The Week: Most Recent Lifestyle Posts

A woman is kicked out of college for being a lesbian -- and she's stuck with the bill

By Harold Maass — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 11:40:00 -0400

Danielle Powell was expelled from Grace University, a conservative Christian school in Omaha, Neb., after she became romantically involved with another woman. That was in 2012, but Powell's fight with the school was just beginning. Now Grace administrators want her to pay back $6,000 in federal grants and loans for her final semester, because she didn't finish it.

Powell says she shouldn't have to pay the bill. She agreed to undergo months of counseling, spiritual training, and mentoring in the hope that the university would let her finish her final semester and graduate — but administrators...

Happy Father's Day! 6 feel-good stories about dads

By Lauren Hansen — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:00:00 -0400

1. Putting a gay son at ease
A father, who goes unnamed, recently overheard his closeted son talking about his plans to come out to his family. Instead of making a big deal of it, dad simply wrote his son a note that said all the right things:

Nate,
I overheard your phone conversation with Mike last night about your plans to come out to me. The only thing I need you to plan is to bring home OJ and bread after class. We are out, like you now. I've known you were gay since you were six, I've loved you since you were born. — Dad. P.S. Your mom and I think you and Mike make a cute couple. [The...

The Father's Day Index: By the numbers

By Emily Shire — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Can you put a value on a good dad? The consumer insurance site Insure.com thinks it can, creating a Father's Day Index to translate all those "dad" tasks, from grilling to car maintenance, into dollars and cents. And it turns out that dad's value has appreciated quite a bit over the past year, climbing about 15 percent. Way to go, pops!

Here, Father's Day by the cold, hard numbers:

$23,344
The 2013 monetary value of all of dad's household tasks.

$20,248
Last year's dad value. According to Barbara Marquand at Insure.com, the 2013 rise is mostly due to increased hourly wages for "drivers teachers...

The wedding industrial complex

By The Week Staff — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 10:30:00 -0400

What do weddings cost today?
An astounding amount. Last year the average American wedding, including the requisite reception, cost $28,427. In affluent areas, the cost is even higher: In Boston, the average price of a wedding is $39,239; in Santa Barbara, Calif., it's $42,319; and in Manhattan, $76,687. In other words, many couples are spending on a single event lasting a few hours the equivalent of a year's tuition at college, or what the average American makes in an entire year. This nuptial extravagance is being driven by what some have called the "wedding industrial complex" — a $70 billion...

How typeface influences the way we read and think

By Chris Gayomali — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:45:00 -0400

Last summer, CERN was on the verge of announcing a discovery so critical to understanding the basic building blocks of the universe that it had been given a divine name: The God particle.

The hunt for the Higgs boson was one of the most expensive and labor-intensive particle physics projects ever undertaken, and promised to answer the fundamental but elusive question of why our atoms stick together in the first place. And yet, when CERN researchers finally announced that they'd glimpsed the Higgs, the world's first reaction wasn't to cheer; it was to stifle collective laughter. The institution...

My future brother-in-law is a needy trainwreck. Help!

Starshine Roshell — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:10:00 -0400

Dear Starshine,

I'm getting married, and the wedding plans were going smoothly until two weeks ago, when my fiancé's brother (a groomsman) decided to pull out of the wedding, saying he doesn't even want to be a part of our lives. This came as a total shock to us. He said he felt that my fiancé does not care about him. He expects them to hang out every weekend and for my husband-to-be to call more often. My fiancé is hurt by his brother, who seems to be slowly cutting the family off; he already doesn't speak to their mother. We tried apologizing, but he wanted guarantees that...

Domestic abuse: When escape is the only option

By The Week Staff — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 11:30:00 -0400

NOT LONG BEFORE she fled, Krystal Ryan had $650 to her name. Not his. Not theirs. Just hers. She'd been squirreling it away for a month, knowing he'd ask for it when the bills came. Make that demand it. If she didn't have it, he'd know something was up.

She used it to buy bus tickets to Denver, even though the purchase ate up $585. It left the three of them — Krystal and her kids, 14-year-old Jay and 11-year-old Adara — with $65 to start a new life. For shelter. To eat. Of course it wasn't enough; she couldn't think about that or she'd turn back.

Every dozen or so seconds in the United...

20 awesomely titled trade magazines

By Arika Okrent — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 07:30:00 -0400

Every industry is a world unto itself, with its own particular rites, rituals, and news to keep track of. That's why every industry has a trade magazine, so the members of its world can follow the latest developments. To an outsider, however, these magazines offer a tantalizing (or baffling) glimpse at the obscure corners of human endeavor. There are worlds out there you may have never even dreamed of! Here are 20 awesomely titled trade magazines to give you an idea of the worlds you're missing out on.

1. Elevator World

(Credit: Elevator World)

"The Magazine of the International Building...

