I know absolutely nothing about making crêpes, and don't think I've even had them more than once or twice... so maybe I should visit a local crêperie and see what this is all about.
I admit to being intrigued.
The rolled omelette is the most fun of any method, but requires more practice. Here the pan is jerked over high heat at an angle so that the egg mass is continually hurled against the far lip of the pan until the eggs thicken. Finally, as the pan is tilted further while it is being jerked, the eggs roll over at the far lip of the pan, forming an omelette shape. A simple-minded but perfect way to master the movement is to practice outdoors with half a cupful of dried beans. As soon as you are able to make them flip over themselves in a group, you have the right feeling; but the actual omelette-making gesture is sharper and rougher.OK, I'll be back in 6 months with a Rocky style montage and perfect omeletts.
I have no problem with Barack Obama asking Reverend Rick to deliver a prayer at the Inauguration. It will have zero--repeat, zero--impact on the policies of the Obama Administration. And it may do some good, especially if it gives pause to all those people who think that I--and the crypto-Muslim Barack Obama--are going to hell...If it causes those folks to give the new President just the slightest credit for appreciating their worldview, if it causes them to give him the benefit of the doubt on controversial stuff like talking to the Iranians or universal health insurance, then it's worth it. If it causes evangelicals to say, "Well, he's not demonizing us, maybe we shouldn't demonize him," it's worth it. If it makes Rush Limbaugh's toxic blather about our next President seem even the slightest bit ridiculous and over-the-top to his idiot legion of ditto heads, it's worth it.
The thing is, Obama is trying to change the nature of public discourse from the raw blast it has been for the past 20 years to something more civil and tolerable. You sense that every time he opens his mouth. He's all for opening doors. I don't know how many of ultra-conservative evangelicals will walk through the door he is opening by having one of their most popular leaders join the inaugural celebration, but I appreciate his inclusive intent. Even if I think there is an insurmountable roadblock to heaven--I'd guess it's about like the relationship between a camel and the eye of a needle--for those who make blanket judgments about which of us is going to hell.
I think it is no secret that I am a fierce advocate for equality for gay and lesbian Americans. It is something I have been consistent on and something I intend to continue to be consistent on during my presidency.There's never been a President who would even dream of of saying something like that... and I'm supposed to get upset because Obama invited a prominent voice of Christianity to the table? Does Warren equate homosexuality with pedophilia? Yes. Does he think Pro-Choice advocates are the equivalent of Nazis? Yes. But so do a lot of Americans. Americans that voted for Obama at double the percentage Kerry got. Now, their views of homosexuality are, by and large, patently offensive and and their statements are often repugnant... but I've got news for you... we're going to have to peel off the moderates if we want to get anything done before the bigots get old and die. National support for gay marriage is quite weak, and even civil unions barely break 50%:
Interestingly, none of the queries, condolences and commiserations came from women born before World War II, women (whom I often describe loosely if unfairly as “grandmothers”) who grew up learning how to cook from their grandmothers. They know that it’s fully possible to cook just about anything just about anywhere, with just about any equipment at hand. I have lovely memories of my grandmother using a beat-up paring knife — which, for all I know, came over with her on the boat — for hacking garlic (she did not mince), peeling potatoes and cutting up chicken. She did not own a cutting board, and would probably be as dazzled by a food processor as by an iPhone.As an urban apartment liver since I reached adulthood, I am quite familiar with small kitchens that lack modern conveniences... though before I started cooking a few years ago, I mostly used my kitchen as a place to store left over take-out and yet to be drunk beer... our current kitchen is the first one I've had that had a garbage disposal, and I've never had a dishwasher. It does seem that the crucial thing is to have an oven and refrigerator that work and maintain the proper temperatures (and you can buy cheap thermometers for both). I've cooked in a few fancy kitchens and on fancy appliances, as my mother has a love of redoing kitchens (for aesthetic and resale value reasons mainly - though she does cook a fair bit), and certainly not found myself to be a better cook in those environments.
No calls came from chefs, either, or from fellow food writers. They, too, know that when it comes to kitchens, size and equipment don’t count nearly as much as devotion, passion, common sense and, of course, experience. To pretend otherwise — to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more on a kitchen before learning how to cook, as is sadly common — is to fall into the same kind of silly consumerism that leads people to believe that an expensive gym membership will get them into shape or the right bed will improve their sex life. As runners run and writers write, cooks cook, under pretty much any circumstance.
I’ve developed material for my column and books when cooking on electric stoves (heat is heat, after all), in unfinished basements using hot plates and microwaves, and in borrowed kitchens all over the world. The equipment can make things more or less difficult, of course, but after all, cooking is cooking.
Throwing a shoe at someone is considered the worst possible insult in Iraq and is meant to show extreme disrespect and contempt. When U.S. forces helped topple a statue of Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein after rolling into Baghdad in April 2003, jubilant Iraqis beat the statue's face with their shoes.
Last night at NBC, we watched the same four replays Walt Coleman saw at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore in the final minute of the Steelers-Ravens game. You've seen it by now: With the ball at the Baltimore four-yard line and the Ravens up 9-6, Ben Roethlisberger scrambled and eventually found Santonio Holmes just over the goal line in the end zone. Holmes caught the pass very close to the goal line, with the ball appearing to be outside the goal line at first look and his feet to be in the end zone. The head lineman, Paul Weidner, standing at the goal line on the far sideline, peered around a player as he tried to see the play, and he ruled the ball did not touch the plane of the goal line. All the ball has to in this case is touch the imaginary plane of the goal line while the player has two feet down. It was agonizingly close, but Weidner ruled the ball should be placed at about the three-inch line.For the record, I think it was a touchdown, but I agree with King that there wasn't "indisputable" evidence to overturn the call on the field. But oh well, that's football.
The magnitude of the play can't be overstated. If the play is upheld, it's fourth and three inches, and Mike Tomlin has the biggest call of his coaching career to make -- go for the touchdown to win the game, knowing he might end up turning it over on downs, or kick the gimme field goal and play for overtime. A Pittsburgh win would clinch the division title. A Baltimore win would tie the two mortal enemies with two weeks to go.
Yeah, they really are. I'm actually playing as a belf chick now, and a week ago, I would have gladly welcomed the chance to wear the pants again. But then something happened. The other day I was doing some PvP in Alterac Valley, when I got into it withe a fellow hordie who kept whining about paladins. It got pretty heated, to the point that I told him I wish I was till Alliance so I could come and kill him. Yeesh. He was prolly a 13 year old kid--at least judging by his response, which was "Get back in the kitchen. Hoes don't play Warcraft!"
It then occurred to me that I, for the first time in my life, had been the target of a sexist remark. And then I started seeing the cool thing about playing a girl in an MMO, the chance to experience life through the eyes of someone else. You guys know me--I'm all about seeing the world in other ways. This is, of course, an imperfect experience--half the chicks running around in WoW are kids who want to watch the back-side of a draenei while the farm.
The measure being discussed in Congress would put a government overseer named by President George W. Bush in charge of setting guidelines for an industrywide overhaul, with the power to revoke the loans if the automakers fail to do what's necessary to become viable. The White House was seeking tougher consequences, including allowing the overseer — being called a car czar — to force the companies into bankruptcy if they weren't doing enough to cut labor costs, restructure their debt and downsize to stay afloat.
The restrictions, which face a final vote by the commission's seven-member board on Nov. 13, also would ban smoking on outdoor patios at restaurants and other businesses and prohibit tobacco sales on college campuses and by all drug stores in the city.That's just nonsense. I mean, what's next? Make it illegal to smoke on your own property?
Using national median income and house prices provides a gross overview of price-to-income (it would be better to do this analysis on a local area). However this does shows that the price-to-income is still too high, and that this ratio needs to fall another 15% or so. The further decline in this ratio could be a combination of falling house prices and/or rising nominal incomes (Note: this uses nominal incomes, and even if real incomes are stagnant or declining, nominal incomes usually are rising).Of course, the economy could begin to recover before housing prices return to their historical values, and who knows if the current slope of housing price decline is going to stay the same or not?
As Daniel Benjamin notes in Slate, igniting tensions between the two countries benefits the terrorists in numerous ways. For one, it destabilizes a relatively hostile Pakistani government. Second, it prevents détente between the countries and thus halts progress on a Kashmir settlement. Third, it keeps the world polarized (the attacks on Westerners were intended to stoke these particular fires).What’s maddening – and terrifying – is that the strategy might work. It certainly worked on us. And India will have a hard time resisting the urge to do something to avenge the attacks – the political pressure may prove too strong. Iraq was no picnic to be sure, but an outbreak of hostilities between two nuclear-armed states would be a different animal altogether – one that must be avoided at all costs.
Even more maddening though, India’s outrage and desire for revenge are absolutely reasonable. To be sure, revenge will lead to horrible things, but it’s unrealistic to expect a country to stoically endure attacks like these, particularly from groups with loose affiliations with a hostile state. It would have been similarly foolish to expect that Americans would be content to do nothing after terrorists training in Taliban-sheltered camps attacked it.
The surprising news made headlines in December 2002. Generic pills for high blood pressure, which had been in use since the 1950s and cost only pennies a day, worked better than newer drugs that were up to 20 times as expensive.Read the whole article, but things like this are a good way to remind ourselves that just doing more studies of comparative effectiveness won't magically make things cheaper. Anywhere where money and policy meet, there is politics, and biomedical research is big money and big politics. This ends up muddying the waters and making it harder for doctors to really know what they right call is... thus they stick with what they've been doing. Fair enough... to some extent.
The findings, from one of the biggest clinical trials ever organized by the federal government, promised to save the nation billions of dollars in treating the tens of millions of Americans with hypertension — even if the conclusions did seem to threaten pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer that were making big money on blockbuster hypertension drugs.
Six years later, though, the use of the inexpensive pills, called diuretics, is far smaller than some of the trial’s organizers had hoped.
Hillary Clinton, U.S. Senator from New York and former First Lady, will serve as Secretary of State.
Secretary Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, will continue to serve in that role.
Eric Holder, former Deputy Attorney General and a former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, will serve as Attorney General.
Janet Napolitano, Governor and former U.S. Attorney for Arizona, will serve as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Dr. Susan E. Rice, a Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to the Obama for America campaign, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, will serve as Ambassador to the United Nations.
General Jim Jones, USMC (Ret), former Allied Commander, Europe, and Commander of the United States European Command, will serve as National Security Advisor.
Without greater urgency and decisive action by the world community, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013...However, from the article at least, it doesn't appear that the report identifies any new threats, it just reiterates that a nuclear armed Iran and North Korea, along with an unstable Pakistan, is really bad news.