IHT Special: Women Appointed to Saudi Council for First Time

DUBAI — For the first time in Saudi Arabia’s history, women have been appointed to the Shura Council, the traditionally all-male body which drafts laws, debates major issues and provides advice to the king.

It may seem a modest step.

There are still no female ministers in the cabinet and women will remain segregated within the council, with their own seating area and a separate door.

The unelected council has only an advisory role: It proposes laws but the king wields sole legislative power.

Yet the chosen women, and some others, are calling the appointments a major advance.

“This enormous, rapid and noteworthy progress means Saudi society and its governing body are finally ready to acknowledge and respect women’s voices and their rights,” said Dr. Khawla Al-Kuraya, a professor of pathology, and director at the King Fahad National Center for Children’s Cancer and Research.

Dr. Kuraya is one of the 30 women — drawn from the elite ranks of Saudi society and including two royal princesses — named by King Abdullah last week to join the 150-member council, which meets in the capital, Riyadh.

The king’s decree, which stipulated that from now on women should make up 20 percent of the council, came amid contradictory signals on women’s rights in the kingdom.

Women are still forbidden to drive and, since November, new electronic texting procedures have been introduced to tighten the compulsory monitoring by their male guardians of women traveling outside the kingdom.

Still, women’s advocates, including some men, are hopeful that the opening of the Shura Council could lead to other advances.

“This is a major move to introduce more reforms when it comes to gender equality throughout our daily lives,” said Khalid Al Khudair, founder of Glowork.net, a recruitment Web site for women in Saudi Arabia.

“Their presence as advisers to the king will move new laws in the right direction, with labor laws suited to allow women to work in new sectors and industries.”

“This could mean we will see women driving very soon,” Mr. Khudair added.

The change on the council follows several economic measures aimed at increasing female participation in the work force.

Since August last year, the Labor Ministry has progressively opened up jobs for women in the retail industry, notably by ordering the replacement of male assistants in stores selling lingerie, abayas and jewelry.

Mounira Jamjoom, a research specialist at the Booz consulting firm in Riyadh, said: “The decision to integrate women in the political process is timely, and by providing policy stability, the government can unleash the region’s considerable human promise — its increasingly educated and aspiring women.”

As recently as 2011 women were excluded from voting in municipal elections — the highest, if occasional, forum for democracy in a kingdom that has no elected national institutions. But the king has promised that they will be allowed to vote and run for office in the next municipals, planned for 2015.

“Saudi Arabia is the most conservative Gulf country when it comes to women’s rights, so the appointment of women to the Shura Council, while in the short term its impact is symbolic, in the long term its impact is significant,” said Najla Al Awadhi, a former member of the United Arab Emirates Parliament and one of the first female members of the legislature there.

“This step by the Saudi king begins to chip away at the institutional and psychological barriers in Saudi society that have historically been unaccepting of a woman’s role in public life where national issues are debated and shaped,” she added. “So the presence of Saudi women there is critical.”

Appointing women to the Shura Council also will create role models for younger women in a society where women have been expected to stay out of the limelight. “We are going to be partners in building our country and that is a phenomenal change from just 10 years ago,” said Muna AbuSulayman, a Saudi development consultant who was formerly a popular television talk show host and secretary general of the Alwaleed Bin Talal Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Kingdom Holding. “It is a great step in realizing that female rights are really human rights.”

Women will be able to join any of the committees of the council including economic, family and foreign affairs.

“Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe that specific female-related issues are going to be the main focus of the women of the Shura,” said Dr. Kuraya. “Rather, as members we have the right to raise and address the diverse array of issues that concern Saudi society as a whole.”

Read More..

Tool Kit: In Choosing a Tablet, First Try It On for Size

In the grand scheme of worries, deciding which size tablet to get — they all sit within a roughly three-inch screen range — does not quite rank.

But technophiles and technophobes alike struggle with the question. About half of the major tablets are the thickness of a failing magazine with screens about seven inches (measured along the diagonal), and the other half are about twice as thick with screens about 10 inches long.

Even if this isn’t a life-changing decision, it can be a baffling one.

The companies that make tablets give some basic but vague guidance. Google’s marketing materials say its larger 10-inch tablet is suitable as a “couch or coffee table companion” and its seven-inch Nexus 7 “is designed to go wherever you go.” Peter Larsen, Amazon’s vice president for the Kindle reader, says the seven-inch Kindle Fire HD is small enough to fit in a purse. He doesn’t say where the 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HD fits.

