Hasta La Gadget!

When you’re preparing a meal, there are tons of things to keep track of. The initial preparation of washing and cutting things is easy enough, but once you start having to deal with cooking times, it can get stressful pretty quickly. This is especially the case if you don’t cook every evening, or have a habit of misplacing your kitchen tools.

One of the most important things to have ready are oven mitts. The reason being that when food is done, or you realize it was done 5 minutes ago, the race to remove it from the heat source begins. If you can’t quickly find two oven mitts to stabilize whatever you’re removing from the oven and end up only using one, there’s a good chance you’ll spill dinner onto the floor. What if instead of having your mitts stuffed in a drawer or cabinet, they were on you at all times?

This Mitten Apron has two oven mitts on the bottom of the apron so you’ll never be in search of protection from heated food. This also has plastic buttons to attach a hand towel so you can dry your hands from the countless amount of times you’ll be rinsing or washing them off during the cooking process. This is going to cost you around $35, which isn’t too bad for a two-for-one deal that will keep your clothes clean and hands safe from harm.

Available for purchase on Amazon
[ The Mitten Apron helps make sure you don’t end up with a hot mess in the kitchen copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

This is big. A new civil rights era births itself in terrible pain.

Black men die, over and over. I can only hope that peace is the result, serious peace, bigger than new laws, bigger than better trained police — agape peace, you might say, peace that is, in the words of Martin Luther King, “an overflowing love which seeks nothing in return.”

“‘We’re out here, and this is peaceful,’ Bishop Walter S. Thomas, pastor of the New Psalmist Baptist Church, shouted to the crowd. After a pause, they continued, singing ‘This Little Light of Mine.’ Helicopters shined spotlights on the group, the thwack-thwack of their rotors competing with the music.”

This is a moment from a New York Times story on the ongoing Baltimore eruption over the death of Freddy Gray — a rare media moment, highlighting not “rioting” and anger and violence but the anguished seriousness of the protesters, who aren’t simply venting emotion over another black man dying in police custody, but evoking the deep music of civil rights and profound change while armed officialdom hovers overhead, ready to make arrests, ready to shoot.

“The march ended at New Shiloh Baptist Church on North Monroe Street, where people raised their hands in a moment of silence to commemorate Mr. Gray. . . .”

The moment of silence is at the center of the Baltimore eruption — the national eruption — over police violence, which is today’s most overt symptom of unquenched American racism.

As we all know, the media delight in us-vs.-them theatrics, so the aftermath of Freddy Gray’s death is mostly portrayed thus, with the police realigning in America’s collective awareness as the keepers of order, decked out in riot gear, standing in crisp formation as the nation’s first line of defense against . . . angry black teenagers! Shouting moms holding protest signs! Agents of change! People who want to know how a young man’s spine became “mostly severed” while in police custody (in a department with a long, documented history of brutal treatment of African-Americans)! How could such a threat to the social order be contained without helicopters and drones, tear gas grenades and pepper balls?

The moment of silence undoes all of the clamor, all of the reality-TV drama. In such a moment, a young man’s life matters, not just to his family and friends but to all of us, because all human life matters. And as we let the moment expand, so many names and faces begin to fill it: even names such as Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, the New York City police officers murdered in cold blood while on duty last December. All human life matters and acts of violence that cut life short are always committed in ignorance of the consequences.

And violence — brute force — is always a pathetically ineffective way to maintain social order or establish authority. Indeed, authority, as Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in a recent piece in The Atlantic, is based on consent and built on functional, positive relationships. Without mutual consent, authority is simply coercion: the violence-backed demands of an occupying army.

“African Americans, for most of our history, have lived under the power of the criminal-justice system, not its authority,” Coates writes. “. . . When African American parents give their children ‘The Talk,’ they do not urge them to make no sudden movements in the presence of police out of a profound respect for the democratic ideal, but out of the knowledge that police can, and will, kill them.”

