Huffington (Issue #55-56)

JULY 4TH SPECIAL ISSUE

JUNE 30 - JULY 7, 2013

America’s More Perfect Dip? PLUS: The Nation’s First Cocktail Have a Backyard Beach Cookout Know Your Whiskey How American Is Apple Pie Really?

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Contents HUFFINGTON 06.30-07.07.13

POINTERS: Abortion Bill Goes Down ... Berlusconi Busted

DOUBLE ISSUE

JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst DATA: Whiskey, on the Rocks?

Q&A: Adrian Grenier on Drugs

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AP PHOTO/TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL; AP PHOTO/ELAINE THOMPSON; SUSAN A. BARNETT; CHRIS BRIGNELL/ALAMY

HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE

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AMERICANIZING HUMMUS One company’s mission to take

A DAY TO REMEMBER Looking back at other defining

BY SAKI KNAFO

PHOTO ESSAY

over the dip industry.

moments in gay rights history.

ART MARKMAN: Stressed? Try This.

CANDY CHANG: The ‘Art’ of Life and Death QUOTED

Exit FOOD: Have a Beach Cookout ... at Home QUIZ: Which of These Dishes Are ‘American’?

DRINK: Our Nation’s (Supposed) First Cocktail TASTE TEST: 10 Ice Creams That’ll Warm Your Heart TFU

MEET THE PAYPAL 14 They aren’t going anywhere yet.

BY GERRY SMITH AND RYAN J. REILLY

COAT OF ARMS When the t-shirt doubles as a badge of honor.

BY SUSAN A. BARNETT

FROM THE EDITOR: Stars, Stripes and Hummus ON THE COVER: Photograph for

Huffington by Wendy George

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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Stars, Stripes and Hummus N THIS WEEK’S special Fourth of July issue, Saki Knafo looks at the Americanization of one of the Middle East’s most traditional dishes: hummus.

We meet Ronen Zohar, an Israeli, who heads America’s biggest hummus company, Sabra. Alongside competitors like Tribe, Sabra is at

ART STREIBER

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the forefront of a campaign to put hummus “on every American table,” in the company of snacks like potato chips, salsa and Doritos.

When Zohar joined executives of Frito-Lay last winter in a suite at the Superdome to watch the Super Bowl — the holy grail of American snacking holidays — he observed that Americans “are looking for what to dip.” But unfortunately, “they are dipping in the wrong product.”

Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Thanks in part to Sabra’s push, more and more Americans are making hummus their dip of choice. Hummus sales — and Sabra’s fortunes — are steadily rising.

Drawing on history and humor, Saki also takes us inside the “hummus wars.” For many people in the Middle East, hummus isn’t just a delicious chickpea dip — it’s part of their cultural identity.

In recent years, pro-Palestinian activists have boycotted Sabra’s Israeli parent company, Strauss.

Lebanese groups have criticized Sabra for co-opting their country’s native dish.

Yet Sabra presses on, tinkering with new recipes designed to appeal to the American palate, with hummus flavors like Asian Fusion and Buffalo Style (“I detest it,” Zohar said of the latter).

The company’s optimism is rooted in the fact that Americans have embraced plenty of foreign-born snacks before, from bagels and burritos to guacamole and salsa.

Elsewhere in the issue, we feature a photo essay of Americans as seen from the backs of their t-shirts. The images are sometimes poignant, sometimes hu-

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morous, and taken together, definitely thought-provoking. We see Americans of all ages and backgrounds, in public places across the country, expressing themselves through what they wear, and shar-

Sabra is at the forefront of a campaign to put hummus ‘on every American table,’ in the company of snacks like potato chips, salsa and Doritos.” ing their messages — from “Vote Incumbents Out” to “Do the Hustle Thing” — with anyone who can read a t-shirt. And since the Fourth of July is perhaps second only to the Super Bowl when it comes to eating, we’ve gone all-in on features about America’s culinary traditions, from clambakes and cocktails to ice cream and a survey of American foods that, alas, aren’t really American.

ARIANNA

MLADEN ANTONOV/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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POINTERS

HUGE WINS FOR GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT

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The gay rights movement won two huge victories this week in the Supreme Court. The justices ruled on Wednesday in a 5-4 vote that the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, is unconstitutional. In praising the decision, President Obama said that DOMA had been “discrimination enshrined in law.” The court also cleared the way for same-sex marriage in California, ruling that the activists who put Proposition 8 on the 2008 ballot didn’t have the standing to defend the law in federal courts. On Tuesday, the court dealt a major blow to the civil rights movement by striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, a decision that will allow states with a history of discriminatory behavior to change their election laws without getting federal approval.

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TEXAS ABORTION BILL GOES DOWN

A Texas anti-abortion bill that would have shuttered nearly all of the state’s abortion clinics has been defeated for now. State Sen. Wendy Davis (D) filibustered the bill for 11 hours with no breaks, and hundreds of people flooded the Capitol to support her. Although the Senate ultimately voted to pass the bill, it was declared dead following disputes over whether the vote occurred before the midnight deadline. The bill would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, required many clinics to be classified as ambulatory surgical centers, and required doctors to have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.

FROM TOP: AP PHOTO/ERIC GAY; AP PHOTO/VINCENT YU; RODGER BOSCH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

3 SNOWDEN’S MAJOR REVELATION

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Edward Snowden, the man responsible for leaking information about the NSA’s surveillance programs, said in an interview that he took his former contracting job expressly to collect information on the NSA. “My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the South China Morning Post. “That is why I accepted that position...” Snowden, who has been charged with espionage, fled Hong Kong on Sunday and is believed to be in an airport transit zone in Moscow.

CRITICAL CONDITION

Former South African leader Nelson Mandela was in critical condition this week after being hospitalized earlier this month for a recurring lung infection. Mandela’s last public appearance was at the 2010 World Cup. The 94-year-old, who helped the country transition from apartheid to democracy after spending 27 years in jail, is revered across the country. “The doctors are doing everything possible to get his condition to improve and are ensuring that Madiba is well-looked after and is comfortable,” President Jacob Zuma said.

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POINTERS

BERLUSCONI TO THE BIG HOUSE?

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in jail — even more than prosecutors requested — for paying for sex with an underage prostitute during “bunga bunga” parties at his mansion in 2010.

He was also barred from ever serving in public office again. However, there are still two more levels of appeal before the sentence is finalized. “This is unreal,” Berlusconi’s lawyer said. “I’m calm because I’ve been saying for three years that this trial should never have taken place here.”

IRS SCANDAL CONTINUES TO UNFOLD

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Documents released this week revealed that the IRS not only targeted conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status, but also flagged progressive ones. The tax agency used terms like “progressive” and “occupy” to target organizations for more scrutiny before the 2012 elections. The news comes about a month after a report revealed that the IRS was screening tea party-affiliated groups applying for tax-exempt status, sparking widespread outrage.

THAT’S VIRAL PAULA DEEN GETS THE AX

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A selection of the week’s most talked-about stories.

HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES

THE FIRST STEP TOWARD TOTAL SNAKE WORLD DOMINATION

THERE’S A SHEEPEATING PLANT. YEAH.

WTF. PORKLACED BULLETS DESIGNED TO SEND MUSLIMS ‘TO HELL.’

... AND OF COURSE: NORTH WEST

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LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

JASON LINKINS

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WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES

THE ‘BULLY PULPIT’ IS NOT DEAD — IT WAS NEVER ALIVE HEN WASHINGTON Post reporter Chris Cillizza writes, as he did Monday, that the “bully pulpit just ain’t what it used to be,” it primes me to expect that some exciting news is coming. Specifically, that somehow, the “bully pulpit” has been transformed into some

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incredibly effective tool for moving opinion. I mean, I can’t point to any recent examples of that happening, but I’ve been binge-watching Arrested Development lately, so it’s possible I may have missed some huge, dramatic turnaround in the power of the bully pulpit.

As it turns out, however, the status quo ante seems to be in place.

Cillizza goes on at length to say that the “bully pulpit is less bully these

President Barack Obama speaks at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., in May.

Enter days.” He takes a good stab at explaining why this is. In his brief, Cillizza says there are a lot of news organizations now — “a million smaller shards [of media] makes that sort of agenda-driving incredibly difficult.” He also says that the news moves at a frenetic pace that precludes “pro-activeness,” and forces “reactiveness.” Also, “America is so polarized,” et cetera. But the plain and simple truth is that the bully pulpit is already zero bully, and it has been for a long time, so it is really hard to see how it can get less bully than “no bully.”

If you want definitive proof that the bully pulpit is a pretty ineffective tool for convincing or persuading people, one need only look at the fact that political scientists keep on seizing their bully pulpit to point out how little impact the bully pulpit has, and they’ve failed to convince people! For once, we have a tautology that you can believe in.

Remember FDR’s “fireside chats?” If you do, you are probably remembering them way too fondly. Ezra Klein, citing George Edwards and his book On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit, pointed out that a “systematic examination of Roosevelt’s radio addresses” found that they

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managed “less than a 1 percentage point increase” in his approvals, and that his “more traditional speeches didn’t do any better.”

And John Sides, also citing Edwards, noted that despite his being known as “The Great Communicator,” Ronald Reagan couldn’t get it done in the bully pulpit either: “Edwards shows that Reagan could not move opinion on signature issues like aid to the contras. And

The bully pulpit is already zero bully, and it has been for a long time, so it is really hard to see how it can get less bully than ‘no bully.’”

