My Husband's Other Wife

In 2009, Emily Yoffe shared the story of her husband’s first wife, Robin, who died from breast cancer at age 34. In honor of Mother’s Day, we are republishing the story below.

by Emily Yoffe

Shortly after my husband John and I were married, on a day he was at work and I was home moving my things into his house, I opened a cardboard box in the attic. It was filled with photos of his other married life, the one he’d had with his first wife, Robin Goldstein. She was 28 when they got married, and six months later she was diagnosed with breast cancer. My husband was nursing her at home when she died just after her 34th birthday. The box contained wedding photos, honeymoon photos, and random snapshots of parties and birthdays. As I excavated, I could chart her illness by her hair—a cycle of dark waves, then wigs and scarves. After I’d looked at them all I closed the box and cried for her, and for my guilty awareness that her death allowed me, five years later, to marry the man I loved.

When our daughter was born, one of the sweetest gifts we got was a tiny chair with her name painted on the back. It was from the Goldstein family. How final it must have felt to them to send this acknowledgement of John’s new life. Robin had wanted children, but her long illness and the brutal treatments made that impossible.

All of us exist because of a series of tragedies and flukes. I’m here because 80 years ago my grandfather’s wife, Ruth, died suddenly of the flu, leaving him a young widower with a toddler and an infant. (They say he had to be restrained from jumping into her grave.) Eventually he remarried to my grandmother, and my mother was born. My grandmother banished all traces of Ruth. Her sons had no contact with Ruth’s relatives, displayed no photos of her. It was as if she never existed. At the end of my grandfather’s long life—he lived to be 95—his distant past became more present to him, and he began to tell stories about Ruth. My grandmother was more incredulous than angry. “Can you imagine?” she told me. “Do you know how long she’s been dead?”

Maybe when my husband and I get old, memories of his life with Robin will become even more vivid than our years together. If so, I hope I’ll welcome those memories. I’m grateful to Robin, not jealous (even if she left it to me to convince our joint husband that the laundry hamper was invented for a reason). I knew my husband for only four months before we got married. But I heard from others how protective, tender, and devoted he was to her. Because of their relationship, I knew that this was a man who could be trusted, who stayed, for better or worse. I also knew that it’s possible to have more than one love of your life. I am the love of his, and so was she.

Read more:

The Biggest Little Man in the World

What do you get when you cross Muhammad Ali, Sly Stallone, Vaclav Havel, Michael Vick, Che Guevara, & Clay Aiken? Manny Pacquiao.

by Andrew Corsello

He is in the car. I am in the car. Physically we are, both of us, in the car. Still, I wonder.

It's now January. In December, I spent a week traversing the Philippine archipelago in a vain attempt to speak with this man. Though it is difficult to arrive at an exact number, it is safe to say that during that week, slightly less than half the national population of 90 million people assured me with a wink that they would get me "in the car" with Manny Pacquiao. But there had been no car. No Manny Pacquiao. (Pronounced like a comic-book sound effect: pack-ee-ow!) I did spend the afternoon of the man's thirty-first birthday in his living room, playing a series of increasingly aggressive Christmas carols on his Yamaha grand piano in a last-ditch effort to flush him from his bedroom. (It was five in the afternoon. He had risen for the day an hour earlier.) But there was no Manny. At 6 p.m., in a single brisk movement, he descended from the balcony—eerily reminiscent of the one on which Al Pacino dies after screaming, "Say hello to my lee-tle frien'!" in Scarface—and out to a waiting caravan. He brushed my shoulder without looking at me as he passed. Or did he? Later, I could not shake my suspicion that the shoulder brush, the whole trip, was a dream. A vivid dream, of a place where every soul and every thing was lit from within by the still, small voice of Manny Pacquiao—Manny… Emmanuel…Hebrew for "God is with us"— but where Manny Pacquiao himself was nowhere to be seen.

