It was the fat joke heard 'round the world. Pope Francis, speaking with Donald and Melania Trump during their recent visit, asked the first lady whether she'd been feeding her husband potica, a rich Slovenian dessert.

His Holiness wasn't the only one eyeballing the president's diet. Recently, the public learned that the White House kitchen staff knows to deliver their boss extra Thousand Island dressing and a double serving of ice cream while his guests get vinaigrette and a single scoop of vanilla, triggering sniggers about presidential gluttony.

And since Trump so shamelessly slings stingingly personal insults tied to fitness and body type from "Miss Piggy" to "fat pig" to "Little Marco" why resist the urge to poke his proverbial soft underbelly?

We should resist, because Trump's attitudes toward healthy eating and exercise aren't a joke they have serious consequences for the nation's health. First, they mark a dramatic pivot from his presidential predecessors on both sides of the aisle. Previous presidents saw projecting a personal embrace of healthy living as politically attractive, while Trump perceives just the opposite.

And second, in a nation already defined by highly unequal access to healthy food and exercise, Trump's own inclinations threaten to make wellness an even lower public and private priority. Today, if your work schedule, child care and next meal are unpredictable, wellness is at best aspirational and at worst a cruel reminder of yet another dividing line between haves and have-nots. Trump's attitudes and actions will only exacerbate this inequality even as they thrill his fans.

American presidents have celebrated wellness as a personal and political virtue for so long it verges on clich. Teddy Roosevelt famously advocated an outdoorsy "strenuous life," which showcased his own swagger and resonated in a moment when urbanization and the expansion of white-collar work provoked anxiety that white men were becoming sedentary sissies.

Sixty years later, President-elect John F. Kennedy decried in Sports Illustrated that affluence had created a physically and morally "Soft American" unfit for Cold War citizenship. This essay painted JFK as a champion of "vigor" (even as he privately suffered from serious ailments) and boosted support for federally funded physical education and recreation programs.

Democrats Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were often photographed jogging, while a 1983 Parade spread featured Republican Ronald Reagan exercising on Nautilus machines and chopping wood. Fellow Republican George W. Bush installed a treadmill on Air Force One, required staffers to exercise and told Runner's World in 2002 that at long last, "statistic after statistic is beginning to sink into the consciousness of the American people that exercise is one of the keys to a healthy lifestyle."

President Trump, however, missed that memo. The president's conspicuous contempt for self-care unlike Obama's occasional furtive cigarette benefits him politically in part because it taps into the anti-Obama hatred that propelled him to power. The Obamas took the presidential embrace of healthy living as a vehicle to improve society and self to new levels.

Men's Health dubbed Obama the "fittest president ever" and stealth video of his workout in a Warsaw hotel gym went viral. If Michelle Obama first drew notice for her sculpted biceps, her legacy became Let's Move and lunchroom reform. So powerful is this association that a Tennessee school cafeteria worker recently told me that a Trump supporter crowed that serving her child chocolate milk and tater tots at school was a "personal F-U to Michelle Obama."

Not only does Trump benefit from being the anti-Obama, but he also gives voice to a sense among his supporters that healthy eating and exercise have become increasingly elitist. Back in 2007, Obama caught blowback at an Iowa campaign stop for making casual reference to buying arugula at Whole Foods. Soon after, white working class reality TV star Mama June proudly told In Touch that despite her wealth, she served her family "sketti" enriched spaghetti doused in butter and ketchup rather than snobbishly preparing quinoa.

Trump's self-fashioning as champion of the common man capitalizes on the contemporary association between wellness and unsavory cosmopolitan pretension. Yet his love of rich foods and leisure paradoxically trades on century-old tropes that also cast him as a kind of Everyman's Billionaire. Until about 1920, the wealthy conspicuously consumed caloric foods and avoided exertion because few felt they could afford to do so.

Dominant scientific theory at the time argued that humans were born with a finite energy supply and that the better classes should conserve theirs for loftier ends than physical labor. When industrialization and the white-collar sector made food abundant and sedentary work more accessible however, resisting these temptations through diet and exercise became a display of upper-class restraint as it remains today.