Reagan’s advocacy for increased defense spending was soon followed by a decrease in support for additional defense spending. Public opinion on government spending often moves in the opposite direction as presidential preferences and government policy.”

And Reagan: Time and again, I would speak on television, to a joint session of Congress, or to other audiences about the problems in

Enter Central America, and I would hope that the outcome would be an outpouring of support from Americans … But the polls usually found that large numbers of Americans cared little or not at all about what happened in Central America … and, among those who did care, too few cared … to apply the kind of pressure I needed on Congress.

More broadly, let’s engage in a thought exercise. Say that the current occupant of the White House is a silver-tongued devil of a speaker — the most gorgeous orator in the history of the realm. And let’s say that I am not blogger Jason Linkins, let’s say that I am Sen. Jason Linkins (I-WTFistan). Give all the speeches you want, Mr. President Silver Tongued-Devil. Go out there and emote. Rend your garments. If I can rustle up a super-minority of senators to quietly filibuster what you want to do, I beat you and your bully pulpit every time.

That’s largely what’s happening now. The word “filibuster” never appears in Cillizza’s column, and it really should, because that right there’s the whole shooting match.

The good news here is that persuasion from a sort of “pulpit” is

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possible. As Sides has pointed out many a time, “What presidents can do, Edwards argues, is ‘facilitate’ change in favorable environments.”

The takeaway then, is that “bully pulpit persuasion” doesn’t have a short game. It’s a long and circuitous and time-consuming process, in which a president does not so much “persuade lots of recalcitrant voters or members of Congress,” as merely “signal the president’s in-

Remember FDR’s ‘fireside chats?’ If you do, you are probably remembering them way too fondly.” tention to push for these policies and, equally if not more important, to bargain about these policies.”

Let me give you a cheap, sideof-the-cereal-box example of how “facilitating change in a favorable environment” works. One day, Vice President Joe Biden is on Meet the Press, and he says, “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men marrying women are entitled to the same exact rights.” The next thing

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Enter you know, Obama is forced to respond to this (my God, he has to be “reactive” and not “pro-active!”) and he, too, comes out in favor of marriage equality. And the next thing you know, Jay-Z is on board and a bunch of states are successfully making marriage equality legal and Mark Kirk is offering gorgeously poetic support for the same and even Lisa Murkowski is on board.

Power of the bully pulpit? Nay, friends. Marriage equality was already very broadly popular at the time Biden went on Meet the Press.

Biden just took that favorable environment and facilitated himself a little change! Had Biden come out in favor of something that wasn’t popular, like, “Let’s bomb Ontario” or, “Can we maybe stop putting ramps in every recipe,” it wouldn’t have moved the needle.

Now, unfortunately, here is where what Cillizza mentions — about the splintered media, and the relative speed of the news — really does come into play. If the media game is all about “jump on the shiny shiny,” there is not going to be a whole lot of drive or effort put behind covering or explaining the long process of “facilitating change in favorable environments” or the bargaining or the

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trade-offs. Usually, you get that story after something has already been accomplished.

So you will get really good afterthe-fact stories, like this one from Carrie Budoff Brown and Manu Raju, titled “Inside the border deal that almost failed.” If more people took these stories seriously, and understood all the complicated wheeler-dealing that actually resolves these kinds of matters, they

Public opinion on government spending often moves in the opposite direction as presidential preferences and government policy.” would feel okay about letting go of the myth of the bully pulpit. So, in the end, where and on what occasion does the presidential “bully pulpit” work? In the movies, when you only have two hours of plot to resolve matters that normally take months, and you need a cool plot device for the final reel.

That’s where the bully pulpit works, and nowhere else. It has always been this way, and it always shall be, the end.

Q&A

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Adrian Grenier Imagines If Obama Had Been Busted for Inhaling “I think he owes it to himself, and future Obamas, to stop this madness.”

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Grenier (above) produced How to Make Money Selling Drugs, a documentary on the war on drugs — directed by Matthew Cooke (bottom right) — that opened in New York this week.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE

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DATA

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Due to rising popularity and a new fervor for American, local and small-batch products, some distilleries are experiencing a shortage of the spirit.

INCREASE IN PRODUCTION VOLUME IN 2012 4% VODKA 5.2% BOURBON & TENN. WHISKEY IRISH WHISKEY

13% 4.7% CORDIALS

2.9% TEQUILA 1.5% RUM & GIN

8.2%

Whiskey makes up 8.2 percent of the market. Vodka is nearly one third.

SOURCES: DISTILLED SPIRITS COUNCIL OF THE UNITED STATES, BEAM INC., BUFFALO TRACE: SHUTTERSTOCK/JOCIC (WHISKEY BOTTLE); INFOGRAPHIC: JAN DIEHM

SO WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?

WHISKEY

BOURBON

Whiskey is distilled from a fermented mash of grain, which usually contains corn, rye, barley or wheat.

Bourbon is distilled from a mash of grain that contains not less than 51 percent corn.

ALL BOURBON IS WHISKEY, BUT NOT ALL WHISKEY IS BOURBON Whiskey can be aged in re-used barrels, but the law requires bourbon to be aged in NEW charred American white oak barrels.

Water is the only thing that can be added to bourbon, and only to bring it down to proof. Other whiskey makers can add colors and flavors.

POPULAR BOURBON & WHISKEY DISTILLERIES Distilleries that have announced possible shortages

Jim Beam & Knob Creek Clermont, Ky. Maker’s Mark Loretto, Ky.

Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg, Tenn.

Buffalo Trace Frankfort, Ky. Woodford Reserve Versailles, Ky.

George Dickel Tullahoma, Tenn.

AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK (GAY DAY, WE NEED TO ACT); AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK, AP PHOTO/FILE (THE VRA IS DEAD TODAY); CHARLES TRAINOR JR./MIAMI HERALD/MCT VIA GETTY IMAGES (STILL THE KING)

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The Week That Was TAP IMAGE TO ENLARGE, TAP EACH DATE FOR FULL ARTICLE ON THE HUFFINGTON POST

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Mexican diver Jonathan Paredes plummets toward water after diving from a 28-meter platform outside the Copenhagen Opera House during the second stop of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series.

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Johannesburg, South Africa 06.21.2013 Pastor Maxwell Ncube blesses bottles containing water and written prayers during a ceremony in Johannesburg’s Yeoville neighborhood.

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New York, N.Y. 06.21.2013 Aisha Johnson and a group of other yoga enthusiasts perform in Times Square during an event marking the summer solstice. Thousands of yogis attended the free, day-long event in Manhattan on the longest day of the year.

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New York, N.Y. 06.18.2013

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“Moai,” a sculpture made entirely of LEGO toy bricks by Nathan Sawaya, stands on display in the “Art of the Brick” show at Discovery Times Square.

The exhibition featured more than 100 works of art created from the toy bricks.

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Chuncheon, South Korea 06.22.2013 South Korean soldiers, dressing and acting as North Korean soldiers, take part in a Korean war reenactment during a commemorative event marking the 63rd anniversary of the Korean War. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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Singapore 06.22.2013 A man waits with a large bunch of heart-shaped balloons before proposing to his girlfriend on the water’s edge at Marina Bay. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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Chatsworth, England 06.22.2013

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Guests dance during the Pride and Prejudice Ball in the painted hall of Chatsworth House to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s iconic novel, Pride and Prejudice.

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Luzon, Philippines 06.24.2013 A Christian devotee trudges through the mud at dawn to attend a celebratory mass at the Taong Putik Festival, commemorating the area’s patron saint, John the Baptist.

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New York, N.Y. 06.22.2013 Musicians perform at Coney Island during the 2013 Mermaid Parade.

Coney Island was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy in 2012, but parade organizers raised $100,000 on Kickstarter to fund the parade, which has been a local tradition since 1983.

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London, England 06.24.2013

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A woman takes a picture at “Dalston House,” a largescale installation art piece by Leandro Erlich.

The piece features a full façade of a late 19th-century Victorian house built on the ground with a large mirror above it, making people appear as if they’re dangling from the structure in the reflection.

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AP PHOTOS/DISCOVERY CHANNEL, TIFFANY BROWN

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Little Colorado River Gorge, Arizona 06.23.2013 Aerialist Nick Wallenda walks a two-inch-thick steel cable taking him a quarter mile above a massive chasm near the Grand Canyon. Wallenda successfully crossed the canyon in 22 minutes.

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Karbala, Iraq 06.24.2013 Shiite Muslim worshippers gather at the holy shrine of Imam Abbas during the annual festival of Shabaniyah, marking the anniversary of the birth of the 9th-century Shiite leader known as the Hidden Imam.

Tap here for a more extensive look at the week on The Huffington Post.

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Voices

ART MARKMAN

Stress Can Make You Do Good Things, Too THE EFFECTS OF STRESS on willpower are a staple of romantic comedies. A character goes through a difficult romantic breakup, and in the next scene, she is sitting on the couch smeared in ice cream with empty

wrappers strewn on the couch.

All of us have experienced this kind of failure of self-control.

There is some bad habit we are trying to avoid, and we succeed until life gets hectic. Suddenly, it is business-as-usual. Because these breakdowns of willpower are so clear when they happen, you might think that stressful situations

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Voices bring out your worst behavior.

A fascinating paper in the June 2013 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

by David Neal, Wendy Wood and Aimee Drolet suggests a different possibility. They argue that in times of stress, we fall back on our habits generally. When those habits are bad, then we experience what we see as a failure of self-control. But, we also fall back on our good habits. We don’t notice those as readily, because those behaviors are helpful.

