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Monday, April 11, 2016

Vindicated

An excerpt from Rolling Stone -



In 1991, 35-year-old Oklahoma State University law professor Anita Hill was called before Congress to testify about the behavior of Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her former boss at the Office for Civil Rights and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Hill was subpoenaed by the Senate Judiciary Committee to share allegations that Thomas sexually harassed her on the job at the EEOC — the federal agency that handles workplace sexual harassment claims, among other things. For coming forward, Hill was demonized by conservatives, who called her a liar and delusional for thinking Thomas could be interested in her. Their attacks on Hill's character worked; by the end of the hearings, nearly three-quarters of the public believed she lied about Thomas. It was only in the ensuing years that a steady stream of booksinterviews and articles emerged to bolster Hill's version of events, and discredit Thomas'.

Add to that list Confirmation, a film airing April 16th on HBO, starring Kerry Washington as Hill, Wendell Pierce as Thomas and Greg Kinnear as then Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden. Hill recently spoke to Rolling Stone about reliving her experience with the hearings via conversations with Washington and screenwriter Susannah Grant; the film's portrayal of Biden, who refused to call witnesses who would've supported Hill's claims; and all the ways America still fails victims of sexual harassment and abuse.


Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/anita-hill-on-confirmation-joe-bidens-legacy-and-bill-cosby-20160411#ixzz45a4uDn5b
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Smart Hiring

An excerpt from The Atlantic - 

The Science of Smart Hiring

Finding great new workers is hard. A little bit of empiricism can help.

Hiring is hard. General managers know it. Startup founders know it. School principals and casting directors know it. But for readers who are none of those things, consider America’s most public hiring processes—aside from presidential elections, perhaps—which are sports drafts.

Every year, millions of Americans watch professional talent evaluators try to predict who will be the best future athletes in the NBA and NFL Drafts. Again and again, audiences get valuable lessons in the inability of experts to divine future talent. Scouts aren’t dumb. Overall, the first pick tends to be better than the tenth pick, and he tends to be better than 100th pick. But years after the draft, at least one squad almost always looks foolish. For every top five team that can’t believe it picked a Darko Milicic or Ryan Leaf, there is a top five team that can’t believe it missed a Stephen Curry or Tom Brady.

Hiring is hard for the same reason that dating is hard: Both sides are in the dark. "The fundamental economic problem in hiring is one of matching with costly search and bilateral asymmetric information,” Paul Oyer and Scott Schaefer write in "Personnel Economics.” In English, that means hiring is expensive, time-consuming, and inherently uncertain, because the hirer doesn't know what workers are the right fit, and the worker don’t know what hirers are the right fit.

http://www.theatlantic.com/author/derek-thompson/

He Was Just Hungry

From The Root -

DC Police Looking for Man Who Broke Into Five Guys Restaurant and Cooked Meal

The unidentified suspect was caught on camera making himself food while the restaurant was closed between 3:10 a.m. and 5:05 a.m. March 18.



http://www.theroot.com/articles/news/2016/04/d_c_police_looking_for_man_who_broke_into_five_guys_and_cooks_meal.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26

Forget the Nerd

#YesImARocketScientist: Graduating Aerospace Engineer Tiffany Davis Breaks the Internet



http://www.theroot.com/blogs/the_grapevine/2016/04/_yesimarocketscientist_aerospace_engineer_tiffany_davis_breaks_the_internet.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content%26


Adele - Hello (Mormon Missionary Parody)

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Sugar Divides the Races

An excerpt from The Charlotte Observer -

Why does sugar in cornbread divide races in the South?

If you stop by La’Wan’s Soul Food Restaurant in south Charlotte for collards and macaroni & cheese, there’s something important on your plate.

It’s a small cornbread muffin. Soft and tender, almost cake-like, with a bit of chewiness to the crust and a flavor that’s just a little sweet.

Now drive over to Lupie’s Cafe on Monroe Road and you’ll get a big square of cornbread, 3 inches across, white with a yellow tinge. Firm, almost coarse, with a crisp top.

Sweet? Not a bit. It’s defiantly not sweet.

La’Wan’s corn muffin and Lupie’s cornbread are humble things. But they represent something deeper: The dividing line between black Southerners and white ones. As examples of one of the defining staples of Southern food, they also are a marker of food history that speaks volumes about origins and identity, about family and what we hold dear.

It also raises a question: So many Southern food traditions are shared by both races. Most Southerners, black and white, revere fried chicken, pursue pork barbecue and exalt their grandmothers’ garden vegetables. So why is there such a fundamental difference between two styles of one basic bread?

Culinary historians have debated this one for years: Did the descendants of slave cooks who were exposed to British baking styles come to value cornbread that was lighter and softer? Did the children of farm-based white Southerners get used to unsweetened cornbread that tasted more emphatically like corn? Whatever caused it, the line is drawn.


Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article68763427.html#storylink=cpy






Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/living/food-drink/article68763427.html#storylink=cpy

Apple TV – Father Time

Friday, April 8, 2016

This Shirt Cost $460!