Trump, whose appeal to many stems from nostalgia, conjures an outdated but aspirational ideal of what wealth might feel, or taste, like. It's why dropping $36 on an "haute burger" just after overwhelmingly capturing the working class white vote didn't tarnish Trump's legitimacy. It's why the "cheap version of rich" marketed in every truffle-oil-soaked steak slung at his eponymous "Grille" still sells. Same goes for his peculiar but precedented explanation that he prefers relaxing at his various luxury properties to exercise that would deplete his "non-rechargeable battery." In the throwback image of American abundance that Trump hawks, his supporters envision themselves as deserving fat cats consuming cake rather than kale.

And yet. While expending energy on exercise and dietary restraint may be undesirable for Trump's everyman, it's a requirement for the women in his orbit. Of the little we know about Melania Trump, her penchant for Pilates is widely reported and a former roommate remembered her consuming only vegetables and diligently wearing ankle weights around the house. First daughter Ivanka Trump's diet and exercise routines have long been the stuff of lifestyle pubs, and she recently craved a sweat badly enough to cause controversy by enrolling at a Washington studio under an alias.

In 1996, Trump himself set up a media scrum in a gym to film a tearful Alicia Machado exercising after she gained what he determined was an unacceptable amount of weight for Miss Universe. A viral meme in the wake of the January Women's March announced, "In one day, Trump got more fat women out walking than Michelle Obama did in 8 years."

Clearly, Trump's world is a sexist one in which wellness is a women's issue. Weight control is appropriately top priority for the half of the population whose worth corresponds to their waistlines.

Unlike exercise and diet, sports especially football have long earned the approval of conservatives, including Trump, for building masculinity and competitiveness. The president's apparently contradictory celebration of sport and scorn for healthy living actually corresponds to a longstanding cultural divide between the two. In the 1950s and 60s, straight American males were assumed to be so uninterested in diet and exercise that women's magazines counseled wives to trim the fat from their husband's roasts out of eyesight in order to safeguard the health of their hearts and egos.

By 1979, historian Christopher Lasch bemoaned the "degradation of sport" due to the "new sports for the noncompetitive" taking place in gyms and studios, which promoted bland "amateurism" in the name of inclusiveness and health promotion. (Some might consider this a forerunner to conservative complaints about participation trophies.) Thus, in the Trump playbook, sports are commendable for building manly character, while expanding opportunities to exercise and eat mindfully for health or beauty is feminine and inferior.

Making America Great Again will affect our collective wellbeing in subtle ways beyond the AHCA, cuts to Planned Parenthood and the deregulation of school nutrition that Trump embraces. Contemporary wellness culture is flawed, but has dramatically improved Americans' lives and saved taxpayers millions. Diverse policies and programs ranging from Title IX, to yoga for the incarcerated, to corporate wellness initiatives, to body-positive activism have helped make the connection between healthy living and human flourishing widely accepted. Trump threatens to destroy those gains.

We owe our president the privacy to eat and exercise as he wishes, free from the fat-shaming cruelty for which his critics rightly fault him. But when he brandishes his unhealthy lifestyle to romanticize an era in which junk science upheld twisted ideas about gender, class and health, we owe it to each other to resist the deepening wellness divide, body, heart and mind.

Washington Post

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is associate professor of history at the New School and the author of "Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture." She is currently writing a book about American fitness culture.

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Donald Trump's diet is bad for America's health - Chicago Tribune

On Wednesday, the Washington Post published an article titled, "Why Donald Trump's diet is bad for America's health." That's right amid journalists' sustained hysteria over President Trump's efforts to discredit the mainstream news media, the mainstream news media is critiquing his diet.

To be clear, the article was amusing and I would never argue it shouldn't have been written or deserved to be censored. But it's just not necessary for a mainstream outlet to publish an article that goes after the president for his diet while working to convince the country that it's fully committed to rescuing our precious democracy from the "darkness." Editors at the Post should have passed and suggested it be submitted to Slate or Salon or another progressive publication.