In a naturalistic study to support this view, the researchers explored the behavior of a sample of college students. First, they looked at the strength of a number of habits relating to eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. Some of these behaviors were good (like eating hot cereal for breakfast), while others were bad (eating a pastry for breakfast). For each person, some behaviors were a strong part of their routine, while others were not. A particular individual might generally eat hot cereal, but rarely eat pastry. That person might also tend to read the op-ed section of the newspaper, but rarely read the comics.

ART MARKMAN

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Over the next four weeks, the researchers continued to track the students’ behavior. In two of those weeks, the students had an intense series of exams, while in the other two of those weeks, there were no major exams. The researchers expected that the students would be undergoing more stress in the exam weeks, and so their willpower would be compromised.

When a particular behavior

In times of stress … we also fall back on our good habits. We don’t notice those as readily, because those behaviors are helpful.” was a strong habit for that person, then they were more likely to engage in that behavior during the stressful exam weeks than during the less stressful nonexam weeks. This reliance on habits was evident both for the good behaviors and the bad ones.

So, the lack of willpower drove people to rely on their habits, regardless of whether they were good or bad.

In several other studies, the researchers manipulated stress

Voices level for participants. In one study, the researchers tracked the behavior of participants over a series of days. On a few of those days, participants were asked to perform their daily activities with their nondominant hand. So, if they routinely used their left hand while talking on the cell phone, they should now use their right hand. This manipulation is known to cause stress to the willpower system by requiring a lot of effortful self-control.

On the days when participants had to use their non-dominant hand, they were much more likely to perform both good and bad habits than they were on days when they were allowed to use their dominant hand.

Other studies in this paper demonstrated that people fall back on their habits because they are acting without thinking. They are not explicitly choosing to act based on their habits when their willpower is depleted.

This study adds to a growing literature demonstrating the power of habits in daily action.

When the going gets tough, the natural response is to fall back on the behaviors that have car-

ART MARKMAN

ried you through so many other situations in the past.

That is why it is crucial to work on developing good habits. It is hard to rise to the occasion in times of stress. When you have lots of exams, a big project at work, or are going through a stressful period in a relationship, you simply do not have the mental energy to rise to the occasion. Instead, you just want

When the going gets tough, the natural response is to fall back on the behaviors that have carried you through so many other situations in the past.� to get through the day. In those cases, your habits will drive a lot of your behavior. The more that your habits push you toward behaviors that support your goals, the better you will do in stressful situations.

Art Markman, Ph.D. is Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing at the University of Texas at Austin.

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Voices

CANDY CHANG

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LIFESTYLE

RYAN LASH/COURTESY OF TED

The ‘Art’ of Life and Death THANKS TO my TEDTalk, over two million people have watched me cry. This was the first time I spoke about Joan in public and saying her name triggered a rush of memories — the day she consoled my teenage angst, a conversation about love in a Detroit cafe, the way she set the table with her

earthy placemats, the satisfaction in her voice when she talked about her garden. Her death was sudden.

The “Before I Die” project was a way for me to make sense of the aftermath. I avoided thinking about death for most of my life, in part because I was taught to avoid it. If you bring up death out of the blue, people will often say “don’t go there,” or “it’s too sad,” or “you don’t need to think

Candy Chang discusses the “Before I Die” project at a 2012 TED Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Voices about it until you’re older.” When Joan died, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I went through a period of grief and depression, then gratitude for the time we had together. I thought about death a lot and found a comfort and clarity I didn’t expect. Beyond the tragic truth lies a bright calm that reminds me of my place in the world. The moment becomes more tactile. Things that stress me out are reduced to their small and rightful place. Things that matter to me get big and crisp again.

Contemplating death, as Stoics and other philosophers encourage, is a powerful tool to re-appreciate the present and remember what makes your life meaningful to you.

We’re all trying to make sense of our lives and there’s great comfort in knowing you’re not alone.

Everyone you’re standing with in line and everyone you’re sitting by in a cafe and everyone you walk past on the street is going through challenges in their life. Yet it’s easy to forget this because we rarely venture beyond small talk with strangers. There are a lot of barriers when opening up.

I started making interactive public art projects on abandoned buildings as a way for my neigh-

CANDY CHANG

bors and I to easily share our memories and hopes for these places. Then they became a canvas to ask more personal questions as my priorities changed. Am I the only one who feels like I’m barely keeping it together? The city historian Lewis Mumford once wrote that the origins of society were not just for physical survival but for “a more valuable and meaningful kind of life.” Some of the earliest gathering places were graves and sacred groves. We gathered so we could grieve together and worship together and console one another and be alone together. Our public spaces are our shared spaces and at their greatest they can nourish our well-being and help us make sense of our communities and our-

TED and The Huffington Post are excited to bring you TEDWeekends, a curated weekend program that introduces a powerful “idea worth spreading” every Friday, anchored in an exceptional TEDTalk. This week’s TEDTalk is accompanied by an original blog post from the featured speaker, along with new op-eds, thoughts and responses from the HuffPost community. Watch the talk above, read the blog post and tell us your thoughts below. Become part of the conversation!

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selves. Our public spaces are as profound as we allow them to be.

Since the first “Before I Die” wall in 2011, over 250 walls have been created in over 15 languages and over 45 countries. Passionate people are building new walls each week, and it’s been one of the greatest experiences of my life to see this little experiment in New Orleans grow into a global project.

I’m excited to honor many of these walls in a book about the project that will come out this November.

The “Before I Die” walls are an honest mess of the longing, pain, joy, insecurity, gratitude, fear and wonder you find in every community. Seeing other people’s feelings have encouraged me to explore my own. I’ve written many things on the wall: to hole up and read books for weeks, to enjoy more cities with the people I love, to write a bedtime story, to revive a ghost town. It took months before I even began to act on some

MORE ON TED WEEKENDS I HAVE A LIST BUT NO BUCKET

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CANDY CHANG

Voices

FACING THE FEARS OF THE UNKNOWN

of these things, but once I wrote them down, those ambient urges took root and became firmer in my mind. I’m a distracted, forgetful person with a short attention

Everyone you’re standing with in line and everyone you’re sitting by in a cafe and everyone you walk past on the street is going through challenges in their life.” span. I need constant reminders of the actions that will really nourish me. And I’m grateful to all my neighbors who have helped stir my mind and step back, pause, be quiet and reflect.

Candy Chang is an artist and a TED senior fellow.

A selection of the week’s related blogs HEADLINES TO VIEW BLOGS ABOUT THIS WEEK’S THEME

WHY I WRITE ABOUT MY LIFE

LIVING WITH A SENSE OF URGENCY

LEARNING HOW TO DIE

Voices

QUOTED

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WIN MCNAMEE/GETTY IMAGES: OLI SCARFF/GETTY IMAGES; AP PHOTO/KEVORK DJANSEZIAN; TOM WILLIAMS/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES; VM/ GETTY IMAGES

“ I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favorite R&B singer.”

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“ I have nothing but respect for people who live their truth in a world that is not always kind.”

— HuffPost commenter Anne_888, on Bob Tur’s transgender process

— Barack Obama

apologizes to UK Finance Minister George Osbourne for calling him Jeffrey repeatedly

“ Bosses always call them ‘painful decisions,’ but they never feel the pain.”

— HuffPost commenter Ortho_Stice, on more than 850 teachers and staffers being handed pink slips

“ You’ve been entirely wrong on virtually every occasion. I’m glad to see you. What’s on your mind?”

— Mitch McConnell

to Norm Ornstein — a centrist political pundit who has irked him over the years — as he stood up to ask a question after the Senate Minority Leader’s speech at the American Enterprise Institute

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: COLUMBUS ZOO AND AQUARIUM/COURTESY OF ZOOBORNS; BRAD BARKET/GETTY IMAGES; CHARLES NORFLEET/GETTY IMAGES; TROELS GRAUGAARD/ GETTY IMAGES; PETER KRAMER/BRAVO/NBCU PHOTO BANK

Voices

QUOTED

I love that they are born with wrinkles — we have to ‘earn’ ours!

— HuffPost commenter Clarabell

on “Baby Gorilla Yawns After Charming Caretakers At Columbus Zoo”

“ Of course I know how to roll a joint.”

—Martha Stewart,

in an interview with Andy Cohen for his Watch What Happens Live series

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“ She was actually white, with really nice skin.”

— Singer Adam Barta on Tan Mom, with whom he made a music video

“ I believe your most enlightening moment in a bad marriage is when you don’t laugh or smile anymore.”

— HuffPost commenter EducatorMe, on the moment when you know a marriage is over

KEVORK DJANSEZIAN/GETTY IMAGES

Features DOUBLE ISSUE

THE NEW SALSA DOUBLE RAINBOW VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE A MESSAGE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

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BY SAKI KNAFO

PREVIOUS PAGES: WENDY GEORGE; THIS PAGE: LISA BILLINGS/AP IMAGES FOR SABRA

Sabra CEO Ronen Zohar delivers a presentation about Sabra products to congressmen at the company’s facility in Colonial Heights, Va., in 2011.

Last winter, executives from the snackfood empire Frito-Lay invited Ronen Zohar, the Israeli head of America’s biggest hummus company, to watch the Super Bowl from a luxury suite at the Superdome in New Orleans. For the snackfood industry, the Super Bowl amounts to something like Christmas and every kid’s birthday party wrapped into one...

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a day on which the average American consumes the caloric equivalent of 20 servings of Utz’s sour cream and onion dip. For Sabra, whose red-rimmed tubs of hummus are increasingly found inside American refrigerators, the stakes were particularly high.