But now, at a promotional event in Texas, the first boxer ever to win seven world titles in as many weight divisions, the first athlete ever to appear on a Philippine postage stamp, a man who in 2008 portrayed the Philippine warrior Lapu-Lapu, whose forces killed Magellan and repelled his conquistadores, in a reenactment of the 1521 Battle of Mactan, a man who often survives on three hours' sleep and is said to possess a photographic memory, is "in the car." As am I.

"Manny," I begin, "one of the many reasons GQ wants to feature you is that we want to explain why your appeal in the United States extends far beyond the sport of boxing. Do you have a theory about this?"

The members of his posse, encircling him at ten, two, three, four, six, eight, and nine o'clock, lean in and look. Nothing about the man moves. He remains perfectly postured, eyes forward, arms crossed, the vertical of his chassis aligned with, determining, the center of the SUV's bench seat and of the vehicle itself. Time passes.

Read more:

Feeding The Demand

by Mitch Lipka

Susan Reef was shopping in a small Andover grocery story one fall day in 2008 when an elderly woman asked her advice about buying tomatoes in the midst of a salmonella outbreak. Reef directed the woman to the store manager, but the recall was still on Reef’s mind when she got home.

As she searched the Internet, she quickly found there was no easy way for consumers to learn about food safety recalls, with fragmentary information scattered across the websites of government agencies, grocers, and food industry groups. An idea was planted that would lead Reef to become a leading source for food safety information.

Reef is the founder of USFoodSafety.com, a three-year-old Marlborough start-up that is attracting tens of thousands of visitors to its website, providing a wide range of consumer information about food recalls. The site often averages more that 100,000 unique visitors a month while the audience for its award-winning blog, US Food Safety, has been growing at a rate of about 17 percent a month and now tops 30,000 readers. Reef’s Twitter account, @FoodSafeGuru, has more than 85,000 followers.

“Food became a passion,’’ Reef said. “I just had a brainstorm one evening and never looked back.’’

USFoodSafety.com aims to fill the gaps in a fractured reporting system. When a company launches a recall, it could be reported to the Food and Drug Administration; the US Department of Agriculture; or various state agencies. In Rhode Island, for example, the site helped get out details of a state recall after two deaths were connected to zeppoles — Italian fried dough pastries — made at a Cranston bakery.

Read more:

Loony-ass Insurgents vs. Waffling Bores: GOP Presidential Fight Starts Tonight!

by Matt Taibi

Yes, you read the news right: there is going to be a 2012 presidential debate this evening. Five Republicans are getting together in Greenville, South Carolina to kick off the long process of burying their party as a mainstream political force for the next decade or so.

I can’t remember a grimmer time for the Republican party in my lifetime. Now that Bin Laden is dead, the 2012 election seems like a formality. The setup is all wrong for the Republicans from almost every conceivable angle, with some of that being bad luck and some of it being poor strategy.

First of all, for the next eighteen months, Obama is going to respond to every single foreign-policy question by holding up Bin Laden’s head and swinging it in front of him like a lantern (metaphorically speaking, of course). It doesn’t matter what the question is: ask Obama about the Irish debt crisis, he’ll answer, “The Irish have been important allies in our fight against terrorism, which as you’ll recall resulted recently in the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden …” Things are so bad for the Republicans on this front that their only strategy left is to adopt an antiwar platform and complain about such things as the brutalizing of Afghan citizens by American troops and the illegality of the Bin Laden operation, things that would have been celebrated by the likes of Karl Rove had they occurred during a Bush presidency.