Here’s the first thing to keep in mind. It kind of doesn’t matter. All tablets can browse the Web, check e-mail and run apps. Some are better at some things than others, but the difference in screen size does not fundamentally change the nature of the machine.

Sarah Rotman Epps, a senior analyst at Forrester Research, had a beautiful way of describing it to me. She said tablets of different sizes were like knives in your kitchen: “You can have a six-inch chef’s knife or an eight-inch chef’s knife or a paring knife, but they all cut food.”

Ms. Epps said that people more often than not use tablets in their homes, where you’d think that more screen real estate would trump more portability. And Jakob Nielsen, principal of the Nielsen Norman Group, who has been studying user interfaces for almost 30 years, agreed. “When it comes to screen size, bigger is better,” he said.

But I’m not sure that’s the whole picture. All those benefits don’t account for the popularity of smaller tablets.

I believe smaller tablets make up for their smaller screens and limited computing power by being easier to hold. That’s different from portability.

Phones are light enough for anyone to hold, and laptops are never expected to be held for long, unless they’re being toted in a bag. But tablets beg not only to be carried like magazines but to be held like them, too. This generation of midsize tablets is not only better out of the house, but more comfortable to hold in the home, on couches and in bed, where they are most often used. The bigger tablets weigh just enough to be annoying after a while.

So, I think you should get a little tablet in most cases. Except these:

YOU HAVE BAD EYES With less screen, text in a comparable app, magazine or e-book will never appear as large as on a full-size tablet.

YOU READ A LOT OF MAGAZINES Condé Nast magazines like GQ and Traveler have been redesigned on iPads to have scrolling pages with bigger text. But some smaller publishers simply port their magazines to tablets by producing what is basically a facsimile of a print page. When shrunk, these pages are nearly impossible to read on smaller tablets, whether they have high-definition screens or not, without zooming in.

YOU HAVE FAT FINGERS Mr. Nielsen says in a blog post about the iPad Mini that apps designed to run on the full-size iPad can’t just be scaled down without making it harder to push on-screen buttons. Nielsen says screen resolution is not as important as buttons, which should be more than a square centimeter in size. I haven’t noticed interface problems on smaller tablets, though.

YOU GIVE PRESENTATIONS Or you call yourself a photographer. Small tablets are clearly personal devices, but full-size tablets can double as sleek presentation tools for doctors displaying X-rays, architects showing off blueprints or sales people making pitches to prospective clients. They can get a lot out of the bigger high-definition screens on bigger tablets.

YOU WRITE A LOT OF MEMOS Or you write a lot of e-mails on your tablet. I don’t get why you would want to do this on a small tablet. Joe Brown, editor in chief of the gadget blog Gizmodo, told me that even on big tablets, touch-screen typing is not as effective as using a physical keyboard. “You should also probably just stick with your laptop,” he said. Unless you don’t have one.

YOU WANT A POST-PC EXISTENCE People who are technophobic seem to take to tablets. You can learn to use them in seconds, there is no long boot-up delay and they rarely crash. Because the lightest laptops tend to be only a little bigger than tablets in screen size and only a pound or two heavier than a full-size tablet, you might as well get the bigger tablet.

YOU LOVE VIDEO GAMES If you’re intent on buying a tablet with the ultimate in graphics performance, you should get a big tablet. Or an Xbox.

YOU ARE VERY BIG AND STRONG If you are an N.B.A. player, Olympian or a person of similar height, strength and weight, I’d guess a big tablet probably feels like a little tablet does to me. (I am a small Chinese-American man.)

Nathan Weiner, chief executive of Pocket, a service that lets people save Web clippings and view them later on any device, said of smaller tablets: “They’re like books and they’re a lot lighter, which is, to be honest, the biggest thing. The big iPad was always a lot of work. You’re always trying to prop it up in bed or on a couch, and it always felt top-heavy. I don’t want to make it sound like I have no arm strength, but it was less tiring in that regard.”

In the end, my advice is that no matter what brand of tablet you buy, you should go to a local store that carries it (Apple or Best Buy should work fine) and try it out. Really try it out — by testing apps, browsing the Web and looking at e-mail, movies and magazines, side by side. And for the sake of this conversation, hold it up the way you would at home for a few minutes. Get down on the floor, if you want. Irritate other shoppers by watching a few long YouTube clips or something. (You are about to part with several hundred dollars. You deserve to take your time with this.)

And if you are still afraid of choosing the wrong one, remember there is no wrong one. You cannot mess this up.