“People are dipping in Super Bowl,” Zohar said. “They are looking for what to dip. Unfortunately they are dipping in the wrong product. But we try to change this. And we are doing okay.”

Around Sabra’s offices just outside New York City, employees are fond of saying that they hope to put their Middle Eastern chickpea dip “on every American table.”

Though that mission is far from achieved, the company is off to an impressive start. In the last halfdecade, overall sales of hummus have climbed sharply in the United States, with Sabra capturing about 60 percent of the market, according to the Chicago-based market research firm Information Resources, Inc. This spring, Sabra announced an $86 million expansion of its Virginia factory, a move that the company says will create 140 jobs. Every year, the company inches closer to its goal of competing with salsa, the longtime

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“ I AM VERY HAPPY IF LEBANON IS GOING TO FIGHT ABOUT THE HUMMUS AND NOT ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE.” Colossus of the dip industry.

As the company’s leader during this stretch, Zohar has overseen a wide-ranging publicity effort aimed at simultaneously coaxing Americans to open their minds to a new taste of foreign origin while downplaying controversial aspects of the product’s provenance. In an age of significant spending by America’s pro-Israel lobby, even chickpeas have been swept into the debate over Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands, its attitude toward its Arab neighbors and its reliance on American support.

Pro-Palestinian activists have in recent years organized boycotts of Sabra’s Israeli parent company, Strauss, for providing care packages to the Golani Brigade, a branch of the Israeli army that has allegedly committed humanrights abuses in the West Bank and Gaza. Groups in Lebanon have criticized Sabra for reaping the spoils of what they say is an intrinsically Lebanese dish. To quote a saying that has surfaced

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on the Internet, “First our land, then our hummus.”

Zohar, a blunt-spoken man of 52 who rose through the industry by persuading more Israelis to consume American corn products, dismisses both groups of critics as irrelevant. The Palestinian boycott amounts to mere “noise,” he says. As for the argument that hummus belongs to Lebanon: “I am very happy if Lebanon is going to fight about the hummus and not about anything else.”

Like any businessman, Zohar likes to talk about his product’s promising future. But hummus has a long history. And in the Middle East, history has a way of intruding upon the present, shaping questions about the legitimacy of what Sabra has been adding to the American table.

“The history of this food is that of the Middle East,” writes Claudia Roden, an Egyptian-Jewish cookbook author who has been credited with introducing Middle Eastern food to the West. “Dishes carry the triumphs and glories, the defeats, the loves and sorrows of the past.”

HUMMUS WARS No one knows for sure how far back the history of hummus goes,

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but traces of chickpea, the key ingredient, have turned up in Middle Eastern archeological sites dating to 7,500 B.C. In his bestselling book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, the anthropologist Jared Diamond identifies the chickpea as one of several hardy, nutritionpacked food crops that grew in the Fertile Crescent and enabled its people to develop agriculture and, in turn, cities, armies, systems of taxation and governments.

As civilization spread outward, chickpeas did, too, becoming garbanzos in Spain and chana in India. In the Middle East, they were boiled, mashed and mixed with the sesame paste known as tahini, becoming “hummus bi tahini,” more commonly known as hummus.

In recent years, the growing popularity of hummus has made the dip an object of controversy.

Sabra instigated one of the fights at a publicity event in New York in 2007, where it served several hundred pounds of hummus on a plate the size of an above-ground swimming pool, prompting its executives to boast that they had produced the largest dish of hummus in the history of the world.

A year later, an Israeli competitor, Osem, responded by serving 881 pounds of hummus at an outdoor market in Jerusalem. The

FROM TOP: ANWAR AMRO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES; ALESSIO ROMENZI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

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On May 8, 2010, Lebanese chefs set a Guinness World Record in Beirut after serving a 23,520-pound plate of hummus (above).

Four months earlier, 50 chefs in Abu Ghosh, Israel, set the previous world record after serving a 8,992-pound hummus dish (left).

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event took place on Israeli Independence day, or as Palestinians call it, Al Nachbar, The Disaster. A Guinness representative was there to document the victory.

Lebanon entered the fray about a year after that, doubling Osem’s record at a cook-off in Beirut. The chefs, who had been convened by a pair of Lebanese business associations, used spices to decorate what was now the world’s largest hummus plate with a picture of the Lebanese flag. While they were at it, they also broke Israel’s record for the largest bowl of of tabouli, a bulgur and parsley dish. According to The Daily Star of Lebanon, the groups that organized the event had a more grandiose goal than merely notching a volume record: They hoped to promote the idea that the Lebanese had invented both tabouli and hummus.

In the months after that feat, Lebanon and Israel traded shots, with Lebanon delivering what has so far proved the victorious blow, serving 23,042 pounds of chickpea dip at a weekend-long gathering in 2010. On the eve of the event, Ramzi Nadim Shwaryi, a Lebanese TV chef and one of the festival’s coordinators, told the Lebanese press that he and his allies were in

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it for Lebanon’s honor.

“We will stand together against this industrial and cultural violation and defend our economy, civilization and Lebanese heritage,” he said.

At about the same time the hummus wars were playing out in Lebanon, a group of Palestinian-

“ THE PROTESTERS MAKE NOISE, BUT THEY MAKE NOISE TO THEMSELVES. IT DOESN’T HAVE ANY INFLUENCE ON OUR BUSINESS.” sympathizers in the United States tried to call attention to Israel’s military activities in the West Bank and Gaza by pressing for boycotts of two Israeli-owned hummus companies — Sabra, and one of its larger competitors, Tribe.

The boycotters identified themselves as supporters of a broader movement called Boycott, Divest and Sanctions.

Launched by Palestinian activists in 2005 following failed peace negotiations, the organization aimed to apply economic pressure on the Israeli government to end its 46-year occupation of Palestinian territories.

A YouTube video produced by

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AP PHOTO/TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL

protesters in Philadelphia who were part of the movement caught the attention of student activists at Princeton and DePaul universities in 2010. They tried to persuade their schools’ dining services to stop offering Sabra. Although they didn’t succeed, activists in the movement are still trying to garner support for their anti-Sabra efforts.

Still, Zohar does not seem particularly distressed by the potential implications for Sabra’s sales.

“The protesters make noise, but they make noise to themselves,” he said. “It doesn’t have any influence on our business.”

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THE HUMMUS RELIGION As the protests played out in the margins, Sabra aimed its product at the American mainstream. It deployed volunteers in trucks to hand out free samples of hummus in cities around the country, and expanded its product line to include more familiar dips, including guacamole and salsa.

It launched a national television ad campaign, exhorting people to “taste the Mediterranean,” and moved its staff in 2011 from an old industrial building across the street from a Queens cemetery to a sleek suburban office park,

A pair of Israeli men eat hummus during lunch at a restaurant in Jerusalem.

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where the company heads plotted the conquest of the American marketplace in conference rooms named after touristy, exotic destinations like Madagascar and Morocco. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, none of the rooms were named after Lebanon or Israel.)

At the root of Sabra’s success was an influx of corporate money and resources. Strauss, an Israeli snack-food giant, bought half of Sabra in 2005, and Frito-Lay, the snack-food division of Pepsico, entered a joint-partnership agreement with Strauss in 2008. Zohar worked closely with the Frito-Lay people, who had scored a big victory for a foreign dip in the early ’90s, when Tostito’s salsa beat Heinz Ketchup to become America’s best-selling condiment.

With Frito-Lay and Strauss’ investments, Sabra built its Virginia factory, where it developed flavors intended to appeal to the average American consumer: Spinach and Artichoke, Pesto, Buffalo Style. As Arabs and Israelis quarreled over the origins of hummus, Sabra was putting out a product that bore about as much resemblance to the authentic dish as a Domino’s BBQ Meat Lovers pie does to a genuine Italian pizza.

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In Israel, meanwhile, yet another hummus debate was raging, and although it was the least overtly political of the controversies, it was no less capable of provoking feelings of hostility and anger. As the celebrated British-Israeli chef and food writer Yotam Ottolenghi and his Palestinian-born business partner and co-author Sami Tamimi wrote in the 2102 cookbook Jerusalem, “Jews in particular, and even more specifically Jewish men,

“ THE HUMMUSIA FETISH IS SO POWERFUL THAT EVEN THE BEST OF FRIENDS MAY EASILY TURN AGAINST EACH OTHER IF THEY SUDDENLY FIND THEMSELVES IN OPPOSITE HUMMUS CAMPS.” never tire of arguments about the absolute, the only and only, the most fantastic hummusia.”

A hummusia is the Israeli equivalent of a New York pizza parlor, a cheap establishment that usually serves only hummus and a few other dishes. But the debates about hummusias are more intense than even the most impassioned pizza threads on Yelp.

“The hummusia fetish is so

LISA BILLINGS/AP PHOTO IMAGES OR ILLUSTRATION FOR SABRA CREDIT TK

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Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell examines a variety of products, including hummus, during a guided tour of the Sabra factory in Colonial Heights, Va., in 2010.

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powerful that even the best of friends may easily turn against each other if they suddenly find themselves in opposite hummus camps,” Ottolenghi and Tamimi wrote. The arguments “can carry on for hours,” they noted, with the debaters delving into the minutia of whether hummus is better served warm or at room temperature, smooth or chunky, topped with fava beans or cumin and paprika, or nothing at all.