And from a domestic-policy standpoint the Republicans are similarly screwed, absent a new financial crisis, which of course is far from unlikely. A year or two ago anxiety about the economy and deficits was at an all-time high and the Republicans smartly rode public discontent by bashing Obama’s spending habits. But in following that path the party went a step or two too far, unleashing Paul Ryan on the budget; now, for the next eighteen months, Barack Obama can walk into Florida and Arizona and California and explain to every person over 50 that the Republicans want to eliminate the Medicare program as they know it. The Republicans meanwhile are already running sideways away from Ryan’s program, or at least are clearly concerned about having to enter 2012 owning Ryan’s Medicare-voucher program. Couple that with dropping unemployment levels and the stabilized capital markets (stabilized of course by massive ongoing government spending, but the casual voter knows little of this), and Obama can now waltz into 2012 claiming that while he was busy rescuing the wrecked economy left to him by George Bush, Republicans were using the financial chaos as an opportunity to launch long-planned attacks against Medicare and Social Security. How true or just any of this is is a different matter, but this is the strategic reality heading into 2012. And this is without even taking into consideration the highly negative (for the Republicans) demographic picture heading into 2012, in which a Republican base that skews older, male, and white is slowly shrinking, while Obama’s urban, ethnic, and young base is growing. The Republicans on the demographic front have to hope for poor turnout, which is not a good place to be heading into a presidential election against an incumbent with a huge war chest (although the turnout for 2010 was low).

Read more:

The Quarterlife Crisis

by Amelia Hill

It is supposed to be the time of opportunity and adventure, before mortgages and marriage have taken their toll. But struggling to cope with anxieties about jobs, unemployment, debt and relationships, many young adults are experiencing a "quarterlife crisis", according to new research by British psychologists .

Bearing all the hallmarks of the midlife crisis, this phenomenon – characterised by insecurities, disappointments, loneliness and depression – is hitting twenty- and thirtysomethings shortly after they enter the "real world", with educated professionals most likely to suffer.

"Quarterlife crises don't happen literally a quarter of the way through your life," said lead researcher Dr Oliver Robinson, from the University of Greenwich in London. "They occur a quarter of your way through adulthood, in the period between 25 and 35, although they cluster around 30."

Robinson, who presented his findings at the British Psychological Society Annual Conference in Glasgow, worked with researchers from Birkbeck College on what he says is the first research to look at the quarterlife crisis from a "solid, empirical angle based on data rather than speculation."

The research is backed by a survey undertaken by Gumtree.com which found 86% of the 1,100 young people questioned admitted feeling under pressure to succeed in their relationships, finances and jobs before hitting 30.

Two in five were worried about money, saying they did not earn enough, and 32% felt under pressure to marry and have children by the age of 30. Six percent were planning to emigrate, while 21% wanted a complete career change.

But Robinson also found that the quarterlife crisis – which lasts on average for two years – can be a positive experience. Such early-life crises have four phases, he said, moving from feelings of being trapped to a catalyst for change then, eventually, the building and cementing of a new life.

Read more:

Who Is Bradley Manning?

by Ellen Nakashima

In January 2010, more than 130 people gathered to celebrate the opening of Room B-28, a “hacker space” in the basement of the computer science building at Boston University. The room had two rows of computers running open-source software, and, in conformity to the hacker ethic, its walls were painted with wildly colored murals, extensions of the free expression to be practiced there. That was the reason for the power tools, too — in case someone wanted to build something amazing and beautiful, such as the musical staircase, under construction now, that chimes when you step on it.

One of the visitors was a young Army specialist named Bradley Manning, on leave from duty in Iraq. He had been working with computers, modifying code, since he was a kid. David House, founder of the hacker space, said he immediately sensed that Manning “was in the community,” someone who understood how technology could be empowering. This was the sort of world Manning hoped to inhabit one day, friends said. He had joined the Army so the GI Bill would finance his education. He had his eye on a PhD in physics.

Days later, he would be on a plane back to Baghdad and a culture where rule-breaking was not celebrated. And eight months after that, House — who had chatted with the man for barely 15 minutes — went to visit him in the brig at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, where Manning was being held as the prime suspect inthe largest national security leak in U.S. history.

