Barack Obama, in his speech at the White House Correspondents dinner. Live video here. (via washingtonpoststyle)
Awesome riff on the recent meme of Hillary texts.
An op-ed by Thomas E. Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and Norman J. Ornstein, a resident scholar at conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute.
First, stop calling it the “Mommy Wars.” How about The Important Debate About Motherhood and Work That Isn’t Trivialized Because It Involves Women? Or, if that’s too much of a mouthful, don’t call it anything at all. But please don’t call it the Mommy Wars. Calling it the Mommy Wars makes it…
As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote in 1904, “taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society.”
But the wealthiest Americans, who haven’t raked in as much of America’s income and wealth since the 1920s, are today paying a lower tax rate than they have in over thirty years. Even…
So you want to make your own boring corner of your town into an ultra hip zone?Who doesn’t want to live in a hip neighborhood these days? The great food and night life, the singles scene, and music—what’s not to like?
Here are a few things you’ll need to make your neighborhood into a hip one
A Used Bookstore. Any neighborhood can have a place piled with used books for sale but to make it hip, you need that something extra. It needs to be the kind of place that when you take your books in to trade, some clerk (with an associates in degree general studies from the local junior college) must be the one to go through your offerings, making loud value judgements about each item your brought in. He treats your 19th century Russian poetry books as if you brought in a stack of People magazine.
Relentless Clipboard Toting Activists. Yes, you want to support their cause but after being accosted continuously every day for weeks at the same location, you then change your walking route just to avoid them…as they chase you down shouting “support world peace, a$$hole!”
A Natural Food Store. You shop there four times per week and they always act as if they’ve never seen you before. It’s as expensive as Whole Foods but with a brooding staff oozing with extra ‘tude. Still, you go there because its close to home and their deli makes dolmas much better than you can in your own kitchen.
A Local Elementary School That Serves as a Dog Park. Sure, the signs say “no dogs allowed” but only until 4 PM. After that, the playground becomes the neighborhood’s off-leash dog park. How about that for efficient use of public spaces?!
A Yarn Store. You wonder where all of those hip ladies are getting the yarn to make those funky scarves and hats you see everywhere. Then, one day you spot it on a back street and catch yourself thinking how out of place it seems, but remembering that its not.
A Brew Pub. You really need one of these, OK? Extra points if they don’t serve food but allow you to bring yours in (and have food trucks parked out front). Double bonus points if they have live music. Of course this is where you’ll spot the guy with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the sleeve of his white T-shirt like James Dean, his buddy wearing the John Deere hat, and their friend doing her best to look like Zooey Deschanel.
The Bike or Drive Dilemma. You want to be eco and some places in this ‘hood offer discounts for arriving on your bike, but it gets stolen every time you lock it up. So now, the bulletproof titanium super-lock you need to carry around weighs more (and costs more) than your bike…so you’re more worried about the lock being stolen than the bike itself.
A Used Record Store. You know, the one everyone claims to love and support but never seem to buy anything from? If they haven’t gone under yet, its probably a front for the local non-medical marijuana dispensary.
Street Musicians. How can an area be hip without people on the sidewalks singing, playing music, or reading poetry? C’mon, drop some coins in that guitar case!
Artists and Gay People. Sorry, but if there aren’t any artists and gay people living in or hanging out in this neighborhood, its just not going to be hip. In fact, many experts claim that it’s the artists and gay people who are vital to transforming an area into a hip one in the first place. Others say that hip neighborhoods attract artists and gay people to them (and not vice versa). Either way, you need them.
A Hip Coffee Place. This place has excellent coffee but once you get to the front of the line, getting one of the four people behind the counter to acknowledge your existence is a constant challenge (unless your ear disks are larger than theirs). A few rules to remember in these places; saying gesundheit or bless you if someone sneezes will earn you sneers and if your laptop does not have a glowing apple on the back of it, prepare to be shunned as if you were Dick Cheney’s cousin.
Panhandlers With Nice Shoes and a Land Rover Parked Nearby. Not to be confused with those truly in need, these are usually Trustafarians who already burned through their monthly allotment of Mommy and Daddy’s cash.
Food Trucks. The food is wonderful and the people running them are very nice. If only you could take a bit from one of their burritos without the insides of it crumbling all over the sidewalk before you can get it into your mouth.
