Huffington (Issue #59)

THE HUFFINGTON POST MAGAZINE

07.28.13 #59 CONTENTS

Enter POINTERS: It’s a Boy! ...

Introducing Carlos Danger JASON LINKINS: Looking Forward in Angst Q&A: Shailene Woodley

ON THE COVER: CENTRAL PRESS/GETTY IMAGES; THIS PAGE FROM TOP: JEFF BLAKE/THE STATE/MCT/GETTY IMAGES; COURTESY OF SPRINT

HEADLINES MOVING IMAGE

Voices ANDREW LOSOWSKY: Should You Boycott Ender’s Game Because of the Author’s Views?

JOHN KINNEAR: 5 Things Parents Need to Stop Saying to Non-Parents

DIFFERENT MARTINS, SAME AMERICA From MLK to Trayvon.

BY HOWARD FINEMAN

QUOTED

Exit CULTURE: Dmitry Itskov Knows He’ll Live Forever STRESS LESS: Introducing the Hotel Beds You’ll Never Want to Leave EAT THIS: Be the Master of Your Soufflé TFU FROM THE EDITOR: The Undercurrent

THE NETWORK ‘I make more money than the dope man, but have none of the risk.’

BY GERRY SMITH

In Issue 58 of Huffington, Hannah Black’s name was misspelled in “The 5 Types of Cosplayers Wandering Comic Con.” ON THE COVER: Photo Illustration

for Huffington by Troy Dunham

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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The Undercurrent N THIS WEEK’S issue, against the backdrop of the Trayvon Martin case, the decision weakening the Voting Rights Act, and Detroit’s bankruptcy, Howard Fineman looks at how far we still are from true equality for African-Americans.

We hear from many leaders in the black community, including Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, who, as Howard puts it, “has lived and seen the best — and the worst — of what this country means, offers and does to a black man.” Rep. Cummings takes us from his experiences of childhood racism in South Baltimore all the way to his mother’s recent encounter with the first black president (“She called him ‘son’!”). It’s a story that reflects just how far America has come, but also how far we have to go.

ART STREIBER

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Fifty years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and declared that AfricanAmericans were “still not free,” Howard cites devastating statistics on everything from healthcare and education to poverty and incarceration rates. As Rev. Jesse Jackson puts it, “We have LeBron. We have Jay Z. We have

Join the conversation on Twitter and Facebook

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Barack Obama. But that is not a random sample. What matters is the undercurrent, and it’s pulling our people down.”

Asked what Dr. King would think if he were alive today, Rev. Jackson postulates, “he would say that we are freer but less equal.”

Elsewhere in the issue, Gerry Smith looks at the underground market for smartphones.

He introduces us to Jerry Deaven, an agent from the Department of Homeland Security, who explores the phenomenon of companies and stores paying cash for used smartphones, no questions asked, and turning a blind eye to the fact that many of the devices are stolen. “You can walk right into one of these storefronts and sell all the phones at once and walk out with $20,000,” Deaven says. Gerry explores the web of crime and complicity, from the thieves and con-artists to the bulk purchasers and retail outlets that function as marketplaces for illegal, and sometimes violent, activity.

Finally, since sleep is a major editorial priority here, we’ve tapped into the expertise of our

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Asked what Dr. King would think if he were alive today, Rev. Jackson postulates, ‘he would say that we are freer but less equal.’” readers, asking the HuffPost Travel community to vote on the best hotel bed they’ve ever spent the night in. The result is a list of the 26 most spectacular hotel beds to add to your sleep bucket list — from Atlantic City to Scotland.

ARIANNA

BEHIND THE SCENES Tap here for a timelapse video showing how the cover of last week’s issue was made.

Enter

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POINTERS

IT’S A BOY!

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After months of eagerly waiting, royal family fans around the world reveled in the news this week that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had a baby boy. The future king was born at St. Mary’s Hospital on Monday at 4:24 pm., weighing 8 pounds, 6 ounces. “We would like to thank the staff at the Lindo Wing and the whole hospital for the tremendous care the three of us have received,” the new parents said in a statement. “We know it has been a very busy period for the hospital and we would like to thank everyone — staff, patients and visitors — for their understanding during this time.” Prince William and Kate made their first appearance with the newborn on Tuesday before leaving the hospital, and the following day announced his name: George Alexander Louis.

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POINTERS

AL QAEDA: ‘A BOLD RAID BLESSED BY GOD’

Al Qaeda’s branch in Iraq took responsibility this week for raids on the Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons outside Baghdad that freed hundreds of inmates. In a statement posted on a jihadist website, the affiliate said it had planned the attacks for months and described them as “a bold raid blessed by God.” Several Iraqi officials said more than 500 detainees escaped during the attacks, and al Qaeda’s statement said more than 500 mujahideen, or holy warriors, were freed. At least 25 members of Iraq’s security forces were killed, according to Iraqi officials, but al Qaeda puts the number at more than 120.

3 ZIMMERMAN OUT OF HIDING

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LAW AND ORDER STAR DIES

George Zimmerman stayed out of the public eye after being found not guilty in the killing of Trayvon Martin, but police reported this week that he recently helped a family of four trapped inside an overturned blue Ford Explorer SUV. Zimmerman’s lawyer and brother, Robert Zimmerman Jr., have spoken to the press since the verdict, but this was the first known public sighting of Zimmerman.

Dennis Farina, who became known for his role as Detective Joe Fontana on Law and Order, died on Monday in Scottsdale, Ariz., after getting a blood clot in his lung. His doctor later confirmed that he was battling lung cancer.

He was 69. Farina was a longtime cop in Chicago and didn’t start acting until his late 30s after a chance meeting with director Michael Mann. He was in dozens of movies, including Get Shorty, Saving Private Ryan and Midnight Run, as well as the TV shows Crime Story and Miami Vice.

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POINTERS

ANOTHER WEINER SCANDAL

NYC mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner admitted this week that he continued to send lewd online messages even after he resigned from Congress in 2011 due to a sexting scandal.

The revelation came in the wake of reports from the nightlife website “The Dirty” that Weiner used the name “Carlos Danger” to send explicit messages to a 22-year-old woman.

In a press conference Weiner held to address the reports, his wife, Huma Abedin, stunned audiences by speaking out about the scandal. “It took a lot of work and a whole lot of therapy to get to a place where I could forgive Anthony,” she said.

YOU’RE OUT!

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Major League Baseball announced the suspension this week of Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, who violated the Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. Braun will miss 65 games and lose about $3 million, the AP reported. “As I have acknowledged in the past, I am not perfect. I realize now that I have made some mistakes,” he said in a statement. “I am willing to accept the consequences of those actions.” Braun is the first player to be suspended in the wake of MLB’s latest drug investigation.

THAT’S VIRAL BREAKING: WOMAN GIVES BIRTH TO BABY

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

HEADLINES TO VIEW FULL STORIES

TIME TO CROSS OUT SUBWAY FROM LIST OF PLACES YOU’LL BE EATING...

McDONALD’S EMPLOYEE COLLAPSES FROM HEAT. STAFF WALKS OUT.

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT WHEN THE TEA PARTY RALLY GETS OVERTLY RACIST

HOW TO RAISE A KID WHO ISN’T WHINY AND ANNOYING

DOUGLAS GRAHAM/CQ ROLL CALL/GETTY IMAGES

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LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

JASON LINKINS

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WALL STREET CASH RULES EVERYTHING AROUND THE HOUSE BANKING COMMITTEE, APPARENTLY ACK IN EARLY JUNE, former Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) took to our pages to lament the way the House Financial Services Committee had rubber-stamped a whole passel of bills that were drawn up by Wall Street lobbyists, bills that

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created “gaping loopholes in the Dodd-Frank Act’s regulation of derivatives, including credit default swaps that figured so prominently in the financial crisis.”

On that occasion, Miller was especially disillusioned by the behavior of his own party’s members of the committee. Despite the fact that the Democratic base strongly supports financial reform, “the great majority of junior Democrats,

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appears in what is most likely his last Capitol Hill appearance on July 17, 2013.

Enter including all seven freshmen” — the group who arrived in Washington while the memory of Wall Street’s economy-cratering cockup still loomed large — fell in with Wall Street’s K Street masters, and helped to weaken reform.

At the time, Miller offered this diagnosis: Washington Republicans live in fear of the Republican base.

Washington Democrats, on the other hand, use the Democratic base as a foil. Washington Democrats — not grassroots Democrats — pick Democratic congressional candidates in swing districts. Washington Democrats recruit candidates who “don’t have particularly strong views” on important issues so they will not strike swing voters as unduly partisan.

Democrats from swing districts get priority in committee assignments, and the Financial Services Committee is a plum assignment. The committee is known in Congress as a “money committee.” Members of the committee have a much easier time raising money from the financial interests affected by the committee’s decisions.

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Democratic members still have to call and ask for money.

And call. And call. And call.

And the amount of time those members spend on the phones, begging, is far from insignificant.

Back in January, The Huffington Post obtained a PowerPoint presentation that was shown to incoming freshmen by the Democratic Congressional Campaign

The great majority of junior Democrats, including all seven freshmen... fell in with Wall Street’s K Street masters, and helped to weaken reform.”

Committee. That PowerPoint revealed that the “daily schedule prescribed by the Democratic leadership contemplates a nine or 10-hour day while in Washington,” which includes four hours of “call time” (read: hustling for ca$h) and “another hour is blocked off for ‘strategic outreach.’” (Read: more hustling).