He is accused of violating military computer security and leaking classified information to the insurgent Web site WikiLeaks. He faces 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy,” a capital crime. The material includes a video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, daily field reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a quarter-million cables from U.S. diplomats around the world. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the cable leaks “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests.”

For most of the past year, Manning spent 23 hours a day alone in a 6-by-12-foot jail cell. His case has become a rallying point for free-information activists, who say the leaked information belongs to the American people. They compare the 23-year-old former intelligence analyst to Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers, and decry excessive government secrecy. “What is happening to our government when Bradley Manning is charged with aiding the enemy?” asked Pete Perry, an organizer with the Bradley Manning Support Network. “Who is the enemy? Information? The American people?”

The case raises troubling issues. Placing information in the public domain has never before been construed as aiding the enemy. Manning had a history of emotional outbursts throughout his youth, and they continued during his Army service, culminating in a breakdown in Baghdad.

How did a young man of such promise wind up in a brig? And how was he in a position to potentially access sensitive material given what the Army knew — or should have known — about him? Who is Bradley Manning, and what made him the way he is?

Read more:

Drunk With Power

by Andrew Price

We always suspected that whisky was part of the solution.

The famous Speyside region of Scotland is home to half of the country's 100 distilleries. They supply Scotland (and the rest of the world) with great whisky, of course, but that distilling process also results in lots of spent grains.

Now that byproduct of the whisky-making process is going to keep the lights on as well, thanks to a new biomass plant in the village of Rothes that just got the go-ahead. The plant will take spent grains from 16 of Speyside's distilleries—including Glenlivet, Chivas Regal, and Macallan—and burn them with woodchips to create electricity for the region. The plant will also create fertilizer and animal feed from a residue called "pot ale" that collects in the distilleries' copper stills.

The 7.2-megawatt Rothes plant is expected to be up and running by 2013 and will provide as much electricity as two wind turbines—enough for roughly 9,000 homes. That will save 46,000 tons of carbon dioxide compared to coal-generated electricity.

The could have just built a few whiskey distilleries in Cape Cod instead of that controversial offshore wind farm. The Kennedys would never have complained.

via:

72 Virgins

[ed.  Ok, I told myself I wasn't going to post any more bin Laden articles, there are enough of them elsewhere, but this one by Steve Martin has to be the last.]

Paradise?

Virgin No. 1: Yuck.

Virgin No. 2: Ick.

Virgin No. 3: Ew.

Virgin No. 4: Ow.

Virgin No. 5: Do you like cats? I have fourteen!

Virgin No. 6: I’m Becky. I’ll be legal in two years.

Virgin No. 7: Here, I’ll just pull down your zipper. Oh, sorry!

Virgin No. 8: Can we cuddle first?

Virgin No. 9: It was a garlic-and-onion pizza. Why?

Virgin No. 10: . . . so I see Heath, and he goes, “Like, what are you doing here?,” and I go, “I’m hangin’ out,” so he goes, “Like, what?” . . .

Virgin No. 11: First you’re going to have to show me an up-to-date health certificate.

Virgin No. 12: Hurry! My parents are due home!

Virgin No. 13: Do you want the regular or the special?

Virgin No. 14: I’m eighty-four. So what?

Read more:

image credit:

What You Didn't Know About Tequila

by Felisa Rogers

The best tequila I ever drank came to me in a plastic jug. I was young, 20 maybe, with a decidedly unrefined palate. I certainly didn't think twice about drinking from the unmarked plastic jug that our friend Danny proffered to me. Hey, it was alcohol, right? But even with my unrefined tastes, the second that tequila touched my lips I understood it was something special. It was so smooth, limes would have been an insult.

Danny was just down from the mountains of Jalisco. The jug came straight from a little distillery in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, which sits on a hill above rolling fields of agave -- the domain of the ancient Cuervo and Sauza families, and home to hundreds of better distilleries. As Cinco de Mayo draws near, our thoughts drift to this tequila Valhalla and it seems an appropriate time to spill some ink on the drink beloved to sophisticates and sorority girls alike.

