Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
How many dumplings equal a “meal”? I’ve personally pondered this question because the number of dumplings I want to eat rarely corresponds with the recommended serving size. But this question also happens to come up when you read the text of California Assembly Bill 626, a new law decriminalizing the sale of home-cooked food. The…
Please note up front that I am not Palestinian, or Arab, or Muslim. I am an American Jew. So any list I draw up with this title is doomed to be incomplete, because there are a lot of facets of the Palestinian experience that I just don’t see. HOWEVER. I’ve seen a shocking amount of…
If you’ve spent any time discussing or reading about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I guarantee you’ve heard some variation of this statement: OMG, Jews think any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic! In the interests of this post, I’m going to assume that the people who express such sentiments are acting in good faith and really don’t…
Image: New Line Cinema Listen, I’m not here to argue about whether the 2004 film adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ novel The Notebook starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling is or is not a good film. But to trim the last minute of the movie and swap in a comparatively dispassionate prelude to credits starring a…
You really shouldn’t pour bacon grease down the sink. That and other stuff flushed down residential plumbing drains is contributing to a rather gross and increasingly prevalent problem: floating blobby masses of trash in the sewers known as “fatbergs.” They’ve popped up in Charleston, Baltimore, and London. They’re washing up on beaches, where they’re sometimes eaten by dogs. In…
A man was dragged to his death after a shoulder bag he was carrying got caught in a moving subway train in Midtown on Tuesday night, police sources said. The 39-year-old man from Queens was standing on the eastbound No. 7 train platform at Grand Central Terminal at about 7:20 p.m. when his bag got…
It’s 8 on a Wednesday morning in January, and David Carroll’s Brooklyn apartment, a sunny, wood-beamed beauty converted from an old sandpaper factory, is buzzing. His 10-year-old daughter, dressed in polka-dot pants, dips out the front door and off to school, Jansport backpack slung over her shoulders. His 5-year-old son darts into the living room…
Scientists call it California’s “other big one,” and they say it could cause three times as much damage as a major earthquake ripping along the San Andreas Fault. Although it might sound absurd to those who still recall five years of withering drought and mandatory water restrictions, researchers and engineers warn that California may be…
At first glance, the hagfish—a sinuous, tubular animal with pink-grey skin and a paddle-shaped tail—looks very much like an eel. Naturalists can tell the two apart because hagfish, unlike other fish, lack backbones (and, also, jaws). For everyone else, there’s an even easier method. “Look at the hand holding the fish,” the marine biologist Andrew…
Of all the disagreements that drove President Trump and then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis apart, one of the most perilous had to do with blowing up Iranian boats. “Why don’t we sink them?” the president would ask. Acting on an obsession that went back to the campaign, Trump repeatedly asked his national security team for plans…