In a letter to The New York Times at the height of the hummus wars, Israeli food writer Janna Gur went even further, calling Israel’s fascination with hummus a “religion.” She noted that the most treasured restaurants are invariably owned by Arabs, a phenomenon she traced to the early Zionist settlers who arrived in the Holy Land determined to put the customs of the Diaspora behind them, while embracing a new identity in the Levant. They traded Yiddish for Hebrew, yeshivas for plowshares, and matzoh balls and tsimmis for falafel balls and hummus.

“This love affair, that has been going on for decades, shows no signs of dying,” Gur wrote.

Last summer, while traveling in Israel, I visited as many of the

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hummusias as I could, hoping to come to my own conclusions about the craze. I was joined in this mission by my father, who moved from Israel to New York in the early 1970s and has griped about the quality of America’s hummus offerings ever since. Like many Israelis, he looks down not just on corporate hummus brands like Sabra and Tribe, but also on local shops that package their own hummus in take-out containers. As far as he is concerned, the religion of hummus forbids packaging of any kind.

In the Middle East, hummus is served fresh from the pot, on a big communal plate dripped with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika and cumin. The plate has to be big enough and flat enough so that you can comfortably wipe up the hummus with a pita, an activity that my father refers to as “swiping.” He insists that hummus should have a subtle, earthy flavor, and disdains spicy hummus, lemony hummus, hummus with chipotles, hummus with artichoke, hummus with basil, sun-dried tomato or spinach, and most of all, the dip referred to as “black bean hummus.”

As he has pointed out many times, hummus is the Arabic word for chickpea; by definition, hummus made of black beans isn’t hummus.

In Israel, my father and I ate at

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AP PHOTO/BRENNAN LINSLEY

Shmulik Nahmias prepares a plate of hummus at Rahmo, a popular hummusia in the Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem, Israel.

Abu Hassan, a bare-tabled hummus den in the seaside town of Jaffa, where the staff starts serving early in the morning and shuts down the shop after the pot runs out, often in the early afternoon.

We wandered the narrow streets of Jerusalem’s Old City, past the pilgrims crowding into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, until we reached a tiny hummus shrine adorned with black-and-white pictures of people sharing a meal at the shop sometime in the 1930s.

One day we drove to a city in Palestine’s West Bank known for its tahina factories and uprisings.

By law, Israelis are forbidden from entering the Palestinian territories, except to travel to the Jewish settlements, but we felt that no hummus pilgrimage would be complete without a trip to Nablus.

At the checkpoint, an Arab cab driver pulled over and said he hoped, for our own sake, that we wouldn’t enter the city in our Israeli rental car. We thanked him and drove past the Israeli guards, through the rounded hills studded with olive trees. My father grew

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quiet. When he’d first traveled those hills, in 1967, he was in a tank, pushing forward toward the Jordan River as thousands of Palestinian refugees streamed down the sides of the road. The Six-Day War had broken out and the Israeli army had conquered the Palestinian villages.

After a while we reached the outskirts of Nablus, parked and made our way through the mazelike casbah, to a dim, windowless hummus restaurant with electrical wires hanging from the ceiling. A teenage boy strolled into the room with an unmarked bottle of olive oil, tipping it onto people’s plates. After a few minutes of “swiping,” my father announced that this was the best hummus he’d tasted on the trip — though he also remarked that the excitement of entering forbidden territory had enhanced the flavor. By that point I knew that my hummus palate wasn’t refined enough to discern the subtle differences between the various hummusia offerings, but I liked them all better than any hummus I’d ever had in America.

Toward the end of our stay, we traveled to the fertile hills of the Galilee region, where an Arab chef

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named Husam Abbas had been garnering praise for his gourmet take on Arab food, defying a number of Israeli assumptions about Palestinian culture.

Abbas, who has been described as a leading figure of Israel’s Slow Food movement, broke ground at his chain of high-end restaurants by showing Israelis that Arab cuisine isn’t just hummus and kebab.

His specialties include a spicy watermelon salad with diced mustard stems and stuffed summer squash in a tomato bisque, and he uses produce grown in fields that his family has tended, by his account, for 1,700 years.

Abbas met us by the side of the road in his pickup truck and led us into his fields. A gruff man with a leathery face, he tramped down the leafy aisles with a cigarette lodged in his mouth, stooping to gather purple-tipped string beans, young cantaloupes that looked more like

HEN I ASKED HOW W HE ACCOUNTED FOR THE DIP’S POPULARITY, HE KEPT HIS ANSWER SHORT: “LOW COST, HIGH CALORIE.” HE SEEMED A LITTLE ANNOYED AT THE NEED TO DELIVER THIS DICTUM.

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cucumbers, several kinds of summer squash, and beautifully misshapen heirloom tomatoes.

Later, in the dining room of one of his restaurants, he explained that when the growing season ends, he and his children go into the hills to gather wild herbs with names like “olesh” and “aqab” and “hobeza.” The herbs grow only locally and only in the winter.

“But because hummus is dry, it

AP PHOTO/TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL

A typical plate of hummus you’ll find at hummusias in Israel.

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can be used throughout the year,” he said. When I asked how he accounted for the dip’s popularity, he kept his answer short: “Low cost, high calorie.” He seemed a little annoyed at the need to deliver this dictum.

FLAVOR HOUSE As Sabra strives to make its chickpea dip as popular as bagels, burritos and other foreign-born

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fixtures of the American diet, it is employing a flavor palette that would test the limits of acceptability in the Middle East.

One recent day, Mary Dawn Wright, Sabra’s executive chef, stood before an array of hummus containers at the company’s Virginia factory, discussing these techniques. She popped open a tub labeled Asian Fusion.

“Israelis would never ever think it’s considered to be hummus,” she admitted.

A glistening spoonful of some brightly colored carrot and ginger mixture distinguished the dip from anything you’d find in a hummusia. Sabra collaborates with outside “flavor houses,” whose scientists also help develop classic American products like Doritos, she explained.

Asian Fusion is just one of more than a dozen flavors that Sabra has invented in its effort to convert more Americans to hummus, and Wright was almost certainly correct in her frank assessment of what Israelis might think of them. Even Zohar didn’t bother to feign enthusiasm for Sabra’s Buffalo Style flavor. “I detest it,” he said.

But for Zohar, and presumably

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for the rest of Sabra’s executives, personal feelings about the flavors are as irrelevant as hummus’ place of origin. What matters are the cravings of the average American consumer, and Zohar seems to think that no American is beyond the company’s reach.

At the Superbowl, he noticed that many of the tailgaters were eating Louisiana fare — “all kinds of crabs and shrimps, whatever it is.”

He didn’t see any hummus containers amid the jambalaya and gumbo.

“Maybe in New Orleans they are eating hummus not as much as people in New York are eating hummus,” he said recently. “But give us two years. They are trying it, and when they try it they become a lover.”

Saki Knafo is a business reporter for The Huffington Post and a life-long hummus eater.

HuffPost reporter Saki Knafo discusses the politics of hummus.

Tap here for the full interview on HuffPost Live.

AP PHOTO/CHARLES DHARAPAK

DOUBLE RAINBOW AS WE HEAD into the anniversary of our nation’s independence, gay Americans can count two new freedoms — this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled both the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional. While gay rights victories have quickened to a steady stream of late, neither historic win would have been possible without the years of battles, large and small, preceding them. Starting with the 1969 Stonewall riots that catalyzed the LGBT movement, we take you through some of the biggest moments in gay rights — and American — history.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 06.26.13 Michael Knaapen (left) and his husband John Becker (right) share an emotional moment outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

PORTER GIFFORD/LIAISON

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 04.25.93 A couple embraces on the street during the March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. More than 500,000 people attended what was, at the time, the largest gathering of gay rights activists in history.

BRIAN ALPERT/GETTY IMAGES

NEW YORK, N.Y. / 1979 Reverend John Kuiper (right), the first gay man in America to win the right to adopt a child, walks with his partner Roger Hooverman (left) during a gay rights march on Fifth Avenue.

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 04.25.93

PORTER GIFFORD/LIAISON/GETTY IMAGES

A member of the U.S. Army holds a sign during the 1993 gay rights march.

AP PHOTO/SUZANNE VLAMIS

NEW YORK, N.Y. / 06.08.77 Former U.S. representative Bella Abzug addresses a crowd of 3,000 during a rally in which demonstrators gathered to protest the repeal of a gay rights law in Dade County, Fla.

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 10.11.09

MARIA BELEN PEREZ GABILONDO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

On the day after President Obama vowed to repeal a ban on gays serving openly in the military, tens of thousands of activists marched on the Capitol to demand civil rights.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 03.27.13 Edith Windsor (center) acknowledges her supporters as she leaves the Supreme Court. Windsor, 83, challenged the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which proved successful as the court deemed it unconstitutional in a 5-4 vote on June 26, 2013.

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. / 06.26.78

AP PHOTO, FILE

San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk waves at supporters during the city’s seventh annual gay freedom parade. Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, was assassinated five months later.

TIM BOYLE/NEWSMAKERS/GETTY IMAGES

CHICAGO, ILL. / 02.14.01 Michael Maltenfort (left) and Andy Thayer (right) are led away by police officers after allegedly trying to lock and chain the doors of the Marriage License Bureau inside City Hall. Both men had previously requested a marriage license before being denied.

AP PHOTO/G. PAUL BURNETT

NEW YORK, N.Y. / 06.28.81 50,000 marchers carry signs during New York’s annual Gay Pride Day parade. This year’s parade commemorated the 12th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riot, when patrons at the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, fought back during a police raid, starting three days of riots. The riots are considered a watershed moment in the modern fight for gay rights.