Tequila and her living ancestor mezcal are made from the hearts of the agave plant. If you drive through the Tequila region, row upon row of agaves flash by, like giant half-buried pineapples or colonies of sea anemones. Despite its sharp thorns and blue-green hue, the agave is closer in kin to the lily than the cactus. One hundred and six varieties of agave, or maguey, grow in Mexico, and the Mexican devotion to the plant is rooted in ancient history. The Olmecs referred to fermented agave as "a delight for the gods and priests," and the Aztecs worshiped Mayahuel, goddess of maguey, who was followed everywhere by a cohort of 400 drunken rabbits. Her husband Patecatl was the god of pulque, a slimy yet highly nutritious drink with the alcohol content of a domestic American beer.

Essentially, the story of how tequila came to be is the story of how Mexico came to be. An Indio idea married to Spanish ambition, influenced by the East, popular in the West. It's a story of highs and lows that shift depending on your perspective: Aztecs fermenting ague miel scooped from the hearts of agave, Don Cenobio Sauza defending his agave plantation against bandit attack, Frida Kahlo with her perfume bottle flask, Cuervo and Sauza bought out by international corporations, Señor Frog's on a spring break Saturday night.

Read more:

image credit:

The Last Post

Here it is. I'm dead, and this is my last post to my blog. In advance, I asked that once my body finally shut down from the punishments of my cancer, then my family and friends publish this prepared message I wrote—the first part of the process of turning this from an active website to an archive.

If you knew me at all in real life, you probably heard the news already from another source, but however you found out, consider this a confirmation: I was born on June 30, 1969 in Vancouver, Canada, and I died in Burnaby on May 3, 2011, age 41, of complications from stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer. We all knew this was coming.

That includes my family and friends, and my parents Hilkka and Juergen Karl. My daughters Lauren, age 11, and Marina, who's 13, have known as much as we could tell them since I first found I had cancer. It's become part of their lives, alas.

Airdrie

Of course it includes my wife Airdrie (née Hislop). Both born in Metro Vancouver, we graduated from different high schools in 1986 and studied Biology at UBC, where we met in '88. At a summer job working as park naturalists that year, I flipped the canoe Air and I were paddling and we had to push it to shore.

We shared some classes, then lost touch. But a few years later, in 1994, I was still working on campus. Airdrie spotted my name and wrote me a letter—yes! paper!—and eventually (I was trying to be a full-time musician, so chaos was about) I wrote her back. From such seeds a garden blooms: it was March '94, and by August '95 we were married. I have never had second thoughts, because we have always been good together, through worse and bad and good and great.

However, I didn't think our time together would be so short: 23 years from our first meeting (at Kanaka Creek Regional Park, I'm pretty sure) until I died? Not enough. Not nearly enough.

Priced Off The Menu

by David Jolly

Sharks can be worth far more when they are swimming around the reef than when they are in a bowl of soup — as much as nearly $2 million each, in fact, according to the results of a study released Monday.

For the study, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science considered the expenditures of divers who travel from around the world to the tiny Pacific nation of Palau to dive with the mainly gray reef and reef whitetip sharks that inhabit its waters, which were declared a shark sanctuary in 2009.

As a remote country of more than 300 islands — Manila, 530 miles away, is the closest city of consequence — Palau does not have many attractions beyond diving, so spending by international tourists on airfare, lodging and diving makes up an important part of the nation’s economy.

The economic logic is straightforward: diver tourism contributes about 39 percent of the country’s gross domestic product of $218 million, and 21 percent of divers chose their vacation there specifically to see the sharks, meaning that tourism to view sharks contributes about 8 percent of G.D.P., the study said. The researchers concluded that the roughly 100 sharks that inhabit the prime dive sites were each worth $179,000 annually to the island nation’s tourism industry, and that each shark had a lifetime value of $1.9 million.