Read More..

Study Confirms Benefits of Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women

While everyone is being urged to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, some pregnant women avoid it in the belief that it may harm their babies. A large new study confirms that they should be much more afraid of the flu than the vaccine.

Norwegian researchers studied fetal death among 113,331 women pregnant during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009-2010. Some 54,065 women were unvaccinated, 31,912 were vaccinated during pregnancy, and 27,354 were vaccinated after delivery. The scientists then reviewed hospitalizations and doctor visits for the flu among the women.

The results were published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The flu vaccine was not associated with an increased risk for fetal death, the researchers found, and getting the shot during pregnancy reduced the risk of the mother getting the flu by about 70 percent. That was important, because fetuses whose mothers got the flu were much more likely to die.

Unvaccinated women had a 25 percent higher risk of fetal death during the pandemic than those who had had the shot. Among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza, the risk of fetal death was nearly doubled. In all, there were 16 fetal deaths among the 2,278 women who were diagnosed with influenza during pregnancy.

Dr. Marian Knight, a professor at the perinatal epidemiology unit of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, called it “a high-quality national study” that shows “there is no evidence of an increased risk of fetal death in women who have been immunized. Clinicians and women can be reassured about the safety of the vaccine in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.”

The Norwegian health system records vaccinations of individuals and maintains linked registries to track effects and side effects. The lead author, Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that there are few countries with such complete records.

“This is a great study,” said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, an obstetrician and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the work. “It’s nicely done, with good data, and it’s additional information about the importance of the flu vaccine for pregnant women. It shows that it’s effective and might reduce the risk for fetal death.”

In Norway, the vaccine is recommended only in the second and third trimesters, so the study includes little data on vaccination in the first trimester. The C.D.C. recommends the vaccine for all pregnant women, regardless of trimester.

“We knew from other studies that the vaccine protects the woman and the newborn,” Dr. Stoltenberg said. “This study clearly indicates that it protects fetuses as well. I seriously suggest that pregnant women get vaccinated during every flu season.”

Read More..

Study Confirms Benefits of Flu Vaccine for Pregnant Women

While everyone is being urged to get the flu vaccine as soon as possible, some pregnant women avoid it in the belief that it may harm their babies. A large new study confirms that they should be much more afraid of the flu than the vaccine.

Norwegian researchers studied fetal death among 113,331 women pregnant during the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009-2010. Some 54,065 women were unvaccinated, 31,912 were vaccinated during pregnancy, and 27,354 were vaccinated after delivery. The scientists then reviewed hospitalizations and doctor visits for the flu among the women.

The results were published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

The flu vaccine was not associated with an increased risk for fetal death, the researchers found, and getting the shot during pregnancy reduced the risk of the mother getting the flu by about 70 percent. That was important, because fetuses whose mothers got the flu were much more likely to die.

Unvaccinated women had a 25 percent higher risk of fetal death during the pandemic than those who had had the shot. Among pregnant women with a clinical diagnosis of influenza, the risk of fetal death was nearly doubled. In all, there were 16 fetal deaths among the 2,278 women who were diagnosed with influenza during pregnancy.

Dr. Marian Knight, a professor at the perinatal epidemiology unit of the University of Oxford, who was not involved in the research, called it “a high-quality national study” that shows “there is no evidence of an increased risk of fetal death in women who have been immunized. Clinicians and women can be reassured about the safety of the vaccine in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.”

The Norwegian health system records vaccinations of individuals and maintains linked registries to track effects and side effects. The lead author, Dr. Camilla Stoltenberg, director of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that there are few countries with such complete records.

“This is a great study,” said Dr. Denise J. Jamieson, an obstetrician and a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was not involved in the work. “It’s nicely done, with good data, and it’s additional information about the importance of the flu vaccine for pregnant women. It shows that it’s effective and might reduce the risk for fetal death.”

In Norway, the vaccine is recommended only in the second and third trimesters, so the study includes little data on vaccination in the first trimester. The C.D.C. recommends the vaccine for all pregnant women, regardless of trimester.

“We knew from other studies that the vaccine protects the woman and the newborn,” Dr. Stoltenberg said. “This study clearly indicates that it protects fetuses as well. I seriously suggest that pregnant women get vaccinated during every flu season.”

Read More..

Supreme Court Hears Argument on Cellphone Towers

WASHINGTON — In June, two Texas cities asked the Supreme Court to decide a practical question and an abstract one, both concerning how quickly local zoning authorities have to respond to applications from telecommunications companies to build wireless towers.