6 enormously unhealthy breakfast sandwiches

By Danny Gallagher — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 13:20:00 -0400

Dunkin Donuts' Glazed Doughnut Breakfast Sandwich, which debuted last week, packs bacon and a fried egg between two halves of a glazed donut. While this fatty treat may not be the healthiest way to start your day, at 360 calories, you could do worse. Here, a look at six other fast-food breakfast sandwiches that will have you unbuckling your belt:

1. Burger King's Enormous Omelet Sandwich
The "Home of the Whopper" unleashed this breakfast behemoth in 2005. The aptly named Enormous Omelet Sandwich features all the breakfast staples: a sausage patty, two omelet-style eggs, two slices of American cheese...

11 products you might not realize were made by prisoners

By Lucas Reilly — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 06:55:00 -0400

1. Books for the blind
There are 36 prison Braille-writing programs in the United States. Through the American Printing House for the Blind, offenders help write K-12 textbooks for blind students. In Missouri, the Center for Braille and Narration Production employs 102 convicts, many whom are certified through the Library of Congress. They transcribe anything, from novels to music.

2. Lingerie
In the 1990s, Victoria's Secret and J. C. Penney hired subcontractor Third Generation, who, in turn, hired people to stitch their lingerie and leisure wear — 35 South Carolina inmates, Mother Jones...

7 life-size LEGO builds

By Danny Gallagher — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:20:00 -0400

1. A Star Wars X-wing
The world record holder for the largest Lego model goes to the builders behind this recently unveiled scale model of the dogfighting spaceship from Star Wars. The LEGO Model Shop in Kladno, Czech Republic, took more than 17,000 man hours and 32 builders to put together this massive model. It consists of more than 5 million bricks and weighs approximately 23 tons.

(SHANNON STAPLETON/Reuters/Corbis)

2. A mecha robot
The X-wing project took the record away from the LEGO Store in Minnesota's Mall of America. There, a massive "mecha robot" called the "Herobot 9000" consists of...

11 incredibly strange college majors

By The Week Staff — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 07:25:00 -0400

Among the millions of new college graduates scrambling to enter the job market this summer are a select group of students with some rather unique degrees.

Sure, employers will see the usual slew of econ and English majors. But hidden in that big stack of resumes could be the student who spent thousands learning how to legally grow marijuana, going whitewater rafting, or jamming out to the Beatles.

To be fair, the most common majors are still business administration and psychology, according to the Princeton Review; but more unique and specifically-tailored degree programs have been cropping...

Chicago's shocking 'pregnant boy' ads

By Lauren Hansen — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 19:07:00 -0400

(Facebook.com/Chicago Department of Public Health)

He looks like a typical high school boy — shaggy hair, low-riding jeans, a skateboard — except for one startling difference: A pregnant belly. Such is the imagery featured in Chicago's teen pregnancy awareness campaign, alongside the fitting tagline: "Unexpected? Most teen pregnancies are."

The message is as blatant as the boy's rotund stomach. Teen pregnancies are not just the girl's responsibility.

"We wanted to create an ad campaign that would cut through the clutter and get people thinking about teen pregnancy and teen births...

The portable resort

By The Week Staff — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 14:30:00 -0400

When you really want to kick back at the beach, a mere folding chair won't do. At 22 pounds, the LoungePac ($280) never likes to roam far from a boardwalk, but it's practically "a portable all-in-one resort." Twin coolers suited for a wine bottle and a cold supper sit at your elbows; pour a glass and the built-in cupholders will keep your chosen libation sand-free. At the end of the day, the chair folds up and can be toted using backpack straps or rolled away on its wheels. But with its cushy seat and optional stereo speakers, "why would anyone need to book a hotel room?" Source: Gizmodo

My $500 family getaway: How a staycation saved us big

By The Week Staff — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 10:00:00 -0400

One of the best vacations my family ever had was the one we never took.

Two years ago we were saving for a down payment and had a brand-new baby, so a lavish beach holiday was not in the cards. But rather than lament our lack of a getaway, we doubled down on the idea of staying put and had ourselves a five-star staycation.

We quickly learned that there are rules to follow if you want a fabulous staycation and not just a week spent vacuuming the living room. If done right, a staycation offers perks that can actually trump a week spent lounging on the beach. You can save money, splurge on local...

Forget cronuts: 7 even crazier ideas for food hybrids

By Peter Weber — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 15:15:00 -0400

If imitation is the truest form of flattery, French-born New York pastry chef Dominique Ansel should have a very big head right about now.

His cronuts, an impressive culinary hybrid of a croissant and a donut, have not only become the object of foodie desire in New York, where people line up for hours outside his eponymous bakery for a taste of the buttery delicacy (or just buy them off the black market), they are an international phenomenon. The cronut has spawned knockoffs in cities from Washington (the "doissant") to Los Angeles (the "cronot") to Melbourne ("dossants").

Ansel, who trademarked...