Tuesday, January 13, 2015
BPA Replacement Could Be Just as Bad For You as BPA
"Bisphenol A," aka, BPA is a compound found in many polycarbonate plastics, like your old Nalgene water bottle from summer camp. It's everywhere, and it's been linked, as the authors point out, to obesity, cancer, and childhood neurological disorders. Study after study showed the chemical was harmful and so eventually, manufacturers relented and started using "bisphenol S," aka BPS, as a substitute. If you buy something that says "BPA-free" on it, there's a pretty good chance the manufacturer just swapped out BPS for BPA.
This would be a great triumph for consumers, except that now it seems that BPS is just as bad.
The Washington Post reports the findings study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which show that BPS has at least one unfortunate similarity to BPA in the way it affects Zebrafish. The study showed that caused the same "precocious" neurological behavior in zebrafish larvae as BPA, indicating that the overall effect of BPA and BPS could be similar on humans. In particular, the affects could be similar on childhood neurological development.
by Mario Aguilar, Gizmodo | Read more:
Image: uncredited
A Teenager’s View on Social Media - Written By An Actual Teen
[ed. See also: the second installment to this essay, plus this response from an "Old Fogey".]
For transparency, I am a 19-year-old male attending The University of Texas at Austin. I am extremely interested in social media’s role in our society as well as how it is currently evolving. Thus, the views I provide here are my own, but do stem from observation of not only my own habits but my peers’ habits as well.
This article will not use any studies, data, sources, etc. This is because you can easily get that from any other technology news website and analyze from there. I’m here to provide a different view based off of my life in this “highly coveted” age bracket. That being said, I'm not an expert at this by a long shot and I'm sure there will be data that disproves some of the points I make, but this is just what I've noticed.
I think the best way to approach this would be to break it down by social media network and the observations/viewpoints I've gathered over the years.
Facebook
In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave. It’s weird and can even be annoying to have Facebook at times. That being said, if youdon't have Facebook, that’s even more weird and annoying. Weird because of the social pressure behind the question, “Everyone has Facebook, why don't you?” and annoying because you'll have to answer that to just about everyone in classes you meet who makes an attempt to friend you or find you on there.
Facebook is often used by us mainly for its group functionality. I know plenty of classmates who only go on Facebook to check the groups they are part of and then quickly log off. In this part Facebook shines—groups do not have the same complicated algorithms behind them that the Newsfeed does. It is very easy to just see the new information posted on the group without having to sift through tons of posts and advertising you don't really care about.
Messaging on Facebook is also extremely popular among our age group, mainly because they provide the means to talk to those people who you weren't really comfortable with asking for their number but comfortable enough to send them a friend request.
Facebook is often the jumping-off point for many people to try to find you online, simply because everyone around us has it. If I met you one time at some party, I’m not going to try to check Twitter or Instagram to find out who you are. Instead, many opt for the ease of Facebook and the powerful search functionality that gives you results of people who you actually have a chance of knowing (unlike Instagram, whose search functionality, although it improved slightly in the last update, leaves much to be desired)
In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. Facebook is something we all got in middle school because it was cool but now is seen as an awkward family dinner party we can't really leave. It’s weird and can even be annoying to have Facebook at times. That being said, if youdon't have Facebook, that’s even more weird and annoying. Weird because of the social pressure behind the question, “Everyone has Facebook, why don't you?” and annoying because you'll have to answer that to just about everyone in classes you meet who makes an attempt to friend you or find you on there.
Facebook is often used by us mainly for its group functionality. I know plenty of classmates who only go on Facebook to check the groups they are part of and then quickly log off. In this part Facebook shines—groups do not have the same complicated algorithms behind them that the Newsfeed does. It is very easy to just see the new information posted on the group without having to sift through tons of posts and advertising you don't really care about.
Messaging on Facebook is also extremely popular among our age group, mainly because they provide the means to talk to those people who you weren't really comfortable with asking for their number but comfortable enough to send them a friend request.
Facebook is often the jumping-off point for many people to try to find you online, simply because everyone around us has it. If I met you one time at some party, I’m not going to try to check Twitter or Instagram to find out who you are. Instead, many opt for the ease of Facebook and the powerful search functionality that gives you results of people who you actually have a chance of knowing (unlike Instagram, whose search functionality, although it improved slightly in the last update, leaves much to be desired)
by Andrew Watts, Medium | Read more:
Image: uncredited
'Do you like my eel skin purse and spray-on dress?'
The conventional leather industry is being shaken up by new fashion innovators that are developing leather-like fabrics out of unlikely materials, such as fish skin and fruit.
Waste salmon and eel skins, a by-product of the food industry, are now being turned into high end accessories by start-up Heidi & Adele.
Founded 18 months ago by Heidi Carneau, a former Goldman Sachs director, and serial entrepreneur Adele Taylor, the fashion business works with a salmon factory in Iceland and an eel processing plant in Korea to make the “eco exotic” leathers.
Fish leather is just as strong as other leathers on the market and takes dye easily, so Heidi & Adele’s range of bags, purses, and oyster card holders come in a dazzling array of colours.
The finished leather has striking scales and patterns that are similar to reptile leather, but without the “guilt factor”.
“Python has been very big in the past few years, but many of those manufacturers source snakes illegally in Indonesia,” says Carneau, who is hoping to appeal to the ethical fashionista.
“Python are inflated while alive to stretch the skin then their heads are chopped off. It’s horrendous - the next fashion scandal waiting to break.” (...)
Footwear brands Puma and Camper are currently experimenting with one of these eco alternatives, made entirely from pineapple leaves.
Pinetex has been developed by former leather consultant Carmen Hijosa after she discovered the material in the Philippines.
“It is made from pineapple leaf fibres that are a waste product of the pineapple harvest,” Ananas Anam founder Hijosa told the Telegraph. “It can be made into any kind of fashion accessory such as bags, shoes, and hats, as well as furnishings and interiors.”
by Rebecca Burn-Callander, The Telegraph | Read more:
Image: Pinatex
Waste salmon and eel skins, a by-product of the food industry, are now being turned into high end accessories by start-up Heidi & Adele.
Founded 18 months ago by Heidi Carneau, a former Goldman Sachs director, and serial entrepreneur Adele Taylor, the fashion business works with a salmon factory in Iceland and an eel processing plant in Korea to make the “eco exotic” leathers.Fish leather is just as strong as other leathers on the market and takes dye easily, so Heidi & Adele’s range of bags, purses, and oyster card holders come in a dazzling array of colours.
The finished leather has striking scales and patterns that are similar to reptile leather, but without the “guilt factor”.