An excerpt from The New York Times - 

Luka Sabbat, the 18-Year-Old Fashion Influencer

Advertisers envy his social media skills. Tom Ford provided him with a
prom suit. “He’s the cool kid at the party we all want to be,” an admirer says.



Who is Luka? The question, which also happens to be his Twitter handle (@whoisluka), is unlikely to go unanswered for long. Among his roughly 184,000 Instagram and 64,000 Twitter followers, the 18-year-old New Yorker has already established himself as the coolest teenager on the Internet.

That is what Complex magazine termed him last year soon after he appeared out of nowhere — or, anyway, from that singular cohort of New Yorkers who line up on any given Thursday outside Supreme — to become a social media phenomenon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/08/fashion/mens-style/luka-sabbat-fashion-influencer.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Maybe He Needs a Kindle

Thursday, April 7, 2016

Is it time to retire the police sketch?

It's not you. Claw machines are rigged.

Love Therapy for Priests

An excerpt from Vox -


I’ve spent 30 years counseling priests who fall in love. Here’s what I learned.

How priests find themselves falling in love

It is true that some priests "fall in love" the way most of us think about that: They meet someone to whom they are drawn; they get to know them; they get physical; they get sexual.
In the normal (i.e., noncelibate) world, this is usually a happy series of events. In the celibate world, it may be happy but constrained — by the watchful eyes of parishioners and superiors, by public expectation, by personal feelings of guilt, by the lack of a clear path toward commitment.
If this experience leads to a decision to leave the priesthood and marry, as it often does, there is no psychological problem. It is simply a life choice: a difficult one, to be sure, but not unlike decisions incumbent upon all of us.
More common is the case of Father D., a successful priest and administrator who finally revealed ongoing involvements with two women that lasted for more than a decade. The push to disclose came when he told Woman No. 1 about Woman No. 2. He was shocked at her (understandably) angry reaction.
That shock enabled him to tell the story of how he got involved, what was going on with him at the time, and how he allowed it to persist even as his career was blossoming and exposure became more threatening. This allowed Father D. to develop a more realistic approach to whatever intimacy needs he had while remaining within the bounds of a celibate priesthood if he so chose.
This is more typical of what is seen in treatment centers: men who yield to their passions but are unable or unwilling to leave the priesthood they love and on which they depend. Up to the moment it becomes known, it is a balancing act between the priesthood and a relationship, or series of relationships, which they come to believe they cannot live without. Is there love involved? Sometimes. But mostly it's a matter of juggling two incompatible things.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/7/11325336/priests-love-therapy


Confessions of an Airport Thief



http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/07/us/airport-theft-investigation/index.html

Not Just Because I'm One

From Lifehack -

10 Reasons to Respect Our Elders

They have lived longer than us

Well this we know, obviously. But when we truly stop to think about it and walk just a little way in their shoes, it commands respect. Life is hard! Have patience and consideration for the time they have spent on this earth.

They might know more than you think

If you haven’t already found things to talk to your grandparents, or your neighbour about, ask them questions. Respect the worlds they lived through, the parts of history they survived. They have a lifetime of knowledge.

They have experienced different things than us

The world was a different place ‘back in the day’. Evolution is happening fast, and we all know that different kinds of experience means different kinds of wisdom. Compare your differences, consult them, consider them. You might learn something you never could have learned from your own world.

They see the world in a different way

Through the experiences of their own lives and through the time they have spent on this earth, they will see the world from their own perspective. They might assign themselves differently to the way they walk and talk and dress. Take note. It might just broaden your horizons.

They have walked a mile in your shoes

The advantage anybody older than yourself has, is that they have lived at the age that you have before. Although every situation is different, they do know what it is like to be where you are, or at least, at the age you are at. Unfortunately you cannot say the same about them, so have respect and listen to what they have to say.

They are more travel weary

Who knows what countries they have trailed though, what mountains they have climbed to get where they are! They might be tired – offer them a seat!

They have experience we can only dream of

The world is a different place now. The world they lived in will also never exist again as it once did. We will never know what it was like then, before things changed and became now. We can only dream of what it was like to dance in the disco era, or experience war. They lived it. Show respect for the history they have survived.

They will have stories that can benefit us

Everybody has a story to tell. Everyone. These are the stories of our lives, the tales of us. Don’t just roll your eyes when your grandma or grandpa tells you ‘again’ about the good old days … relish in a story that might influence your own.

They are still learning from us too

As we are alive, we are all still learning. They might be older, but they are learning too. Have patience.

They are our family

Your grandparents choices in life resulted in YOU! Be grateful. Look after each other. Love is the answer.
“R.E.S.PE.C.T” – Aretha Franklin, mother and grandmother. 
http://www.lifehack.org/382748/10-reasons-respect-our-elders?mtype=daily_newsletter&mid=20160407_customized&uid=789627&email=fayesharpe%40gmail.com&action=click&ref=mail