Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

This makes sense to me:

Why Do Sandwiches Taste Better When Someone Else Makes Them?

By Daniel Kahneman

When you make your own sandwich, you anticipate its taste as you’re working on it. And when you think of a particular food for a while, you become less hungry for it later. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, for example, found that imagining eating M&Ms makes you eat fewer of them. It’s a kind of specific satiation, just as most people find room for dessert when they couldn’t have another bite of their steak. The sandwich that another person prepares is not “preconsumed” in the same way.

Via: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/10/02/magazine/29mag-food-issue.html#/cooking

 

Forgiveness: Mother Lives Next to Son’s Killer

I doubt I could do this:

A mother whose only child was shot dead has shown the ultimate forgiveness – by inviting her son’s killer to live next door.

Mary Johnson, 59, now lives in the apartment adjoining the home of 34-year-old Oshea Israel and they share a porch.

In February 1993, Mrs Johnson’s son, Laramiun Byrd, 20, was shot in the head by 16-year-old Israel after an argument at a party in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Israel, who was involved with drugs and gangs, was tried as an adult and sentenced to 25 and a half years. He served 17 before being released.

 

She sought a relationship with him:

Then just a few years ago, the 59-year-old teacher and devout Christian, asked if she could meet Israel at Minnesota’s Stillwater state prison.

She said she felt compelled to see if there was a way in which she could forgive her son’s killer.

At first he refused but then nine months later, changed his mind. Israel said he was shocked by the fact she wanted to meet him.

He said: ‘I believe the first thing she said to me was, ”Look, you don’t know me. I don’t know you. Let’s just start with right now.”

‘And I was befuddled myself.’

The pair met regularly after that. When Israel was released from prison around 18 months ago, Mrs Johnson introduced him to her landlord – who with her blessing, invited Israel to move into the building.

What a woman!
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2000704/Woman-shows-incredible-mercy-sons-killer-moves-door.html#ixzz1P6Yh4r3g

 

Out on a limb

My lovely wife asked me to cut off a large limb that was blocking views of the creek.

The limb draped above the creek.

The tree leaned over the creek.

The dutiful husband felt vulnerable 15′ above a cold creek and the large-ish rocks just below the water.

Did the lovely wife hold the ladder?  Pray?  Or take photos with her iPhone?

Getting there …

How much will this trunk buck?

Tree saw: $19.95.  Ladder: $59.99.   Landing the sucker: Priceless!

 

April is the cruelest month …

… says Parker!

 

Apology, turbocharged

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

 

Beware the Parent Who Knows Photoshop!

From a creative mother, with too much time on her hands.  I liked the last item on the flyer.

Wanted to keep the trip to Disney World a secret from the kids, so I made this flyer and told them this is why we’re driving to Florida.

 

Husband Puts Wife on “No-Fly” List, Keeps Her Away for 3 Years

Every once in awhile, those staid, proper, stiff-upper-lip Brits do something really wild:

An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects.

He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is ‘not conducive to the public good’.

As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.

The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects’ list during a vetting inquiry.

Moral of the story: Don’t try to rise above your station.

Via: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351937/Immigration-officer-fired-putting-wife-list-terrorists-stop-flying-home.html#ixzz1CxGClVxn

 

 

Perspective

From today’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, one more thing for which to be thankful:

 

World’s Oldest Facebooker

Lillian Lowe, 103, from Tenby, Pembrokeshire, has only a few dozen friends, mostly family, registered.

But since being dubbed Facebook’s oldest user, she has had 999 friendship requests from around the world.

She said: “They have been very kind and uplifting messages. I can’t reply to them all.”

Ms Lowe is thought to have become the oldest person among Facebook’s 500m users following the death of 104-year-old Ivy Bean, from Bradford, in July.

The retired hotelier and businesswoman says she uses the site about twice a week to keep up to date with family, including two at university in Cardiff.

She said: “I like it very much, to see my grandchildren and speak to them, but it does waste a lot of time.

Good for her!

Via: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-12013756

 

From today’s Wall Street Journal:

 

Grandma’s Superhero Therapy

A few years ago, French photographer Sacha Goldberger found his 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika feeling lonely and depressed. To cheer her up, he suggested that they shoot a series of outrageous photographs in unusual costumes, poses, and locations. Grandma reluctantly agreed, but once they got rolling, she couldn’t stop smiling.

Frederika was born in Budapest 20 years before World War II. During the war, at the peril of her own life, she courageously saved the lives of ten people. When asked how, Goldberger told us “she hid the Jewish people she knew, moving them around to different places every day.” As a survivor of Nazism and Communism, she then immigrated away from Hungary to France, forced by the Communist regime to leave her homeland illegally or face death.

I like this one:

via Grandma’s Superhero Therapy (18 photos) – My Modern Metropolis.

 

What’s the opposite of “happy meal”?

Perhaps Thoreau really meant to say, “The mass of mothers….“

 

A lot of work to be done!



Today is the 25th anniversary of Leon Klinghoffer’s murder by Palestinian terrorists.

Klinghoffer and his wife Marilyn were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary with a Mediterranean cruise on the liner Achille Lauro.  Palestinians seized the ship, murdered Mr. Klinghoffer, an American Jew, as he sat in his wheelchair, then forced the crew to shove his  body into the sea.  His corpse eventually washed up on the Syrian coast.

The Foreign Secretary of the PLO initially claimed that Mrs. Klinghoffer had killed her husband for the insurance money, but the PLO eventually had to admit responsibility in the face of so many witnesses to the shooting.

Last year, the leader of the terrorists gained early release from an Italian prison “for good behavior.”

Mrs. Klinghoffer, who died of colon cancer a few months after her husband’s murder, must have had incredible strength of spirit.  Her call to her daughters from the Achille Lauro included the admonition,

Do your crying now. We have a lot of work when I come home.”

She did not want her husband’s death to be in vain.  And the Klinghoffers’ daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, still work to keep their father’s memory alive.

Sadly, terrorism is still an accepted tactic in much of the world.  So this 25th anniversary is a reminder that all of us still have a lot of work to do.

Links:  Article on Klinghoffer family

Article on terrorist’s early release

 

 

 

Whoops! Neo-Nazi Couple Learn They’re Jewish

How do you say “irony” in Polish?

Two Polish neo-Nazis who were childhood sweethearts and later became skinheads have discovered what for them is a shocking family secret: They’re actually Jewish.

Pawel and Ola, identified only by their first names, are the subject of a CNN documentary about Poles rediscovering their Jewish roots generations after their ancestors hid their religious identities to escape persecution during World War II.

A few years ago, Ola found out from Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute that both she and her husband are technically Jews. “It was unbelievable — it turned out that we had Jewish roots. It was a shock,” she said.

At the time, she and Pawel were active in Warsaw’s neo-Nazi movement. “I was a nationalist 100 percent. Back then when we were skinheads it was all about white power… that Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world,” Pawel said.

Both 33, they’ve now embraced their Jewish identity and are active in their local orthodox synagogue.

via Neo-Nazi Couple Find Out They’re Jewish.

 

This would be a much better world if more married couples were as deeply in love as they are in debt.

– Earl Wilson