“Python has been very big in the past few years, but many of those manufacturers source snakes illegally in Indonesia,” says Carneau, who is hoping to appeal to the ethical fashionista.
“Python are inflated while alive to stretch the skin then their heads are chopped off. It’s horrendous - the next fashion scandal waiting to break.” (...)
Footwear brands Puma and Camper are currently experimenting with one of these eco alternatives, made entirely from pineapple leaves.
Pinetex has been developed by former leather consultant Carmen Hijosa after she discovered the material in the Philippines.
“It is made from pineapple leaf fibres that are a waste product of the pineapple harvest,” Ananas Anam founder Hijosa told the Telegraph. “It can be made into any kind of fashion accessory such as bags, shoes, and hats, as well as furnishings and interiors.”
by Rebecca Burn-Callander, The Telegraph | Read more:
Image: Pinatex
The War on Drugs Is Burning Out
The conservative wave of 2014 featured an unlikely, progressive undercurrent: In two states, plus the nation's capital, Americans voted convincingly to pull the plug on marijuana prohibition. Even more striking were the results in California, where voters overwhelmingly passed one of the broadest sentencing reforms in the nation, de-felonizing possession of hard drugs. One week later, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD announced an end to arrests for marijuana possession. It's all part of the most significant story in American drug policy since the passage of the 21st Amendment legalized alcohol in 1933: The people of this country are leading a dramatic de-escalation in the War on Drugs.
November's election results have teed up pot prohibition as a potent campaign issue for 2016. Notwithstanding the House GOP's contested effort to preserve pot prohibition in D.C., the flowering of the marijuana-legalization movement is creating space for a more rational and humane approach to adjudicating users of harder drugs, both on the state level and federally. "The door is open to reconsidering all of our drug laws," says Alison Holcomb, who led the pot-legalization push in Washington state in 2012, and has been tapped to direct the ACLU's new campaign against mass incarceration. (...)
The trajectory of the citizen-led drawdown of the Drug War is clearest in California – where four years ago the pot-legalization movement's biggest stumble, ironically, helped clear a path for one of the anti-Drug War movement's most transformational successes this past November.
Pushing the envelope back in 2010, California activists qualified a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. At the time, Holder warned the Justice Department would "vigorously enforce" federal marijuana prohibition in California. Eager to pre-empt a constitutional crisis over fully legal weed, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger steered passage of a half-measure – an October 2010 law decriminalizing marijuana use.
The Governator's gambit worked. Decriminalization helped take the wind out of the sails of the legalization campaign, which failed at the ballot box. But having spurred the legislature to action, pot activists indirectly scored a huge victory for criminal and racial justice. Possession of up to an ounce of marijuana became an infraction, like a parking ticket, with a maximum $100 fine. And the California law applied to users of any age – not just tokers 21 and over.
The impact of this tweak has been remarkable: By removing low-level youth pot offenses from the criminal-justice system, overall youth crime has plummeted by nearly 30 percent in California – to levels not seen since the Eisenhower administration. And decriminalization didn't lead to any of the harms foretold by prohibitionists. Quite the opposite: Since the law passed in 2010, the rate of both high school dropouts and youth drug overdoses are down by 20 percent, according to a new research report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Non--marijuana drug arrests for California youth, meanwhile, are also down 23 percent – fully debunking the gateway theory.
Decriminalization in California, the report concludes, has reduced the harms of prohibition for thousands of California teens. "Fewer young people," its authors write, "are suffering the damages and costs of criminal arrest, prosecution, incarceration, fines, loss of federal aid and other punishments." Perhaps most important, the Darren Wilsons of California have one less pretext to disrupt the lives of the state's Michael Browns.
In November – building on the success of decriminalization and on public disgust at the state's criminally overcrowded and ruinously expensive prison system – California voters took an even bolder leap with Proposition 47, which reduced possession of hard drugs including cocaine, heroin and meth from a felony to a misdemeanor. (Prop 47 also de-felonized nonviolent theft of less than $950.)
In a year of record-low voter turnout, Prop 47 passed with 59 percent support, thanks in part to endorsements from nationally prominent Republicans like Rand Paul and Newt Gingrich. The new law is expected to affect 24,000 drug convictions a year. And the reduction in the ranks of the incarcerated will create savings, the state estimates, in the "low hundreds of millions of dollars annually." Innovatively, Prop 47 captures those savings and steers them into community programs. "This is the first voter initiative to literally take money out of the prison budget and put it into prevention and treatment," says Lenore Anderson, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, which spearheaded the campaign for Proposition 47.
The new law also allows current convicts to petition to get their sentences- reduced retroactively. In the cases of some convicts under California's notorious "Three Strikes" laws, this will mean the difference between a continued life sentence and freedom. Additionally, as many as 1 million Californians will qualify to have felony records expunged – removing what Anderson calls the "Scarlet- F" from their chests – opening doors to fuller integration in society, with fewer obstacles to getting a job, finding an apartment or enrolling in public assistance.
"We're not only stopping overincarceration," Anderson says. "We're also going to clean up its legacy."
November's election results have teed up pot prohibition as a potent campaign issue for 2016. Notwithstanding the House GOP's contested effort to preserve pot prohibition in D.C., the flowering of the marijuana-legalization movement is creating space for a more rational and humane approach to adjudicating users of harder drugs, both on the state level and federally. "The door is open to reconsidering all of our drug laws," says Alison Holcomb, who led the pot-legalization push in Washington state in 2012, and has been tapped to direct the ACLU's new campaign against mass incarceration. (...)The trajectory of the citizen-led drawdown of the Drug War is clearest in California – where four years ago the pot-legalization movement's biggest stumble, ironically, helped clear a path for one of the anti-Drug War movement's most transformational successes this past November.
Pushing the envelope back in 2010, California activists qualified a ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana. At the time, Holder warned the Justice Department would "vigorously enforce" federal marijuana prohibition in California. Eager to pre-empt a constitutional crisis over fully legal weed, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger steered passage of a half-measure – an October 2010 law decriminalizing marijuana use.
The Governator's gambit worked. Decriminalization helped take the wind out of the sails of the legalization campaign, which failed at the ballot box. But having spurred the legislature to action, pot activists indirectly scored a huge victory for criminal and racial justice. Possession of up to an ounce of marijuana became an infraction, like a parking ticket, with a maximum $100 fine. And the California law applied to users of any age – not just tokers 21 and over.