The practical question was whether the Federal Communications Commission was authorized to set time limits. But the Supreme Court, which includes four former law professors with an interest in administrative law, agreed to decide only the abstract question of whether an administrative agency like the commission may determine the scope of its own jurisdiction.

At the argument of the case on Wednesday, some of the justices seemed content to tease apart the semantic distinctions posed by the second question, though there did not seem to be much enthusiasm for adding further complexity to an already tangled area. Others appeared frustrated that the court had gone out of its way to avoid having to give real-world guidance about a concrete and consequential issue.

The case, City of Arlington v. Federal Communications Commission, No. 11-1545, concerns a 1996 federal law that requires state and local authorities to act “within a reasonable period of time” after receiving applications to build or alter wireless facilities. In response to a request from a trade association for the wireless industry, the commission made two decisions.

First, it found that it had jurisdiction to define what a reasonable time was. Second, it said that 90 or 150 days were generally appropriate deadlines, depending on the circumstances.

The Texas cities, Arlington and San Antonio, said Congress had not authorized the commission to act in the first place, pointing to a part of the law that said it was not meant to limit the power of state and local governments.

The general rules in this area were set out in 1984 in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which said that judges should defer to an administrative agency’s views when Congress itself has not spoken clearly.

The additional question in the new case was whether Chevron’s general framework applies to an agency’s determination of whether it has the power to act in the first place. Several justices said it did.

“The jurisdictional question, like any other question,” Justice Antonin Scalia said, “is to be decided with deference to the agency.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to agree, adding that it was hard to tell the two kinds of questions apart. “It’s almost impossible to talk about what’s jurisdictional and what’s an application of jurisdiction,” she said.

A lawyer for the cities, Thomas C. Goldstein, responded that there are times when courts should draw distinctions between an agency’s general authority to interpret a law and its specific authority to interpret a particular provision of the law based on the text of the statute.

Justice Elena Kagan said that was slicing things too fine. “Mr. Goldstein, at one level you are right,” she said. “It’s just a level that doesn’t help you very much.”

At the end of the day, she said, it is all the same question. “We’ve just had some very simple rules about what gets you into the box where an agency is entitled to deference,” she said.

Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the commission, said that a uniform approach was workable. The alternative proposed by the cities, he said, would “open a Pandora’s box” because there was no “clear, neat dividing line” between the two kinds of questions.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the court should generally defer to agencies with expertise that lawmakers lack. “Congress, which is not expert, would have wanted the F.C.C. to figure this one out,” he said.

But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said there might be a special reason not to defer to the commission in this case because it concerned a conflict between federal and state powers. Federal courts, he said, are better suited to policing that boundary than “an agency of unelected bureaucrats.”

Read More..

The Lede Blog: Video of Aleppo University Bombing

Last Updated, 6:07 p.m. Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists appeared to show the moment one in a series of deadly explosions struck the campus of Aleppo University on Tuesday.

Video said to capture an explosion on the campus of Aleppo University in Syria on Tuesday, uploaded to the Web by opposition activists.

The brief clip, uploaded to the YouTube channel of the ANA New Media Association (formerly the Syrian Activists News Association), begins with a view of smoke rising from behind a university building as students mill about. Moments later, following a very loud explosion close to the camera, students run for cover and a much larger plume can be seen above the building.

The building visible in the video looks similar one pictured in a photograph of the campus uploaded to the Web in 2010, which suggests that the clip was recorded by someone standing outside the university’s college of education, looking in the direction of the school of architecture.

A description of the video posted on YouTube by ANA, which is run from Cairo by the British-Syrian activist Rami Jarrah, said that the video was filmed by an activist just after the university was hit by a missile fired from a Syrian Air Force MIG fighter jet, and captured the impact of a second airstrike.

Another video clip, uploaded to the Web earlier in the day, appeared to offer a more distant view of the plumes of smoke above the campus. Mr. Jarrah, who blogs as Alexander Page, suggested that one part of the video showed the fighter jet’s contrail in the sky over the damaged buildings.

NEW FOOTAGE: Shows trail of Jet Fighter seconds after Airstrike on University of #Aleppo http://t.co/CRk3C8wb Syrian state TV Lie

— Alexander Page (@AlexanderPageSY) 15 Jan 13

While opposition activists insisted that the blasts, which killed more than 80 people according to the government, were the result of airstrikes by President Bashar al-Assad’s air force, state-controlled television channels claimed that “terrorists” had fired rockets at the campus.