This article, by the way, is just one of many similar examples of mainstream outlets finding laughably creative ways to attack Trump. Which is why Trump and his supporters argue the mainstream media will find any way at all to attack the president. The publication of this article doesn't exactly rebut their argument.

Really it's somewhat remarkable that mainstream journalists have the audacity to complain about Trump attacking the credibility of the media when their publications continue to willfully provide him with the ammunition to do so. Those are the very headlines that Trump allies blast around on social media or rant about on the radio, incrementally making Americans less and less inclined to trust the serious reporting from top outlets.

Yes, the Post publishes opinion articles from people on both sides of the aisle. Still, this one was filed under the paper's news analysis section, and almost comically embodied Trump allies' constant complaints about the press finding every possible way to critique him.

If you are concerned about the president discrediting you, do not provide him with the tools to do so. I, too am worried about the disintegration of trust in the media. I think it's important to have gatekeepers who can be counted on to tell readers the truth in a balanced way. But the media will never earn back the country's trust if it insists on publishing trivial attacks that only make the president's work of undermining their credibility so much easier.

Emily Jashinskyis a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

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Democracy Dies in Double Scoops: WaPo publishes article critiquing Trump's diet - Washington Examiner

TAMPA BAY, Fla. - Charcoal toothpaste, charcoal detox pills, and even charcoal lemonade! People are going charcoal-crazy over the dark stuff. We're not exactly talking about the charcoal you use to grill out with, but rather activated charcoal.

It's the same activated charcoal doctors have been using for detox in the emergency room, but now, it's made its way into mainstream as a diet fad!

One Tampa doctor is warning though, for some, this new way of detox and teeth whitening could be dangerous.

"There is really no medical necessity for activated charcoal," said Dr. Kamal Patel. "And in fact even for teeth, it's been shown to take off some of the enamel from the teeth."

Dr. Patel has done extensive research on the effects of activated charcoal on the human body when taken as a detox supplement and says his findings are quite disturbing, especially for people who are on life-saving medications.

"We found that people that were taking activated charcoal; it was interacting with their prescription medication and that was dangerous."

Dr. Patel isn't convinced and neither is the Food and Drug Administration. The marketing flyers that come with some of these products even warn people should consult with their healthy provider about mixing any supplements with medications.

Read more:
Tampa doctor warns about possible dangers of taking activated charcoal for diet purposes - ABC Action News

At Colonia Verde in Fort Greene. Photo: Liz Clayman

When Hawa Hassan couldnt find the sauces from her home country of Somalia in the States, she made them herself. Now, shes the creator and CEO of Basbaas Sauce, a line of condiments that so far includes tamarind-date sauce and coconut-cilantro chutney. (Shes also involved in fundraising efforts for ZanaAfrica.) Basbaas is currently the only Somali line of sauces sold in America, and this week, Hassan took a break from her hustle to go back to Seattle, where she moved as a refugee when she was 7. There, she feasted on Ethiopian food and a 10-year-olds excellent home cooking, and returned to New York to enjoy meals at Santina and Colonia Verde. Read all about it in this weeks Grub Street Diet.

Friday, June 23 Im in Seattle, where I spent many of my formative years. Im here to see my goddaughter, Smary, who recently turned 10 and is graduating from fifth grade. Her mother, Mulu, has been my best friend since we were about that age. After the graduation, about ten of us head over to our favorite Ethiopian restaurant, Abeba. Mulus dad is already there and waiting for us with tej (honey wine) on the table. As soon as we sit down, he suggests we cut the sweetness of the wine with a few squeezes of lemon. This is radically different to me, so I listen closely. Mulu is a refugee like me, but shes Ethiopian and Im Somali a big difference. I spent many years sharing meals with her and her family, and this outing feels wonderful, like coming home.

Lunch is doro wat, Ethiopias national dish. Its made with chicken slow-cooked in a spicy, onion-based stew, and served with hard-boiled eggs. Theres also a veggie combo, shiro (ground chickpeas), and doro tibs (beef cubes sauteed in a spice blend). Ethiopian food is served on a communal platter and eaten with your hands. Once the food arrives, Mulus sister Elisabeth asks for mitmita, a hot Ethiopian spice blend. It transforms the flavor profile and makes everything taste even better. Of course, through all of the spices and delicacies, were all talking, laughing, and feeding each other, a practice known as gursha. I wish I could express how lovely it all is.