The impact of this tweak has been remarkable: By removing low-level youth pot offenses from the criminal-justice system, overall youth crime has plummeted by nearly 30 percent in California – to levels not seen since the Eisenhower administration. And decriminalization didn't lead to any of the harms foretold by prohibitionists. Quite the opposite: Since the law passed in 2010, the rate of both high school dropouts and youth drug overdoses are down by 20 percent, according to a new research report from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Non--marijuana drug arrests for California youth, meanwhile, are also down 23 percent – fully debunking the gateway theory.
Decriminalization in California, the report concludes, has reduced the harms of prohibition for thousands of California teens. "Fewer young people," its authors write, "are suffering the damages and costs of criminal arrest, prosecution, incarceration, fines, loss of federal aid and other punishments." Perhaps most important, the Darren Wilsons of California have one less pretext to disrupt the lives of the state's Michael Browns.
In November – building on the success of decriminalization and on public disgust at the state's criminally overcrowded and ruinously expensive prison system – California voters took an even bolder leap with Proposition 47, which reduced possession of hard drugs including cocaine, heroin and meth from a felony to a misdemeanor. (Prop 47 also de-felonized nonviolent theft of less than $950.)
In a year of record-low voter turnout, Prop 47 passed with 59 percent support, thanks in part to endorsements from nationally prominent Republicans like Rand Paul and Newt Gingrich. The new law is expected to affect 24,000 drug convictions a year. And the reduction in the ranks of the incarcerated will create savings, the state estimates, in the "low hundreds of millions of dollars annually." Innovatively, Prop 47 captures those savings and steers them into community programs. "This is the first voter initiative to literally take money out of the prison budget and put it into prevention and treatment," says Lenore Anderson, executive director of Californians for Safety and Justice, which spearheaded the campaign for Proposition 47.
The new law also allows current convicts to petition to get their sentences- reduced retroactively. In the cases of some convicts under California's notorious "Three Strikes" laws, this will mean the difference between a continued life sentence and freedom. Additionally, as many as 1 million Californians will qualify to have felony records expunged – removing what Anderson calls the "Scarlet- F" from their chests – opening doors to fuller integration in society, with fewer obstacles to getting a job, finding an apartment or enrolling in public assistance.
"We're not only stopping overincarceration," Anderson says. "We're also going to clean up its legacy."
by Tim Dickenson, Wired | Read more:
Image: Victor Juhasz
How Tobogganing Works in 2015
The front page of Monday’s National Post informed me that North American parks are witnessing a “war on the toboggan.”
“Dubuque, Iowa, is set to ban toboggans in nearly all its 50 parks,” reporter Jen Gerson wrote. “Other cities, including Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana, are following suit by restricting certain runs or posting signs warning people away. . . . In Canada, Hamilton has restricted sledding on pain of a hefty fine for almost 15 years.” (...)
When I was a young kid on vacation in the Laurentians, my mother would zip my sister and me up in our ski jackets and toss us outside the very moment there was snow on the ground. We would go up and down the hill until one of us was frostbitten or injured. My mother’s level of participation consisted of making us hot chocolate when we returned home. I have no idea what she did while we were out risking our necks. I assume she was reading, since mom always managed to blast through great stacks of books and magazines when we headed up north. As for my dad, he often was in the garage, where he pursued a hobby restoring World War II–era US Army jeeps.
As any modern parent knows, this is not how tobogganing works in 2015. The idea of sending young kids out on their own is considered dangerous since, in their childish stupidity, they presumably will pick a too-steep hill and crash. Or they will arrive safely at the bottom of the hill and glide right into the arms of a waiting pedophile.
What happens instead is that the whole family goes out to the hill together as part of their weekend “quality time.” Maybe mom gets on the toboggan, to steer the thing, and keep the kids safe, and prove she is a Fun Mom. Maybe dad takes pictures on his smartphone to post to Facebook. The whole thing lasts about ten minutes, because that’s how long it takes one parent to get bored and the other to get cold. Also, the kids are whiney—because mom and dad, mom and mom, or dad and dad are both in attendance, so, hey, why not. (...)
It’s common for culture critics to lament that our obsession with safety has made children risk-averse and less adventurous. And it’s true—they are. But what we don’t talk about nearly as often is how this affects parents. I just spent the last two weeks on winter vacation with my young children, who now are around the age I was in my rock-hopping and tobogganing prime. During this period, I dutifully accompanied them through the whole gamut of wholesome outdoor activities. In two weeks, I read exactly half a book, and restored zero army jeeps.
According to one study I’ve seen, twenty-first century parents spend something like three times as much time with their children as parents did in the 1960s—despite the fact that we also are working harder to make money. When I go home tonight, I will help my kids with their homework (despite the fact that my assistance won’t statistically help them do any better in school), then I will hover over them to ensure they eat the nutritious parts of their dinner, referee their arguments, read them books (look, Facebook, we’re enjoying Dr. Seuss!), and, finally, lie with them in bed until they fall asleep. At this point, the day will be over, and I will go to sleep, too. Thus do the child-free, late-evening hours—which my wife and I might otherwise use to drink cocktails, talk, and watch television together—evaporate into nothingness.
“Dubuque, Iowa, is set to ban toboggans in nearly all its 50 parks,” reporter Jen Gerson wrote. “Other cities, including Des Moines, Iowa; Montville, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Columbia City, Indiana, are following suit by restricting certain runs or posting signs warning people away. . . . In Canada, Hamilton has restricted sledding on pain of a hefty fine for almost 15 years.” (...)
When I was a young kid on vacation in the Laurentians, my mother would zip my sister and me up in our ski jackets and toss us outside the very moment there was snow on the ground. We would go up and down the hill until one of us was frostbitten or injured. My mother’s level of participation consisted of making us hot chocolate when we returned home. I have no idea what she did while we were out risking our necks. I assume she was reading, since mom always managed to blast through great stacks of books and magazines when we headed up north. As for my dad, he often was in the garage, where he pursued a hobby restoring World War II–era US Army jeeps.As any modern parent knows, this is not how tobogganing works in 2015. The idea of sending young kids out on their own is considered dangerous since, in their childish stupidity, they presumably will pick a too-steep hill and crash. Or they will arrive safely at the bottom of the hill and glide right into the arms of a waiting pedophile.
What happens instead is that the whole family goes out to the hill together as part of their weekend “quality time.” Maybe mom gets on the toboggan, to steer the thing, and keep the kids safe, and prove she is a Fun Mom. Maybe dad takes pictures on his smartphone to post to Facebook. The whole thing lasts about ten minutes, because that’s how long it takes one parent to get bored and the other to get cold. Also, the kids are whiney—because mom and dad, mom and mom, or dad and dad are both in attendance, so, hey, why not. (...)