Well, according to Politico’s MJ Lee, those calls that went out did not go unreturned — and the replies came with enough lucre to

Enter lube up the dealmaking process.

The big winners were apparently Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Fla.), who used their perches on the the House Financial Services Committee to take home “$611,341 and $530,963, respectively.” But the freshmen did really well across the board — Lee’s dive into the committee members’ FEC filings found that the “11 freshman lawmakers who serve on the House panel raised an average of $322,012 during the second quarter — $100,000 more than the $221,633 average hauled in by all House freshmen.”

As you might expect, GOP freshmen on the committee outpaced their Democratic counterparts in the race to suck down Wall Street boodle. But the Democrats didn’t do too shabby!

Rep. Denny Heck (D-Wash.), for example, raised $251,687 during the filing period thanks, in part, to donations from the PACs of Credit Suisse Securities, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) pulled in $395,593, including thousands of dollars in donations from the PACs of Morgan Stanley, the American Bankers

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Association, Mastercard International and Goldman [Sachs].

Both Rep. Joyce Beatty (DOhio) and Murphy received cash from the PACs of the ABA, Bank of America and Citigroup, while Democratic Reps. Dan Kildee of Michigan and John Delaney of Maryland raised funds from PACs of industry groups, like the Mortgage Bankers Association and the

The ‘daily schedule prescribed by the Democratic leadership’... includes four hours of ‘call time’ (read: hustling for ca$h) and ‘another hour... blocked off for ‘strategic outreach’ (read: more hustling).”

Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association.

Kildee, who raised $131,435 last quarter, said, “There’s always some correlation between the work that a person does on a committee and the organizations that find some reason to support them.”

Ha, ha, yes, there always seems to be some correlation, for some

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reason. The phenomenon even has a name, given to us by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.): “the unreliable bottom row.� Gutierrez coined the term after a similar incident took place in the House Committee on Financial Services back in October of 2009, when the panel met to determine whether the lending practices of auto dealers would be subject to the oversight of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

On that occasion, Rep. John

LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST

Campbell (R-Calif.), a former Saab dealer who was still stacking cheddar from his friends in the industry, proposed a bill that would exempt the industry from CFPB scrutiny. As Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney reported: As usual, the members filed into the high-ceilinged first-floor hearing room in the Rayburn House Office Building. Committee Chairman Barney Frank oversaw the vote atop four tiered rows of seats, a full story above the witnesses and the audience.

The longest-serving Democratic

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Senate Finance Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) speaks with Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) in 2009.

Enter members of the panel — informally known as the banking committee — sat to the right or just below the chairman; it can take years, if not decades, for a freshman representative to ascend up the risers.

The clerk called the roll, starting from the top. Senior Democrats roundly rejected Campbell’s amendment. It appeared as if the Democrats would beat back the effort and apply the same standard to car dealers that was applied to everyone else.

Then came the bottom two rows, the place where reform goes to die. Despite the disapproval of the powerful chairman and nearly every consumer group in the country, the Campbell amendment passed by a 47-21 margin.

As Grim and Delaney bottomlined it, this phenomenon was essentially created by party bosses pursuing perverse incentives.

Their purple-district freshmen were among the most vulnerable members of their caucus.

Vulnerable members need large war chests to fend off pesky challenges. Wall Street interests have

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lots of cash with which to pad war chests. And so those freshmen found themselves on the front lines of the committee dedicated to financial reform — but deployed there to rake in campaign cash, not to pursue reforms.

“In short, by setting up the committee as a place for shaky Democrats from red districts to pad their campaign coffers, leadership made a choice to priori-

Senior Democrats roundly rejected Campbell’s amendment... then came the bottom two rows, the place where reform goes to die.” tize fundraising over the passage of strong legislation,” write Grim and Delaney.

And that’s just one more way that the system is broken and things don’t get better. For you, anyway! Things are going great for these freshmen, because even if they lose their seats to the vagaries of purple-district politics, chances are good that their benefactors will remember their hard work, and guide them toward the gilded revolving door.

Q&A

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Enter

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From One Young Adult Star to Another...

Shailene Woodley: “Being somebody who was in Winter’s Bone who had this amazing career beforehand — was [Jennifer Lawrence] happy with [Hunger Games]?... She said it was the biggest blessing she’d ever received and that I would be a fool not to do Divergent.”

Above: Shailene Woodley arrives at the 84th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 26, 2012. Below: Woodley stars in Divergent, which opens in theaters in March 2014.

FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW, VISIT HUFFPOST LIVE

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (SPEECH BEFORE THE STORM); LANE TURNER/THE BOSTON GLOBE VIA GETTY IMAGES (TRAYVON COULD HAVE BEEN ME); JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES (HUMA STANDS BY HER MAN); MANDEL NGAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES (REFUGEE CITY)

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An 80-year-old street barber named Mr. Man waits for customers at his roadside shop.

On average, a haircut from one of Hanoi’s traditional street barbers costs between $1 and $4 USD.

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Gotland Island, Russia 07.15.2013 Russian President Vladimir Putin rides along with crew members in a submersible vessel designed to dive to the bottom of the Baltic Sea. PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

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London, England 07.17.2013 Swimmers enjoy the sunshine at an outdoor pool in central London.

The United Kingdom experienced close to two weeks of heatwave conditions in early July.

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07.18.2013 A charred pickup truck stands among burnt ruins after a massive wildfire spanning 23,000 acres forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

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Taichung, Taiwan 07.20.2013 A young boy presses up against the window of a train at the Checheng railway station during this year’s Nantou Train Festival.

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Singapore 07.20.2013 A group of climbers rappel down the Sentosa during the OBS-The Merlion Charity Abseil event.

Rappellers descended down the iconic national structure to raise money for disadvantaged children and at-risk youths whose parents are incarcerated.

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Poole, England 07.21.2013 Lightning strikes near Poole Harbour during a thunderstorm that drew the curtain on weeks of stifling temperatures throughout the United Kingdom.

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Kelmarsh, England 07.20.2013 Re-enactors relax after the first day of the “History Live!” event at Kelmarsh Hall near Northamptonshire. The event brings more than 2,000 re-enactors together to animate 2,000 years of English history.

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Sheffield, England 07.22.2013 A worker carries out a burning procedure inside a ladle at Sheffield Forgemasters International. After returning to growth in the first quarter, the British economy appears to be gathering momentum.

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Milwaukee, Wis. 07.21.2013 Milwaukee Brewers center fielder Carlos G贸mez unloads a bottle of foot powder onto teammate Caleb Gindl after Gindl hit a walk-off home run to defeat the Miami Marlins in the 13th inning.

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Sydney, Australia 07.21.2013 Falun Gong practictioners meditate on the 14th anniversary of the beginning of the Chinese government’s persecution of the spiritual practice.

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

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RICHARD FOREMAN JR SMPSP/© 2012 SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, LLC.

Voices

ANDREW LOSOWSKY

Should You Boycott Ender’s Game Because of the Author’s Views?

IF YOU FIND an author’s views objectionable, should you boycott their work?

The question has emerged as the movie Ender’s Game is to be released this November. Though it’s months away, a campaign by the group Geeks Out called Skip

Ender’s Game is already calling for a boycott because of author Orson Scott Card’s views on LGBT rights.

Let’s say that you, like so many, loved the book, and want to go and see this movie. Or you want to read the book then see the movie — but you still find Scott Card’s opinions on human rights objectionable. What should you do?

There’s a lot to unpick here.

Harrison Ford (center) and Asa Butterfield (right) star in Ender’s Game.

Voices Here are some of the issues that this question raises. * An author is not separate from the work they create. On the most basic level, that’s clearly true. Books do not emerge from the heavens, using authors as lightning rods to connect publishers and eternal truth. Novels are written by people whose ideas, childhoods, beliefs, inspirations are placed in a hot subconscious for a few decades until they’re ready to serve.

Some people’s work is deliberately constructed around ideas of themselves and their character — Paula Deen, to take a now-notorious example — which means that anything objectionable about the person also impacts everything about their work.

However, a person who has bigoted views will not always create work that is itself necessarily bigoted (or, importantly, vice versa).

Writers do not have complete control over the meanings and interpretations of their work, in their own age or those that follow, and themes that are unintentionally misogynist, racist — or prolesbian, pro-choice for that matter — might still emerge as clearly advocated in a text despite the

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personal politics of the author.

Perhaps the best thing is always to be aware that every cultural product you consume contains subtexts and interpretations beyond what the author might intend (but that also sometimes might be intentional) — and if you’re reading a book by someone whose views about a particular percentage of the population you know to be controversial, be

A person who has bigoted views will not always create work that is itself necessarily bigoted.” hypervigilant to see if and when their prejudice might be showing.

And it’s doubly difficult to separate an author from their work, because... * Publishers and media encourage us to connect books with their authors. We are in an age of the cult of author. If you have a new book coming up for a major publisher, they will expect you to become a personality, for both readers and media, across multiple platforms. No matter the subject of your fiction, your personal story

RICHARD FOREMAN JR; SMPSP /© 2013 SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, LLC.

Voices

will also be told and you’ll find yourself in a dizzying carousel of interviews and blog posts in the month of publication, talking about yourself more than your book.

