The Nigerian national who authorities say sneaked past layers of airport security and on to a Virgin America plane headed to Los Angeles is a Chicago-area businessman who claims to be a frequent traveler working for God. Olajide Oluwaseun Noibi, 24, also known as Seun Noibi, proclaims himself a "storyteller, strategist and designer who is passionate about reaching the world for Jesus," according to his Facebook page.

via latimes.com.

AS we drove toward the Punjabi Market — a densely packed collection of sari shops and Indian sweets stores south of downtown Vancouver — a local radio station helped get my husband, son and me primed for a weekend of Indian feasting. The winter sky was Windex blue and the air was near freezing, but inside the warm car, the speakers bounced with track after track of clubby Indian music.

This being Vancouver, however, just before we parked, the station switched over to a Mandarin talk show. Such a mashup of Asian cultures is par for the course in British Columbia's hub. Because of its huge Chinese immigrant population, Vancouver has earned its reputation as one of the continent's best places for Chinese food, but as with the radio station, that reputation can overshadow other faces of ethnic Vancouver.

On this visit, we had India on our minds. We set off to find innovative Indian food that strays beyond the boilerplate menus of butter chicken and lamb korma at so many Indian restaurants, in particular to see if the success of Vij's — the contemporary Indian restaurant that has become internationally famous — had spawned a modern-Indian movement, a kind of culinary parallel to the bhangra music I heard on that radio station.

Vancouver, with its vital mix of cultures, seems the perfect breeding ground for such cuisine. After all, Lizzie Collingham's insightful book "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) reminds us that the food of India and its diasporas is at its core heterodox, influenced by the tastes of the Moguls, Portuguese, Chinese and British, who both distorted Indian food and globalized it. The first immigrants — almost all of them Sikh and Punjabi — arrived in British Columbia at the turn of the 20th century, after members of the empire's Indian troops had visited the area on their return trip from the Queen's 1887 Diamond Jubilee.

via NYTimes.com.

Vij's was a mixed bag: the appetizers were extraordinary, the entrees were surprisingly undistinguished.

Will check out Chutney Villa tonight.

later...

Chutney Villa was friendly, authentic, good but not exceptional.

via Bonkers World.

awesome.

Sitting on my couch were other adults in their 20s or early 30s who reported that they, too, suffered from depression and anxiety, had difficulty choosing or committing to a satisfying career path, struggled with relationships, and just generally felt a sense of emptiness or lack of purpose—yet they had little to quibble with about Mom or Dad. Instead, these patients talked about how much they “adored” their parents. Many called their parents their “best friends in the whole world,” and they’d say things like “My parents are always there for me.” Sometimes these same parents would even be funding their psychotherapy (not to mention their rent and car insurance), which left my patients feeling both guilty and utterly confused. After all, their biggest complaint was that they had nothing to complain about!

At first, I’ll admit, I was skeptical of their reports. Childhoods generally aren’t perfect—and if theirs had been, why would these people feel so lost and unsure of themselves? It went against everything I’d learned in my training.

But after working with these patients over time, I came to believe that no florid denial or distortion was going on. They truly did seem to have caring and loving parents, parents who gave them the freedom to “find themselves” and the encouragement to do anything they wanted in life. Parents who had driven carpools, and helped with homework each night, and intervened when there was a bully at school or a birthday invitation not received, and had gotten them tutors when they struggled in math, and music lessons when they expressed an interest in guitar (but let them quit when they lost that interest), and talked through their feelings when they broke the rules, instead of punishing them (“logical consequences” always stood in for punishment). In short, these were parents who had always been “attuned,” as we therapists like to say, and had made sure to guide my patients through any and all trials and tribulations of childhood. As an overwhelmed parent myself, I’d sit in session and secretly wonder how these fabulous parents had done it all.

Until, one day, another question occurred to me: Was it possible these parents had done too much?

via The Atlantic.

In a sense, these three companies’ cloud services do represent three different concepts of God. Google is an Old Testament, theist-style cloud all the way: He through whom all blessings and punishments come, who must be praised and supplicated; without the Cloud, you are nothing and have nothing. iCloud represents more of a Deist ideal. The Cloud exists, but its presence is more to be felt than seen; if it does its job right, iCloud will instill great doubt that it even exists, or that it takes any notice of us at all. Amazon is a form of agnosticism. You don’t know if you really believe in it or not, but you do know that on the third weekend of every month this pointy building near the center of town throws a really great bake sale.

The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I’m on to something with these ideas about God and iCloud. Some atheists derisively describe God as “Your magic friend who lives in the clouds,” after all. I’m perfectly fine with that concept, if this new magical friend makes sure I’ll never again find myself 3000 miles from home with a hard drive that’s making crunchy noises instead of retrieving the Keynote files I’ll need for the four hours of talks I traveled there to deliver.

I mean, at the time I prayed to my previous, analog God for deliverance… and a fat lot of good that did me.

via Andy Ihnatko.

Do psychopaths enjoy reading books about psychopaths? In his engagingly irreverent new best seller, The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry (Riverhead, $25.95), the journalist Jon Ronson notes that only about one in 100 people are psychopaths (there is a higher proportion in prisons and corporate boardrooms), but he wonders if this population will be overrepresented among readers of his book. After all, people do enjoy learning about themselves, and psychopaths in particular have an enhanced sense of their own importance. And they might like what Ronson has to say. He approvingly quotes experts who argue that psychopaths make “the world go around.” Despite their small numbers, they cause such chaos that they remold society — though not necessarily for the better. If you aren’t sure whether you are a psychopath, Ronson can help. He lists all the items on the standard diagnostic checklist, developed by the psychologist Robert Hare. You can score yourself on traits like “glibness/superficial charm,” “lack of remorse or guilt,” “promiscuous sexual behavior” and 17 other traits. As one psychologist tells Ronson, if you are bothered at the thought of scoring high, then don’t worry. You’re not a psychopath.

One of the traits on the checklist is “callous/lack of empathy.” This is the focus of another new book, The Science of Evil: On Empathy and the Origins of Cruelty (Basic Books, $25.99), by Simon Baron-Cohen, a Cambridge psychologist best known for his research on autism. Baron-Cohen begins by telling how, at the age of 7, he learned that the Nazis turned Jews into lampshades and bars of soap, and he goes on to provide other examples of human savagery. To explain such atrocities, he offers an ambitious theory grounded in the concept of empathy, which he defines as “our ability to identify what someone else is thinking or feeling and to respond to their thoughts and feelings with an appropriate emotion.” For Baron-Cohen, evil is nothing more than “empathy erosion.”

Now, one might lack empathy for temporary reasons — you can be enraged or drunk, for instance — but Baron-Cohen is most interested in lack of empathy as an enduring trait. Once again, you might want to know where you stand, and Baron-­Cohen ends his book with a 40-question Empathy Quotient checklist.

via NYTimes.com.