AP PHOTO/DAVID TULIS

DECATUR, GA. / 08.03.2012 Jim Fortier (left) and Mark Toomajian (right) share a kiss outside a Chick-Fil-A, where two dozen gay rights activists gathered to protest the fast-food chain owner’s public opposition to marriage equality.

WASHINGTON, D.C. / 10.11.87

AP PHOTO/SCOTT STEWART

A group of terminally-ill AIDS victims participates in the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights. An estimated 50,000 participants attended.

LOS ANGELES, CALIF. / 08.22.80

AP PHOTO/DAVID F. SMITH

Louise Fitzmorris (center-left) and Carol Brock (center-right) speak to members of the media after the U.S. Navy dropped charges of homosexual misconduct against the two sailors.

AP PHOTO/PAUL SAKUMA

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. / 11.28.83 Gay activist Timothy Hough holds a sign and candle during a march commemorating the fifth anniversary of the deaths of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

AP PHOTO/BEN MARGOT

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. / 11.06.98 Bruce Deming (left) and Jeff Byrne (right) hold their 8-month-old daughter Anna Byrne-Deming while applying for a marriage license at the County Clerk’s office. Senior legal process clerk Maggie Zevallos (right) denied the license in accordance with state law.

AP PHOTO/HANS PENNINK

ALBANY, N.Y. / 06.20.11 Activists from both sides of the marriage equality debate engage each other in the halls of the Capitol building before senators eventually approved a same-sex marriage bill.

AP PHOTO/ED ANDRIESKI

LARAMIE, WYO. / 10.12.99 Jerry Switzer (right) wipes tears from his eyes as he hugs Cathy Renna (center) during a visit to the fence where Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay student, was murdered in Laramie.

AP PHOTO/CARLOS RENE PEREZ

NEW YORK, N.Y. / 06.27.77 An activist carries a sign displaying his opinion of Anita Bryant, a Florida politician who fought to repeal a law that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation, during a march on New York’s Fifth Avenue.

AP PHOTO/ELAINE THOMPSON

SEATTLE, WASH. / 12.09.12 Terry Gilbert (left) kisses his husband Paul Beppler (right) after wedding at Seattle City Hall. The couple was among the first gay couples to legally wed in the state of Washington.

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE THE ‘PAYPAL 14’ VS. THE GOVERNMENT

PREVIOUS PAGE: RICH LEGG/ GETTY IMAGES (LINE-UP); CHRIS BRIGNELL/ALAMY (MASK); PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: MARTIN GEE; THIS PAGE: US MARSHALS SERVICE

By GERRY SMITH and RYAN J. REILLY

Before he was charged in July 2011 with aiding the hacker group Anonymous,

Josh Covelli lived what he considered the life of an ordinary 26-year-old. He spent countless hours on the Internet. He had a girlfriend. He was a student and employee at Devry University in Dayton, Ohio. ¶ But after federal authorities accused him and 13 other people of helping launch a cyberattack against the online payment service PayPal, Covelli faced potentially 15 years in prison, and his life began to unravel.

His girlfriend broke up with him.

He struggled to find an employer willing to hire an accused computer hacker. His friends “wanted nothing to do with me,” he said, and he suffered from bouts of paranoia — “looking out windows, not sure who to trust” — before checking into a behavioral health center for three days.

“It was as if I got kicked off a cliff,” Covelli, now 28, told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Nearly two years after the charges made headlines, the case remains an anxiety-provoking daily reality for Covelli and his 13 co-defendants. Though they come from disparate worlds — drawn from different points on the map and stages in their lives — the defendants collectively share a sense of unsettling uncertainty, their plans

>> DENNIS COLLINS

>> CHRISTOPHER COOPER

>> JOSHUA JOHN COVELLI

>> KEITH DOWNEY

>> MERCEDES HAEFER

>> DONALD HUSBAND

>> VINCENT KERSHAW

>> ETHAN MILES

>> JAMES MURHPY

>> DREW PHILLIPS

>> JEFFREY PUGLISI

>> DANIEL SULLIVAN The PayPal 14 — who were accused by federal authorities of helping launch a cyberattack against the online payment service PayPal in 2011 — are still awaiting a resolution of their case.

US MARSHALS SERVICE

>> TRACY VALENZUELA

>> CHRISTOPHER VO

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

and aspirations stuck in a limbo of indeterminate duration as they await a resolution of their case.

Their wait may be nearing a conclusion. Last month, the defendants — known collectively as the “PayPal 14” — attended a closed-door hearing in federal court in San Francisco in hopes of negotiating a settlement that could keep them out of prison.

Lawyers for both sides declined to discuss the negotiations, but a joint court filing called the meeting “productive.”

“We’re at a delicate point,” one defense attorney said in an interview.

Such a deal would mark the final chapter in a case that has been seen as one of the first major salvos in the federal government’s war on Anonymous, a loose collective of hackers who say they are motivated by ideological beliefs, not financial gain. It would also bring to a close months of legal uncertainty that the defendants say has caused them both financial and emotional strain. One defendant in the case told The Huffington Post that she would “jump off the Hoover Dam” if convicted.

While the PayPal case has largely faded from public view, the law

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[I] opened the door and “got a pistol put to my face,” he said. under which the 14 defendants were charged — the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — has come under increased scrutiny. The government used the same antihacking law to prosecute Internet activist Aaron Swartz, charging him with illegally downloading millions of articles from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology computer archive. Facing the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence, Swartz committed suicide, provoking claims of prosecutorial overreach and calls to reform the law. Critics say it is overly broad and excessively punitive, meting out stiff prison terms for some computer-related crimes they deem relatively innocuous.

The PayPal arrests appeared to have done little to deter Anonymous. Six months after the indictment was unsealed, in January 2012, Anonymous launched one of its largest attacks, knocking offline the Justice Department’s website in protest of the U.S. government’s arrest of leaders of

WENDY MAEDA/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

Megaupload.com, a file-sharing site that allegedly facilitates Internet piracy. Since then, the group has taken credit for numerous other attacks on corporate and government websites.

But the charges in the PayPal case had one noticeable impact on the hacker group — its members became more careful. They began circulating manuals online on how to use virtual private networks, or VPNs, to shield their IP addresses from the watchful eye of law enforcement, said Gabriella Coleman, a professor at McGill University who has studied Anonymous. “The arrests led to a kind of moment of education,” she said.

The case against Covelli and the 13 other defendants stems from a series of cyberattacks in December 2010. In response to PayPal’s decision to cut off donations to the whistleblower site WikiLeaks, Anonymous encouraged supporters to download software that bombards websites with traffic, causing them to crash. The resulting “denial of service attack,” which brought down PayPal’s site intermittently over four days, was nicknamed “Operation Avenge Assange” in reference to the WikiLeaks founder.

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On Jan. 27, 2011, the FBI executed 27 search warrants and seized more than 100 computers in 12 states in connection with the PayPal attack. That day, Covelli said he was awoken at 6 a.m. by FBI agents knocking at his door.

“The FBI is here,” he recalled telling his girlfriend at the time. He opened the door and “got a pistol put to my face,” he said.

Six months later, authorities filed charges against 14 people, some of whom belie the stereotype of the teenage male hacker. The defendants are men and women ranging from 22 to 44 years old and living in small towns and big cities stretching from California to Florida. They include a real estate

Faced with a lengthy prison sentence, internet activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide earlier this year after being charged with illegally downloading files from MIT’s computer archives.

PHOTO AP PHOTO/GREG OR ILLUSTRATION BOWKER,CREDIT NEW ZEALAND TK HERALD

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

broker, a military veteran, a massage therapist and a single mother with two children.

Some knew each other before the indictment, but only by online nicknames such as “Anthrophobic” and “Reaper.” They had never met in person until Sept. 1, 2011, when they made their initial court appearance together.

One defendant, Tracy Ann Valenzuela, a single mother and massage therapist, told a local ABC station in 2011 that she got involved in the PayPal attack while reading the news online.

“I saw something about PayPal shutting down payments to WikiLeaks, and I clicked on some other site and joined a protest,” she

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said. “And next thing I knew, my house was surrounded by guns.”

Although 14 people were charged, PayPal collected about 1,000 IP addresses of computers involved in the attack, according to an FBI affidavit. Some observers have questioned whether those arrested in the case were highlevel members of Anonymous or merely unsophisticated activists who wanted to be associated with the group and were unaware of the consequences of their actions.

“There were a handful who were core participants and a handful who were there because they were outraged that day and didn’t know the consequences,” said Coleman, the McGill professor.

She said the nature of the PayPal attack made it seem innocent to the untrained eye. “They were

From left to right: Megaupload. com employees Bram van der Kolk, Finn Batato, Mathias Ortmann and Kim Dotcom appear in court in Auckland, New Zealand, after the site was linked to a U.S. criminal investigation.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

just sitting there firing requests with a piece of software from their computers,” she said. “It doesn’t feel all that criminal. It doesn’t feel like you’re causing harm.”

But Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime prosecutor, said the Anonymous attack on PayPal should be considered a serious crime. He compared it to chaining a lock to the entrance of a store to prevent customers from entering. “If you do something illegal, the essence of civil disobedience is you run the risk of arrest and prosecution,” he said.

Still, Rasch said the 14 PayPal defendants should be considered individually. “You need to look at the nature of their participation. Were they leaders or not?” he said. “It may be appropriate for some of these people to not be prosecuted or be given probation.”