For dinner, Mulu, her sister, and I set out for a girls night. We grew up in the South End neighborhood of Seattle, and we all have fond memories of Lake Washington. We head to BluWater Bistro and sit outside. We start with a Sauvignon Blanc, which I relish, as Im still stuffed from that big lunch. Mulu orders jerk-chicken satay, pineapple-jcama salsa, and wild greens for the table. Shes excited to be out on a Friday night, and Im enjoying how laid-back it all is. We make plans to meet more of my friends at Stone Lounge in Bellevue, where my high-school friend Zack Bruce is singing.

Saturday, June 24 I wake up early (7:30 a.m. on a Saturday thats early). The girls are heading to tap class, so I read a little, check emails, and set my schedule for the week. Soon, its brunch time. Mulus husband, Zithri, is a Ph.D. student, so they live basically on campus in a lively neighborhood called U Village, which has a lot of options. I walk over to Joey Kitchen, get a seat outside, and people watch. I order a BBQ salmon-rice bowl with sesame soy sauce, snap peas, edamame, mushrooms, and daikon. Its crunchy, savory, and filling.

Dinner is made by my goddaughter, and shes so excited to feed us (with help from her mom). We have seared salmon, butter-lettuce salad, and simple Asian egg noodles. I love that she credits her sous-chef mom. Shes 10, and this is honestly better than anything I usually make on a Saturday night. Im so proud of her love for cooking.

Sunday, June 25 I wake up really early, at 6:45 a.m., chug water, and do a little writing. I go for a walk and get coffee for everyone. Im having breakfast with my friend Vanessa, and she suggests Jujubeet, a juice bar, which is a new spot for me. We both order a power smoothie with almond milk, cacao, almond butter, protein powder, and banana. It tastes like chocolate milk, and I dont feel guilty.

Today is Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. Mulu, whose husband is Muslim, invites me to lunch. We go to Stanfords Restaurant & Bar in Tukwila. I order the pan-seared crab Benedict, which features poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, asparagus, housemade biscuits, and country potatoes. Its great, but too much for me.

We rush home because Im due to fly back to New York tonight, and I want to spend more time with the girls and Mulu. My time in Seattle always flies by; its bittersweet.

Monday, June 26 I drink a ton of water on the red eye, and ginger tea when I get home. Im not really hungry (for once), so I plunge back into work. Basbaas, my Somali condiment company, is growing fast, and its definitely time to raise money for the next phase. Ive got meetings all over town. Its exciting, exhausting, and overwhelming. But through all the daily craziness, Im grateful to be sharing my culture and my cuisine.

I run home and whip up a late lunch of scrambled eggs on rye, a personal favorite. Sadly, my spinach went bad while I was out West, so I saute a red onion, a handful of mushrooms, and diced garlic. I throw in the two eggs at the very end. For seasoning, I only add black peppercorns, because Im obsessed with using my Basbaas coconut-cilantro chutney on everything.

Just before dinner, I have a boxing appointment with my dear friend and trainer Susan Reno.

Ive been boxing for ten years at the Wat in Tribeca. I love it there, but I havent done any workouts for two weeks, and I know Susan is going to kick my butt. She does, and then I head to Santina. Its airy, bright, and refreshing, and I meet my friend Joseph Mizzi for dinner. Joe is the co-founder of 14+, a nonprofit that builds and operates schools and orphanages in rural Zambia. Im inspired every time I see him.

I start with a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, while Joe gets a Montepulciano. Joe and I always eat alike, so we share. We get the salad with tuna carpaccio and the cecina, an Italian pancake served with broiled rock shrimp, crispy fried shallots, spicy ginger, and bok choy. Im in heaven and probably dancing, which Im known to do when the food is this yummy. We transition to the branzino crudo and the spaghetti with blue crab. I cant believe how light the spaghetti is, and how much flavor the cherry tomatoes and parsley add. I love New York, but right now it feels like Im cruising the Mediterranean.

Tuesday, June 27 Ive got jet lag and Im still on PT. I chug water and take a rehab shot from Juice Press. I pick up coffee on the way to my first meeting, but like most New Yorkers, Im moving slower than normal because of the MTA. After kicking myself for not making breakfast, I run into Sun in Bloom and huff down some corn-tortilla tacos. Feels so good.

Later, after work, I run to Trader Joes to get some fixins for tonights dinner (and a Clif bar). I often find myself craving my moms cooking, and when this happens, I make a Somali pasta sauce that we call suggo. Somali cuisine is rich, aromatic, and flavorful, influenced by the spices and tastes of far-off lands, such as India and Italy. (I share this recipe in Julia Turshens upcoming cookbook, Feed the Resistance.) Instead of spaghetti, I serve it over a sweet potato, and its delectable. After dinner, I have a couple cups of ginger tea, and then its off to dreamland.

Wednesday, June 28 I wake up around 6:30 a.m., down some water, and follow it up with a shot of apple-cider vinegar. My friend Lisa is stopping by at 8 for a walk and catch-up session before work, and when she arrives, we head to Bittersweet for iced coffee. Fort Greene, my Brooklyn hood, is buzzing this morning, the weather is perfect, and we do a brisk walk for an hour before we both need to get to work. I skipped breakfast and its fine.

Lunch is at Colonia Verde. I go there at least once a week, and its become my favorite local hangout. I love taking my Manhattan friends there. We order Cmodos sliders, which are lamb meatballs with cranberries on gluten-free po de queijo, and a big salad.

I run home, catch up on emails, and get ready for a work meeting in the evening. Dinner is at Piora in the West Village, and its new to me. I start with espresso, and then dive into monkey bread (with chicken wings, potato, and artichoke barigoule), crab, shrimp mandu, and crispy poussin, which our server insists tastes like candy apples. We move to a nightcap at Hudson Clearwater. Its been a busy day and Im grateful.

Washington Square Parks famed Dosa Man is featured.

The staff of three wasnt even sure who he was at first.

Youll have to make a reservation, though.

Restaurants cant afford to keep losing staff to jobs that pay $22 an hour, plus benefits, in a greenhouse.

For some reason, its going to be called Scotty Ps Big Mug Coffee.

The meal-kit-delivery services stock-market debut was unimpressive.

Through all of the spices and delicacies, were all talking, laughing, and feeding each other, a practice known as gursha.

Its new stunt is turning fan suggestions into flavors.

The restaurant closed for nearly a year after an electrical fire.

Its trying to find a solution for Greek-style yogurts slipping sales.

Your food agenda for the month.

Launching in the AmazonWhole Foods aftermath is less than ideal.

These are the easiest, best bean burgers youve ever made.

Thanks to his trade deal, beef is now going to China instead of them.

It says itll work faster and cheaper than its competitors.

Rooftop gatherings, lots of hot dogs, and more.

No word on the terms, but the network did not issue a retraction.

In a new test, a third of the chains iced drinks were contaminated with fecal bacteria.

Here, a group of truly great, mostly old-school, worth-going-out-of-your-way diners.

Original post:
Entrepreneur Hawa Hassan Loves Po de Queijo and Doro Wat - Grub Street

Dr. Travis Stork's known for hosting The Doctors, a health-focused daytime talk show, but these days, it's his latest book that's getting all the attention. In December, he released The Lose Your Belly Diet, a book that aims to help people lose weight by focusing on the bacteria in your gut.

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Though it's been months since its debut, the book continually spikes on Amazon's Movers and Shakers list its roundup of the top-selling products across the site and it's currently listed as the No. 1 bestseller in the Diet Books category. Naturally, this begs the question: What's all the hype about? Aside from the famous author and the fact that the title suggests fixing a problem just about every human struggles with (just look at search traffic for "flat belly" and "flat stomach" exercises). Is it all just marketing hype?

While it is cleverly marketed, what sets the diet apart from many out there is its focus on microbiomes those tiny organisms that live in our bodies, particularly our stomachs. Having a healthy mix of bacteria in your gut can keep you healthy, lowering your chance for various diseases and help keep your weight in check, according to Dr. Stork.