So however separate they might be thematically, if you’ve read much of Scott Card’s opinions on atypical sexuality, you might find it hard to read his work dispassionately. You might also find it embarrassing to read his work in public, just as some shy away from reading the works of Ayn Rand or Karl Marx on public transportation.

That’s the flip side of the machinations of book publicity.

(Judge not the reader of a book

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in public, for you know not why they readeth.)

Hence, despite my above advice to readers about reading widely and carefully, publishers who are thinking of hiring Scott Card might want to think twice about the decision. The cult of the author means that you will be devoting some of your publicity resources to giving him a mouthpiece, and what he says will be on some level presented alongside your brand. Also, some groups may not be excited about the advance you paid him, which brings me to... * Authors make money from books and movies. This is undoubtedly true (at least for the lucky few.) However much the

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Hailee Steinfeld (left) and Asa Butterfield (right) in Ender’s Game.

RICHARD FOREMAN JR SMPSP/© 2012 SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, LLC.

Voices filmmakers distance themselves from Scott Card’s opinions, they doubtless paid a lot of money for the rights to adapt his book. This isn’t really a surprise — the Hollywood Hills are pretty, but those sure aren’t moral high grounds.

Should the studio have refused to do buy this script, because some of the money would be going to someone who might donate it to anti-gay causes?

Maybe. Scott Card’s cut was probably small in comparison to the movie’s budget, but still substantial in itself. The ethics of capitalism are complex at the best of times, and it seems relevant to point out that the filmmakers seemed to want to make a movie that wasn’t bigoted (as far as I’m aware, though other interpretations are likely available, and I haven’t seen the movie yet.)

To be honest, I feel that merely asking these questions, and highlighting how objectionable Scott Card’s views are, are themselves a bigger net positive than if no studio had dared go near the book for fear of a hypothetical backlash about the man. As a result of the campaigns and statements about him, a lot of people primarily now seem to know the author for his

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opinions. Without a movie billboard to hang it on, “old author has ugly views” wouldn’t nearly get so much attention. * Boycotting the movie makes a statement. Kind of, but there are a couple of issues here. First of all, there’s no talk yet about making a second Ender’s Game movie from the book series. Sure, if the movie is a flop then no sequel, but wouldn’t it make more sense to boycott all movies by the film’s producers until they apologized or promised not to pay Scott Card any more money? One flop won’t threaten their livelihoods — they’ll just move onto something else.

The bigger point though is this: not seeing a movie is like tweeting “#SupportEgypt.” It makes a

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Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham in Ender’s Game.

Voices statement but in a very low-key way. If you want to boycott it, then great, go right ahead. And if you truly want to demonstrate your objections to Scott Card’s ideas, but really, really want to see Ender’s Game, then go see the movie and give twice as much money as your movie ticket cost to a decent advocacy group that opposes his personal opinions.

Because to be honest, it really doesn’t matter very much whether you go to a movie or don’t, whether you read a book or not, whether or not you personally go to Chickfil-A twice a year. Though mass campaigns undoubtedly can have an impact, especially in PR terms, a few dollars spent on a ticket are not going to make a huge difference one way or the other to the issue itself. It’s a nice enough gesture if you want to make it, but more important is how you allow the debates that surround these questions inform your thinking, and help you understand how deep your feelings are about the issues.

Look at the wider picture of society’s bigotry, not just the ramblings of one grumpy Mormon church member whose views don’t come as a huge surprise to anyone.

When you’ve thought that

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through, then don’t not see a movie as your method of response. This is a negative non-reaction that does very little to help or hinder anyone.

Instead, do something positive: spend time informing yourself of the issues, research local groups, volunteer, give money, write and circulate stories that contradict objectionable ideas — whatever you feel is most effective and realistic

Look at the wider picture of society’s bigotry, not just the ramblings of one grumpy Mormon church member whose views don’t come as a huge surprise to anyone.” for you, as Geeks Out also suggests on its Skip Ender’s Game page.

Yes, doing this will be a lot more work than simply going to see a different movie, but the results will impact you and everyone around you a lot longer than the duration of a film. And that, more than any movie ticket bought or not, will really, really piss off Orson Scott Card.

Andrew Losowsky is the books editor of The Huffington Post.

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JOHN KINNEAR

5 Things Parents Need to Stop Saying to Non-Parents IRST, I should say that I am 100 percent guilty of all of these. I know this reads as an advice list, but really it’s advice I’m giving myself. The “you” I am addressing in this piece is me... unless it applies to you; then it is you. ¶ I ran headfirst into this parenting thing, and have gladly and gratefully let it redefine me as a person. One unforeseen side-effect has been that I view everything through the lens of parenting. Sometimes that is a good thing. For instance, I don’t leave steak knives lying around as much as I used to. Sometimes — and this is what I’ve recently learned — it can alienate my non-kid-having friends. Here are some things that are better left unsaid.

Voices 1. ‘DOGS ARE NOT KIDS.’ It usually goes like this. “Ugh. You know what really bugs me? When so-and-so compares her dog to my kid. Or when so-and-so refers to his or her dog as his or her kid. Dogs are not kids! She has NO IDEA!” You know what? Unless “soand-so” needs professional help, I guarantee “so-and-so” knows that her dog is not a human child.

She also knows that having a dog is nothing like having a kid. What she’s really saying is “Oh! Yes. I also have something in my life that poops AND brings me joy.”

She is trying to relate to you and be a part of your life — the life where all you do is talk about your kids. I know that it’s hard to relate when you have kids and your friends don’t. What were once close relationships can become sporadic meet-ups where you do your best to try and catch up with someone with whom you have very little in common anymore. Sure, you two were best buds in college, but now you have very different lives. So, when “so-and-so” offhandedly, and perhaps awkwardly, tries to relate to your story about picking poo out of your bangs by comparing it to scraping dog shit out of the carpet, cut her some

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slack. She’s just trying to be nice.

And she misses you.

2. ‘YOU THINK YOU’RE [INSERT ANYTHING HERE]? TRY HAVING KIDS!’ Tired, stressed, in pain, covered in urine, it doesn’t matter. They all apply. Too often, we parents downplay non-parents’ concerns by pulling ours out and tossing them on the table. “Oh man! You worked 50 hours this week? Try

I guarantee ‘so-and-so’ knows that her dog is not a human child ... What she’s really saying is ‘Oh! Yes. I also have something in my life that poops AND brings me joy.’” doing that with kids!” “Oh man, you think your feet hurt from working outside all day! I’ve been chasing my toddler blah blah blah punch me in the face, please.”

It’s not a competition. If, on a scale of 1 to Passing Out Awkwardly in the Shower and Waking Up When the Hot Water Runs Out, your friend is at a 7, and three weeks into your first newborn you were at a 9, that DOESN’T MAKE YOUR FRIEND ANY LESS TIRED.

Voices

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It isn’t that your experiences can’t be a valid contribution to the conversation, but instead of a “my pain is more painful than your pain” approach, instead, try sympathizing. Why not try using your experience as a new parent to help instead of compete? Say something like, “Whoa! I bet you’re tired. When I was tired after my daughter was born, I found that pouring coffee directly into my eyeballs was incredibly useful.”

3. ‘DON’T WORRY, WHEN YOU HAVE KIDS YOU’LL...’ ... not be grossed out by boogers, know who Dora the Explorer is, be happy... UGH. We’ve got to quit assuming that everyone is going to have kids. Some people don’t want kids and choose not to have them.

Some people really want kids and are trying incredibly hard to have them. Indicating to these people that having kids is the only way they will reach some higher level of understanding is both inconsiderate and rude. I don’t know what the alternatives to these statements are. Maybe just cut anything that starts with “When you have kids...” out of your repertoire all together. It makes you sound like someone’s mom, anyway.

JOHN KINNEAR

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‘Oh man, you think your feet hurt from working outside all day! I’ve been chasing my toddler blah blah blah punch me in the face, please.’”

4. ‘IS THE PARTY KID-FRIENDLY?’ Unless you and your friend have some previous communication on this topic about how your little one is always welcome, assume the party is not kid-friendly. Don’t ask. If it were “kid-friendly” they would have invited you AND your kids, and mentioned the awesome playroom that they will have set up in the basement. By asking your non-kid-having friends if their party is kid friendly you are putting them in the really awkward position of either MAKING their party kid-friendly on the fly, or telling you that the party is NOT kid-friendly which, then, no matter how low-key the party

Voices was intended to be in the first place, pretty much requires that they now provide a steady supply of hookers and blow. Don’t make your friends set up a kids’ room, and definitely don’t make them buy hookers and blow.

5. ‘MY LIFE DIDN’T HAVE MEANING BEFORE I HAD KIDS!’ Another way to say this: My life was meaningless before I had kids. Another way: Life without kids is meaningless.

Look, I know this feeling. Sometimes it feels like all the worries I had before my kids were trivial.

I understand the urge to convey that feeling into words. Don’t do it. Your life may have a different purpose now, but your pre-kid life was an important part of your story, and your non-kid-having friends are a part of that. Don’t dismiss that part of your life the way most people skip the foreword to a novel they really want to read.

By dismissing the “before” as just a buildup to your kids, you are not only dismissing your friends, but you’re also implying that their story has not started yet.

Lastly, if you have done or said any of these things, you don’t need to apologize. Just stop say-

JOHN KINNEAR

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ing them. Apologizing will make it worse. I apologized for one of these things, and it came out poorly. It basically sounded like “Oh, you poor, delicate, non-kidhaving flower. I am sorry that I was so consumed in my awesome parenting that I was neglectful and dismissive of our friendship.

Please forgive me.”

There was no forgiveness needed. I hadn’t harmed anyone, I’d

Unless you and your friend have some previous communication on this topic about how your little one is always welcome, assume the party is not kid-friendly.” just annoyed them. Forgiving me would have been like forgiving a fly for landing on you. So, I promise to try and be more aware of how I say things, a better friend and less of a fly. And by less of a fly, I mean that I will not land on you, vomit on you and then try to eat you. College is over. I don’t do that stuff anymore.

John Kinnear is the author of AskYourDadBlog.com.

QUOTED

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Voices

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“ Just knowing that Ann Coulter [said] “Hallelujah” should tell you that something terrible has happened.”

— HuffPost commenter F_Sz

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LEE JEFFRIES; AP PHOTO/J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE; COURTESY OF DR. CRISTINA LUCIA STASIA; AP PHOTO/WENNER MEDIA

on Ann Coulter’s reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict

Through the artist eyes, these people go from invisible to lovable.

— HuffPost commenter DBP67

on Lee Jeffries’ portraits of homeless men and women

“ I’m actually kind of surprised it’s taken so long for one of these kids to set off a bomb.”

— Community college professor Wick Sloane

on young immigrants, in Rolling Stone’s controversial cover story on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

“ Perhaps the issue of alcoholism in our youth culture needs to be addressed.”

— HuffPost commenter Free_Again on the “Don’t Be That Girl” campaign

Voices

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“ Mankind is doomed.”

— HuffPost commenter DeceptionIsReality

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KRISTOPHER LONG/COMEDY CENTRAL; GETTY IMAGES; WILLIAM B. PLOWMAN/NBC/NBC NEWSWIRE/GETTY IMAGES; ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

“ Shouldn’t the job of comptroller go to someone who has shown a modicum of self-comptrol?”

on a survey showing that nearly 20 percent of young adults use their smartphones during sex

— Stephen Colbert,

in an interview with New York City Comptroller candidate Eliot Spitzer

“ [T]he Constitution itself is suffering.”

— Microsoft lawyer Bradford Smith

in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder (pictured) asking for permission to disclose more information about the U.S. government’s secret program to spy on Americans’ Internet activity

“ I’m speaking now for all white people but especially those who have tried to change in the last 50 or 60 years ... I’m sorry for this stuff. That’s all I’m saying.”

— MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews

to black colleagues on last Thursday’s broadcast

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07.28.13 #59 FEATURES

‘STILL NOT FREE’ THE BIG STEAL

‘STILL

BY HOWARD FINEMAN

FIFTY YEARS AGO THIS SUMMER, at the March On Washington, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech that forever altered the national conversation around race and injustice in America. He spoke of his Dream — a vision of an America where individuals were judged not by “the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Despite the remarkable progress made in the nearly 100 years since slavery had been abolished, King declared that day that blacks in America were “still not free.” Five decades later, in the shadow of the death of Trayvon Martin, Americans are once again fiercely debating race. What does it mean to live in a country with a black president, but one where he, too, can relate to racial profiling? Where we have AfricanAmerican entertainers topping the charts, but far more people struggling to get by?

How far have we really come?

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‘STILL NOT FREE’

ELIJAH CUMMINGS, 62 years old, has lived and seen the best — and the worst — of what this country means, offers and does to a black man. He knows the promise and pain of Black America.

His parents were Southern sharecroppers who moved to Baltimore for a better life. The budding civil rights movement was active in the city, and schools and public facilities became integrated when he was a boy. They were excellent, and he went on to become

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“She called him ‘son’!”

I said, ‘Mom, he’s the president.’” student body president at Howard University, earned a law degree and now serves as a Democrat in the House, representing the city in which he grew up.

He recently took his 86-yearold mother, Ruth Cummings, to meet his close friend, Barack Obama. A Pentecostal preacher, she told the president, “I want

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in June 2013.

‘STILL NOT FREE’ you to know, son, I pray for you every day.”

“She called him ‘son’!” Cummings recalled with a laugh. “I said, ‘Mom, he’s the president.’

She told me it was the best day of her life. It blew her mind to meet a black president.”

But as Cummings rose — indeed, as Barack Obama rose in Chicago — Baltimore fell.

Cummings’ district, which is 60 percent African-American, encompasses block upon block of abandoned, boarded-up housing.

The congressman lives on one such block. Schools and other public institutions are under crushing financial pressure. Poverty, joblessness and incarceration: all rampant, and in many cases worsened in recent years of recession.

“The unemployment rate in my district among African-American men is 40 percent,” he told me.

“Forty percent!” And that doesn’t count the many men serving hard time in prison, often for victimless drug crimes that carry stiff mandatory sentences. “The criminal record makes it hard, if not impossible, for them to get jobs after they get out,” he said.

Gun violence struck Cummings’ own family in 2011. Intruders shot

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“ We have famous names of outstanding achievement.

We have LeBron. We have Jay Z. We have Barack Obama. But that is not a random sample.

What matters is the undercurrent, and it’s pulling our people down.”

— REV. JESSE JACKSON and killed his 20-year-old nephew, Christopher Cummings, in an off-campus apartment at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., Two years later, no one has been arrested. Christopher was a top student, studying criminal justice.

At a memorial service in Baltimore, Cummings pleaded for an end to violence in the black community. “I consider my nephew’s murder a hate crime,” he told me, his voice laced with bitterness.

“They hated his success.”

The story of Elijah Cummings is a story of Black America in the summer of 2013: rising visibility and achievement, power in high places, but also renewed focus on the persistence, or decay, of conditions on the streets and in the homes of African Americans. We

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‘STILL NOT FREE’

aren’t living in the colorblind, post-racial society we hoped a black president might usher in, not when success is so split along color lines.

“We have famous names of outstanding achievement,” the Rev. Jesse Jackson told me. “We have

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

LeBron. We have Jay Z. We have Barack Obama. But that is not a random sample. What matters is the undercurrent, and it’s pulling our people down.”

This is a teaching moment in American life, a teaching summer.

The country, including the president himself, is talking about race again. It’s our oldest and deepest argument, a conversa-

Poverty, joblessness and incarceration have all increased in Cummings’ Baltimore district since the start of the recession.

AP PHOTO/MANUEL BALCE CENETA

“ Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”

— PRESIDENT OBAMA

tion in black and white and blood about our original constitutional and social sin.

The reasons for its revival now: the Supreme Court, Trayvon, Detroit and Martin Luther King Jr. In June, the court issued opinions restricting the reach of affirmative action and the Voting

Rights Act, twin engines of African-American upward mobility.

Earlier this month, a jury in Sanford, Fla., acquitted George Zimmerman of all charges, accepting his claim that he had shot and killed a 17-year-old unarmed black youth named Trayvon Martin in self-defense. The 2012 shooting and the 2013 verdict divided the country, but united Black America around the reasonable fear that no

President Obama spoke about his personal experience as a black man in America after the Zimmerman verdict.

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‘STILL NOT FREE’

black child — especially no black male — is safe from the assumption that he is somehow a threat to the civil order on any street he walks.

President Obama was moved this past week to offer his own personal testimony about the casual slights he had suffered and the fears he thought he had engendered in whites in passing encounters earlier in his life.

“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago,” he said. It was

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

a stunning statement, and a rare attempt by Obama to explain the world from his black perspective.

The day before Obama spoke, Detroit filed for bankruptcy, owing an estimated $20 billion to creditors. The city of 700,000 — once it was 2 million — is over 80 percent African-American and a mecca of black culture. But the cheerful pop sound of Motown now seems like a cruelly ironic soundtrack to decline.

Then there is the equally loud echo of political history.

Later this summer, the nation

Jobseekers form a long line outside an employment fair at the Baltimore Convention Center.

AP PHOTO/FILE

‘STILL NOT FREE’

will observe the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for “Jobs and Freedom,” and in advance of that milestone, new questions are being asked about whether African Americans have much more of either than they did on Aug. 28, 1963.

If Dr. King were alive today,

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what would he say on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial as he surveyed the scene?

“He would say that we are freer but less equal,” said Jackson. “He would remind us of what he said back then, which is that the allies who joined us to oppose barbarity will not necessarily be our allies for equality.”

Measured against the arc of American history, which includes

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivers his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech before thousands in Washington, D.C., in 1963.

FROM TOP: ROWLAND PHOTO SCHERMAN/GETTY OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT IMAGES; TKMOSES ROBINSON/GETTY IMAGES

THEN + NOW:

ABOVE: Demonstrators rally during the March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, D.C., in August 1963. BELOW: Thousands attend a “Justice For Trayvon” vigil in Atlanta in July 2013.

PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK

‘STILL NOT FREE’ more than two centuries of slavery and a third of official segregation, the legal, political and social advancements since 1963 are impressive, even astonishing. We are not a perfect Union, but we are less imperfect in fundamental and decent ways.

“Jim Crow is gone, housing and school segregation are gone, voting rights are in, millions were registered, blacks voted in a higher percentage than whites in 2012,” Jackson noted. “We have won a lot of victories.”

Racial diversity is accepted as a social norm, good not only for the soul and society but for the economy and even, if not especially, for corporate management.

The president, who measures the culture in part by watching his daughters, took note of the changed tone. “It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated,” he said earlier this month. “But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I see them interact: They’re better than we are — they are better than we were — on these issues.

And that is true in every community that I have visited all across the country.”

But cold federal statistics add

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“ … when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I see them interact: They’re better than we are — they are better than we were — on these issues.”

— PRESIDENT OBAMA up to a different narrative. It is a depressing litany, but one that bears repeating. The numbers tell an old story: It is shocking how little things have changed since Dr. King started measuring out loud in the 1950s.

Black poverty rates were cut in half from the start of the 1960s (when they were more than 50 percent) to the year 2000, but have mostly been inching upwards since.

In absolute terms, more blacks are in poverty than ever — more than one in four of the nation’s 44 million African-American citizens.

More than one in three black children live in poverty, a percentage that rises to well over 50 percent in cities such as Detroit.

Diversity is a social good but not automatically an economic one if there is no broad access to capital. “Diversity can be a diversion,” said Jackson. “I can sit

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‘STILL NOT FREE’

down and eat anywhere in my hometown, but not a single building is owned by an African American.” And there are only a small handful of blacks who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.

Health care numbers are equally bleak. Infant mortality, a basic

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

measure of community health, is 1.14 percent among black Americans, more than double the 0.51 percent among whites. The relative rates of health insurance and pension coverage for blacks haven’t budged since 1979, according to Census figures and the most recent “State of Working America” study. For example, 48.2 percent of whites had health care

Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy on July 19, 2013, making Detroit the largest city to file for bankruptcy in U.S. history.

‘STILL NOT FREE’ coverage in 2010, compared with 37.7 percent of blacks.

Changes in the criminal justice and penal systems — especially the rise of mandatory sentencing and the privatization of prisons — have created an archipelago of incarceration that has trapped a vastly disproportionate number of black men behind bars. African Americans are 14 percent of the U.S. population, but constitute nearly 1 million of the 2.3 million prison inmates today, according to a recent NAACP study. “If current trends continue,” the study says, “one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.”

Education is a more hopeful tale, at least at first glance.

In 1975, 40 percent of AfricanAmerican high school graduates enrolled in college; by 2008, that percentage had risen to 56 percent, according to the College Board. But overall, only 16 percent of blacks have at least a bachelor’s degree, a rate half that of whites. After decades of diligent effort and the advent of more generous scholarships, the Ivy League is 7 percent black, still only half the percentage of the overall population.

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“ Diversity can be a diversion.”

— REV. JESSE JACKSON Violence remains rampant.

Blacks were victims in nearly half of all homicides, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Serious violent crime against black youths was more than twice that against white youths.

Violent crime remains a mostly segregated phenomenon in America, a tragic function of proximity, not race per se. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, black perpetrators are responsible for more than nine of ten homicides of blacks; for nonfatal violent crimes, the percentage four out of five. “It is something we talk about all the time in the community,” said Cummings. “I have had mothers tell me they don’t want to bring children into the world because it is just too dangerous a place for them.”

So how far have we really come?

In 1963, Dr. King declared on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that African Americans were “still not free.”

Five years later, in his posthumously published book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or

ROBERT NICKELSBERG/GETTY IMAGES

‘STILL NOT FREE’

Community?, he depicted the life of African Americans, especially men, in a way that seems alarmingly current: “Of the good things in life he has approximately one half those of whites,” King wrote, “of the bad he has twice those of whites. ... When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality (widely accepted as an accurate index of general health) among Negroes is double that of whites.” And so on.

Such statistics remain all too real to men such as Elijah Cummings, who sees them vividly in his Baltimore district.

He told me that he has pressed the president, whose campaign he oversaw in Maryland in 2008 and

Baltimore police officers arrest a man for allegedly dealing drugs in 2010.

A recent NAACP study says that “one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.”

‘STILL NOT FREE’ 2012, to speak out and do more on what Jackson called “the undercurrent.” Cummings said, “He thinks he has accomplished a lot, and there is only so hard I can press him.”

But, since the death of Trayvon Martin and now more openly, Obama now seems to be awakening to the need to speak openly from the African-American perspective, and Cummings insists on seeing the promise beyond the pain, based in part on his own youth.

For Cummings, the first steps on the still arduous march to true racial equality began in a wading pool in the late 1950s.

Back then, he was just a young boy whose parents — strict Pentecostal preachers both — had come north from South Carolina in the 1940s to ensure that their children would receive a decent education. Each summer, in the soupy Chesapeake heat, Elijah and the other black children would crowd into a tiny wading pool in their poor South Baltimore neighborhood. “It was so crowded that we had to take turns stepping into it,” Cummings recalled.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

Until one day Juanita Jackson Mitchell arrived. Her husband was Clarence Mitchell, a close associate of Dr. King, a lobbyist for the NAACP in Washington, and a man who ultimately deserves major credit for passage of most significant civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. She was a lawyer — the first African-American woman admitted to the bar in Maryland — and a fiercely effective civil rights activist in her own right.

“She came by one day and held a meeting of us kids and our parents,” Cummings recalled. “She said that only a few blocks from us was a much larger pool, with deeper and cooler water, and didn’t we want to swim in it?” he remembered.

“She said, ‘Now the only problem is there are going to be some people in that pool who don’t want you to be in it with them.’

We kids didn’t know what she was talking about.

“It took us seven days of trying, but we finally integrated that pool. And that was my introduction on civil rights. Change does happen.”

Howard Fineman is the editorial director of The Huffington Post. Ashley Balcerzak contributed reporting.

TAP HERE TO READ MORE OF THE HUFFINGTON POST SERIES EXAMINING THE STATE OF BLACK AMERICA

THE BIG

STEAL

‘ Tony Buy iPhone’ and Other Tales From the Shadowy World of Smartphone Trafficking

BY GERRY SMITH

PREVIOUS PAGE FROM TOP: STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL; COURTESY OF SPRINT

B

Before a federal SWAT team descended last summer, one storefront in a Detroit suburb attracted so many people bearing shopping bags stuffed with iPhones and iPads that managers installed a port-a-potty on the sidewalk.

Once inside, people deposited their electronic wares into a rotating drawer below a bulletproof glass window and waited for the cashier to deliver stacks of cash.

So much money changed hands in this fashion at the Ace Wholesale storefront in Taylor, Mich., that an armored truck arrived each morning to deliver fresh bundles of cash, according to an undercover investigator for the wireless company Sprint and an employee at the Mattress World outlet next door.

“It was like Fort Knox over there,” said the Mattress World employee, who asked not to be named for fear of making enemies inside what police say was a locus of criminal activity.

Many of the mobile devices swapped for cash at Ace Wholesale had been stolen at gunpoint

in an escalating wave of gadgetrelated robberies, police say. Ace Wholesale had become a key broker in the underground trade of stolen phones, a global enterprise that often connects violent street thieves in American cities with buyers as far away as Hong Kong, according to law enforcement and the wireless industry.

“These companies fence the stolen phones for them, no questions asked,” said Jerry Deaven, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with preventing the trafficking of stolen goods. “You can walk right into one of these storefronts and sell all the phones at once and walk out with $20,000.”

Deaven told The Huffington

You can walk right into one of these storefronts … and walk out with $20,000.

Post that such traffickers are responsible for “a tremendous amount of phones being shipped out of the country,” adding that “some organizations are shipping a couple million dollars worth of phones per month.”

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WXYZ.COM

THE BIG STEAL Deaven declined to comment specifically about Ace Wholesale, which he said is now under federal investigation. Last August, federal agents armed with search warrants raided the company’s locations in suburban Detroit, Atlanta and Chicago, and the owner’s home in Taylor, Mich., according to a DHS spokesman.

Ace Wholesale’s owner, Jason Floarea, has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond to requests for comment. His attorney, Jim Thomas, who has represented high-profile clients including former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, declined to comment.

The case against Ace Wholesale sheds light on what law enforcement and wireless providers portray as a shadowy world of smartphone trafficking. At the center of this trade is a crucial layer of middlemen: bulk purchasers who

Once it gets overseas, it’s virtually impossible to track a phone back here to the person who committed the crime.

buy devices from thieves and con artists before exporting them to customers around the world.

In 2009, federal agents charged Hezbollah operatives in Philadelphia with attempting to buy thousands of stolen cell phones and ship them to Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates to finance the Shiite militant organization, which the United States considers a terrorist group.

Earlier this year, a woman’s iPhone stolen at a bar in San Francisco turned up a few days later in Lima, Peru, according to San Francisco police.

Last fall, American and Mexican wireless carriers began collaborating to address the cross-border trade in stolen phones after learning that Mexican drug cartels were using them to communicate with kidnapping victims’ rela-

A SWAT team and agents from the Department of Homeland Security conduct a raid on Ace Wholesale in Troy, Mich., in August 2012.

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STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

THE BIG STEAL

tives without being traced. But American wireless companies lack similar arrangements with other countries, allowing international phone trafficking to flourish.

Phones stolen in the United States have been located “on all continents except Antarctica,” said Marci Carris, vice president of customer finance services at Sprint.

The global nature of the trade stems in part from measures that law enforcement and wireless carriers have imposed to make it harder to resell stolen phones in the United States, prompting crim-

inals to forge new markets abroad.

“Once it gets overseas, it’s virtually impossible to track a phone back here to the person who committed the crime,” Deaven said.