In interviews with The Huffington Post, defendants in the PayPal case said they have spent the past two years burdened by pre-trial conditions that restricted their Internet usage. Many also struggled to secure employment.

“When you’re applying for a job and someone Googles you, you have a lot of explaining to do when you want to point out that you

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“ I ran out of money fast and have been living on almost nothing or from the generosity of my family.” were standing up for free speech and a worthy cause and the government says you’re a cyber terrorist,” said Graham E. Archer, an attorney who represents Ethan Miles, one of the defendants.

Archer said being on pre-trial release has been “extraordinarily stressful” for Miles. Court records note that he spent time at a mental health facility.

“You have a pre-trial services officer who is in your life constantly,” Archer said. “It’s a form of out-of-custody incarceration for a lot of people.”

Covelli, who went by the online aliases “Absolem” and “Toxic,” said a brief stretch in which he was barred from using the Internet was “like a muzzle.” A courtappointed officer routinely inspects his computer to ensure he is complying with pre-trial conditions that bar him from Internet

MARK CHEW/FAIRFAX MEDIA/FAIRFAX MEDIA VIA GETTY IMAGES

Hackers from Anonymous launched “Operation Avenge Assange,” a denial of service attack named after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, on PayPal’s website in 2010.

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

chat rooms and knowingly communicating with other members of Anonymous.

Covelli said he has gone through various periods over the past two years during which “everything seemed dark and dim.” He has been diagnosed with depression that is “exacerbated by the threat of prison that hangs over him,” his attorney said in court filings.

“At first it was soul-crushing,” Covelli told The Huffington Post.

“I was like, ‘Holy crap, everything is going to end. What am I going to do?’”

Today, Covelli is unemployed, living with his parents and volunteering 35 hours a week at a food pantry in Sidney, Ohio. He attended a drug treatment facility after violating pre-trial conditions by smoking marijuana, according to court records.

He now faces potentially 30 years in prison — much longer than his co-defendants — because he also has been charged in connection with a separate hacking case.

Authorities say Covelli helped bring down Santa Cruz County’s website in December 2010 in protest of a local ordinance that barred people from sleeping outdoors.

Covelli said his only possessions

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“ At first it was soulcrushing. I was like, ‘Holy crap, everything is going to end. What am I going to do?’” are a laptop and an Xbox that he received as a gift. The U.S. Marshals Service pays for his flights to court hearings because his attorney has told the court that Covelli is indigent. “I ran out of money fast and have been living on almost nothing or from the generosity of my family,” he said in an interview.

He found some work painting in Ohio but said he missed out on other job opportunities because of the charges against him. He briefly worked at a McDonald’s restaurant, a gig he called “the best job I’ve had in two years.” He lost one job because he was forced to request time off to attend a court hearing, his attorney said in court filings.

Last month, Covelli tweeted from court that he was “bored” and suggested that supporters organize a game of whiffle ball outside the courthouse.

Another defendant in the PayP-

AIDAN CRAWLEY/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

VIRTUAL DISOBEDIENCE

al case, Mercedes Renee Haefer, a 22-year-old sociology major at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, told The Huffington Post that after the indictment was made public, one of her professors barred her from using her laptop in class, citing security concerns.

She said she didn’t speak to her sister or father for several months and was fired from her job at a Sony retail store because of the charges. She said she has been unable to find jobs beyond parttime paralegal work for her lawyer and IT work for nonprofits. “No one will hire me,” she said.

Haefer, a brunette who wears glasses and used the online aliases “No” and “MMMM,” said she still believes in Anonymous, especially when the hacker group organizes attacks in defense of freedom of speech or freedom of information.

“Some things they do I agree with and some things they do I don’t agree with,” she said.

She spoke to The Huffington Post by phone while riding her bike in Las Vegas. When a reporter suggested that activity might not be safe, she replied, “Safety is for losers.”

Haefer said the case has brought her a small measure of fame, including an appearance

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in a recent documentary about Anonymous. “The day my indictment went public my name trended on Twitter,” she recalled.

Before last month’s court hearing, she used the social media service to write: “Really excited that people are coming out to support us for court on the 13th. Makes the whole thing a little less dehumanizing. #paypal14” In an interview, Haefer declined to discuss the PayPal attack beyond saying, “I was speaking out about an issue I feel passionate about.”

She said she tries not to think about the possibility of going to prison.

“If I wake up every day thinking about 15 years in prison, I’m not really going to live my life,” she said.

“You can’t sit and wait on your hands for three years.”

Gerry Smith and Ryan J. Reilly are reporters at The Huffington Post, covering technology and the Justice Department, respectively.

While an FBI affidavit says PayPal collected more than 1,000 IP addresses related to the attack on its site, authorities filed charges against only 14 alleged hackers.

A MESSAGE FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE Text + Photographs

by Susan A. Barnett

Six Flags Jackson, N.J.

IN THE SERIES “NOT IN YOUR FACE,” we witness a chronicle of American subcultures and vernaculars through an iconic piece of American clothing: the t-shirt. While the t-shirt is the visual focus here, these photographs are about identity, validation and perception. The messages are similar to the very coats of arms warriors painted on their shields letting the enemy know just who they were fighting. Individuals wear t-shirts as a kind of badge of honor that says, “I

belong to this group not the other,” and these images create a time capsule, placing the wearer in a moment and place in history.

By photographing from the back, I attempt to challenge the time-honored tradition of the portrait being of the face, and test whether body type, dress and demeanor can tell us just as much as a facial expression might. When we see someone on the street with a mes-

14th St., New York

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sage on their shirt, we may feel we know more about them than we actually do.

These are “anonymous portraits” that ask just what kind of information is necessary to make a portrait.

On the streets, t-shirts become a part of the cultural, political and social issues that have an impact on our everyday lives. In the early months of 2012, the Los Angeles Times ran an article describing how the Trayvon Martin protest t-shirt became a staple at rallies: “It’s difficult to think of another item of clothing more representative of the nation’s twitchy zeitgeist in April 2012. Sometimes it seems as though the PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

old-fashioned medium of cotton has done as much as the Internet to spread the memes associated with the tragedy through the country—and the world.”

In the early 70s, I was a student activist and participated in rallies to protest the Vietnam War. We made t-shirts and posters with the saying, “Hell no we won’t go.” Since then, I have observed messages on t-shirts and have always felt they had a special place in the bottom of our drawers, where we could remember what we once cared about — and maybe still do — when we pull out that special shirt to wear that day.

Coney Island, New York

Boston, Mass.

Boston, Mass.

Lexington Ave., New York

Queens, New York

Miami, Fla.

Palm Springs, Calif.

Minnesota State Fair St. Paul, Minn.

Minnesota State Fair St. Paul, Minn.

Beaubourg, Paris, France

Copenhagen, Denmark

Santa Fe, N.M.

Santa Monica Pier Santa Monica, Calif.

Venice Beach Venice, Calif.

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In which we turn our focus to our favorite 4th of July activity: EATING!

This Is America, and You Can Bake Clams in Your Yard If You Want To

KELLY CLINE/ GETTY IMAGES

BY JULIE R. THOMSON

FOOD

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Exit LMOST ALL FOURTH of July celebrations involve the grill. And you can almost bet your life on the fact that hamburgers and hotdogs will be on the menu.

They always are. It’s not that we have anything against these traditional options, but this year we’re pushing for a different American classic to celebrate our great nation: a clambake.

Clambakes are a typical New England summertime dish — and they’re nothing short of awesome.

For those of you who don’t live anywhere near the coast and are new to clambakes, let us explain.

Clambakes are a beach cookout where potatoes, corn, sausage and, of course, clams are baked in a fire pit built right into the sand.

And while, yes, clambakes do normally require a beach, it’s just absolutely, positively not necessary. You don’t even need to be remotely near an ocean. If you have a grill — or access to one — you can clambake from a rooftop patio right in the middle of New York City or deep in the suburbs of the Midwest with not a body of water in sight. All you really need are clams — lots of them (and a few other amazing accoutrements).

ALISON MIKSCH/ GETTY IMAGES

A

EAT THIS

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You can clambake from a rooftop patio right in the middle of New York City or deep in the suburbs of the Midwest with not a body of water in sight.”

FROM TOP: SHUTTERSTOCK / SERGEY RYZHOV; EEKIM/FLICKR; ALEXANDRA GRABLEWSKI/GETTY IMAGES

Exit HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED FOR A BASIC CLAMBAKE ON THE GRILL

FOOD

INGREDIENTS ■

■

(SERVES 8-10) ■

SUPPLIES ■

■

1 8-inch roasting pan or a large stockpot Foil

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■ ■

1 pound andouille sausage sliced into half-inch pieces ears of corn | husked and 6 broken into thirds or quarters pounds small new potatoes 2 scrubbed clean and cut in half if not very small pounds clams | cleaned 4 eer or water | for boiling B

Preheat the grill. Prepare the clams. Line the roasting pan or large pot with potatoes and sausage. Top with about 4 cups of water or beer and cover with foil. Close the grill and allow to come to boil and cook for about 15 minutes or until the potatoes have become tender.

Once the potatoes are tender, add the clams, your seasoning of choice, corn and cook until the clams open up and the corn is cooked through. Serve immediately onto tables lined with newspaper, along with melted butter and lots of Old Bay seasoning at the ready.

GETTY IMAGES/STOCKFOOD

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If you’d like to take your clambake to the next level, consider adding shrimp or even lobster.

Of course you’ll need a little more beer or water to accommodate for the extra ingredients.