"Researchers are now discovering that gut bacteria also seem to play a role in the complex process of weight loss and weight gain," he writes. "We don't know exactly how much impact our Little Buddies have on our weight, but we're learning enough to believe that understanding the connection more fully may help us as we confront the obesity epidemic in the United States and in our own bodies."

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The book itself doesn't get tediously microbiome-focused, though. The first section of The Lose Your Belly Diet sets the stage, then part two goes into which foods can give you that healthy mix of gut bacteria. Part three focuses on other ways to boost your stomach's microbiome health (avoiding antibiotics when you don't need them, exercise, and what probiotic supplements to take, namely), while part four gets actionable, providing a diet quiz, recipes, and a meal plan.

Essentially, that meal plan involves eating plenty of leafy greens and fiber-rich vegetables, as well as high-fiber, low-sugar fruits, like blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, and pears. He also recommends two to three servings of whole grains per day, as well as six to seven servings of protein with a preference for nuts, legumes, fish, and dairy over beef, pork, and chicken.

Overall, the plan seems in line with many healthy eating plans out there. No food is off limits, though it does recommend avoiding anything that's high in sugar.

Though there aren't many stories online from people who've tried the diet, Dr. Stork has featured two women on his talk show who both lost 20 pounds and four inches from their waistline after following the diet for a few months.

"Compared to other diets, there is more variety. I didn't feel like I was deprived," one of the women featured, Karen, said. "Within a week, I actually felt different. I felt better."

Throughout the clip, there is a disclaimer: These results aren't typical. Most people lost an average of about 1 1/2 pounds per week. That falls in line with most recommendations for healthy weight loss (about 1-2 pounds every seven days).

Get the top 10 flat-stomach tips from The Lose Your Belly Diet here.

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People Are Going Crazy For The 'Lose Your Belly' Diet - Delish.com

Normally I like to kick back Saturday and not think about anything in particular with no appointments to keep and no clocks to watch, but I dropped that routine last weekend. Editor Samantha Perry had gotten a text from the Beckley Gun Club, and that text had the magic words machine gun.

For several years, the Beckley Gun Club has hosted a Media Day at its gun range in Cool Ridge up on Flat Top Mountain. Its built on reclaimed strip mining land, and a really great piece of scenery. The mined out areas, now converted into gun ranges, form natural arenas for shooting. Bullets and shotgun pellets go right into cliffs. The sites remoteness also adds to safety.

I look forward to Media Day, and this year fellow sports reporter George Thwaites and photographer Jessica Nuzzo joined me for the shooting. I know the way pretty well it involves going up steep roads, many of the paved with gravel so I didnt have any problems; in fact, the route seemed shorter this year. George and Jessica traveled together and found the route a touch more daunting; the forest on either side of the road makes you think of cougar and Bigfoot sightings. As the old saying goes, once you think youre lost, youre there. Jessica told me after she and George arrived that they were thinking of turning back. I know theyre glad that they didnt.

We get to fire a variety of rifles, shotguns and pistols; the gun club provides all the firearms and ammunition. But this year there was some ammunition I could have provided: filled pop cans.

Shooters Roost brought a can cannon to this years event. Its an AR-15 rifle body with what looks like a mortar or rocket tube instead of a regular barrel. You load the rifle with a .223 Remington blank cartridge and load a 12-ounce can of soda pop into the tube.

Naturally, I had to try it. You hold it like you would a shotgun, and when the range supervisor gives you the OK, you take off the safety and fire. The kickis similar to what a shotgun gives you.

I fired a can of Diet Mountain Dew about 150 feet into the air. It smashed into a cliff, spraying Mountain Dew and embedding itself into the rock. I think that can is still there. After firing that, I announced, I want one! Cpl. James Long, of the West Virginia State Police Princeton Detachment, who is a gun club member, pointed out that you wouldnt want to get hit by that cannon. I agreed, and remarked that the state medical examiner would have a pretty strange report to write if anyone got hit. Struck by a round of Diet Mountain Dew would be an unusual cause of death.

Longs daughter Brittany, who is a champion shooter in NRA 3-Gun competition, demonstrated her skill when she shot two cans fired by the AR-15 launcher. What was really amazing was how the cans reacted to the buckshot. Instead of exploding, they seemed to peel apart in flight as they kept going in a straight line. Imagine an oranges peel suddenly spinning right off the fruit.

We also got to fire an automatic AR-15 short barrel rifle with a suppressor. I quickly learned that its a weapon you dont master quickly. Yes, it looks simple, but when on full automatic, the barrel wants to climb and you have to hang on tight; of course, I came away wanting one of those, too.

Of course, we learned about gun safety, too. Thanks to the clubs lessons, Ive come to think of firearms the same way I think of power tools like saws and drills. Theyre perfectly safe if you use them correctly. For instance, leaving a power saw plugged up is a bad idea, and so is leaving a firearm loaded and with its safety off. Im planning to get a pistol of my own, but I also plan to attend classes on how to use and store it safely. Im not looking to get into any gun battles or foolishness like that; just some target shooting on a range and self protection, which I hope would never be necessary.

I plan to attend next years Media Day, and I hope my friends at theDaily Telegraph will keep attending it, too. Its a great opportunity to use firearms and learn more about them.

Greg Jordan is the senior reporter at the Daily Telegraph.Contact himat gjordan@bdtonline.com.

Continued here:
'Can cannon,' AR-15 add extra kick to Media Day at the range - Bluefield Daily Telegraph

JUNE 30 Former law minister Datuk Zaid Ibrahim has received a lot of flak for criticising the pilot of AirAsia Flight D7237 for asking passengers to pray during a turbulent flight that forced the plane to turn back to Perth.

Zaid had tweeted: Good lord, I much prefer pilot dont tell me death is imminent. Pilot has to give hope, and leave the rest to God and the passengers.

Some reports quoted a passenger as saying that the pilot had said: I hope you all say a prayer; I will be saying a prayer too and let's hope we all get back home safely, while other reports said the pilot had twice asked passengers to pray.

The key issue is really whether the pilot had followed SOP during emergencies. Does aviation SOP require passengers to be informed if a plane crash is inevitable?

It must be pointed out that Flight D7237 passengers were reportedly told to get into the brace position for landing. So it wasnt as if the pilot just asked everyone to pray without also giving them practical instructions on what to do during an emergency landing.

According to the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the safety rule to follow is aviate, navigate, communicate. The top priority is to Aviate, which means flying the plane, before figuring out where you are and where youre headed (Navigate). The last step, Communicate, is talking to air traffic control or someone outside the plane. No mention of talking to the cabin.

Some have defended Zaid by saying that prayer should be a private matter and that the pilot had caused unnecessary panic.

Their sentiments are understandable, given how religion is often exploited in Malaysia for political purposes. PAS has often called for alcohol to be banned on Malaysia Airlines, ignoring the fact that the airline serves passengers of all faiths.

No one has a problem if you choose to abstain from alcohol, premarital sex or anything else, but that doesnt mean everyone else should be forced to follow suit. Its a bit like asking your friends to stop eating ice cream just because youre on a diet, or calling for meat to be banned just because youre vegetarian.

However, we shouldnt allow such instances of religious extremism to cloud our perspective.

While asking passengers to pray may have caused some to panic (theres no evidence of this based on videos showing relatively composed passengers on the AirAsia flight), prayer also has a calming effect.

We should recognise the serenity that prayer may bring to some people at times of powerlessness.

For atheists, well, they probably wouldnt be unduly panicked at ominous warnings anyway since theyre likely to see death as a natural part of life.

The most important fact is that the pilot did his job he flew the plane well and got everyone to safety despite the failure of one engine on the twin-engine aircraft. What he said to passengers was secondary and didnt seem all that frightening (it wasnt as if he said Were all going to die).

There have been worse cabin crew announcements on other planes, such as one on Ryanair whose passengers were reportedly told by a flight attendant: We have ice on the wings and we don't want to die (a bad joke). Then theres a Southwest Airlines pilot who said: Were in trouble, were going down (the plane landed safely).

Of course, Captain Eric Moody on British Airways Flight 9 from Kuala Lumpur on June 24, 1982, showed the ultimate sangfroid when the plane flew into a cloud of volcanic ash caused by the eruption of Mount Galunggung in Indonesia.

He told passengers: Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

The plane landed safely in Jakarta.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

Originally posted here:
Should a pilot tell passengers to pray? - Malay Mail Online

Cats conquered the internet. Now theyre after games.

Spawning a litany of outrageous memes, I sometimes get the feeling these furry felines have sneakily taken control of the internet. Cat simulators, cats underwater, politi-cats, Nyan cats, is there anywhere they havent been? The moon, probably. I believe Gromit made it there first. Anyway, it goes without saying cats have claimed shares in video games with varying degrees of sophistication. From Atari to PlayStation to PC, weve seen cats leaping through windows, searching for lost frogs, and even ones stuck in a depressed funk without employment. Weve selected some memorable games starring cats below, but if weve skipped one of your favourites? Let us know!

1. Garfield

If youve ever read the comics, youll be all too familiar with Garfield, the worlds laziest cat period. In the eponymous PlayStation and PC games, players had to help Garfield clean the house or risk going on a diet. Normally, thats a good thing, but when you love lasagna as much as he does, its tantamount to punishment. Garfield also appeared in subsequent titles on Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Wii.

2. Night in the Woods

Website |itch.io | Steam| Bandcamp| Shop

Released to critical acclaim,Night in the Woodsis an arthouse indie adventure that covers atypical themes like depression and mental illness. It was funded on kickstarter in just over a day, and after four years of development, the story of Mae Borowski was ready. After dropping out of college, Mae winds up back in her home town of Possum Springs, but something feels off. Jobless and lacking any real direction, she tries reconnecting with her old friends, which eventually results in finding a trail of clues that lead to the woods.

3. Alley Cat

Alley Catslimited neon colour palette might seem boring by todays standards, but this game is a darling of the 1980s. In it, you control an energetic black cat that jumps around trash cans, dodging dogs and jumping through open windows to complete a slew of difficult minigames. Originally released for Atari,Alley Catmade the leap to PC, and can still be played today on the Internet Arcade.

4. HK

Development blog

This title certainly doesnt give away much, butHKis a beautiful looking game about a cat meandering through the busy streets of Hong Kong. Specifically, a place called Kowloon Walled City. Robots lean against the walls, deep in conversation. The glaring lights of shop signs clash against the night, and a cat moves eternally forward, using pipes as transport to reach its destination.HKis currently in development, so stay tuned for more updates later this year.

5. Rain World

Steam| PlayStation | Website

As you might have noticed, the protagonist in Rain Worldisactually a nomadic slugcat. And while its ghostly presentation is a little disturbing, the objective of the game is rather fascinating; you need to guide the slugcat safely through a ravaged ecosystem, hunting for scraps of food to stay alive. The world around you is bleak, unforgiving, and overflowing with frightening creatures that wont hesitate in making you their next meal.

6. Sonic Adventure

Steam

A bestselling launch title for SEGA Dreamcast, Sonic Adventurewas a much-loved platformer that put high-speed gameplay into the spotlight. It even got re-released for GameCube and PC. Sonic Adventurelets players control six different characters including Big the Cat, a feline whose reputation precedes him. InSonic Adventure, his story involved chasing after his friend Froggy and fishing him out of pondssomething fans didnt find particularly exciting. Last year, a trial forBigs Big Fishing Adventure 3released, a parody visual-novel about Big the Cats lost story.

7. Petz (Catz)

Catzis an animal simulation game for PC that belongs to thePetzseries. It let you adopt a cat, raise and care for it, and eventually, breed it with other cats. Another game calledPetz: Catz 2came out for PC, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS and Nintendo Wii but unlike the original Catz, it offered a new adventure that tasked players with defeating an evil wolf intent on destroying the universe.

And finally,Cat Mario is an absolute impostor and cant be in this list because hes in a tanooki suit.

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7 Games That Let You Play as a Cat - Gameranx (blog)