An English-language news bulletin from Syrian state television started with a minute of raw footage showing the aftermath of “the terrorist explosion at Aleppo University.” The pro-Assad satellite channel al-Ikhbaria also broadcast video of the aftermath, showing extensive damage to the campus and victims being rushed from the scene as on-screen text blamed the attack on rebel forces.

Video from the pro-government Syrian satellite channel al-Ikhbaria showed the aftermath of bombings at Aleppo University on Tuesday

Restrictions on independent reporting in Syria make it hard to confirm who was responsible for the explosions, but the university is in a government-controlled area of the city and large anti-Assad demonstrations there last May were harshly dealt with by the security forces, despite the presence of United Nations observers.

Opposition activists claimed that witnesses saw the bombs drop from jets, and one antigovernment Facebook page posted what it said was a copy of a statement from the univesity’s own press office accusing Syrian Air Force MIG fighter planes of targeting the campus in two “criminal” missile attacks three minutes apart.

A blogger in Aleppo who supported peaceful protests against the Assad government but has been fiercely critical of the armed rebellion, Edward Dark, described the carnage as a result of an air attack that was “probably a mistake, not an intentional bombing.”

just now: regime jet bombs Aleppo Uni faculty of architecture as students are taking tests. this is in a peaceful regime held area #Syria

— edward dark (@edwardedark) 15 Jan 13

@APHClarkson no, I think it was probably a mistake, not an intentional bombing

— edward dark (@edwardedark) 15 Jan 13

A pair of video clips posted on YouTube shortly after the bombings showed extensive damage to what was described as the university’s architecture school. In one of the clips, dazed students made their way through shattered glass, carrying a wounded or dead man on a table, in the entrance hall to the architecture faculty pictured on the university’s Web site.

Video said to show the badly damaged school of architecture at Aleppo University on Tuesday.

Video of a wounded man being evacuated from Aleppo University’s school of architecture on Tuesday.

Another pro-Assad satellite channel, Addounia, broadcast a report blaming “a terrorist group” for the bombings — which was uploaded, with English subtitles, to YouTube.

A video report on bombings at Aleppo University from Addounia, a pro-Assad satellite channel.

Writing on Twitter, a Syrian-American from Aleppo who uses the pen name Amal Hanano posted links to photographs of three people identified as victims of the bombings by activists on social networks.

Muhanned Assi, 1st year Civil Engineering student. Killed in today’s bombing in University of #Aleppo. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/Wj3o5kII

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Fahed Miri, 23, refugee living in the dorms, volunteer, killed in today’s bombing in University of #Aleppo. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/Z8mjJGdM

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Sawsan Haqi, mother of 3, grandmother of 2, beloved citizen, killed today in University of #Aleppo bombing. #RIP #Syria http://t.co/WTjENdhZ

— Amal Hanano (@AmalHanano) 15 Jan 13

Read More..

Bits Blog: Facebook Unveils a New Search Tool

3:22 p.m. | Updated

Facebook on Tuesday took a stab at cracking a big, elusive problem of its own making: How to help its one billion users find what they’re looking for in the jumble of posts, pictures and blue thumbs-up “likes” they share every day.

At an event at company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s co-founder and chief executive, announced a tool the company had spent over a year honing. He called it “graph search,” and said it would be available to a limited number of Facebook users on Tuesday — in the “thousands”— and gradually rolled out to the rest. It would enable Facebook users to search their social network for people, places, photos and things that interest them.

That might include, Mr. Zuckerberg offered, Mexican restaurants in Palo Alto that his friends have “liked” on Facebook or checked into — though not status updates as yet. The tool might be used to find a date, or a job, Facebook executives said. “Graph search is a completely new way to get information on Facebook,” Mr. Zuckerberg said.

What he didn’t say, but which was clear, was how it would try to elbow out other companies that allow you to search for other things – LinkedIn for jobs, Yelp for restaurants, Amazon for gifts to buy for a friend and, of course, Facebook’s biggest rival on the Web, Google, which dominates Web search.  Facebook is staking its bet on the sheer volume of data that it has access to; it is hoping that its users will find what they’re looking for on Facebook itself, without having to go to the rest of the Web.

And that is how Mr. Zuckerberg distinguished Facebook search from Google search, which sends you to other sites. The Facebook search tool is meant to keep you inside Facebook itself. “Web search is designed to take any open-ended query,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “Graph search is designed to take a precise query and return to you the answer, not links to other places where you get the answer.”