Also, don’t be shy with the seasoning. Lemon and Old Bay are always a good idea when it comes to seafood. But garlic, fresh herbs and even celery can add great flavor, too. Food blogger Coconut & Lime has a great recipe that uses shrimp and fennel. Check out her recipe here.

BEHIND THE SCENES

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FOOD

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How American Are ‘American’ Dishes?

S AMERICA’S BIRTHDAY nears, we always start to get a little nostalgic for our favorite American foods. But, like everyone always says, America is a melting pot, and that means that most of our food actually originated someplace else. We were amazed to find out just how many of our favorite iconic American foods were actually invented somewhere else. So how American is apple pie, really? Hamburgers? Fried chicken? Some of the answers may surprise you. Take the quiz ahead to see how well you know your culnary American history.

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GETTY IMAGES/VETTA

BY REBECCA ORCHANT

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Swipe down to take our American Food Quiz!

GETTY IMAGES/BRAND X (MACARONI); ALEXANDRA GRABLEWSKI/GETTY IMAGES (PASTRAMI, BISCUITS); LAURI PATTERSON/GETTY IMAGES (BLT): SHANNON LONG/GETTY IMAGES (PIE); BRIAN KLUTCH/ GETTY IMAGES (PIZZA); JESSICA KEY/GETTY IMAGES (PANCAKES); SVARIOPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES (BURGER); SHUTTERSTOCK/JOSHUA RESNICK (CHICKEN); GETTY IMAGES/DORLING KINDERSLEY (FRIES)

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FOOD

Take the American Food Quiz Tap boxes to reveal the answers

WHERE WAS APPLE PIE INVENTED?

ENGLAND

FRANCE

AMERICA WHICH OF THESE COUNTRIES HAS NOT LAID CLAIM TO THE INVENTION OF THE HAMBURGER?

GERMANY

HUNGARY

AMERICA WHERE WAS PIZZA INVENTED?

WHERE WAS THE PANCAKE INVENTED?

FRANCE

GREECE

CHINA

JAPAN

WHICH OF THESE IS NOT A POSSIBLE BIRTHPLACE OF MACARONI AND CHEESE?

GREECE

ITALY

AMERICA

FRANCE

WHO INVENTED THE FRENCH FRY?

CHINA

ITALY

FRANCE

BELGIUM

AMERICA

GREECE

AMERICA

SPAIN

WHERE DID FRIED CHICKEN REALLY COME FROM?

SCOTLAND

W. AFRICA

AMERICA WHICH IMMIGRANTS BROUGHT PASTRAMI TO AMERICA?

WHERE WERE BISCUITS INVENTED? (THE FLUFFY BREAD, NOT THE CRISPY COOKIE.)

ENGLAND

FRANCE

AMERICA

GERMANY

WHICH COUNTRY MADE THE FIRST BLT?

TURKISH

RUSSIAN

CANADA

GERMANY

AMERICAN

ROMANIAN

AMERICA

SPAIN

DRINK

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GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF

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Get to Know T America’s (Supposed) First Cocktail

BY REBECCA ORCHANT

HERE ARE about as many stories about who invented the Sazerac as there are ways to make one. There has also been plenty of debate about whether or not the Sazerac was America’s first-ever cocktail, but regardless, this classic New Orleans cocktail is one of our favorites.

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DRINK

As we started to dream up our Independence Day cocktail menu, celebrating the best, brightest and earliest American cocktails, we knew two things: the Sazerac had to be on the list, and we needed to get the cold, hard facts regarding its history. For that, we reached out to our booze spirit guides at Liquor. com. Here’s what they had to tell us: The Sazerac gained popularity in the mid-1800s at the Sazerac Coffee House in New Orleans, which was named for the Sazerac de Forge et Fils brand of cognac.

The drink was originally made with cognac, but the phylloxera

epidemic of the late 19th century that destroyed European vineyards forced a switch to rye whiskey.

Peychaud’s Bitters, which are a must for the Sazerac, were also created in New Orleans, in the 1830s, by a pharmacist named Antoine Amedie Peychaud (in fact, the cocktail was actually first mixed by Peychaud, before it even had a name).

Despite what some claim, the Sazerac is not the original cocktail.

The word ‘cocktail’ was first defined in print in 1806 as a mix of spirit, water, sugar and bitters — basically an Old Fashioned.

READY TO GIVE THE SAZERAC A TRY? Check out Liquor. com’s recipe: INGREDIENTS ■ 2

■ ■

■

■

■

oz. Russell’s Reserve Rye Whiskey 1 tbsp. Absinthe 1 sugar cube (Demerara or white) dashes 3 Peychaud’s Bitters dashes 2 Angostura Bitters 1 slice lemon peel

1

2

Rinse a chilled In a mixing rocks glass glass, muddle with absinthe, the sugar discarding cube and both any excess, bitters. and set aside.

3

4

5

Add the rye, fill with ice and stir.

Strain into the prepared glass.

Twist a slice of lemon peel over the surface to extract the oils and then discard.

TASTE TEST

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10 Ice Creams That’ll Warm Your Heart

BY KRISTEN AIKEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAMON DAHLEN

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VEN THE MOST modest food markets carry more flavors of ice cream than any of us have the attention span to properly vet. The process of finding the right flavor takes you through a range of emotions that goes somewhat like this: 1) Overwhelmed, 2) Excited, 3) Doubtful, 4) Paranoid that fellow shoppers have noticed you’ve been looking at a wall of ice cream for 10 minutes, and finally, 5) either Defeated or Hopeful, depending on your decision.

We’re here to instill some confidence in your ice cream selections this summer. Ever loyal to our dear readers, we bestowed upon ourselves the burdensome task of tast-

E

TASTE TEST

ing approximately 45 flavors of the more unconventional ice creams on the market. Though we have included a pint of Ben & Jerry’s in our selection, we tried to stay away from the typical brands you see every day at the supermarket, instead leaning toward small-batch, artisanal craftsmen who really know their stuff. (Don’t worry, you can order most of them online if they’re not available in your area.)

Among the flavors we sampled were several on the kooky side, featuring everything from birthday cake to flowers and candy swirls.

The true winners, for the most part, stuck to clean, fresh flavors.

But don’t worry — these top 10 ice creams are far from boring. Give them a try, and let us know what you think. Honestly, we’re addicted to some of them.

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As always, our selection has not been influenced or sponsored by the brands included in any way.

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TASTE TEST

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TAP ON EACH ICE CREAM FOR THE TASTERS’ VERDICTS STEVE’S COLD-BREWED CINNAMON COFFEE

SNOQUALMIE HONEY CINNAMON CUSTARD

JENI’S JUNIPER & LEMON CURD

STEVE’S BKLYN BLACKOUT

GRAETER’S SUMMER PEACH ICE CREAM

CIAO BELLA PISTACHIO GELATO

BEN & JERRY’S PINA COLADA

TALENTI SOUTHERN BUTTER PECAN

SALT & STRAW STRAWBERRY HONEY BALSAMIC WITH BLACK PEPPER

JENI’S THE BUCKEYE STATE

01

TFU

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JOAN VICENT CANTA ROIG/ GETTY IMAGES (DOG); BILL CLARK/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES (BURGESS); CHINAFOTOPRESS VIA GETTY IMAGES (DOLPHIN); AP PHOTO/DR. SCOTT M. LIEBERMAN (HANNITY); GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF (MARRIED IN INDIA)

The Dog Meat Festival in China Must Go On

2

Michael Burgess: I Oppose Abortion Because Male Fetuses Masturbate

3

DOLPHIN DIES AFTER TOURISTS MANHANDLE IT

4

Sean Hannity: Obama Went to School in Kenya, Indonesia, ‘or Wherever’

05

Having Premarital Sex Now Means You’re Married in India

06

KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (BUGGED ELECTRONICS); PATRICK FALLON/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (MEN’S WEARHOUSE FOUNDER); DANIEL ZGOMBIC/ GETTY IMAGES (MARIJUANA); GETTY IMAGES/FSTOP (EMAILS); NICOLAS HANSEN/ GETTY IMAGES (SABOTAGE)

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TFU

Blind Chinese Dissident Given Bugged Electronics

7

Men’s Wearhouse Founder Canned

By His Own Board of Directors

8

ONE FARMER IS PIONEERING MARIJUANAFED PIGS

9

Encrypting Your Emails to Prevent Spying?

The NSA Thinks You’re a Criminal.

10

One in 5 Americans Hates Work So Much, They Sabotage Their Employers, Colleagues

Editor-in-Chief:

Arianna Huffington Editor: John Montorio Managing Editor: Gazelle Emami Senior Editor: Adam J. Rose Editor-at-Large: Katy Hall Senior Politics Editor: Sasha Belenky Senior Food Editor: Kristen Aiken Senior Voices Editor: Stuart Whatley Pointers Editor: Marla Friedman Quoted Editor: Gina Ryder Viral Editor: Dean Praetorius Editorial Intern: AJ Barbosa Creative Director: Josh Klenert Design Director: Andrea Nasca Photography Director: Anna Dickson Associate Photo Editor: Wendy George Senior Designer: Martin Gee Design Intern: Jamie Carusi Infographics Art Director: Troy Dunham Production Director: Peter Niceberg AOL MagCore Head of UX and Design: Jeremy LaCroix Product Manager: Gabriel Giordani Architect: Scott Tury Developers: Mike Levine, Sudheer Agrawal QA: Joyce Wang, Amy Golliver Sales: Mandar Shinde AOL, Inc. Chairman & CEO:

Tim Armstrong

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK