reading those stories for over a decade now. Legalized shakedowns, that's all that is.

Also making me angry today:

http://www.cleveland.com/rape-kits/index.ssf/2013/08/serial_rapists_terrorized_clev.html

I'm speechless.

 

[gravyrug]

I'm speechless.

And I doubt seriously that the problems are limited to Cleveland.

 

[Laurel]

And I doubt seriously that the problems are limited to Cleveland.

And I doubt that this is the first time this sort of thing has happened anywhere. Who knows what evidence is locked up untested, allowing rapists and murderers to run around free.

 

[Saint Peter]

http://lindseycatarino.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Salt-image.jpg
Americans love salt. And we eat too much of it. So much so that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is thinking about limiting the amount of sodium in packaged foods.

Cutting back on sodium would almost certainly be good for the country's health. The average American consumes nearly 50 percent more sodium than experts recommend, most of it from processed foods.

Though it adds flavor and helps preserve food, all that sodium can cause high blood pressure and increase the risk of heart attack, stroke, and other health problems. (Sodium is a component of table salt, but they're not the same thing.)

But can we handle a blast of bland? Apparently not. If the FDA and the food industry do reduce the sodium in our food, it will happen gradually, because our taste buds simply can't handle a crash course in low-sodium fare.

The fact is, experts say, the American palate has become so accustomed to the high levels of sodium and salt added to our meals that the only way to kick the habit may be to wean ourselves off it slowly.

​

- read the full article Why our salt addiction is hard to kick (from CNN)​

 

[KRCummings]

I do enjoy me some salt.

 

[mrcoffee96]

http://images.nymag.com/news/features/space130527_1_560.jpg

This is not a rendering. It is a launching pad in the New Mexico desert for rocket planes that will send you into space for $200,000. It opens later this year.​

- read the full article Welcome to the Real Space Age (from New York Magazine)​

Amazing!

 

[Colonel Hogan]

That's seriously disgusting.

Hey now, there's a ribeye steak with grilled mustard greens in there. Somewhere.

As always, the real challenge is choosing the right wine.

 

[Laurel]

As always, the real challenge is choosing the right wine.

With canned food...canned wine.

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