Mr. Zuckerberg sought to reassure Facebook users that their posts and pictures would be found only if they want them to be found. Before the new search tool rolls out, users will get a nudge: “Please take some time to review who can see your stuff,” it will read. Facebook tweaked its privacy controls last December.

Mr. Zuckerberg said Tuesday that initially, photos posted on Instagram, which Facebook owns, would not be part of the database of photos that can be searched. He did not specify how soon graph search would be available to those who log in on cellphones.

The search tool is plainly designed with an eye to producing profits. If done right, said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner, the Facebook search tool could offer marketers a more precise signal of a Web user’s interests than a keyword on Google. “It’s going to lend itself to advertising or other revenue-generating products that better matches what people are looking for,” he said. “Advertisers are going to be able to better target what you’re interested in. It’s a much more meaningful search than keyword search.”

Search earns the lion’s share of advertising revenues on the Web, which is why Google makes nearly 10 times more money than Facebook on a yearly basis.

Read More..

Well: How to Go Vegan

When I first heard former President Bill Clinton talk about his vegan diet, I was inspired to make the switch myself. After all, if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.

At the grocery store, I stocked up on vegan foods, including almond milk (that was the presidential recommendation), and faux turkey and cheese to replicate my daughter’s favorite sandwich. But despite my good intentions, my cold-turkey attempt to give up, well, turkey (as well as other meats, dairy and eggs) didn’t go well. My daughter and I couldn’t stand the taste of almond milk, and the fake meat and cheese were unappealing.

Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous vegan chefs and diners who say it can be a challenge to change a lifetime of eating habits overnight. They offer the following advice for stocking your vegan pantry and finding replacements for key foods like cheese and other dairy products.

NONDAIRY MILK Taste all of them to find your favorite. Coconut and almond milks (particularly canned coconut milk) are thicker and good to use in cooking, while rice milk is thinner and is good for people who are allergic to nuts or soy. My daughter and I both prefer the taste of soy milk and use it in regular or vanilla flavor for fruit smoothies and breakfast cereal.

NONDAIRY CHEESE Cheese substitutes are available under the brand names Daiya, Tofutti and Follow Your Heart, among others, but many vegans say there’s no fake cheese that satisfies as well as the real thing. Rather than use a packaged product, vegan chefs prefer to make homemade substitutes using cashews, tofu, miso or nutritional yeast. At Candle 79, a popular New York vegan restaurant, the filling for saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms and cashew cheese is made with cashews soaked overnight and then blended with lemon juice, olive oil, water and salt.

THINK CREAMY, NOT CHEESY Creaminess and richness can often be achieved without a cheese substitute. For instance, Chloe Coscarelli, a vegan chef and the author of “Chloe’s Kitchen,” has created a pizza with caramelized onion and butternut squash that will make you forget it doesn’t have cheese; the secret is white-bean and garlic purée. She also offers a creamy, but dairy-free, avocado pesto pasta. My daughter and I have discovered we actually prefer the rich flavor of butternut squash ravioli, which can be found frozen and fresh in supermarkets, to cheese-filled ravioli.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST The name is unappetizing, but many vegan chefs swear by it: it’s a natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor. Ms. Coscarelli uses nutritional yeast flakes in her “best ever” baked macaroni and cheese (found in her cookbook). “I’ve served this to die-hard cheese lovers,” she told me, “and everyone agrees it is comparable, if not better.”

Susan Voisin’s Web site, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, offers a nice primer on nutritional yeast, noting that it’s a fungus (think mushrooms!) that is grown on molasses and then harvested and dried with heat. (Baking yeast is an entirely different product.) Nutritional yeasts can be an acquired taste, she said, so start with small amounts, sprinkling on popcorn, stirring into mashed potatoes, grinding with almonds for a Parmesan substitute or combining with tofu to make an eggless omelet. It can be found in Whole Foods, in the bulk aisle of natural-foods markets or online.

BUTTER This is an easy fix. Vegan margarines like Earth Balance are made from a blend of oils and are free of trans fats. Varieties include soy-free, whipped and olive oil.

EGGS Ms. Coscarelli, who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with vegan cupcakes, says vinegar and baking soda can help baked goods bind together and rise, creating a moist and fluffy cake without eggs. Cornstarch can substitute for eggs to thicken puddings and sauces. Vegan pancakes are made with a tablespoon of baking powder instead of eggs. Frittatas and omelets can be replicated with tofu.

Finally, don’t try to replicate your favorite meaty foods right away. If you love a juicy hamburger, meatloaf or ham sandwich, you are not going to find a meat-free version that tastes the same. Ms. Voisin advises new vegans to start slow and eat a few vegan meals a week. Stock your pantry with lots of grains, lentils and beans and pile your plate with vegetables. To veganize a recipe, start with a dish that is mostly vegan already — like spaghetti — and use vegetables or a meat substitute for the sauce.

“Trying to recapture something and find an exact substitute is really hard,” she said. “A lot of people will try a vegetarian meatloaf right after they become vegetarian, and they hate it. But after you get away from eating meat for a while, you’ll find you start to develop other tastes, and the flavor of a lentil loaf with seasonings will taste great to you. It won’t taste like meat loaf, but you’ll appreciate it for itself.”

Ms. Voisin notes that she became a vegetarian and then vegan while living in a small town in South Carolina; she now lives in Jackson, Miss.

“If I can be a vegan in these not-quite-vegan-centric places, you can do it anywhere,” she said. “I think people who try to do it all at once overnight are more apt to fail. It’s a learning process.”

---

What are your tips for vegan cooking and eating? Share your suggestions on ingredients, recipes and strategies by posting a comment below or tweeting with the hashtag #vegantips.

Read More..

Well: How to Go Vegan

When I first heard former President Bill Clinton talk about his vegan diet, I was inspired to make the switch myself. After all, if a man with a penchant for fast-food burgers and Southern cooking could go vegan, surely I could too.

At the grocery store, I stocked up on vegan foods, including almond milk (that was the presidential recommendation), and faux turkey and cheese to replicate my daughter’s favorite sandwich. But despite my good intentions, my cold-turkey attempt to give up, well, turkey (as well as other meats, dairy and eggs) didn’t go well. My daughter and I couldn’t stand the taste of almond milk, and the fake meat and cheese were unappealing.

Since then, I’ve spoken with numerous vegan chefs and diners who say it can be a challenge to change a lifetime of eating habits overnight. They offer the following advice for stocking your vegan pantry and finding replacements for key foods like cheese and other dairy products.

NONDAIRY MILK Taste all of them to find your favorite. Coconut and almond milks (particularly canned coconut milk) are thicker and good to use in cooking, while rice milk is thinner and is good for people who are allergic to nuts or soy. My daughter and I both prefer the taste of soy milk and use it in regular or vanilla flavor for fruit smoothies and breakfast cereal.

NONDAIRY CHEESE Cheese substitutes are available under the brand names Daiya, Tofutti and Follow Your Heart, among others, but many vegans say there’s no fake cheese that satisfies as well as the real thing. Rather than use a packaged product, vegan chefs prefer to make homemade substitutes using cashews, tofu, miso or nutritional yeast. At Candle 79, a popular New York vegan restaurant, the filling for saffron ravioli with wild mushrooms and cashew cheese is made with cashews soaked overnight and then blended with lemon juice, olive oil, water and salt.

THINK CREAMY, NOT CHEESY Creaminess and richness can often be achieved without a cheese substitute. For instance, Chloe Coscarelli, a vegan chef and the author of “Chloe’s Kitchen,” has created a pizza with caramelized onion and butternut squash that will make you forget it doesn’t have cheese; the secret is white-bean and garlic purée. She also offers a creamy, but dairy-free, avocado pesto pasta. My daughter and I have discovered we actually prefer the rich flavor of butternut squash ravioli, which can be found frozen and fresh in supermarkets, to cheese-filled ravioli.

NUTRITIONAL YEAST The name is unappetizing, but many vegan chefs swear by it: it’s a natural food with a roasted, nutty, cheeselike flavor. Ms. Coscarelli uses nutritional yeast flakes in her “best ever” baked macaroni and cheese (found in her cookbook). “I’ve served this to die-hard cheese lovers,” she told me, “and everyone agrees it is comparable, if not better.”

Susan Voisin’s Web site, Fat Free Vegan Kitchen, offers a nice primer on nutritional yeast, noting that it’s a fungus (think mushrooms!) that is grown on molasses and then harvested and dried with heat. (Baking yeast is an entirely different product.) Nutritional yeasts can be an acquired taste, she said, so start with small amounts, sprinkling on popcorn, stirring into mashed potatoes, grinding with almonds for a Parmesan substitute or combining with tofu to make an eggless omelet. It can be found in Whole Foods, in the bulk aisle of natural-foods markets or online.

BUTTER This is an easy fix. Vegan margarines like Earth Balance are made from a blend of oils and are free of trans fats. Varieties include soy-free, whipped and olive oil.

EGGS Ms. Coscarelli, who won the Food Network’s Cupcake Wars with vegan cupcakes, says vinegar and baking soda can help baked goods bind together and rise, creating a moist and fluffy cake without eggs. Cornstarch can substitute for eggs to thicken puddings and sauces. Vegan pancakes are made with a tablespoon of baking powder instead of eggs. Frittatas and omelets can be replicated with tofu.

Finally, don’t try to replicate your favorite meaty foods right away. If you love a juicy hamburger, meatloaf or ham sandwich, you are not going to find a meat-free version that tastes the same. Ms. Voisin advises new vegans to start slow and eat a few vegan meals a week. Stock your pantry with lots of grains, lentils and beans and pile your plate with vegetables. To veganize a recipe, start with a dish that is mostly vegan already — like spaghetti — and use vegetables or a meat substitute for the sauce.

“Trying to recapture something and find an exact substitute is really hard,” she said. “A lot of people will try a vegetarian meatloaf right after they become vegetarian, and they hate it. But after you get away from eating meat for a while, you’ll find you start to develop other tastes, and the flavor of a lentil loaf with seasonings will taste great to you. It won’t taste like meat loaf, but you’ll appreciate it for itself.”

Ms. Voisin notes that she became a vegetarian and then vegan while living in a small town in South Carolina; she now lives in Jackson, Miss.

“If I can be a vegan in these not-quite-vegan-centric places, you can do it anywhere,” she said. “I think people who try to do it all at once overnight are more apt to fail. It’s a learning process.”

---

What are your tips for vegan cooking and eating? Share your suggestions on ingredients, recipes and strategies by posting a comment below or tweeting with the hashtag #vegantips.

Read More..

Media Decoder: The Atlantic Apologizes for Scientology Ad

The Atlantic on Tuesday issued a simple three-word apology for publishing an advertisement by the Church of Scientology that resembled a normal article from the acclaimed magazine: “We screwed up.”

The Web page, published around lunchtime on Monday, was labeled as “sponsor content,” but otherwise looked like a sunny blog post about the church’s expansion. The page was titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year.” It was noticed by reporters at other news organizations on Monday evening and was stripped from The Atlantic’s site by midnight.

“It shouldn’t have taken a wave of constructive criticism — but it has — to alert us that we’ve made a mistake, possibly several mistakes,” The Atlantic said in a statement. “We now realize that as we explored new forms of digital advertising, we failed to update the policies that must govern the decisions we make along the way.”

In other words: The Web site published Scientology’s ad without considering all the consequences.

The Atlantic is far from the only digital publisher pitching advertisers on what is known as sponsored content. Gawker and BuzzFeed are among the other Web sites that have gained attention for the practice, which places an advertiser’s words and visuals (the content) within the frame of the site. The Huffington Post has a whole section front for sponsored content.

But no instance of sponsored content has come under as much criticism as this one. Gawker called the sponsored Web page “bizarre, blatant propaganda for Scientology.” Others raised questions about why all the comments on the page were supportive of the church, indicating that critical comments were being deleted. A spokeswoman for The Atlantic said that the comments were moderated by its marketing team, not by the editorial team that moderates comments on normal articles.

At the same time, others defended the arrangement as a smart business move. The church’s ad buy comes at a time when it is trying to blunt the impact of a new book about the secretive religion by Lawrence Wright, “Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and the Prison of Belief.” The book will be published on Thursday.

On the same day, the NBC newsmagazine “Rock Center with Brian Williams” will broadcast an interview with the writer and director Paul Haggis, described by the network as “the most famous Scientologist to leave Scientology and speak out against it.”

The Atlantic said on Tuesday that it deleted the Scientology ad “until we figure all of this out,” meaning the policies that govern sponsored content.

“It’s safe to say that we are thinking a lot more about these policies after running this ad than we did beforehand,” the magazine said.

The magazine indicated that it was not backing away from sponsored content altogether, far from it: “We remain committed to and enthusiastic about innovation in digital advertising, but acknowledge — sheepishly — that we got ahead of ourselves.” The statement concluded, ”We are sorry, and we’re working very hard to put things right.”

The Atlantic spokeswoman said that the handling of comments on sponsored content is one of the issues it is going to review.

Read More..