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| Why gay marriage, getting high, and going to Cuba will soon be legal.
October 31, 2009 at 11:06 am
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| "I think this would be a good time for a beer," Franklin D. Roosevelt said upon signing a bill that made 3.2-percent lager legal again, some months ahead of the full repeal of Prohibition. I hope Barack Obama will come up with some comparably witty remarks as he presides over the dismantling of our contemporary forms of prohibition—laws that prevent gay marriage, restrict cannabis as a Schedule I Controlled Substance, and ban travel to Cuba. "You may now kiss the groom," perhaps, or—a version of the comment he once made about smoking pot—"I inhaled—that was the point."
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Sponsored Topics: Barack Obama - Franklin D. Roosevelt - Cuba - United States - Politics | 
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| Please add updates@feedmyinbox.com to your address book to make sure you receive these messages in the future. | |
| Why are helicopters always crashing?
October 30, 2009 at 9:36 pm
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| The Coast Guard and Navy are searching for nine people after a military helicopter collided with a U.S. Coast Guard plane off the coast of San Diego on Thursday evening. An Army helicopter crashed in western Afghanistan on Monday, the same day that two American helicopters in southern Afghanistan smashed into each other. Why are helicopters always crashing?
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Sponsored Topics: San Diego - United States - Helicopter - United States Coast Guard - Coast Guard |
| Four essential tips for extending the battery life of your computer, cell phone, and every other gadget.
October 30, 2009 at 9:31 pm
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| Whether they're in our computers, cell phones, or cars, the only time we think about batteries is when they're almost dead and we need to find some place to charge them—and then we're not thinking nice things. Batteries are an old-school technology. We stuff them into gadgets that are always getting smaller, faster, and cheaper, but battery technology doesn't yield to Moore's Law. What we know about batteries today is pretty much what we knew about batteries back when ENIAC was invented. As a result, batteries remain a primary limiting factor in our machines; they're the reason we don't have better cars, why your smartphone won't play a two-hour movie, and why your otherwise perfectly functional three-year-old laptop is useless on a plane trip.
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Sponsored Topics: Technology - Battery - Mobile phone - Laptop - Smartphone |
| Saving Face: A chick-lit novel written in real time. With your help.
October 30, 2009 at 9:24 pm
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| The candles have guttered down into two puddles, and Ellie is fighting sleep as she melts deeper into Cole's lap. Marina's two girls and Sam are piled up in front of the television in the other room in various states of wakefulness. People have had so much beer and wine and dessert, they are now telling backyard chicken stories. Of which there are more than one might expect here in the 21st century.
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Sponsored Topics: Beer - Wine - Television - Food - Drink |
| The latest updates from Barack Obama's Facebook feed.
October 30, 2009 at 7:40 pm
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| Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fox News, and Joe Biden's Halloween costume.
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Sponsored Topics: Barack Obama - Joe Biden - United States - Politics - Candidate |
| Reviews of: This Is It, Gentlemen Broncos, and The House of the Devil
October 30, 2009 at 6:34 pm
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| A daily video from Slate V.
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Sponsored Topics: Gentlemen Broncos - House - Arts - Sam Rockwell - Movies |
| Did the Congressional Budget Office just kill the public option?
October 30, 2009 at 6:30 pm
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| I've had a bad feeling since Tuesday that Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman's pledge to filibuster any variety of public option eliminated its chances of becoming law. Continuing recalcitrance from moderate Democrats didn't help, either. But I never figured that the final death blow would come from the Congressional Budget Office.
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Sponsored Topics: Connecticut - Joe Lieberman - Democratic - United States - Filibuster |
| Bidenisms: A collection of the vice president's gaffes and head-slappers.
October 30, 2009 at 5:59 pm
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| The vice president produced two fresh Bidenisms this week. Please continue to send your nominations (with a link, please) to slatebidenisms@gmail.com. For more, and our stab at a definition, see "The Complete Bidenisms."
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Sponsored Topics: Gmail - United States - History - Vice Presidents - Government |
| Troubling new revelations about Arendt and Heidegger.
October 30, 2009 at 4:37 pm
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| Will we ever be able to think of Hannah Arendt in the same way again? Two new and damning critiques, one of Arendt and one of her longtime Nazi-sycophant lover, the philosopher Martin Heidegger, were published within 10 days of each other last month. The pieces cast further doubt on the overinflated, underexamined reputations of both figures and shed new light on their intellectually toxic relationship.
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Sponsored Topics: Hannah Arendt - Nazism - Martin Heidegger - Politics - Philosophy |
| A TV critic journeys through the cheerful hell of exercise shows.
October 30, 2009 at 3:57 pm
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| Flip the channel and feel the burn. The history of exercise on TV stretches to 1951 and The Jack LaLanne Show. Amazingly, despite the advent of home video, LaLanne's successors are still on the air, lifting and thrusting and smiling too hard. By way of seeing what kind of shape the genre is in, I subjected myself to its rigors, devising along the way a weeklong regimen: The TV Critic Workout. It guarantees flatter abs in seven days, partly by way of stomach crunches, partly by way of promoting tummy-straining laughter at both one's own foolishness and the sillier programs.
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Sponsored Topics: Television - Physical exercise - Jack LaLanne - Video - Fitness |
| Paranormal Activity reviewed.
October 30, 2009 at 3:37 pm
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| The surprise success of the microbudget indie horror film Paranormal Activity (Paramount Pictures) constitutes one of those pop-culture moments when you realize that mass taste is sometimes better than you give it credit for. This may not be the horror movie of the year—that crown still easily goes to Sam Raimi's similarly themed Drag Me to Hell—but it's good enough that its unexpected popularity is heartening. In a genre where a fresh mutilated corpse every 15 minutes has become a reasonable expectation, this slow-paced but relentless spooker is refreshingly un-extreme. It comes by its screams honestly, earning them with incremental, at times agonizing gradations of old-fashioned, what's-that-noise-in-the-hallway suspense.
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Sponsored Topics: Sam Raimi - Paranormal - Drag Me to Hell - Horror film - Paramount Pictures |
| The week's most interesting Slate stories.
October 30, 2009 at 3:02 pm
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| 1) "The Lieberman Option: Could one of the left's least favorite senators kill health care reform?" by John Dickerson. Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman wants to be courted by Democratic leaders and will continue to oppose the public option until he is appeased.
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Sponsored Topics: Joe Lieberman - Health care - Democratic - John Dickerson - United States |
| Why couldn't we tell that the balloon boy's parents were faking their distress?
October 30, 2009 at 2:54 pm
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| Shortly after authorities announced that 6-old-year Falcon Heene had been found safe and sound, ending speculation that he had been aboard a flying saucer that escaped from his family's backyard, his father Richard appeared before an encampment of cameras to share a few words of relief. "He says he was hiding in the attic," Heene said, his voice swelling on the last two syllables as he half-shrugged and looked at the ground. "And, um, because I yelled at him." He took a sharp breath, voice faltering. "I'm really sorry I yelled at him."
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Sponsored Topics: Flying saucer - balloon - Recreation - Aviation - Arts |
| What I learned from my global surf-and-turf challenge.
October 30, 2009 at 2:18 pm
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| If you ever find yourself surfing the Arctic Ocean, here's a tip: Don't borrow a wet suit from a Norwegian. Those people have massive feet. The wet-suit boots I borrowed are so loose that my toes feel as if they're soaking in a bucket of ice water.
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Sponsored Topics: Arctic Ocean - Surfing - Wetsuit - Water - Foot |
| What Jonathan Nossiter's Liquid Memory gets wrong about wine.
October 30, 2009 at 1:34 pm
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| Who said there is no disputing taste? For many oenophiles, half the pleasure of wine is arguing about it. In recent years, the vinosphere has seen a contentious debate over what can be called, for lack of a less ponderous phrase, First Principles. What defines quality in a wine? How about authenticity? Is it ultimately more important for a wine to taste good or to taste true to its origins—to exhibit goût de terroir, as the French say? And if the end result is agreeable, does it matter how a wine was made? With much of the wine industry fixated on branding and marketing, and technology increasingly giving vintners the power to bend nature to their will, these questions have taken on added urgency, and the discussion of them has grown ever more acrimonious.
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Sponsored Topics: Jonathan Nossiter - Wine - Terroir - Winemaking - Food |
| Why Halloween can be an organizational nightmare for pagans.
October 30, 2009 at 1:33 pm
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| For most people, Halloween represents candy, costumes, and scary movies—a diversionary, tongue-in-cheek day of miming sin and deceit. But for pagans, the holiday is a time for ardent ritual, a celebration of the thin line between the living and the dead. As Lee Ann Kinkade writes in this "Faith-Based" from October 2008, planning and performing rituals doesn't come naturally for witches and warlocks. Fiercely independent and eager to question authority, their freewheeling nature can make celebrating Samhain a hassle. The article is reprinted below.
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Sponsored Topics: Halloween - Samhain - Horror film - Nature - Holidays | | | |