Sold in pieces for their fins and meat, those same 100 sharks would be worth only about $10,800 total, the researchers estimated.

“It clearly indicates that no matter how you slice it, that a shark is worth more in the water than the sum of its parts when it’s cut up and sold,” said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group, which financed the study.

Read more:

image credit:

Nine Below Zero

Small Port In Boshu

 

Small Port in Boshu

Koitsu Tsuchiya (1870 - 1949)

via:

For Your Reading Pleasure

by Conor Friedersdorf

Throughout 2010, I kept my own running list of exceptional nonfiction for the Best of Journalism newsletter I publish. The result is my third annual Best Of Journalism Awards - America's only nonfiction writing prize judged entirely by me. I couldn't read every worthy piece published last year. But everything that follows is worthy of wider attention. Thanks to Byliner, a promising new site dedicated to publishing and sharing feature-length nonfiction, my annual awards dating back to 2008 are soon going to have a permanent home. I am indebted to its founder, John Tayman, for including me in an enterprise well worth checking out - and for his encouragement as I assembled this list.

It was put together before I began my current gig at The Atlantic. The pieces I've selected represent only my own judgment, and do not reflect the opinions of my colleagues, whose lists would surely be wonderful and different.

The Art Of Storytelling

WASHINGTON MONTHLY
Dirty Medicine by Mariah Blake

Thomas Shaw invents breakthrough medical devices. In America's hospitals they'd save lives and money. But the dysfunctional industry that supplies doctors and nurses prevents these wares from getting to the patients who need them. And health care reform hasn't changed a thing.

THE TEXAS MONTHLY
Last Days Of The Comanches by S.C. Gwynne

"By the autumn of 1871, the Western frontier was rolling backward, retreating in the face of savage Indian attacks. When a ragtag army of federal soldiers arrived on the Llano Estacado to crush the hostile natives once and for all, they had numbers and firepower on their side. What they didn't know was that their enemies were led by Quanah Parker, a half-white war chief who may have been the greatest fighter of his time."

THE NEW YORKER
Pandora's Briefcase by Malcolm Gladwell

During World War II, the British pulled off one of the most successful acts of espionage in history. In its details, however, even this fascinating tale of Allied trickery suggests that spying might not be worthwhile.

THE NEW YORKER
The Hunted by Jeffrey Goldberg

In a remote corner of Africa, two American conservationists did their utmost to prevent poachers from destroying an endangered species of elephant. In their zealousness, did they go too far?

THE MORNING NEWS
The High Is Always The Pain And The Pain Is Always The High by Jay Kang

After living the ups and downs of life as a professional poker player, the author observes that "gambling narratives tend to glamorize the upswing." In his own story, however, the romance is wrapped up in the losses.

THIS AMERICAN LIFE
Patriot Games by Ben Calhoun

An unsurpassed case study in how idealistic people who enter professional politics wind up compromising their values.

ESQUIRE
The Gun by CJ Chivers

Shortly after President Eisenhower warned against the military-industrial complex, an unholy alliance of defense contractors and military brass conspired to cover up the fact that they put American troops into combat with a defective gun.

Read more:

(Way Past) Time To Go

Professor Juan Cole

by Juan Cole

An American president, himself the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, has taken down notorious terrorist Usama Bin Laden. Despite being a Christian, Obama, it seems to me, had a personal stake in destroying someone who had defamed the religion of his birth father and his relatives. His 2007-2008 presidential campaign was in part about the need of the US to refocus on the threat from al-Qaeda. He said that the Bush administration had taken its eye off the ball by running off to Iraq to pursue an illegal war and neglecting the eastern front, from which the US had been attacked, and where riposting was legitimate in international law. Obama began threatening to act unilaterally against al-Qaeda in Pakistan in August 2007, during the early period of the Democratic primary.