But phone trafficking is driven largely by the massive profits made by exploiting the price difference between smartphones sold in the U.S. and overseas. Americans who agree to two-year service contracts with their cell phone company can buy the latest iPhones for about $200 — a price subsidized by the carrier. In Hong Kong, an iPhone can be sold for as much as $2,000.

This equation helps explain why more than 1.6 million Americans were victims of smartphone

In March, authorities in California charged two men from Sacramento for their role in an operation that brought millions of dollars worth of stolen iPhones to Hong Kong, where they sell for as much as $2,000 per phone.

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THE BIG STEAL theft last year and why thefts of mobile devices now make up 40 percent of all robberies in major American cities. The rising street crime is exacting a heavy toll on consumers who spend an estimated $30 billion each year replacing lost and stolen devices, according to Lookout, a San Francisco-based mobile security firm.

Smartphone-related crime has also turned increasingly violent.

Last month, a 24-year-old man was shot in Philadelphia after police say he would not give up his cell phone to a thief. Last year, 26-year-old Hwangbum Yang of New York City and 23-year-old Megan Boken of suburban Chicago were shot and killed during separate iPhone robberies, police say.

In response to the crime wave, state and city law enforcement officials are investigating smartphone makers for their failure to adopt measures that would render their devices inoperable when stolen. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pressed smartphone manufacturers in May to create “kill switch” technology to undercut the black market, noting that “foreign trafficking of stolen devices has proliferated.”

Phone trafficking also costs the

I make more money than the dope man, but have none of the risk. wireless industry “hundreds of millions of dollars a year,” said James Baldinger, an attorney for Sprint. One alleged phone trafficker, Hassan Essayli, admitted in 2008 that his company, Platform Enterprises, shipped 30,000 phones from California to other countries in just two months, according to his testimony in a lawsuit filed by TracFone Wireless.

“I’m seeing thousands and thousands of phones being resold overseas,” Baldinger said. “The numbers are so big, but a lot of time it flies under the radar.”

Over the last eight years, wireless companies have filed more than 200 lawsuits against alleged phone traffickers, but no case has bigger stakes than the federal lawsuit Sprint filed last summer against Ace Wholesale, Baldinger said. Sprint has accused Ace of buying thousands of Sprint phones and reselling them overseas, thereby depriving the wireless company of revenue from monthly phone bills.

“As far as we know,” Baldinger

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KHOU.COM

THE BIG STEAL

said, “Ace is the biggest phone trafficker in the country.”

Founded four years ago, Ace Wholesale was the brainchild of Jason Floarea, a Detroit area entrepreneur who opened his first wireless retail outlet when he was only 16, according to the company’s website. He says on the site that he started the company to help consumers purchase top quality smartphones at discount prices.

Now 27, Floarea is a married father of three and an ordained minister. He aims to open his own church focused on outreach to convicts, alcoholics and the home-

less, the site says.

Local law enforcement, however, accuse him of less savory activities: acting as a well-known buyer of smartphones and tablets stolen in burglaries and armed robberies.

In January 2010, Dearborn, Mich., police pulled over Floarea in his wife’s silver Lexus and found two handguns, more than 30 cell phones, marijuana, a bottle of prescription drugs and more than $40,000 in cash, according to a local police report obtained by The Huffington Post through the Freedom of Information Act. He was arrested on charges of possession of marijuana, possession with intent to distribute narcotics and possession of a firearm in commission

In April, burglars drove a truck through the front of a cell phone store in Houston before stealing dozens of cell phones.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

THE BIG STEAL

A guy can go into a cell phone store and steal 30 or 40 phones and get a lot more than if he hit a bank. of a crime, the report says. Police later returned the phones and all but $4,200 in cash to Floarea per a court judgment.

A search of court records found no evidence of the case and both prosecutors and Floarea’s attorney declined to comment on it. In Michigan, some defendants have been sentenced under statutes that prevent their cases from being disclosed publicly, according to a Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman.

While it remains unclear how profitable Floarea’s business has become, he appears to be making a comfortable living. Early last year, he purchased a five-bedroom house in West Bloomfield, Mich., for $1.4 million, according to the town assessor’s office. Even Ace Wholesale’s low-level associates say they are well-compensated. One person

who buys and sells phones for the company told Sprint’s investigator that he makes $3,000 per week, court documents show.

Deaven said he recently interviewed a man who claimed to supply phones to traffickers and boasted about how his work supported his lavish lifestyle.

“He said, ‘I drink nothing but top-shelf liquor and get all the girls,’” Deaven recalled. “‘I make more money than the dope man, but have none of the risk.’”

‘A VERY LUCRATIVE CRIME’ The underground market transporting iPhones and other gadgets around the world began with a different form of theft.

For years, traffickers have hired teams of so-called “runners” or “credit mules” to buy discounted phones in bulk from retailers by agreeing to long-term service contracts. These runners simply stop paying the bills and sell the devices to traffickers who export them overseas.

In March, the California Attorney General charged two people — Shoulin Wen, 38, and Yuting Tan, 27 — with recruiting runners from homeless shelters to buy iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones. The pair shipped the phones to Hong Kong — a scheme that the attorney general says netted them nearly $4

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

THE BIG STEAL million in less than a year.

But recently, thefts have become bolder and more violent: Traffickers have been acquiring phones through a growing number of cell phone store robberies, according to local and federal law enforcement officials.

“A guy can go into a cell phone store and steal 30 or 40 phones and get a lot more than if he hit a bank,” said Deaven, the Homeland Security agent. “It’s just a very lucrative crime.”

In Houston’s Harris County last year, thieves robbed at least a dozen cell phone stores — sometimes at gunpoint — during a two-month period, prompting the police department to establish a special task force to investigate the burglaries.

At one store in Houston, three men crashed a truck through the front window and stole dozens of cell phones before speeding away.

At another store last year, a thief lowered himself through the ceiling, grabbed as many handsets as he could, then climbed back through the ceiling to escape.

Last July, Anthony Riopelle, 22, was working at a Meijer department store in Taylor, Mich., when two men approached and started asking about iPads. Suddenly, one

man punched Riopelle in the face, knocking him to the ground, while the other grabbed more than a dozen tablets and fled the store, according to police.

“They said, ‘If you move, we’re going to kill you,’” Riopelle told HuffPost.

Police said they later found the stolen iPads behind the bulletproof glass window at Ace Wholesale.

The two thieves were never caught.

It was not the only time police tracked stolen mobile devices to

There are lots of consumers walking around with phones they think they got legitimately … when in fact the phones were stolen during armed robberies.

Ace Wholesale. In August, Taylor police arrested a man in the company’s parking lot shortly after he had stolen iPhones from several victims at gunpoint in Detroit.

“Ace Wholesale made it very easy for people who were obtaining phones through robberies and retail fraud to go there and sell them,” Taylor police Chief Mary Sclabassi told HuffPost. “It brought a large

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THE BIG STEAL

B2BCFO/YOUTUBE

crime element to the city.”

Dozens of other companies around the country have played a similar role, Sprint says.

Sprint’s investigators discovered hundreds of stolen iPhones stored in a suburban Baltimore warehouse owned by a company called Wireless Buybacks, according to a lawsuit Sprint filed against the company in February.

Wireless Buybacks says it buys used phones and resells them to large retailers, which in turn issue them to customers who have insurance policies and need a replacement phone.

In its lawsuit, Sprint claims that a company associated with Wireless Buybacks tried to sell 800

iPhones to its undercover investigator for more than $400,000. A sample of serial numbers revealed that “the vast majority” of phones were stolen or obtained through fraud, the suit says.

In February, agents from the FBI, the Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms raided Wireless Buybacks’ warehouse in Elkridge, Md., and found the facility was being used to store stolen phones, according to Sprint.

Law enforcement declined to comment about the raid, citing an ongoing investigation.

In court documents, Wireless Buybacks said it “does not knowingly transact business with anyone involved in burglaries or

Wireless Buybacks cofounder Kevin Lowe denies allegations that his company deals with stolen phones.

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STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

THE BIG STEAL armed robberies” and conducts “a rigorous screening process” to ensure it doesn’t buy stolen phones.

Kevin Lowe, co-founder of Wireless Buybacks, has said that his company supplies phones to “some of the largest retailers in the country.” The company generates most of its revenue from a contract to supply cell phones to Best Buy worth about $45 million each year, the company said in court documents.

Best Buy has no plans to cut ties with Wireless Buybacks. “At this point, these are accusations that haven’t been substantiated,” a company spokesman said.

But Baldinger, Sprint’s attorney, said the lawsuit reveals how many U.S. consumers are unwittingly buying stolen phones.

“There are lots of consumers walking around with phones they think they got legitimately from a national retailer,” he said, “when in fact the phones were stolen during armed robberies.”

NEVER ENOUGH The middlemen at the center of the global trade in stolen smartphones organize themselves into distinct roles.

Many hire hackers who use

special software to “unlock” the devices, enabling them to connect with wireless networks around the world, according to Lt. Ed Santos of the San Francisco Police Department, which has created a special task force focused on combating smartphone thefts. Then, they erase the data on the handsets, often within an hour after the device is stolen.

“They completely erase them so the phones can’t be identified by who they belong to,” Santos told HuffPost. “They want to sell a clean phone that can’t be traced.”

Traffickers later repackage phones in boxes with the manufacturer’s logo, power chargers and instruction manuals in the native language of their destinations, according to Sprint.

Finally, they ship them overseas, mostly to Hong Kong, where they

Authorities in California confiscated hundreds of stolen iPhones before they were illegally shipped for re-sale in Hong Kong.

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COURTESY OF SPRINT

THE BIG STEAL

are distributed across Southeast Asia, said Baldinger, Sprint’s attorney. Many phones are also shipped to Dubai, Israel and Latin America.

In 2011, Ace Wholesale shipped dozens of iPhones and Samsung Nexus phones to Go Telecom HK and Mobile Planet HK, according to invoices obtained by Sprint.

These two companies listed addresses in Kowloon, a district of Hong Kong that is thick with elec-

tronics merchants.

Most traffickers ship phones in large cardboard boxes via FedEx and UPS, according to Deaven, the Homeland Security agent. The destination of stolen phones often depends on the provenance of the traffickers.

“Here in San Francisco, a lot of people have ties to Mexico,” San Francisco police Sgt. Josh Kumli said. “A lot of phones are going to Mexico because that is where they have contacts.”

Until December of last year,

Thuc Ngo told Sprint’s lawyers in court that he collected used iPhones that he purchased throughout the Bay Area in a van before smuggling them to his native Vietnam.

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THE BIG STEAL two brothers, Henry and Victor Gamboa, drove thousands of stolen phones and other electronics by truck from the Bay Area to Mexico every two weeks, Santos said. The two brothers are now in jail after being convicted of running a massive stolen electronics fencing ring.

Thuc Ngo told Sprint’s lawyers that he smuggled iPhones from California to his native Vietnam, where his siblings helped him find buyers, according to a deposition from a Sprint lawsuit against him.

Ngo said he obtained phones through his business, which he called “Tony Buy iPhone.” He drove a white Dodge Ram 3500 van emblazoned with an advertisement — “We Buy Used Iphone” — listing his phone number and website, the lawsuit claims. He met customers at Starbucks coffee shops around the Bay Area and paid between $220 and $330 for each iPhone. Some of the iPhones had been reported stolen, he confessed, according to his deposition.

He regularly flew to Vietnam to sell his inventory, stuffing the phones in his pockets and strapping them to his waist beneath his clothing with plastic wrap — a

One ad read: “Buying Apple iPhone 4S!! Must Be Brand New!!..Will Buy any Quantity!!”

Another read: “Ace Will Buy Your Smartphone For Top Dollar!!!!!!!” technique he used to bypass Vietnamese customs at the airport and avoid paying taxes, the deposition says. In this way, he carried 11 iPhones at a time.

“That’s the most I can hide on my body,” he said, the deposition notes.

And yet it was never enough.

“Every time I was there, people would tell me, ‘Oh, next time, I want such and such phone and if you come back, you know, sell it to me,’” he said.

Earlier this year, a judge in San Francisco barred Ngo from buying and selling phones manufactured for use on Sprint’s network. Ngo could not be reached for comment.

A ‘SECRETIVE’ STOREFRONT Ace Wholesale acquired phones by advertising on Craigslist and websites like thewirelessbuzz.com and wirelessdealers.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

THE BIG STEAL com. One ad read: “Buying Apple iPhone 4S!! Must Be Brand New!!..Will Buy any Quantity!!”

Another read: “Ace Will Buy Your Smartphone For Top Dollar!!!!!!!”

The company listed the price it paid for each model on the walls of its stores. The latest iPhones still sealed in their original packaging commanded the highest prices. One employee told Sprint’s undercover investigator that he was buying the iPhone 4S for $430.

At the Ace storefront in Taylor, Mich., the Mattress World employee next door said he saw “the same people every day” arriving with bags full of iPhones and other high-end phones and tablets. Mirrored windows prevented passersby from seeing inside. The company hired a security guard to sit in a car in the parking lot. Sometimes, people bought phones from others in the parking lot, then resold them inside Ace. At another Ace Wholesale location in Troy, Mich., the company replaced the glass front door with a metal door featuring a peephole and buzzer, according to Scott Zochowski, an attorney who works in the building.

“They were very secretive and

kept very strange hours,” Zochowski told HuffPost. “I’ve always been very suspicious about what the heck was going on in there.”

With so much valuable inventory moving through its operation, Ace Wholesale itself became a target for robberies, police say.

In February 2011, Floarea, the store’s owner, told police that four masked men broke into his store and stole 258 cell phones worth about $140,000. One month later, police say six men wearing masks broke into Ace Wholesale again and stole smartphones and tablets worth $173,000.

Last July, a man reported to police that he was robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of Ace Wholesale after he sold 25 iPads for $15,000. The gunman grabbed the cash, which was in a black duffel bag, and ran away, according to a police report.

Some Ace Wholesale associates have criminal records. At the Atlanta location, the company paid $800 to Barney Gunn for two iPhones, Sprint says. Gunn, 46, who goes by the streetname “Spook,” has served multiple prison sentences since the early 1990s for drug and weapons charges, Georgia court records show.

One morning last August, a SWAT team and agents from the Department of Homeland Se-

STATE OF CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

THE BIG STEAL curity busted through the front window at Ace Wholesale’s location in Taylor, leaving behind piles of shattered glass. The storefront is now occupied by a company that sells outdoor pools and jacuzzis. Federal agents spent six hours removing boxes and surveillance cameras from inside Ace Wholesale’s location in Troy, Zochowski said.

In court documents, Ace Wholesale said the raids forced the company to shut down its business. Its website says its inventory is now “entirely online” and being carried by its sister company, Electronics Direct, which is also owned by Floarea.

Baldinger, of Sprint, said the raid against Ace Wholesale caused “a short-lived drop” in the number of phones being shipped overseas.

But in the increasingly competitive underground smartphone trade, shutting down one operation — even a major one — left plenty of others waiting in the wings, Baldinger added.

“There are so many other players out there,” he said. “The raid provided an opportunity for a lot of other traffickers to step up and fill the void.”

Gerry Smith is a technology reporter at The Huffington Post.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

In addition to stolen iPhones, authorities in California confiscated cash from the suspects.

Exit

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Dmitry Itskov Knows He’ll Live Forever

AP PHOTO/MARY ALTAFFER

BY BIANCA BOSKER

O SOONER has Dmitry Itskov, a 32-year-old Russian multimillionaire, sat down at the table in his hotel room than he springs up again and begins pawing through the snacks in the minibar. He tosses aside chips and

N

candy, settles on a box of mixed nuts, then sits back down.

Itskov maintains a strict diet — no meat, fish, coffee, alcohol or cold water — but not because he’s afraid of high blood pressure or heart disease. In fact, he’s convinced we’ll all live forever.

Itskov’s 2045 Initiative has the goal of achieving human immortality within the next three

Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov speaks at the Global Future 2045 Congress in New York on June 15, 2013.

Exit decades. It aspires to change human evolution as we know it, and Itskov has drawn up an ambitious timeline for this transition to “neo-humanity”: By 2045, his manifesto maintains, we’ll have “substance-independent minds” housed in non-biological bodies.

In 2011, he stepped back from his work as an internet entrepreneur to lead the project, which he runs from his home in Moscow. He traveled to New York last month to host a conference at which luminaries such as Marvin Minsky and Ray Kurzweil discussed this new evolutionary approach.

Though his endeavor immediately conjures up visions of robotic humanoids and artificial organs, Itskov is most concerned with how immortality will reshape the mind.

“Immortality is a side effect,” he explains, describing eternal life as a means of transforming and improving human consciousness. Decoupling the mind from the needy human body, which demands food, medicine and shelter, can curb our negative inclinations and pave the way for a more elevated and sublime human spirit, he believes.

“Sometimes the way people live

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HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

makes me think that they’re just following programs,” he says. “We should try to look for the opportunity to develop spiritually.”

Itskov is preparing for eternal life by training himself to attain a higher state of consciousness, and he gives the impression of someone who considers his body only insofar as it hinders or helps his

By 2045, his manifesto maintains, we’ll have “substanceindependent minds” housed in non-biological bodies. mental pursuits. He spends several hours a day meditating, doing yoga or engaged in breathing exercises, all part of a spiritual practice he says helps him “discover some different states of my consciousness.”

His diet is guided by how different foods affect his energy.

Meat gives him an energy he’s “not comfortable with,” he says.

Alcohol “affects the consciousness” so “you stop feeling the real nature of it.” Even ice water is off limits because it lowers energy, Itskov tells a documentary filmmaker who’s offered him a cup of ice water while her crew

AP PHOTO/MARY ALTAFFER

Exit sets up in his hotel room.

Itskov, who has close-shaven blonde hair and a vague shadow of stubble, speaks softly, slowly and with the calm self-assurance of someone who’s used to considering much more cosmic questions than those being posed to him.

How certain is he that humans will attain immortality by 2045?

“I am 100 percent certain,” he answers.

And what gives him that certainty?

“My belief,” he says. He pauses for a moment, then continues: “In an ancient text, I read that whatever we have in our mind, in our consciousness, whatever we intend to achieve, we will achieve. It depends when, and it depends on the internal certainty.”

Questions are frequently answered with a question — is he religious? “What is religion?” — and even the nature of death is up for debate. Doctors can measure the death of the physical body, says Itskov, but no one has determined how to evaluate the death of consciousness.

Itskov has already considered a world in which biology is obsolete, and bodies are supplanted by holograms or avatars. (“If

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HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

Why don’t people think about something more sophisticated than just food, sex and children?” the technology advances, I think there will be no need for biology at all,” he says.)

Within a century, he tells the filmmaker, we’ll frequent “body service shops” where we can choose our bodies from a catalog, then transfer our consciousness

Itskov discusses his plans to achieve “neohumanity” by 2045 in New York.

Exit to one better-suited for, say, life on Mars. He seems to find the world’s relentless focus on carnal matters to be quite tedious, and laments to the documentary crew that every interviewer asks him how his vision will affect eating, procreating and having sex.

“Why don’t people think about something more sophisticated than just food, sex and children?” he asks. “By the way, if you live in this biological body for 80 years and have five or six children, isn’t that enough? Why don’t you start living for a greater purpose than to just help raise your children?”

Itskov’s quest for a deeper consciousness hasn’t stopped him from indulging in a few earthly pleasures: When we sit down for an interview, he has on a Burberry button-down and Louis Vuitton sneakers.

So what does someone do for fun if he knows he’ll live forever?

Itskov is content to dedicate his life to the pursuit of eternal life.

He has no wife, children or immediate plans to have either, and spends just one week a month at his home in Moscow. The rest of the time he’s traveling between the U.S., Europe, India and China

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HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

meeting with experts and potential supporters.

“We are mostly having fast fun in this world,” says Itskov, likening fast fun to fast food. “But we are not thinking of a more essential fun, which is inside of us.”

Itskov says he has fond memories of visiting the Salvador Dali Theater and Museum in Figueres, and he loves the Prado Museum in Madrid. He’s partial to paintings

If you live in this biological body for 80 years and have five or six children, isn’t that enough? Why don’t you start living for a greater purpose than to just help raise your children?”

by El Greco and Goya. But once his mission has been realized, three decades from now, Itskov says he will seek out solitude, not sightseeing.

“What will be intriguing to me is the process of development of my personal consciousness,” he tells the crew of filmmakers.

“Probably, I’ll be sitting somewhere up in the mountains, just meditating.”

Exit

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HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

Introducing the Hotel Beds You’ll Never Want to Leave

COURTESY OF THE CALEDONIAN

BY ANNEMARIE DOOLING

THE CALEDONIAN EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND

A “four-poster king with big fluffy pillows, cozy comforter and a direct view of the Castle!” makes this a favorite for Twitter follower Kristy.

Exit stocked mini-bar and stunning views are fantastic, but let’s be real: The most important element of a hotel room is the bed. Jet lag, exhaustion and backaches have befallen many the traveler who booked a room for style without finding out what lies beneath the sheets.

If you’re looking to get away purely for relaxation, you shouldn’t accept just any comfortable bed, but the softest mattress, layers of thick, warm blankets and

COURTESY OF THE CHARLES HOTEL

A

CHARLES HOTEL CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

A favorite of both readers and editors from this fun hotel near Harvard Square.

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mountains of fluffy pillows to get you through the night.

We asked the The Huffington Post community to vote on the best hotel bed they’ve ever spent the night in and got some surprising results. Among popular brand hotels, Marriott and Hilton Garden Inn took the cake, with The Four Seasons close at third.

Read on for a selection of the coziest hotel beds you could dream of — and if you’re lucky, will dream in.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

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REVEL

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: THOMAS HART SHELBY/COURTESY OF REVEL; POUL OBER/COURTESY OF GRAHAM & CO; COURTESY OF U.S. GRANT

A reader and editor favorite with several layers of warm blankets and one super-thick comforter.

GRAHAM & CO PHOENICIA, N.Y.

An editor favorite with paired-down but cozy beds in a stylized upstate motel; Budweiser and Tivoli radios included.

U.S. GRANT

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. Kateri sent us this San Diego hotel whose pillow-top mattresses are mentioned on several review sites as “huge and super comfortable.”

XV BEACON

BOSTON, MASS. Another pick in the Boston area, this one with Italian linens and four-poster beds.

POST RANCH INN BIG SUR, CALIF.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP:COURTESY OF XV BEACON; KODIAK GREENWOOD/COURTESY OF POST RANCH INN; GEOFF LUNG PHOTOGRAPHY/COURTESY OF FOUR SEASONS

A great addition by community member Anna who says this Big Sur hotel and its beds “really stand out.”

BAY LAKE TOWER DISNEY WORLD, FL.

The only Disney beds to make the cut, these mattresses reside in the modern Bay Lake Towers at Disney’s Contemporary Resort.

FOUR SEASONS SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Though a few Four Seasons locations were noted, community member Darren called out this bed from the Sydney hotel.

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THE RITZ CARLTON

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13 ST. THOMAS, VIRGIN ISLANDS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MARK WIELAND/COURTESY OF THE RITZ CARLTON; COURTESY OF LONDON MARRIOTT HOTEL KENSINGTON; COURTESY OF THE WHITCOMB

One of two Ritz Carltons mentioned, this cozy bed is paired with stunning St. Thomas views.

KENSINGTON MARRIOTT LONDON, ENGLAND

Marriotts were among the most loved submissions, including this one in London.

THE WHITCOMB

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. A historic addition to the list with “heavenly” beds.

GETTY IMAGES/RADIUS IMAGES

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EAT THIS

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

Be the Master of Your Soufflé

BY JULIE THOMSON

Exit

HERE’S NO DISH that’s more intimidating, more fear-inducing, more downright terrifying than the soufflé. Even the most experienced of chefs have been known to break out in a sweat when faced with the soufflé. Not even Audrey Hepburn could get it right. The soufflé is a dish that calls for only a handful of ingredients, making it appear to be simple. But it requires just the right amount of whipping and folding of egg whites to work. And it’s with the egg whites that people usually go wrong.

For one reason or another, egg whites scare people. Maybe they’ve been told one too many times to be careful when handling them. The repetitive warning can begin to mean “you can epically mess this up.” But this is not the case, and it’s time that people’s irrational fear of egg whites comes to an end. If you can make whipped cream from scratch — which we seriously hope you all can — then you can whip up beautiful egg whites without skipping a beat. Promise. And if you believe that, which you should, then you can make soufflé as well as any French chef.

EAT THIS

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

FROM TOP: COLIN ANDERSON/ GETTY IMAGES; GETTY IMAGES/DORLING KINDERSLEY

T

Even the most experienced of chefs have been known to break out in a sweat when faced with the soufflé.”

There are few simple things to keep in mind before you get started, and then you’ll be ready for soufflé mastery.

1. M ake sure you start with the cleanest of egg whites. By this we mean don’t let any yolk in. Just the tiniest bit can hinder your whites from properly rising. If you’ve got yolk in your whites, throw them out and start over.

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

EAT THIS

Exit 2. C oat your baking dish with grease and a coarse ingredient. Sugar works well for sweet soufflés and bread crumbs are perfect for savory ones. The coarse ingredient gives the soufflé traction and helps it rise higher.

GETTY IMAGES/STOCKFOOD (EGG WHITES); CULTURA/LINE KLEIN/ GETTY IMAGES (SOUFFLE); JAMIE CARUSI (ILLUSTRATIONS)

3. W hip the egg whites just right.

By this we mean, just pay attention — don’t panic.

Once the egg whites are stiff, they’re ready. You can tell they’re just right by testing to see if they’ll stand at about a 45 degree angle.

4. B e conscious while you fold. Folding egg whites into a custard is not like mixing up pancake batter. You want to be a little more gentle. The best way to do this is to push the egg whites gently down and pull the heavier custard up in a sort of ‘S’ shape. And try not to overmix. It’s better if there are a few streaks of egg whites left than to mix all the air out of your egg whites.

You are now ready for soufflé making — without any of the stress.

Check out some of our favorite recipes:

Orange Soufflé with Grand-Marnier

Poached Pear & Almond Soufflé Cakes

Chocolate Soufflés with Berries

Blueberry Muffin French Toast Soufflé

Pumpkin Soufflé with Maple Pumpkin Ice Cream

01

TFU

DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (SHERWIN WILLIAMS); JOYCE MARSHALL/FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM/MCT/GETTY IMAGES (PERRY); GETTY IMAGES/PHOTOALTO (BACK PAIN); SCOTT EELLS/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES (STARBUCKS); PETER DAZELEY/GETTY IMAGES (DEMOLITION)

Exit

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

SherwinWilliams and Others May Have Knowingly Promoted Paint Products That Contain High Levels of Lead

2

Three Planned Parenthood Locations Close One Day After Rick Perry Signs Abortion Restrictions Into Law

3

DOCTOR DIAGNOSES WOMAN’S LOWER BACK PAIN AS ‘GHETTO BOOTY’

4

Deaf Customers Accuse Starbucks Employees of Laughing at Them, Kicking Them Out of the Store

05

Demolition Crews in Fort Worth, Texas, Completely Destroy the Wrong House

06 Exit

HUFFINGTON 07.28.13

TFU

AP PHOTO/CARLOS OSORIO (DETROIT); GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO (PIPE); BEN KLAUS/ GETTY IMAGES (COLLEGE); THOMAS PIKETTY AND GABRIEL ZUCMAN/ PARIS SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS; DAVID J SAMS/ GETTY IMAGES (DEATH PENALTY)

Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

7

Marijuana Pipe With Fully Loaded Bowl Found Inside Burger King Kid’s Meal

8

COLLEGE RAPIST PUNISHED WITH ESSAY, $75 FEE

9

The Astonishing Economic Power of the U.S. Slave System

10

The FBI Has Found Scientific Errors in 27 Death Penalty Convictions

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

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