Tag Archives: photo essays

Sunday French Fry Blogging

by KindraPVLC Posted on February 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few weeks ago I had lunch at my favorite diner and I asked what kind of oil they cooked their fries in. Corn oil, it turns out. But the owner of the place happened to be standing right there, and with no prompting he immediately grokked why I was asking:

Nobody makes fries the old way anymore. They used to be so good. These days—phhht. There’s no taste at all. But everybody got afraid of the health stuff, so it’s all vegetable oil now.

The fries at this place range from good to spectacular depending on the whims of the deep fryer, so it’s not impossible to get tasty fries from corn oil. Still, fries made in beef tallow—or a mixed oil that includes animal fat of some kind—are unquestionably better. So why hasn’t anyone picked up on this? There’s plenty of evidence suggesting that fries cooked in animal fat might be no worse for you than fries cooked in vegetable oil, and even if this is wrong there should still be a market for an “artisanal fries” menu item or some such. Upscale burger places are forever looking for ways to differentiate themselves for the foodie crowd, so why not this? I’d buy them.

It’s a mystery. Nobody should be afraid of some occasional fries cooked in animal fat. And if you are, nobody is going to take away your bland canola oil fries anyway. Someone needs to get on this bandwagon. Who will do it first?

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Sunday French Fry Blogging

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Friday Cat Blogging – 5 February 2016

by MarlaBuxton Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here are the furballs up on the balcony surveying their domain. All is well in the kingdom—though Hilbert does appear to be alarmed about something. Probably a patch of light on the opposite wall or something. Hilbert is quite convinced that we humans don’t take the threat of light patches seriously enough. Someday, perhaps he’ll have the last laugh.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 5 February 2016

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

by Dorcas8538 Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Open enrollment for Obamacare is over, and HHS announced yesterday that 12.7 million people signed up via the exchanges plus another 400,000 via New York’s Basic Health Program. So that gives us 13.1 million—up from 11.4 million last year. And since HHS is getting better at purging nonpayers, this number should hold up better throughout the year than it did in 2015. Charles Gaba has more details here.

Add to that about 15 million people enrolled in Medicaid thanks to the Obamacare expansion, and the total number of people covered this year comes to 28 million or so. This means Obamacare has reduced the ranks of the uninsured from 19 percent to about 10 percent. Not bad.

Obamacare’s raw enrollment numbers remain lower than CBO projected a few years ago, but that’s partly because employer health care has held up better than expected—which is a good thing. The fewer the people eligible for Obamacare the better. More on that here. Generally speaking, despite the best efforts of conservatives to insist that Obamacare is a disastrous failure, the truth is that it’s doing pretty well. More people are getting covered; costs are in line with projections; and there’s been essentially no effect on employment or hours worked. The only real problem with Obamacare is that it’s too stingy: deductibles are too high and out-of-pocket expenses are still substantial. Needless to say, though, that can be easily fixed anytime Republicans decide to stop rooting for failure and agree to make Obamacare an even better program. But I guess we shouldn’t hold our collective breath for that.

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Obamacare Enrollment Up About 15 Percent This Year

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Rubio Feasts on the Leftovers in New Hampshire

by JarrodLNFcyejkz Posted on February 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Apologies for two polls in one day, but the latest CNN poll shows something interesting in the Republican race. Donald Trump is still in the lead in New Hampshire, but in the wake of the Iowa caucuses Marco Rubio has picked up a lot of support. Basically, several other folks have either left the race or lost their fan base, and nearly all of it has gone to Rubio.

It’s only one poll, and the absolute margin of error is large, but it probably shows the trend fairly well. And what it suggests is that as the also-rans steadily drop out of the race, Rubio is picking up the bulk of their support. If this happens in other states as well, Rubio could be well on his way to building a commanding lead.

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Rubio Feasts on the Leftovers in New Hampshire

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How Donald Trump Could Become President, In 10 Words

by CathernBrazil Posted on January 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at Vox, David Roberts writes 2,000 words explaining why Donald Trump will never become president. He makes some good points, but I think he misses some important issues that call his argument into question. Here’s my rebuttal outlining how Trump could win in November:

The economy dips into recession and workers’ incomes start falling. The end.

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How Donald Trump Could Become President, In 10 Words

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Poll: Most People Expect a Democratic Victory This November

by DonnieHagen2063 Posted on January 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest projection of the general election from ABC News and the Washington Post:

This is not a poll of who people say they’ll vote for. It’s a poll of who they expect to win. I’m surprised that the public is apparently so sure of a Democratic victory, but I suppose that has a lot to do with the obvious turmoil in the Republican race.

In an interesting aside, the poll finds that voters are least comfortable at the prospect of a Trump presidency and most comfortable at the prospect of a Sanders presidency. Is that because they know the least about Sanders? Or because this whole business of being scared of a “socialist” in the White House is bunk? Hard to say.

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Poll: Most People Expect a Democratic Victory This November

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Buy a Backward-Facing Stroller For Your Baby

by LelaClvfcl Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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I just got back from my morning walk, and as usual I saw a bunch of parents taking their babies out for a walk in their strollers. And that got me wondering: does this have any benefit for babies? What do they get out of a daily ride around the neighborhood?

When I got home I tried to find some research on this point, but I failed. I guess I don’t know where to look. But I did find some research suggesting that if you’re going to take your baby for a stroll, you should do it in a stroller where the baby faces you rather than the outside world. Why? One researcher suggested (without data, apparently) that babies just felt more comfortable when they could see mommy or daddy. But two researchers have actual data. Although they come up with raw numbers that are different enough to make you wonder just how accurate any of this is, both Suzanne Zeedyk and Ken Blaiklock performed observational research of parents pushing their kids around and found that parents talked to their babies a lot more when the babies faced them.

This makes perfect sense, of course, and both Zeedyk and Blaiklock recommend parent-facing strollers because it encourages more interaction, which is a good thing. This doesn’t answer the question of whether taking your baby for a stroll has any effect one way or the other, but at least it suggests the best kind of stroller to get. Consider this your parenting tip of the day.

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Parenting Tip of the Day: Buy a Backward-Facing Stroller For Your Baby

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

by WinfredBSB Posted on January 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote a post that listed a bunch of things people have said about Ted Cruz, along with a bunch of things I made up. But which were real and which were invented? Here was the answer:

All statements whose ordinal number takes the integer form 2n+1 or 2n-1 have been invented. The rest are real.

I got some pushback about this, mostly asking what the hell kind of crap was this, anyway? So here goes. Here’s where it came from:

  1. At first I was just going to toss in a few fake statements and put the answer key below the fold. But then I realized that anyone who got here via a direct link would see the answers right away.
  2. So then I figured I’d add eight fakes in all the odd slots. But if your eye drifted down to the answer, you’d see “odd” right away.
  3. So I put it in small type. But even that was readable.
  4. So then I figured that instead of “odd,” I’d say that all the fakes were of the form 2n+1. My geeky readers would appreciate it.
  5. Then I looked for a link that defined “odd,” so that my non-geeky readers had a fighting chance of figuring things out. The only simple one I found defined odd as 2n+1 or 2n-1. So I changed the text to match.

This was pretty obviously a pointless waste of time. Welcome to my world. This is what blogging has done to me.

Anyway, in case you didn’t figure it out, all the odd numbered statement are fakes. The rest are real. The scary thing is that I didn’t have any trouble coming up with eight plausible fakes.

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

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Raw Data: How #White Are the Oscars, Anyway?

by Aleida4328 Posted on January 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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The chart on the right shows the trend of black nominees in the four acting categories by decade. In the most recent decade—including the past two years, in which no blacks were nominated—there were 18 black nominees, which amounts to 9 percent of the total acting field. Here’s a comparison (for Americans only) with top positions in other fields:

4-star military officers: 13 percent
Members of Congress: 10 percent
University presidents: ~3 percent
Senators: 2 percent
Nobel Prize winners: 1.1 percent
Fortune 500 CEOs: 0.8 percent
Billionaires: 0.2 percent
Governors: 0

POSTSCRIPT: Most of the #OscarsSoWhite backlash has come in the acting categories, which is why I made this chart. The odd things about this is that the acting categories are a gaudy aurora borealis compared to the paleness of the rest of the awards. With the exception of songwriting, a grand total of eight black artists have been nominated in every single other category over the past decade. Here are the percentages:

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Raw Data: How #White Are the Oscars, Anyway?

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Let’s Have a Contest For Best Alternate "Against Trump" Cover

by Daisy09Jmt Posted on January 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Just keep in mind: this is a cover that’s supposed to persuade conservatives to turn against Trump.

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Let’s Have a Contest For Best Alternate "Against Trump" Cover

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