Ironically, Obama had to admit that Pakistani intelligence helped the US develop the lead that allowed the US to close in on Bin Laden. So the operation was not unilateral, and young candidate Obama was too over-confident. The US story that the Pakistanis were not given prior notice of the operation is contradicted by the Pakistani news channel Geo, which says that Pakistani troops and plainsclothesmen helped cordon off the compound in Abbotabad. CNN is pointing out that US helicopters could not have flown so far into Pakistan from Afghanistan without tripping Pakistani radar. My guess is that the US agreed to shield the government of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and President Asaf Ali Zardari from al-Qaeda reprisals by putting out the story that the operation against Bin Laden was solely a US one. And it may be that suspect elements of the Pakistani elite, such as the Inter-Services Intelligence, were kept out the the loop because it was feared they might have ties to Bin Laden and might tip him off.

Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East. He passed from the scene at a time when the dictators are falling or trying to avoid falling in the wake of a startling set of largely peaceful mass movements demanding greater democracy and greater social equity. Bin Laden dismissed parliamentary democracy, for which so many Tunisians and Egyptians yearn, as a man-made and fallible system of government, and advocated a return to the medieval Muslim caliphate (a combination of pope and emperor) instead. Only a tiny fringe of Muslims wants such a theocratic dictatorship. The masses who rose up this spring mainly spoke of “nation,” the “people,” “liberty” and “democracy,” all keywords toward which Bin Laden was utterly dismissive. The notorious terrorist turned to techniques of fear-mongering and mass murder to attain his goals in the belief that these methods were the only means by which the Secret Police States of the greater Middle East could be overturned.

Heartbeat

For all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: 'It might have been'. 

~ John Greenleaf Whittier

image:

Alternate History

Or: An exploration of Dick Cheney's recent daydreams.

by  Alex Pareene

President Bush announces the news to the nation on May 24, 2006, immediately following the East Coast airing of the finale of "American Idol." He appears in military fatigues and, for some reason, spurs. Behind him, an oversize Osama bin Laden "Wanted" poster, with the word "LIQUIDATED" stamped on the terrorist mastermind's face. The camera pulls back to reveal that the president's East Room audience is in fact made up entirely of firefighters. The Marine band plays "Stars and Stripes Forever" as the president speaks, forcing Bush to address the room, and the nation, through a bullhorn.

"America has won the war on terror," Bush shouts. "Tonight, I am proud to say, Osama bin Laden is in hell." The president explains that the terrorist mastermind was "taken out" by American forces in Afghanistan, along with the entire senior leadership of al-Qaida. Crowds spontaneously gather in celebration outside the White House, with handmade signs ("THESE COLORS DON'T RUN," "LET'S ROLL") in plain view of cable news cameras set up beforehand according to a White House communications office suggestion. A professional-quality sound system blares Lee Greenwood. Then, fireworks.

Thrilling night-vision footage of a daring firefight in a labyrinthine cave is immediately provided to news channels. All of them air it, without noting that the video was edited by the Pentagon prior to release, and its contents unconfirmed.

In background briefings to national security journalists, the Pentagon credits the kill to one lone unnamed but slightly Schwarzeneggerian special forces officer acting on intelligence procured by one lone unnamed but remarkably Jack Bauer-like CIA officer who personally "interrogated" the al-Qaida courier until he revealed bin Laden's whereabouts.

Read more:

Treats

Office jobs are tough.

I know we cubicle farmhands aren’t exactly hammering diamonds in dusty mineshafts, landing planes in snowy storms, or performing emergency appendectomies.

But still — what we’re doing is complex mail merges to make envelope labels, compiling meeting minutes, and stapling through very thick piles of paper.

It’s demanding.