Two Competing Bike Shops. Because you can’t have only one bike shop and still qualify as a hip neighborhood. Both shops are knowledgeable and do good repairs, but one is very friendly and helpful while the other one only hires people who pass their ‘tude test. The latter one generally treats any woman with a question like she has no business riding a bike. Guess which place is doing better?
A sufficient number of people with exposed tattoos. This one is compulsory. If you want your neighborhood to keep its hip rating, be sure to get all of your tatted up residents out on the streets when the National Council on Nonconformity is in town renew your hip license. Sorry, but temporary tattoos don’t count.
Multiple vegan/vegetarian restaurants. At least one must be a place people rave about to others but actually gag when thinking about the green goo they serve. The rest can be great.
A used clothing store. They seldom have anything you really want, which may explain why they only wanted two of the 67 items you brought in to trade. Of course they’ll offer to “donate” your unwanted items to charity (but then you see a worker wearing some of them the following week).
The Overpriced Quasi-Hip Quick-Casual Restaurant. Usually dropped right in the middle of the hip neighborhood. This is a place with good food and friendly service but hipsters try to avoid it. So, who are their clientele? Usually its businessmen on their lunch breaks or bored housewives from other neighborhoods who want to feel hip, even if just for an hour.
A Brazilian Waxing Place. You know the one, they never have a Groupon or Living Social offer but they are always jam packed with people seeking their services. Extra points if it has a wedding chapel attached to it. I mean, who doesn’t want to be all cleaned up just moments before saying “I do?”
A ratio of three Thai restaurants and two hair salons per resident. No one knows exactly why but 17 separate studies have shown this to be true.
An Old School Local Restaurant. This family restaurant was here before the area was hip and will probably be there when the whole scene moves to another part of town. Plus, their breakfast is a great cure for a hangover.
A Starbucks that was once an Arby’s. You know, in one of those old covered wagon shaped buildings. Plus, the Arby’s is now re-located next door in a more standard styled building.
The empty shell of a local outdoor retail store. Before REI (Walmart in fleece), put them out of business.
The Prayer-Flag, Buddha Statue Place. The students at the local college badly need this place so they can buy stuff to freak out their fundamentalist Christian ‘rents when they arrive for Parents’ Weekend.
The Local Hipster Newspaper. Every big town has one and they seem to be found on every corner in a hip neighborhood. This paper does a good job of acting like they are against “the man” but look a little deeper and they are “the man.” Your band, small business, or service will be ignored in every feature and review until you do a multi-week ad buy. Then expect to disappear again until you can buy their love one more time.
Incorrect source, offensive, or found a typo? Want to write?
Chris Courtney, is an Albuquerque based yoga teacher and sometime film consultant when he is not trying to write songs on his guitar. He started the Off The Couch And Onto The Mat movement to promote healthy alternatives to a sedentary lifestyle. Chris is a former expat journalist, warrior and diplomat who is forever finding new experiences to explore. Find him online on Twitter @CK_Courtney or check out his website at: chriscourtneyyoga.com
Using Non-Newtonian Fluids to Fill Potholes (news.sciencemag.org)
CLEVELAND, OHIO—So-called non-Newtonian fluids are the stars of high school science demonstrations. In one example, an ooey-gooey batter made from corn starch and water oozes like a liquid when moved slowly. But punch it, or run across a giant puddle of it, and it becomes stiff like a solid. Pour it on top of a speaker cone, and the vibrations cause the fluid to stiffen and form strange tendril-like shapes. Now, a group of college students has figured out a new use for the strange stuff: filler for potholes.
The students, undergraduates at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, devised the idea as part of an engineering contest sponsored by the French materials company Saint-Gobain—and took first prize last week. The objective was to use simple materials to create a novel product.
“So we were putzing around with different ideas and things we wanted to work with—and we were like, what’s a common, everyday problem all around the world that everybody hates?” explains 21-year-old team member Curtis Obert. “And we landed on potholes.” He and four other students decided on a non-Newtonian fluid as a solution because of its unusual physical properties. “When there’s no force being applied to it, it flows like a liquid does and fills in the holes,” says Obert, “but when it gets run over, it acts like a solid.”