It’s common for culture critics to lament that our obsession with safety has made children risk-averse and less adventurous. And it’s true—they are. But what we don’t talk about nearly as often is how this affects parents. I just spent the last two weeks on winter vacation with my young children, who now are around the age I was in my rock-hopping and tobogganing prime. During this period, I dutifully accompanied them through the whole gamut of wholesome outdoor activities. In two weeks, I read exactly half a book, and restored zero army jeeps.
According to one study I’ve seen, twenty-first century parents spend something like three times as much time with their children as parents did in the 1960s—despite the fact that we also are working harder to make money. When I go home tonight, I will help my kids with their homework (despite the fact that my assistance won’t statistically help them do any better in school), then I will hover over them to ensure they eat the nutritious parts of their dinner, referee their arguments, read them books (look, Facebook, we’re enjoying Dr. Seuss!), and, finally, lie with them in bed until they fall asleep. At this point, the day will be over, and I will go to sleep, too. Thus do the child-free, late-evening hours—which my wife and I might otherwise use to drink cocktails, talk, and watch television together—evaporate into nothingness.
by Jonathan Kay, The Walrus | Read more:
Image: B.W. Muir/Forest History Society
Monday, January 12, 2015
CONSTELLATION VELA—Claiming that the mere thought is an “absolute nightmare,” WR 67c, a terrestrial planet from the distant Gamma Velorum star system, expressed its profound terror Wednesday at the possibility of one day gaining the capacity to sustain human life.
The 5.2-billion-year-old celestial body, which is located roughly 1,100 light years from Earth, said that for both its own sake and that of its entire solar system, it can only hope to never possess the necessary planetary characteristics and chemical elements needed to support either a deep-space human outpost or, more gravely, an entire human colony.
“Luckily, with my high levels of atmospheric sulfur dioxide, methane, and radon, there’s no way any human could survive on my surface for more than a few seconds,” said WR 67c, adding that it is “incredibly lucky” to have developed extremely violent and widespread volcanism in addition to its poisonous atmosphere. “But I don’t know, what if I produce a magnetic field that blocks out stellar wind and cosmic radiation? What if I develop an axial tilt that fosters a mild global climate? It’s terrifying to admit, but my surface temperature already sometimes drops to 120 degrees Fahrenheit at night, and their species can technically survive in that.”
“Stuff like that really freaks me out,” the extrasolar planet continued. “The real doomsday scenario would be someday acquiring a breathable atmosphere rich with oxygen and ultraviolet-absorbing ozone. At that point, I might as well just hurl myself at the nearest black hole and be done with it.”
The Onion | Read more:
Image: uncredited
Inside the Buzz-Fueled Media Startups Battling for Your Attention
Over the past couple of decades, this war for eyeballs has been fought across an ever-expanding territory. With the advent of the modern web, online publications and blogs competed to dominate your laptop screen. But with the rise of mobile, the battleground has become infinite. No matter where you are or what you’re doing—eating, drinking, watching a movie—the news has access to you. Stories roll in on push notifications and social media streams in a nonstop look-at-me barrage, all of them lighting up the same small screen. There is only one true channel now, and it’s probably in your pocket (or hand) at this very moment.
What’s more, everyone has access to it. Everyone can program it. The media has been so completely flattened and democratized that your little sister can use the same distribution methods as the world’s most powerful publishers. She has instant access to you—potentially to everyone—and she doesn’t need to invest in broadcast towers or a printing press, satellites or coaxial cable. Neither does anyone else. That little vibration in your pocket could mean that we are bombing Iraq again or that a massive typhoon is headed for the Gulf of Thailand or that your father has tagged a photo of you on Facebook. (Nice Boy Scouts uniform.) Even Hearst never had to compete with corgi videos.
But the thing is, the media isn’t just competing with your little sister—it’s co-opting her, using her as a vector to spread its content. She is the new delivery mechanism. We don’t learn about the world from The New York Times, we learn about it from the Times stories that our family and friends share or that show up as push notifications four minutes before one from The Guardian does. Thirty percent of American adults get news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, and more than half of Americans got news from a smartphone within the past week, according to the American Press Institute. And these metrics are just going up, up, up. The question for news publishers is no longer how to draw an audience to their sites, it’s how to implant themselves into their audience’s lives.
These dynamics have unleashed a new breed of media company that is racing to master these cutting-edge distribution systems. Much as Hearst, Henry Luce, and Ted Turner figured out how to amass huge audiences using newspapers, magazines, and television, the latest would-be kingpins are learning what kinds of stories resonate with readers on phones and Facebook. Instead of hiring newsies to scream at you in the streets, they are enlisting social media experts to scream at you on Twitter. Instead of investing in satellite trucks or paying for prime placement at the corner newsstand, they are reverse-engineering Facebook’s algorithm to ensure their stories dominate your News Feed. (...)
The vibe at BuzzFeed headquarters in lower Manhattan is young and antiseptic. Everything looks too brand-new. The walls are white. Great Big Screens are mounted everywhere. Where the data team sits they show charts and numbers. And at each of the editors’ desks, dashboards display the ebb and flow of its stories’ popularity on BuzzFeed itself as well as across social media. And those numbers are moving relentlessly, inevitably, always and forever up.
BuzzFeed is best known for its lists and quizzes— many of which are gauche little trifles designed to shock, like “29 Things Everyone With a Vagina Definitely Should Know”—or those too-cute compilations of cat pictures and corgi GIFs. But over the years it has muscled into other genres: breaking and investigative news, service-oriented lifestyle stories, long-form narrative, and video. It’s growing like a well-fed toddler, building out bureaus both domestically and internationally, and has launched a motion picture studio in Los Angeles. It’s also creating a new division, BFF, that will make content that lives only in the apps where kids are, like Vine and Snapchat and Imgur. Noted VC firm Andreessen Horowitz just invested $50 million in the company, giving it a reported valuation of $850 million, which it is using to extend its reach even farther. The much larger New York Times Company is worth $1.9 billion. But with profits declining, the Times is slashing its workforce yet again, while BuzzFeed is hiring. Dear God, yes, it’s hiring!
“BuzzFeed News has the potential to become the leading news source for a generation of readers who will never subscribe to a print newspaper or watch a cable news show,” explains the company’s CEO, Jonah Peretti. It’s not hard to see BuzzFeed as the next great media empire, something like Time Warner was in its prime, publishing news, entertainment, and even games. But unlike Time Warner, its growth doesn’t come from lavish ad campaigns or newsstand placement but from social media. Its stories—be they quizzes, listicles, or investigative news—are engineered to come to you. They exist as free-floating agents, cruising along as links in social media streams and finding readers via shares and retweets and email forwards and pins. To do that effectively, BuzzFeed’s staff has to understand why people share things. They have to understand what makes a story go viral and then try to apply that understanding to all sorts of media.