As a result, sometimes it’s tough getting through the week. When cloudy mornings, barking bosses, and long meetings got you down it’s time to get smiling with some office treats. Today we say thanks to the guy who brings them in — usually in one of five ways:

Level 1: Email Scrambles. A mass email is sent out reading “If anyone wants leftover brownies come to Sheila’s desk NOW!!!” Be careful because if you’re away from your desk you have to listen for slamming keyboard trays and quietly shuffling gang herds swishing down the hallway. When you spot a sugar rush like this there’s no time to waste — just jump in and get going. Slowing to tip someone off means no brownies for you. (2 points)

Level 2: Treat Fairies. This is the plate of lemon danishes someone leaves on a filing cabinet in the hallway or the box of donuts sitting in the lunchroom from yesterday night. Office raccoons like myself love finding goodies from Treat Fairies but they lose marks for freshness and selection. (5 points)

Wodka

The rise of the funny-named, sub-$20 super-premium cheap vodka

by David Sax

Standing amid pleather ottomans in a dimly lit Manhattan lounge, New York Giants defensive lineman Jason Pierre-Paul was mystified by the vodka bottle before him. It had a screw top; conspicuously absent from its label were a flock of gray geese, a mogul's chateau, or any symbol of gratuitous wealth. Concerned, Pierre-Paul looked up Wódka Vodka on his smartphone and discovered that it retailed for $12. "What the f—k are you serving this for!" he barked at Matt Shendell, proprietor of The Hill bar and restaurant. In response, Shendell persuaded Pierre-Paul to taste the one-time Soviet favorite before passing judgment. He did. At the end of the night, he took a bottle home with him.

Wódka's journey from Polish tractor factories to American nightclubs is the result of vodka's latest reinvention. After a decades-long march of absurdly expensive "ultra-premium" and "super-premium" vodkas (Belvedere, Grey Goose, Chopin), the industry has come up with a new recession-proof formula—absurdly cheap "premium" vodkas. Along with Wódka, more than 50 vodkas with sub-$20 price tags and ridiculous names—KU:L, Blue Feather, and L'Chaim, to name a few—have recently created a vodka niche in the affordable luxury category. "If you can put 'ultra-premium' on your label and sell it at a low price point," says Agata Kaczanowska, a beverage analyst with researcher IBIS World, "you're going to be well off." According to Garima Goel Lal, a senior analyst at market research firm Mintel International Group, "Over one-quarter of all spirits drinkers reported moving to cheaper brands in 2010." And many cheap premium vodkas are now taking aim at vestiges of pre-Lehman excess. "Smirnoff?" says James Dale, Wódka's co-owner. "They can go f—k themselves, mate. You can print that!"

Dale, a 40-year-old New Zealander, is at the center of the cheap premium vodka universe. In 2004 he helped introduce 42 Below to the U.S., where it rode the frosted-bottle bull market until Bacardi acquired it, three years later, for $91 million. That same year, one of Dale's associates came across a bottle in a Bialystok, Poland, distillery with a hammer and sickle on its label. Wódka, the Communist Party-approved spirit during the 1950s, also happened to taste very good, and Dale believed it was ripe for an austerity-chic comeback. "We saw psychology change in the U.S. There's a whole generation that's now averse to spending more money than they have to," Dale says. "The whole concept of 'premium' would have to be redefined." In 2010, Wódka—"vodka" in Polish—entered the American market.

Read more:

image credit:

VJ Day - Honolulu 1945

VJ Day, Honolulu Hawaii, August 14, 1945 from Richard Sullivan on Vimeo.

Great video of a spontaneous victory parade in Honolulu in 1945. Take a look at this video-absolutely fabulous! Notice the cars and jeeps, and youth. The guys in khaki or gray shirts and black ties are Navy officers or chiefs. The rest are Army or Marine.

How young they all were to do what they did.

This guy really captured a moment in history! (You can listen to Jimmy Durante singing “I’ll be Seeing You” in the background, too).

This is a super video of a time past – we need to remember and be thankful.

Check out the color fidelity. It’s not bad for 1945. Nothing will ever compare with Kodachrome film.

via: