http://www.tastespotting.com/ is described as...

Founded in January 2007 on the idea that we eat first with our eyes, TasteSpotting is our obsessive, compulsive collection of eye-catching images that link to something deliciously interesting on the other side. Think of TasteSpotting as a highly visual potluck of recipes, references, experiences, stories, articles, products, and anything else that inspires exquisite taste.

We don’t use the term “potluck” for the hell of it. Everyone brings something to the party here: the user community submits images/links from around the web and the editorial team reviews the submissions. What finally gets served up on the site is a beautifully refined set of the community’s contributions.

...and is a collection of frankly beautiful images of food that I would love to cook. The recipes are pretty well done, but it's the photographs that are inspiring. I can't gush about this site enough--and I'm not even the cook of the duo!

You need a crock pot, a stove, and a pan (preferably 2). There are three primary elements to the meal. The onion-and-tomato topping, the steak itself, and the pepper stuffing.

The steak should be thin-cut raw sandwich steak, or thin-cut pieces of beef intended to be quickly cooked on the stove. This kind of cut is usually relatively tough, so it needs to be marinaded. A simple marinade of steak sauce and lemon juice for a few hours should be sufficient, but it depends on the quality of the meat you purchase.

• steak sauce
• 2 standard-size packs of thin-cut sandwich steak
• lemon juice

Put the steak into a gallon plastic bag, dump in enough steak sauce and lemon juice to coat the steak. Zip and fold up the plastic bag around the steak, then refrigerate on a platter to prevent leakage.

Then make the topping.

Put 1 tub of margarine into a microwavable bowl. Add worchestershire sauce, hot sauce, lemon juice, paprika, old bay^*. Melt in the microwave, stir. Taste, adjust ingredients to taste. Pour into warmed crock pot (on the hot setting).

• 2 baskets of cherry tomatoes.
• 2 onions

Quarter the onions into a petal shape, then peel apart. Place into crock pot. Stir. Cover.

Depending on your crock pot's settings, times may vary, but around the time your onions taste sweet and your tomatoes look wrinkled, it's time to prepare the stuffing.

^{* If you aren't from the Maryland area, this may be difficult to come by. However, you can google a recipe to make old bay yourself with relative ease. It's just a spice mixture popular in the region.}

• 1 sandwich baggie full of cut bell peppers^*
• 1 carrot
• 1 cucumber

^{* My family is friends with farmers, so we have a lot of bell peppers and tend to slice them, then freeze bags with mixes of the three main colors mixed in. I used 1 sandwich bag worth, which was probably about a pepper and a half.}

Cut the vegetables. Use a julienne cut--slices should resemble match-sticks and be about 1/4" wide and about 3" long (I cut the cucumber and carrot in half, to be about the size of my bell pepper slices).

Warm a skillet or pan on your stove, wiped down with olive oil to prevent sticking. Add your vegetables. Season with standard green herbs: oregano, basil, parsley. Also add paprika. Stir and flip until vegetable juices begin to accumulate in the bottom of the pan.

Remove the steaks from the fridge and cook on the stove in another oiled pan (I used a griddle because they're bigger and it's a lot of steak in terms of surface area).

Take a finished steak and place on a plate. Using tongs (or normal utensils, but the tongs make it much easier), place julienned vegetables in the center of the steak, crossing the thinner section of the steak. Wrap the steak around the vegetables and secure with toothpicks (I recommend using two). Repeat until plate is full or you're out of steak. Then spoon the onion/tomato mixture from the crock pot on top of the vegetables and serve with a knife and fork.

This was enough to feed three people, but they also work as hors d'œuvres though they aren't bite-sized. Perhaps tapas would be the better term?

"Can we count on your donation?" the caller asks.

Oh, your heart bleeds for this cause, as well it probably should - but don't get out that checkbook just yet, and giving a donation over the phone isn't a good idea either.  Instead, take down the name and address of the charity and do a little charity check online.

While I have my arguments with watchdog organizations and the methods they use to judge efficiency, organizations like Charity Navigator, Guidestar, and the Better Business Bureau serve as excellent sources to ensure that the charity you want to donate to is legitimate.  You can also check the website of your Secretary of State or Attorney General, as many will list charities and link to their registration and financial reporting paperwork.

What are you looking for?

1. Evidence that this charity exists: a standard web search of the organization's name will provide you with some information.
2. Evidence that the charity is a legitimate 501(c)(3) organization: check with your Secretary of State or Attorney General's websites, or Guidestar.
3. While I have my arguments with measures of "efficiency", checking Charity Navigator or the Better Business Bureau (or both!) should provide some helpful information, such as the overhead of a given charity and whether any complaints have been lodged against it within the last three years.

None of this is particularly new information, except that my opinion of efficiency and overhead aren't mainstream in or out of the third sector.  I personally subscribe to the more lenient overhead "limit": 25%.

"But Charity!  A full quarter of what I donate might be going to pay for someone's salary?  And you think that's OK?"

Well, yes, I do - perhaps because for the most part, salaries in the NPO world aren't very high except at the top.  Charities rely on "overhead" (particularly the administration part; fund raising expenses are often separated) to ensure that the organization can do what it needs to do.  How can an organization effectively provide services if the electricity has been shut off, the roof of its building is leaking, and they can't pay their employees anything resembling a living wage - or worse, can't even make payroll?

Priests* are exempt from Maryland's child abuse reporting requirement as to confidential confessors make by the perpetrator, victim, or anyone else with knowledge.

Now, my friend thought that this meant something somewhat more rational, like they were exempt from registering as a sex offender. But as terrible as that would be (and untrue as it is, at least if Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is any judge), the truth is worse and more bizarre. To give an example of what that particular rule of privledge means...

If someone confesses to a priest that they molested a kid, the priest doesn't have to report it. If a child tells their priest that they've been molested, the priest doesn't have to report it.

This news may not come as a surprise to you (it didn't to Charity), but it certainly bugged me. I mentioned it to a friend, who wondered, can priests/preachers report suspicions of molestation? Notwithstanding whether or not their religious oaths give them permission, does the law?

In evidence law, for privilege, it matters who holds the privilege.

For instance, spousal privilege. Depending on the type (yes, there is more than one - some apply to ex-spouses, some to current, etc. but I don't want to get into that here) and the state where the trial is taking place, a husband may be able to waive spousal privilege and choose to testify against his wife, or the defendant may refuse to allow their spouse to testify. See the difference?

So for priests; is it that the confessor is the one being protected against having their secrets spilled, or the priest being protected against losing the confidence of their flock?

Apparently, the case law is unclear. It's not something that comes up often, really--most lawyers are smart enough not to start a giant sh!tstorm with the Church, which has some seriously powerful lobbies. In Maryland, it seems that the closest case is one in which the confessor was dead, and the priest wanted to testify, and if memory serves, he was allowed to.

Md. Cts. & Jud. Proc. Code Ann. (9-111) provides: "A minister of the gospel, clergyman, or priest of an established church of any denomination may not be compelled to testify on any matter in relation to any confession or communication made to him in confidence by a person seeking his spiritual advice or consolation."

And the language of the statute implies that it's the priests who hold the privilege, not the people confessing. This probably has a lot to do with politics; as I mentioned, the Catholic Church is a powerful lobby, and even though the US is largely Protestant, it's not like Protestants don't have powerful lobbies too, and legislators are incredibly leery of ticking off the religious powers.

From a practical standpoint, they probably should be--look how much power the religious sector has on things that are purely intellectual-debate issues. How much worse would it be if legislators actually tried to take a central tenant of a faith (the sanctity of the confessional) and take it away?

That doesn't mean it's OK for child molesters to get away with abusing kids.

I'm glad I'm taking Evidence Law Reform next semester.

_{*Maryland was founded by Catholics, so "Priests" is the preferred term, but it refers to preachers and the "confessor" type people of the other religious denominations, and not just priests in formal confession circumstances.}

Pallotta expects, implicitly, that readers know the following before they read this article:

1. Donors these days are sophisticated: instead of just writing a check at Christmas to whatever humanitarian organization sends the nicest mailing, many if not most donors are trained (one might even say, conditioned) to look for certain indicators that an NPO is worthy of a donation.  The biggest of these is the percentage of overhead a charity has: that is, what the charity spends on administrative expenses (salaries, keeping the lights on, etc.) and fund raising.
2. Non-profits reveal their various financial information through three sources: the 990, which is the official IRS tax filing a charity must submit each year; the financial summary in the charity's annual report; and the audited financial statement, which serves as a supplement to the 990.
3. The salaries of non-profit workers are, as a general rule, much lower than those of their for-profit counterparts.

Pallotta's argument - that charities are treated as "female" while the for-profit world is treated as "male" - is a provocative one.  Certainly the idea that anyone who makes money from charity work must be evil still holds sway in the public mind: when asking people to sign a petition to stop government funding cuts from the NPO where I work, I was repeatedly told that instead of stealing money from the government, we should first cut the salaries of everyone in the organization.

Pallotta would indicate that this sentiment - don't you dare make money by doing charity work - is part of what holds back the NPO world:

Consider: The for-profit sector is free to pay competitive wages based on the value people produce, yet it’s considered unseemly for anyone to make money in charity. This forces our brightest young men and women to choose between doing well and doing good, and drives most of them, burdened by student debt, into for-profit careers.

I have to segue for a minute here.  I'm lucky, in a sense.  Due to the extraordinary generosity of my parents I'm not struggling under a mountain of student debt.  However, because I have chosen to do good rather than do well, I still live at home.  I cannot - even were I to have roommates - afford to live independently in a relatively safe neighborhood.  My paycheck simply will not cover rent, gas for the car, food, work-appropriate clothing, and the medical expenses my insurance company doesn't cover.  These complaints are echoed by myriad young NPO employees who after a year or two will move on to either the most profitable sectors of the non-profit world (health care, usually) or into the for-profit world.

Back to Pallotta's argument: he isn't saying that because women work in charity, the world imposes restrictions on charities and that's sexist.  His argument is a little more nuanced than that.  Instead, he posits that because of the historical separation between "for-profit" (the realm of men, in Puritan teachings) and charity work (the realm of women according to the same societal beliefs), the non-profit is itself subconsciously treated as female. He concludes by noting that the women's movement changed the world, and that

It’s time now to undertake a similar movement to win equal economic rights for charity: Equal pay, equal ability to spend on markets, and to use financial incentive to attract capital and reward risk, no matter how uncomfortable that kind of equality might make us feel. When AmeriCorps has the same access to capital as Ameritrade, and microfinance has the same market cap as Microsoft, then the nonprofit sector will stand some chance of addressing the massive social problems that confront us. Until then, the sector’s true potential will remain obscured, and the needy will pay the price.

I would posit that in fact the "third sector" has taken advantage of the women's movement.  With the entrance of women to the workforce in ever greater numbers, the third sector has been able to take advantage of these new workers.  Women are socialized to do good, and third sector jobs are often touted as allowing much greater flexibility in the way of work-life balance.  Thus, women are socialized to pick third sector jobs - at least for a while - as a way of doing good and having more time for their families.

It can, perhaps, even be said that NPO jobs render women "non-threatening": many women are constantly socialized to believe that if we make more money than the man we are interested in, dating, or married to, he will feel emasculated, discouraged, and may even cheat or leave because he is "intimidated by" a woman who makes more money.

I don't necessarily agree with the whole of Pallotta's argument, mostly because I think that for-profit companies should be more regulated in what profit-making methods they are legally able to use - subprime mortgages, anyone? - however taken with a grain of salt and a step back from the literal, Pallotta's argument - that until we stop segregating entirely the third sector we will never be able to solve our social ills - has merit.

I'm not going to talk too much about the cover this time, except to note again with approval that the machete she's holding actually shows up in the story, yay artists (it's still Larry Rostant) whose covers actually address the subject material.

The idea of this book is that Allie has to deal with the soul of her dead father cohabitating her body and generally trying to tell her what to do. She also has to deal with the Authority, which her father was a member of, though he did his dead level best to keep her off their radar and vice versa. Her main goal is to learn to better use her magical abilities, except nothing really comes out of that and she doesn't learn to do too much that's new.

Book three starts almost immediately where book two left off, which isn't something I really like in a series, mostly because it doesn't allow for as much of a lead-in to this story, and because it requires a lot more info-dumping in the beginning to catch the reader up. Unfortunately, MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS kicked off with a lot of infodumping, and I didn't enjoy the set-up too much, although the opening scenes were rather good visually. The pacing was good in the beginning, and we never got cheated out of our payoff.

Unfortunately, as I read through the rest of the book, the pacing started to feel a little hectic. Though I really enjoyed book two and book one had quite a bit of promise, book three felt like a bit of a let down. It was still a solid book, with a solid premise and a lot of good things about it (for instance, there's a moment when Allie splits her lip and she and her boyfriend stop kissing because she hasn't been tested lately, and recently she's had a few sketchy things happen to her--like being injected with a needle and stabbed, and she came into contact with bleeding people while she had open wounds--which I think is a great thing to see happen in a novel) but it wasn't excellent.

MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS felt a bit like the editor saw the burgeoning success of the series and decided to slack off a bit in urging the right amount of tightening around the middle and the end. The sub-threads (involving the creepy nightmare thing, Davy's ex-girlfriend, Allie's father) mostly come together in the end, though Allie's father randomly stops insisting that she find the discs find the discs find the discs, and there's no real indication of why his behavior changed. Allie also doesn't talk to Violet about how her father might be affecting their relationship, even though it seemed like she intended to and she certainly should.

But the main thing that bothered me about this book was the loose ends. Things didn't get ignored, subplots didn't get dropped, no, but so many things were planned out that didn't happen. Though it seems they'll be looked at in the next book, and I don't mind when the last 10 pages set up the thing to be dealt with next time or if there are subplots that span multiple novels (for instance as happens in The Dresden Files) that's not what happened here. Instead, Nora came into town to get Cody, and sure, there was a happy ending there, but Allie never actually gets a free minute to sit down and bond with her friend. They see each other in passing, and it's a bit irksome. There are things that Allie plans to tie up with Violet that she never gets to. She has lessons she's agreed to start taking, but she never even picks out an instructor. Because she never has time, it's pushed off "until later." But as a reader, I want the "later" to come during the time frame of the book. I want the story to be wrapped up.

Unfortunately, this one wasn't, and one of the side effects of this is that the pace felt hectic. Which brings me to my last problem with MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS, which was that it was kind of confusing. I don't want to sound like I didn't understand what was happening or that the plot didn't make sense, because it did. But there were moments when I felt a little lost about what was going on, and they didn't all get cleared up. As a reader, I don't like that feeling of quicksand beneath my toes, even if the narrator is probably feeling the same way.

That said, there certainly were things I enjoyed about MAGIC IN THE SHADOWS. I really liked the gargoyle, and the subtle hints that were dropped about the Hand who created it and the relationship that Allie and he have that may have allowed her to set him free. I loved that we got to see Nora again, and the way that Zay and Allie begin working on their relationship. Seamus was a great character, and seeing him (an adult) interact with his mother (a real badass) was very cool. It was also good to see Zay interact with his peers, have a friend, instead of just playing strong, silent type with Allie. We see a lot of his past--including an ex that causes trouble for Allie, though the way Allie refrained from being catty was great to see, given the general bitchiness that pervades the genre. Monk also does a good job showing characters who have dark tendencies, unfortunate addictions, and real problems, while letting those problems be problems without defining the characters or making them into cookie cutter bad guys while simultaneously refusing to forgive those dark traits just because the characters are on the side of the angels.

In general, I think the series is still promising. Monk does a lot of things right, and the things she does right are things that I find really important philosophically and that the majority of the genre tends to get teeth-grindingly wrong. However, I felt this book experienced a few growing pains.

3/5: The concept is great and this book did a lot of things right, but the pacing and loose ends caused a lot of problems for me.

You can buy from: Powell’s | Borders | B & N | Amazon | Indiebound

This is usually a double-edged sword, if the consultant is supposed to oversee the day-to-day operations of a team or entire department.  The group s/he will be overseeing usually has an established dynamic, and the consultant's sudden appearance disrupts that.  Sometimes the consulting firm will send in a consultant who turns out to be poor match, whether due to personality conflicts or lack of relevant experience.