What’s more, everyone has access to it. Everyone can program it. The media has been so completely flattened and democratized that your little sister can use the same distribution methods as the world’s most powerful publishers. She has instant access to you—potentially to everyone—and she doesn’t need to invest in broadcast towers or a printing press, satellites or coaxial cable. Neither does anyone else. That little vibration in your pocket could mean that we are bombing Iraq again or that a massive typhoon is headed for the Gulf of Thailand or that your father has tagged a photo of you on Facebook. (Nice Boy Scouts uniform.) Even Hearst never had to compete with corgi videos.But the thing is, the media isn’t just competing with your little sister—it’s co-opting her, using her as a vector to spread its content. She is the new delivery mechanism. We don’t learn about the world from The New York Times, we learn about it from the Times stories that our family and friends share or that show up as push notifications four minutes before one from The Guardian does. Thirty percent of American adults get news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, and more than half of Americans got news from a smartphone within the past week, according to the American Press Institute. And these metrics are just going up, up, up. The question for news publishers is no longer how to draw an audience to their sites, it’s how to implant themselves into their audience’s lives.
These dynamics have unleashed a new breed of media company that is racing to master these cutting-edge distribution systems. Much as Hearst, Henry Luce, and Ted Turner figured out how to amass huge audiences using newspapers, magazines, and television, the latest would-be kingpins are learning what kinds of stories resonate with readers on phones and Facebook. Instead of hiring newsies to scream at you in the streets, they are enlisting social media experts to scream at you on Twitter. Instead of investing in satellite trucks or paying for prime placement at the corner newsstand, they are reverse-engineering Facebook’s algorithm to ensure their stories dominate your News Feed. (...)
The vibe at BuzzFeed headquarters in lower Manhattan is young and antiseptic. Everything looks too brand-new. The walls are white. Great Big Screens are mounted everywhere. Where the data team sits they show charts and numbers. And at each of the editors’ desks, dashboards display the ebb and flow of its stories’ popularity on BuzzFeed itself as well as across social media. And those numbers are moving relentlessly, inevitably, always and forever up.
BuzzFeed is best known for its lists and quizzes— many of which are gauche little trifles designed to shock, like “29 Things Everyone With a Vagina Definitely Should Know”—or those too-cute compilations of cat pictures and corgi GIFs. But over the years it has muscled into other genres: breaking and investigative news, service-oriented lifestyle stories, long-form narrative, and video. It’s growing like a well-fed toddler, building out bureaus both domestically and internationally, and has launched a motion picture studio in Los Angeles. It’s also creating a new division, BFF, that will make content that lives only in the apps where kids are, like Vine and Snapchat and Imgur. Noted VC firm Andreessen Horowitz just invested $50 million in the company, giving it a reported valuation of $850 million, which it is using to extend its reach even farther. The much larger New York Times Company is worth $1.9 billion. But with profits declining, the Times is slashing its workforce yet again, while BuzzFeed is hiring. Dear God, yes, it’s hiring!
“BuzzFeed News has the potential to become the leading news source for a generation of readers who will never subscribe to a print newspaper or watch a cable news show,” explains the company’s CEO, Jonah Peretti. It’s not hard to see BuzzFeed as the next great media empire, something like Time Warner was in its prime, publishing news, entertainment, and even games. But unlike Time Warner, its growth doesn’t come from lavish ad campaigns or newsstand placement but from social media. Its stories—be they quizzes, listicles, or investigative news—are engineered to come to you. They exist as free-floating agents, cruising along as links in social media streams and finding readers via shares and retweets and email forwards and pins. To do that effectively, BuzzFeed’s staff has to understand why people share things. They have to understand what makes a story go viral and then try to apply that understanding to all sorts of media.
by Mat Honan, Wired | Read more:
Image: National Venture Capital Associastion, First Look Meida, Circa, Atavist
Why Life Is Absurd
A Consideration of Time, Space, Relativity, Meaning and Absurdity (Yep, All of It)
by Rivka Weinberg, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Leif Parsons
I. Relativity
DZIGAN: Professor Einstein said, “In the world, there is time. And just as there is time, there is another thing: space. Space and time, time and space. And these two things,” he said, “are relative.”
Do you know what “relative” means?
SHUMACHER: Sigh. Nu? The point? Continue.
DZIGAN: There is no person these days who doesn’t know what “relative” means. I will explain it to you with an analogy and soon you will also know. Relativity is like this: If you have seven hairs on your head, it’s very few but if you have seven hairs in your milk, it’s very many.
II. Absurdity
In the 1870s, Leo Tolstoy became depressed about life’s futility. He had it all but so what? In “My Confession,” he wrote: “Sooner or later there will come diseases and death (they had come already) to my dear ones and to me, and there would be nothing left but stench and worms. All my affairs, no matter what they might be, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I myself should not exist. So why should I worry about these things?”
Life’s brevity bothered Tolstoy so much that he resolved to adopt religious faith to connect to the infinite afterlife, even though he considered religious belief “irrational” and “monstrous.” Was Tolstoy right? Is life so short as to make a mockery of people and their purposes and to render human life absurd?
In a famous 1971 paper, “The Absurd,” Thomas Nagel argues that life’s absurdity has nothing to do with its length. If a short life is absurd, he says, a longer life would be even more absurd: “Our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute. But of course none of these evident facts can be what makes life absurd, if it is absurd. For suppose we lived forever; would not a life that is absurd if it lasts 70 years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity?”
This line of reasoning has a nice ring to it but whether lengthening an absurd thing will relieve it of its absurdity depends on why the thing is absurd and how much you lengthen it. A longer life might be less absurd even if an infinite life would not be. A short poem that is absurd because it is written in gibberish would be even more absurd if it prattled on for longer. But, say I decided to wear a skirt so short it could be mistaken for a belt. On my way to teach my class, a colleague intercepts me:
“Your skirt,” she says, “is absurd.”
“Absurd? Why?” I ask.
“Because it is so short!” she replies.
“If a short skirt is absurd, a longer skirt would be even more absurd,” I retort.
