Althouse

I predict the ascendancy of the Slacker parent over the next few years. Alpha parenting is not only tiring, it is can backfire, raising what some call the T-Ball generation, where everyone swings until they get a hit, everyone gets a trophy, and no one learns what it means to be disappointed. (Gen Y knows the risks well; they are that generation.) The economy will also help to tamp down the Alpha Moms in the near future (a speck of a silver lining).

"I'm absolutely, fully in agreement with the argument that if pain is insufferable, then someone should be given help to die, but I feel there's a wider argument that if somebody absolutely, desperately wants to die because they're a burden to their family, or the state, then I think they too should be allowed to die.

"Actually I've just written an article called 'A Duty to Die?' for a Norwegian periodical. I wrote it really suggesting that there's nothing wrong with feeling you ought to do so for the sake of others as well as yourself."

[British moral philosopher Lady Warnock] went on: "If you've an advance directive, appointing someone else to act on your behalf, if you become incapacitated, then I think there is a hope that your advocate may say that you would not wish to live in this condition so please try to help her die.

"I think that's the way the future will go, putting it rather brutally, you'd be licensing people to put others down."

The late queen mother, being driven in a Rolls-Royce through a stricken district of Manchester, England, said as she winced at the view, "I see no point at all in being poor." The Duke of St. Albans once told an interviewer that an ancestor of his had lost about 50 million pounds in a foolish speculation in South African goldfields, adding after a pause, "That was a lot of money in those days." The Duke of Devonshire, having been criticized in the London Times, announced in an annoyed and plaintive tone that he would no longer have the newspaper "in any of my houses."

Dame Helen, who picked up an Academy Award last year for her portrayal of The Queen, said she was date-raped "a couple of times" when she was young but did not report the attacks because "you couldn't do that in those days."

Despite her experiences, the British-born actress said date-rape was a "tricky area" and something men and women had to work out between themselves.

She said it was rape if a couple engaged in sexual activity but the woman said "no" at the last second.

However, in comments likely to anger anti-rape campaigners, she added: "I don't think she can have that man into court under those circumstances. I guess it is one of the subtle parts of the men/women relationship that has to be negotiated and worked out between them."

In the past months in Britain, there has been a sort of low-humming cultural unease about suicides on the Tube, which are readily announced over station intercoms as the reason for delays, presumably to allay fears of terrorism. A movie in general release, Three and Out, attempted to turn this unease into dark comedy by portraying a hapless Tube driver who tries to exploit a (fictional) loophole in his contract that grants him early retirement if he witnesses three suicides from his train. The film misjudged the nation's mood and was savaged by film critics, mental-health workers and the train drivers' union....

Weasel = The weird gray fuzzy thing that sound techs put over their sticks' mikes at scrums to keep annoying wind-noise off the audio. It looks like a large floppy mouse-colored version of a certain popular kind of fuzzy bathroom slipper. (N.B.: Weasels, which are sometimes worn by sound techs as headgear during OTSs when it's really cold, are thus sometimes known as tech toupees.)

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.

This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons....

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Vait, vait. Vat’s zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?â€

We exchanged astonished glances. “Hamas,†we explained, “is a Palestinian Islamist political movement. Hummus is a food.â€

“Ya, but vy hummus? Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping hummus. Unt it’s too high in carbohydrates.â€...

“Your conflict is not so bad. Jennifer-Angelina is worse.â€

The problem today is that the U.S. political system seems to have lost its ability to fix its ailments. The economic problems in the United States today are real, but by and large they are not the product of deep inefficiencies within the U.S. economy, nor are they reflections of cultural decay. They are the consequences of specific government policies. Different policies could quickly and relatively easily move the United States onto a far more stable footing. A set of sensible reforms could be enacted tomorrow to trim wasteful spending and subsidies, increase savings, expand training in science and technology, secure pensions, create a workable immigration process, and achieve significant efficiencies in the use of energy. Policy experts do not have wide disagreements on most of these issues, and none of the proposed measures would require sacrifices reminiscent of wartime hardship, only modest adjustments of existing arrangements. And yet, because of politics, they appear impossible. The U.S. political system has lost the ability to accept some pain now for great gain later on.

As it enters the twenty-first century, the United States is not fundamentally a weak economy or a decadent society. But it has developed a highly dysfunctional politics. What was an antiquated and overly rigid political system to begin with (now about 225 years old) has been captured by money, special interests, a sensationalist media, and ideological attack groups. The result is ceaseless, virulent debate about trivia -- politics as theater -- and very little substance, compromise, or action. A can-do country is now saddled with a do-nothing political process, designed for partisan battle rather than problem solving.

The slogan is "twist, lick, dunk" and the television advert features a boy demonstrating the technique to his dog.

"This ritual that comes with Oreo makes it more than a biscuit," says Ms McNulty. "The ritual elevates it to a moment of child-like delight and a warm family moment. 'Twist, lick and dunk' is the language we use. Around the world, 'twist, lick and dunk' is Oreo."...

But self-appointed biscuit expert Stuart Payne, author of A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, says he was under-whelmed and disappointed by them.

"It's like someone rudely coming into your home and telling you how to arrange your settee. It arrives here and says: 'I'm Oreo and this is what you do with me.'" [Said Stuart Payne, author of "A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down."]

"Well we've had biscuits for a long time and we know what to do."

I've been eating Oreos for a few months and while they are nice enough I have to say that the whole twist thing is rubbish. You cannot just twist it apart if you try it will just shatter in your hand. I found that you have to use the same method used for the custard cream ... bite one half of the biscuit off. And taste wise the custard cream beats it hands down, all in all i cant see it beating our British fave anytime soon.

I've tried these, and was disappointed. The dark colouring makes them look as if they'll be really dark-chocolatey, which would be great, but they aren't at all. Give me a plain chocolate digestive any day!

Ugh! These monstrosities, like Hershey's revolting "chocolate" just go to reinforce the stereotype that Americans have no sense of quality. Give me a custard cream every time!

The company developed 20 prototypes of reduced-sugar Oreos and tested them with Chinese consumers before arriving at a formula that tasted right....

In China, Kraft began a grassroots marketing campaign to educate Chinese consumers about the American tradition of pairing milk with cookies. ...

Still, Kraft realized it needed to do more than just tweak its recipe to capture a bigger share of the Chinese biscuit market. China's cookie-wafer segment was growing faster than traditional biscuit-like cookies...

So in China in 2006 Kraft remade the Oreo itself, introducing for the first time an Oreo that looked almost nothing like the original. The new Chinese Oreo consisted of four layers of crispy wafer filled with vanilla and chocolate cream, coated in chocolate....

It was associated with stress. I was working too hard....

The only break I took was to eat. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food.

I could sup a whole tin of Carnation condensed milk, just for the taste, stupid things like that.

Marks & Spencer trifles, I still love them. I can eat them for ever....

[H]is fellow bulimia sufferer William Leith says: "Poor John Prescott. I feel for him. More importantly, though, I feel for the society he lives in."

Uri Geller, another self-confessed bulimic, praises Prescott's "courage" in admitting his condition.

"No one expects a man, especially a successful one, to have an eating disorder," he writes in the Telegraph. "It seems such a weakness. But addiction isn't weak: it's as powerful as a landslide, and it was burying me alive."

Such sentiments are echoed online by bulimia experts. "It is good that man in such a high-powered position has finally come out and said he was a sufferer of this insidious disorder," William Webster writes on the Bulimia Anorexia Blog.

Even the often acerbic Tory blogger Iain Dale feels sorry for Prescott.

"In some ways, his bulimia partly explains his affair with Tracey Temple, and no doubt others," Dale writes. "We all think of politicians as supremely confident and outgoing people who wouldn't recognise shyness and self doubt if they hit them in the face. Many politicians are far from confident."

Mrs Clinton's supporters look at Mr Obama's and see latte-drinking elitists. Mr Obama's supporters look at Mrs Clinton's and smell all sorts of ancestral sins, not least racism. The two groups neither like nor respect each other.

There are actually good reasons for irritation on both sides. The Obamaites are not just otherworldly. They are also weirdly cultish. All the vague talk of “hope†and “change†is grating enough. But many Obamamaniacs want something even vaguer than this—they want political redemption....

It is certainly impressive to see 20,000 people queuing for hours to see a politician. But should they worship their man with such wide-eyed intensity? And should they shout “Yes we can†with such unbridled enthusiasm? The slogan, after all, reminds any parent of “Bob the Builderâ€, a cartoon for toddlers, and Mr Obama himself rejected it as naff when it was first suggested to him. His supporters are rather like high-school nerds who surround the coolest kid in the class in the hope of looking cool themselves.

But there are also good reasons to be irritated with Mrs Clinton's beer-track Democrats. Blue-collar workers have certainly had a hard time of it. The Cleveland rustbelt is a decaying monument to good jobs that have been shipped abroad or mechanised out of existence. But one of the tragedies of this campaign is that both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton have decided to ignore Bill Clinton's message—that the only way that America can remain competitive is to prepare people for new jobs rather than cling on to old ones—and instead engage in a silly competition to see who can bash NAFTA hardest.