In one case I am familiar with, a consultant about my age was brought in to oversee a team of no less than ten people - most of whom had many years of experience in the field of fundraising.  She had, to be frank, pretty much no not-for-profit experience - and unlike an older consultant, she couldn't make up for that with management experience. Between that complete lack of experience and the frustration enveloping the team, the tension was palpable and affected not just that team, but the entire department.  I can't even imagine what the consultant must have felt like, as most of the department actively gossiped about how poorly equipped she was to handle the job.

In addition to the gossip, some of the younger team members sought out further information about this young woman, using Google and other search methods.  Whether they were seeking disparaging information or not, it certainly turned up - and that didn't help matters either.  While things seem to have calmed down somewhat, as they always do, it's apparent that this young woman is still treated as very much an outsider, and the consulting firm made a misstep - how serious remains to be seen - in placing such an inexperienced person in a position of leadership.  The organization in question, of course, should have stepped in and asked for a more experienced consultant.

I've had it for a few months now, and so it's time to sit down and decide how I feel about the overall wisdom of the purchase. The short version is, I'm really glad I bought it.

The best part of the Kindle is that it doesn't take up a lot of space, and I can read more than one book even if I only have it with me, if I end up having more time than I thought, or I decide that I absolutely have to have the sequel after all. The fact that I only need one hand to read is convenient as well--I can click with my "carrying" hand instead of having to flip pages using both hands, and I don't have to worry about wind or the pages turning on their own.

I read a book sitting in a convertible on the way from Norfolk to Baltimore, with the top down. I couldn't have done that without the Kindle--at least not without a whole lot of frustration. I also find that I read faster with the Kindle, because I don't flip pages, accidentally drop the book and lose my location, have my fingers get in the way of words, etc.

There are negatives to the Kindle, however. I find it a lot more difficult to flip randomly around the book looking for something, particularly if I'm, say, writing a review. Sure, I can just run a search or use the option to go to the right percentage of how far into the book I want to go, but I find flipping by 2-3 pages a lot more organic. Perhaps as I get more used to the Kindle, this will get easier. And I will say that it's not bad for anthologies, since it lets me skip to the next short story if I don't like the one I'm on, but I couldn't find a way to go right to the one I wanted, or back easy.

The .pdf reader is described as being a preliminary, beta sort of thing, and it definitely shows that they haven't mastered proper rendering of .pdfs, which makes reading e-books that I get in that format (I don't have many, but there are a few given out free at conventions or in contests and the like) a pain in the butt. Also, there seem to be more typos and errors in the e-format than I'm used to in books, but that's probably more the publisher's fault than Amazon's.

I find it really annoying that, although both sides (left and right) of the Kindle have a "next page" button, only the left side lets you go back. The menu button is where the "back" button logically should be, and I can't go back if I'm reading with my right hand, which is really annoying, especially since it's advertised that you can read with either hand.

As a note, the Kindle is the only e-book reader I've ever owned, so this is a comparison of the Kindle and a paper book, not the Kindle and other e-readers.

Then an article in the New York Times covered a method that has been catching on recently: the bento box.  I won't get into the history of bento, but one of the interesting ideas behind bento boxes is that if you fill your box with normal food (for example, not with chocolate fudge), the size of the bento equals roughly how many calories you are eating.  It's an interesting way to control caloric intake.

Another thing that a bento does well is food separation.  Why carry three tupperware containers of various sizes because you don't want to mix strawberries with chicken teriyaki?  A bento box with dividers will keep your food separated, either in different sections on the same "level", or in a different tier if you have a multi-tier bento box.

Personally, I use a two-tier bento box that fits approximately 580ml of food, or just shy of 2.5 cups worth of food.  So, my meal each day is about 580 calories.

What do I put into a bento?  I generally go for laziness over creativity - I make a little extra for dinner the night before, pack the bento and let it cool on the countertop, then refrigerate it overnight.  I try, however, to pack foods that will do well in a bento: small pieces of chicken, miniature burgers (I love Just Bento's meat and tofu recipe), small-cut vegetables, small fruits, etc.  Liquid-based and very heavily sauced items can leak out if your box isn't water-tight; extra sauce can be kept in little bento sauce bottles.

The prompt immediately reminded me of IRON KISSED by Patricia Briggs, where Mercy is tricked into drinking from Orfino's Bane (a goblet that lets someone rob the person who drinks from it of their will). In IRON KISSED, the bad guy, Tim, has stolen a bunch of fae artifacts, including bracers that make him very strong and a Druid's Hide, which keeps his enemies from finding or harming him.

One of the things that Tim makes Mercy do is to fall in love with him. It's a very disturbing scene, and it's emotionally wrenching to watch Mercy fight with the compulsion to maintain a sense of self. In the end, though, Mercy is able to beat Tim--precisely because she loves him. She wasn't his enemy because he told her not to be, she says after she attacks and kills him.

This is not, however, a review of IRON KISSED.

It should seem obvious that it is easier to love a good person than a bad one. I'm not speaking of romantic love here, but rather platonic love--the love you have for a friend or relative. However, in my experience, friendships don't grow up because of admiration between two people about the strength of their consciences or the saintliness of their decisions. Most people don't pick their friends based on how much they donate to charity or how many puppies they've saved from the pound. It more usually has to do with things such as time spent together in a school or work environment or compatibility of interests, i.e. liking similar music, movies, sports, etc.

Most of my close friends are people that I've known for over five years. "The girls" I met in high school, and we were in the same extracurricular group. For 9th and 10th grades, we had all of the same classes together, and every year, after school we would stay after for at least an hour every day, and there were days when we were at school until five or ten o'clock at night working on sets, practicing lines. Some years, when we won State competition, we met on weekends to work on fundraising to pay for our trips to Globals in Tennessee. Other people I'm close to, I met in middle school and have been friends with--despite occasional blips where we fell out of touch, like when I went to college--ever since.

Around the time when I went to college, though, my mother got sick, and my college was about 2 hours from home. So I came home on weekends to do housework and spend time with my family, which meant that while I was attending classes, I didn't spend a lot of time socializing. I was friendly with people, but now that I've come back home for law school, there isn't anyone from college who I talk to, other than the occasional e-mail to or from a professor. The same is true of law school; I have acquaintances here, but there are only a handful of people here who I would invite to a party or out to the bar, and of them, I doubt I'll still talk to them after the bar exam.

What does this have to do with the topic?

Some of the people I'm close to are, quite frankly, awful human beings. I won't name names (they wouldn't mean anything to you anyway), but I have friends who are manipulative, irresponsible, borderline sociopathic, dangerous. I know people who can't stand to be anything but the center of attention, people who are so boring and sad that they make parties not-fun to be at. I have friends who I call whores to their face, who are alcoholics, who are on probation for assault. They have redeeming qualities, of course--all people do--but for the most part, I'm comfortable admitting that I am friends with people who elicit such (justifiable--I don't deny it) distaste in others I know that group events almost always end in tears, and have occasionally broken out in violence.

Yes, I love these people, but I am comfortable in stating that I have friends whom I also detest on a moral level, where I hate everything they stand for.

I don't love them because they're good people--I love them because they're my friends. They're my friends because we share history, because they've gone out of their way to do sweet things for me, because I can sit and talk and laugh for hours with them about a movie or life, because when they're in town I want to drop everything to be with them. I may disapprove of things they do, and I'm not afraid to tell them, but in most ways, I don't love them despite their character flaws, I love them because of their character flaws. They wouldn't be the same people they are, without them. The same character traits that make them horrible people also give them the opportunity to be great--to land them good jobs in the medical field, to send them into a Ph.D. program at 21, to let them stand on their own two feet despite horrible childhoods.

To be a friend, you have to understand and accept who your friends are. You have to be ok with the fact that they aren't perfect people--you can't pretend that because they're your friend, because you love them, they don't have flaws. It's okay to hate something about a person--even to hate that person--if you love them.

That's life, and frankly I think more damage is done when people try to pretend that the people they care about are good people, than when they accept that some people have glaring character flaws and work those flaws into their relationships so that they stop being hurtful or infuriating, so that they simply are.