Now who’s being absurd? The skirt is absurd because it is so short. A longer skirt would be less absurd. Why? Because it does not suffer from the feature that makes the short skirt absurd, namely, a ridiculously short length. The same goes for a one-hour hunger strike. The point of a hunger strike is to show that one feels so strongly about something that one is willing to suffer a lack of nourishment for a long time in order to make a point. If you only “starve” for an hour, you have not made your point. Your one-hour hunger strike is absurd because it is too short. If you lengthened it to one month or one year, you might be taken more seriously. If life is absurd because it’s short, it might be less absurd if it were suitably longer.
Absurdity occurs when things are so ill-fitting or ill-suited to their purpose or situation as to be ridiculous, like wearing a clown costume to a (non-circus) job interview or demanding that your dog tell you what time it is. Is the lifespan of a relatively healthy and well-preserved human, say somewhere between 75 and 85, so short as to render it absurd, ill-suited to reasonable human purposes?
DZIGAN: Professor Einstein said, “In the world, there is time. And just as there is time, there is another thing: space. Space and time, time and space. And these two things,” he said, “are relative.”Do you know what “relative” means?
SHUMACHER: Sigh. Nu? The point? Continue.
DZIGAN: There is no person these days who doesn’t know what “relative” means. I will explain it to you with an analogy and soon you will also know. Relativity is like this: If you have seven hairs on your head, it’s very few but if you have seven hairs in your milk, it’s very many.
II. Absurdity
In the 1870s, Leo Tolstoy became depressed about life’s futility. He had it all but so what? In “My Confession,” he wrote: “Sooner or later there will come diseases and death (they had come already) to my dear ones and to me, and there would be nothing left but stench and worms. All my affairs, no matter what they might be, would sooner or later be forgotten, and I myself should not exist. So why should I worry about these things?”
Life’s brevity bothered Tolstoy so much that he resolved to adopt religious faith to connect to the infinite afterlife, even though he considered religious belief “irrational” and “monstrous.” Was Tolstoy right? Is life so short as to make a mockery of people and their purposes and to render human life absurd?
In a famous 1971 paper, “The Absurd,” Thomas Nagel argues that life’s absurdity has nothing to do with its length. If a short life is absurd, he says, a longer life would be even more absurd: “Our lives are mere instants even on a geological time scale, let alone a cosmic one; we will all be dead any minute. But of course none of these evident facts can be what makes life absurd, if it is absurd. For suppose we lived forever; would not a life that is absurd if it lasts 70 years be infinitely absurd if it lasted through eternity?”
This line of reasoning has a nice ring to it but whether lengthening an absurd thing will relieve it of its absurdity depends on why the thing is absurd and how much you lengthen it. A longer life might be less absurd even if an infinite life would not be. A short poem that is absurd because it is written in gibberish would be even more absurd if it prattled on for longer. But, say I decided to wear a skirt so short it could be mistaken for a belt. On my way to teach my class, a colleague intercepts me:
“Your skirt,” she says, “is absurd.”
“Absurd? Why?” I ask.
“Because it is so short!” she replies.
“If a short skirt is absurd, a longer skirt would be even more absurd,” I retort.
Now who’s being absurd? The skirt is absurd because it is so short. A longer skirt would be less absurd. Why? Because it does not suffer from the feature that makes the short skirt absurd, namely, a ridiculously short length. The same goes for a one-hour hunger strike. The point of a hunger strike is to show that one feels so strongly about something that one is willing to suffer a lack of nourishment for a long time in order to make a point. If you only “starve” for an hour, you have not made your point. Your one-hour hunger strike is absurd because it is too short. If you lengthened it to one month or one year, you might be taken more seriously. If life is absurd because it’s short, it might be less absurd if it were suitably longer.
Absurdity occurs when things are so ill-fitting or ill-suited to their purpose or situation as to be ridiculous, like wearing a clown costume to a (non-circus) job interview or demanding that your dog tell you what time it is. Is the lifespan of a relatively healthy and well-preserved human, say somewhere between 75 and 85, so short as to render it absurd, ill-suited to reasonable human purposes?
by Rivka Weinberg, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Leif Parsons
Why is There a Worm in Bottles of Tequila?
Dear Cecil:
The other night I was talking with a friend who worked at a bar in Arizona where most of the hicks got shots of tequila. As they got drunker they would ask to have "the worm" (bleagh) along with their shot. My questions are: What kind of worm is that thing? Does drinking/eating the worm make you drunker? And how did the worm end up in the tequila?
— Beth L. Grover, via the Internet
Cecil replies:
You probably think this is some ancient Mexican tradition, right? Not unless your idea of ancient is 1950. We even know who invented the practice. Various reasons are given for it, but I say it all boils down to: Let's see if we can get the gringos to eat worms.
First let's get a few things straight. There's no worm in tequila, or at least there isn't supposed to be. Purists (hah!) say the worm belongs only in a related product, mescal. Strictly speaking, mescal is a generic term meaning any distillate of the many species of agave (or maguey) plant, tequila included. Today, however, mescal is popularly understood to mean a product bottled in the region around the city of Oaxaca. For years this stuff was basically home-brewed firewater consumed by the locals, but in 1950, Mexico City entrepreneur Jacobo Lozano Paez hit on the idea of putting a worm in each bottle as a marketing gimmick. Stroke of genius, eh? I don't get it either, but that's what separates us from the visionaries.
The critter in question is the agave worm, which is actually a butterfly larva. The worms bore into the agave plant's pineapplelike heart, and quite a few get cooked up in the brew used to make mescal. Far from being grossed out, Jacobo concluded that the worm was an essential component of the liquor's flavor and color. He may also have figured, Hey, mescal is about as palatable as paint remover, and the only people who are going to drink this stuff are macho lunatics, so why not take it to the max? In fairness, the worms were also said to have aphrodisiac properties, and worms and bugs are sometimes consumed in Mexico as a delicacy. (Supposedly this dates back to the Aztecs.) At any rate, the ploy worked and the worm in the bottle is now a firmly established tradition.
The other night I was talking with a friend who worked at a bar in Arizona where most of the hicks got shots of tequila. As they got drunker they would ask to have "the worm" (bleagh) along with their shot. My questions are: What kind of worm is that thing? Does drinking/eating the worm make you drunker? And how did the worm end up in the tequila?
— Beth L. Grover, via the Internet
Cecil replies:You probably think this is some ancient Mexican tradition, right? Not unless your idea of ancient is 1950. We even know who invented the practice. Various reasons are given for it, but I say it all boils down to: Let's see if we can get the gringos to eat worms.
First let's get a few things straight. There's no worm in tequila, or at least there isn't supposed to be. Purists (hah!) say the worm belongs only in a related product, mescal. Strictly speaking, mescal is a generic term meaning any distillate of the many species of agave (or maguey) plant, tequila included. Today, however, mescal is popularly understood to mean a product bottled in the region around the city of Oaxaca. For years this stuff was basically home-brewed firewater consumed by the locals, but in 1950, Mexico City entrepreneur Jacobo Lozano Paez hit on the idea of putting a worm in each bottle as a marketing gimmick. Stroke of genius, eh? I don't get it either, but that's what separates us from the visionaries.
The critter in question is the agave worm, which is actually a butterfly larva. The worms bore into the agave plant's pineapplelike heart, and quite a few get cooked up in the brew used to make mescal. Far from being grossed out, Jacobo concluded that the worm was an essential component of the liquor's flavor and color. He may also have figured, Hey, mescal is about as palatable as paint remover, and the only people who are going to drink this stuff are macho lunatics, so why not take it to the max? In fairness, the worms were also said to have aphrodisiac properties, and worms and bugs are sometimes consumed in Mexico as a delicacy. (Supposedly this dates back to the Aztecs.) At any rate, the ploy worked and the worm in the bottle is now a firmly established tradition.
by Cecil Adams, The Straight Dope | Read more:
Image: via:
Saturday, January 10, 2015
John Henry Wise
[ed. Marcus Mariota isn't the first Hawaiian football player to gain fame with a big "O" on his jersey, or to be associated with a Heisman. That would be John Henry Wise.
Oberlin was the first school coached by the legendary John W. Heisman. He coached the teams in 1892 and '94, the second and fourth seasons that football was a varsity sport at the college. The faculty had not approved football as a sport prior to 1891, but it agreed to hire Heisman as head coach for the '92 season because he was recommended by Walter Camp. Heisman was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where he starred as an end in football. In those days football was quite popular in the East and was just beginning to take root in the Midwest. The hiring of Heisman enabled Oberlin to become one of the leading team's in the Midwest. In 1892 the "O" Men, as they were called at the time, were led by Heisman to their first undefeated season with a perfect 7-0-0 record beating their opponents by an average score of 37-4 which included two wins over Ohio State and one over Michigan. To this day, the Wolverines still claim they won the contest but all agree that both sides played the game as it should have been played (without any slugging.) Because Heisman enrolled in post graduate courses in art, he was permitted to play football for Oberlin as he participated in the late stages of some games near the end of the season. Heisman became known as the leading pioneer in developing the game of football into what it is today with formation shifts, centering the ball, and forward passing. His contribution to Oberlin was in proving that an intelligent coach was an integral part of the sport. The Heisman name is more famous today than back in 1892, being synonymous with the award for most outstanding player in college football. As a result, Oberlin named their athletics booster club after Heisman, in an attempt encourage support for all of Oberlin's athletic programs.Controversial game vs. Michigan
On a cold Saturday afternoon in November 1892, Oberlin's team took the field in Ann Arbor against a heavily favored Michigan squad which had trounced them handily the year before. Notable among the Oberlin visitors was their new player-coach John Heisman, who had been hired away from the University of Pennsylvania by the Oberlin Athletic Association (a student-run enterprise in those days) and who brought an undefeated team with him to Ann Arbor. The team's fastest running back was Charles Savage, who a few years later would become Oberlin's director of athletics and, like Heisman, a nationally prominent figure. Oberlin's best lineman was theology student John Henry Wise, half-German, half-Hawaiian, who after graduation returned to his island home and joined the 1895 Counter-Revolution aimed at toppling the Republic of Hawaii and restoring Queen Liliuokalani and the monarchy. He was sent to prison for three years charged with treason. Oberlin's team trainer, "nurse to the wounded," was pre-med student Clarence Hemingway, who would go on to practice medicine in Oak Park, Illinois, and pass on his love of hunting in Michigan to his son, future novelist Ernest Hemingway.
The game in Ann Arbor was close all the way. At halftime Michigan led 22-18. The team captains agreed on a shortened second half, to end at 4:50 p.m. so Oberlin could catch the last train home. With less than two minutes remaining, Michigan drove to the 5-yard line before Oberlin stopped them and took over on downs. Then halfback Savage entered the mists of Oberlin athletic legend by dodging through the line and sprinting 90 yards to the Michigan 5, where Michigan's star player, George Jewett, caught him from behind.
Two plays later Oberlin made its final touchdown. Score: Oberlin 24, Michigan 22, with less than a minute to go. As Michigan launched its last drive, the referee (an Oberlin sub) announced that 4:50 p.m. had arrived, time had expired, and the Oberlin squad trotted off the field to catch the train. Next the umpire (a Michigan man) ruled that four minutes remained on the game clock, owing to timeouts that Oberlin's timekeeper had not recorded. Michigan then walked the ball over the goal line for an uncontested touchdown and was declared the winner, 26 to 24. By that time the Oberlinians were headed home clutching their own victory, 24 to 22. Officially, each school recognizes a win for themselves in the respective archives.
by Wikipedia | Read more:
Image: Wikipedia
Sunday, January 4, 2015
The Shape of a Listener
You could not say a word and still be thought a great conversationalist, so long as your interlocutor ends up doing the kind of talking they like to do. That’s what it means to be good at conversation. It’s not about saying interesting things or absorbing what someone else says. It’s about extruding the right kind of talk.
The picture I have in mind is of a pasta maker. I imagine someone turning a little hand crank, working a glob of dough into clean hollow tubes of macaroni or waves of lasagna. That’s what conversation is like. Conversation is like making pasta the old-fashioned way, except that in conversation what you’re working into form is someone else’s ideas.
At the heart of the process, you, the listener, are just like a pasta machine—a machine so obnoxiously simple that you hesitate to call it one. Because all it is is a shape. (...)
I shine—I come into my own—under certain configurations of these knobs, and shrivel under others. For instance I enjoy riffs of sarcastic banter and quoting movies, but I tire quickly of pun-upmanship. I like to explain. I lean heavily on a stock of nerdy analogies and feel crippled when I can’t use them. I don’t know how to keep small talk going. I range from being very charismatic to having something like a stammer. I like it when the gossip knob is turned up high. I can’t riff about football or how many gigabytes a phone has. I prefer my talk to be salted with curse words. I don’t like talk that sounds like it’s coming out of an English classroom. I rarely argue. I don’t do well when I’m trying to impress.
Different speakers draw different kinds of talk out of me. Michael, fluent in most of my intellectual interests, is great for helping me feel out ideas. Rob gets me spilling insecurities. I have a friend, Carey, who leaves me thinking I’m inarticulate and wrong. With Nikhil I talk slow and philosophical. I get Seinfeldian with Matt. I spout bullshit with Sanders. There is a guy at work who encourages me to improv. An old roommate, Andy, always had me explaining things I didn’t understand well enough to explain. Drew gets my polemical side going. I’m made to feel young when I talk to my older brothers, and wise when I talk to my older friends. I’m at my most charming in the company of my good friends’ girlfriends.
Which is all to say that I configure myself in light of who I’m talking to—so much so that you could say they configure me.
Some talkers are no doubt more configurable than others, in the sense that they change themselves, chameleon-like, depending on whoever they’re talking to, while others are “just themselves” no matter what. But I’d bet most people are more pliable than they’d say. How easy it is to tell when a friend of yours picks up their phone that they’re talking to their girlfriend? Their employer? A mutual friend? Their parents?
What’s happening, I think, is some combination of “mirroring”—that phenomenon where I’ll unconsciously mimic your posture, tone, level of intimacy, style of humor, and so on—and this thing where before each of my remarks I’ll think about you and what I know about you and what I think I can say and then I’ll triage your likely responses, and my responses to your responses, and so on, and make my conversational moves in light of this projected snap-analysis of where I think our talk might take us.
It sounds effortful and conscious but of course it’s not. Having a sense of where you are in a conversation, of what’s apt and in play, is the bedrock social skill. It happens automatically. To be socially well-adjusted is to adjust well, to be highly responsive to the microdynamics of talk.
The picture I have in mind is of a pasta maker. I imagine someone turning a little hand crank, working a glob of dough into clean hollow tubes of macaroni or waves of lasagna. That’s what conversation is like. Conversation is like making pasta the old-fashioned way, except that in conversation what you’re working into form is someone else’s ideas.
At the heart of the process, you, the listener, are just like a pasta machine—a machine so obnoxiously simple that you hesitate to call it one. Because all it is is a shape. (...)
I shine—I come into my own—under certain configurations of these knobs, and shrivel under others. For instance I enjoy riffs of sarcastic banter and quoting movies, but I tire quickly of pun-upmanship. I like to explain. I lean heavily on a stock of nerdy analogies and feel crippled when I can’t use them. I don’t know how to keep small talk going. I range from being very charismatic to having something like a stammer. I like it when the gossip knob is turned up high. I can’t riff about football or how many gigabytes a phone has. I prefer my talk to be salted with curse words. I don’t like talk that sounds like it’s coming out of an English classroom. I rarely argue. I don’t do well when I’m trying to impress.
Different speakers draw different kinds of talk out of me. Michael, fluent in most of my intellectual interests, is great for helping me feel out ideas. Rob gets me spilling insecurities. I have a friend, Carey, who leaves me thinking I’m inarticulate and wrong. With Nikhil I talk slow and philosophical. I get Seinfeldian with Matt. I spout bullshit with Sanders. There is a guy at work who encourages me to improv. An old roommate, Andy, always had me explaining things I didn’t understand well enough to explain. Drew gets my polemical side going. I’m made to feel young when I talk to my older brothers, and wise when I talk to my older friends. I’m at my most charming in the company of my good friends’ girlfriends.
Which is all to say that I configure myself in light of who I’m talking to—so much so that you could say they configure me.
Some talkers are no doubt more configurable than others, in the sense that they change themselves, chameleon-like, depending on whoever they’re talking to, while others are “just themselves” no matter what. But I’d bet most people are more pliable than they’d say. How easy it is to tell when a friend of yours picks up their phone that they’re talking to their girlfriend? Their employer? A mutual friend? Their parents?
What’s happening, I think, is some combination of “mirroring”—that phenomenon where I’ll unconsciously mimic your posture, tone, level of intimacy, style of humor, and so on—and this thing where before each of my remarks I’ll think about you and what I know about you and what I think I can say and then I’ll triage your likely responses, and my responses to your responses, and so on, and make my conversational moves in light of this projected snap-analysis of where I think our talk might take us.
It sounds effortful and conscious but of course it’s not. Having a sense of where you are in a conversation, of what’s apt and in play, is the bedrock social skill. It happens automatically. To be socially well-adjusted is to adjust well, to be highly responsive to the microdynamics of talk.
by James Sommers, jsommers.net | Read more:
Saturday, January 3, 2015
Pernil: Let the Oven Do All the Work
If you buy a big pork shoulder and take your time, as you should, the classic Puerto Rican pork roast called pernil can take you nearly all day. The last time I roasted a large one it was in the oven for seven hours.
Yet there are times I feel almost guilty about this dish because the process is beyond easy and incredibly impressive, it feeds as many people as a medium-size ham, and the flavor is unbelievable.
When I first learned how to make a classic pernil, about 30 years ago, the only seasonings I used were oregano, garlic and vinegar.
But I’ve taken some liberties by adding a little cumin and some chilies; the onion is my addition, too. After all, pork is less flavorful than it used to be.
I believe that a slightly wetter coating and some water in the bottom of the pan keeps the meat moist during the long, slow roasting period.
The idea is this: Make a purée of the onion, garlic — you can use much more than the four cloves I recommend here — oregano, cumin and mild chili powder, like ancho. You can add a little cayenne or chipotle powder, but not too much.
Rub the paste all over the pork shoulder, and then roast it in a slow oven at about 300 degrees until it’s super-tender and brown.
When it’s done, the pork should be just about falling off the bone and a thing of beauty, crisp and dark. If the outside needs a little more browning, just jack the heat up a bit for 10 or 15 minutes.
Let it rest a bit, serve and try not to feel too guilty.
Yet there are times I feel almost guilty about this dish because the process is beyond easy and incredibly impressive, it feeds as many people as a medium-size ham, and the flavor is unbelievable.When I first learned how to make a classic pernil, about 30 years ago, the only seasonings I used were oregano, garlic and vinegar.
But I’ve taken some liberties by adding a little cumin and some chilies; the onion is my addition, too. After all, pork is less flavorful than it used to be.
I believe that a slightly wetter coating and some water in the bottom of the pan keeps the meat moist during the long, slow roasting period.
The idea is this: Make a purée of the onion, garlic — you can use much more than the four cloves I recommend here — oregano, cumin and mild chili powder, like ancho. You can add a little cayenne or chipotle powder, but not too much.
Rub the paste all over the pork shoulder, and then roast it in a slow oven at about 300 degrees until it’s super-tender and brown.
When it’s done, the pork should be just about falling off the bone and a thing of beauty, crisp and dark. If the outside needs a little more browning, just jack the heat up a bit for 10 or 15 minutes.
Let it rest a bit, serve and try not to feel too guilty.
by Mark Bittman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Evan Sung
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