And this profound wrong is also part of the moment of silence, as it commingles with prayer and hope. In the silence, the outrage turns into commitment, which the thwack-thwack of the helicopter blades only intensifies. And the deepest commitment, I believe, is nonviolent.

“The nonviolent resister,” King said in 1957, “must often express his protest through noncooperation or boycotts, but noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the creation of the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

Perhaps the Baltimore Police Department fears choking on tragic bitterness as it continues to ascribe Freddy Gray’s death-by-severed-spinal-cord to his not being properly seatbelted — a regrettable “mistake,” not an act of actual brutality. Yet the Baltimore police have a history of such brutality, with the city having paid out over $5.7 million to settle over 100 police brutality lawsuits since 2011. Many of the incidents were documented last fall by the Baltimore Sun.

This is shocking but not exactly surprising. Every police killing that has become national news in the past year seems to emerge from such a context. The fact that the stories keep springing up anew indicates that America’s cellphones are outing a deeply embedded national horror: a shadow Jim Crow justice system. Suddenly it’s news.

But what happens next? A serious movement for political and social change has to cohere around the endemic violence. The changes must include better trained police, an end to racial profiling, the demilitarization of the police and a national embrace of community policing. This is just a start. We need a new civil rights movement. Let it begin with a moment of silence.

– – –
Robert Koehler is an award-winning, Chicago-based journalist and nationally syndicated writer. His book, Courage Grows Strong at the Wound (Xenos Press), is still available. Contact him at koehlercw@gmail.com or visit his website at commonwonders.com.

© 2015 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, INC.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

MADISON, Tenn. (RNS) Goodpasture Christian School sits on a sprawling, bucolic campus seven miles north of downtown Nashville, where 900 students ready themselves for adult lives of college, career and loving the Lord.

Right next door sits the United Fellowship Center, a planned church where adults will ready themselves to have sex with each other after enjoying a little BYOB togetherness.

It’s the newest incarnation of The Social Club, a whispered-about swingers club in downtown Nashville that left for the suburbs when a building boom took its parking lot. The community went bonkers after zoning hearings revealed the club’s plans to relocate in a former medical office building in Madison — adjacent to Goodpasture and within a mile of an Assemblies of God megachurch.

After months of debate, an emergency city zoning amendment and a state law designed to stop the relocation, the club’s attorney made an announcement: The Social Club would open in its new location as a church.

Protection via the First Amendment effectively silenced zoning complaints — for now. But it sparked conversations about what it means for a secular organization suddenly to label itself a church, and religious scholars seem no more ready to plunge into that debate than American courts have proved to be.

“When I see this case, I do roll my eyes, but I also know Protestant Christians in America don’t own ‘church,’” said Kutter Callaway, assistant professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif.

“What is a church, what’s the point of it, and why have we as a society said religious groups are exempt from things other groups aren’t? Those are really core questions. We don’t get to them, because we founder upon the rocks of politics and legalese.”

The church’s attorney, Larry Roberts, makes clear that United Fellowship won’t seek nonprofit status — removing its exposure to a 14-point list that the Internal Revenue Service uses to determine whether an enterprise is religious. Members will pay about $150 a year to belong, plus a per-visit fee, he said.

When The Social Club first announced its plan to move to Madison, remodeling plans for the new space submitted to Metro Nashville’s zoning department labeled two rooms as dungeons. Now, as United Fellowship, those same rooms are labeled “choir” and “handbells.”

Roberts said members can bring their own alcohol, and if they show up and want to have sex, they’ll have to take it off campus. United Fellowship Center doesn’t align itself with any world religion, and its belief system is brief: “Do not steal, do not lie, do not cheat, do not take the life of another, do not commit adultery — without the knowledge and consent of your spouse,” Roberts said.

The debate gives churches the opportunity for some introspection, said Craig Detweiler, a communication professor at Churches of Christ-affiliated Pepperdine University. For example, he asks, when buildings house coffee shops, bookstores or gyms, are those part of the church — or are they not another form of social club?

“The swingers club may be gathering to worship the body,” Detweiler said. “But what does it mean to be the Body of Christ? Maybe we need to redefine why we gather. … Perhaps this is a post-Christendom moment that we’re in.”

After all, he noted, the Apostle Paul advised the Corinthians on how their church should stand out from temples where patrons had sex with prostitutes to get closer to God.

Transcendent thinking about religion aside, Goodpasture president Ricky Perry has a ground-level zoning war to fight. He said the biggest problem with United Fellowship is his students’ curiosity. Google searches of “United Fellowship Center” — which is on a sign that’s visible from the school’s side entrance — lead to articles about the swingers club.

Perry said he initially received the news of the “church” with hope that the club’s owners had seen the errors of their ways. Now that seems unlikely.

“For (Roberts) to play the we’re-going-to-be-a-church card — I don’t think the club realized that once he played that card, that can begin a lengthy legal process that could employ him for a long period of time. What is a church? It’s nebulous in our society,” Perry said.

“Our school will exhaust every resource to stop this project.”

According to Metro Nashville Zoning Administrator Bill Herbert, United Fellowship has a permit for remodeling. There will be electrical, plumbing and building inspections to pass, then a request for an occupancy and use letter from the city government. If everything complies with code, Herbert said, he has to grant it.

Then anyone is free to complain if United Fellowship isn’t operating in accordance with its approved use. If that’s the case, the city would seek to enforce its codes through the courts.

“It is difficult. What is a church and what is not a church, and where do we draw the line between the two? I don’t have a clear answer for that at this point,” Herbert said.

“Right now, my obligation is to take them at their word.”

Club owners and members declined interviews through Roberts.

There’s a long list of precedents that courts can consider on whether religious beliefs are sincere, said Mark Goldfeder, director of the Law and Religion Student Program at Emory University. The most recent is last year’s Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, where Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the majority about the case’s lack of pretextual religious beliefs — insincere claims of religious motives purely for financial gain.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the court found that the owners’ objection to providing insurance coverage for certain types of birth control was based on long-held religious beliefs, not a desire to save money. Both Goldfeder and Alito also cited Witmer v. United States, a 1955 military draft case in which the plaintiff suddenly lay hold to strong belief as a Jehovah’s Witness in order to avoid service. He lost.

In 1968, in United States v. Kuch, a defendant indicted on charges of selling LSD offered the defense that her membership in the Neo-American Church required her to take psychedelic drugs. The court refused to dismiss the case against Judith Kuch under the finding that defendants can’t use religion as a shield for antisocial behavior.

All the courts would have to do in the swingers club case is look at the events leading up to the announcement that it was a church, said Kathleen Flake, a University of Virginia religious studies professor who specializes in First Amendment issues. “The court is not barred from using common sense,” she said.

Courts will look at United Fellowship’s leadership structure and whether those leaders have religious training, as well as their belief system and whether it deals with the transcendental rather than the material. As for whether a sexual enterprise can or should apply the label of church, Flake said, offense doesn’t equal harm.

“Most people are offended by someone else’s religious beliefs,” she said.

The 50 members of New Jerusalem Baptist Church, located on the other side of United Fellowship from the school, tried to buy the building at 520 Lentz Drive before the swingers club swooped in and got it at a bargain, said Pastor Harry Flemmings.

His congregants have been less vocal than the school or the nearby megachurch, but they’re no less aggrieved. Flemmings, a former police officer, said he’s known of club founder George “Al” Woods for decades through Woods’ nightclub and other business ownership.

“It’s sacrilegious, calling that building a church,” Flemmings said.

“In the Bible Belt, we’re not equipped to deal with something like this. It’s very painful, very hurtful, and we’re praying about it.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

What’s the difference between an investment and an expense? The difference is simple: one will start paying you back, and the other is a drain on your resources.

A Bottom-Line Distinction

Viewing all spending as investments instead of expenses will help guide better decisions. Say you need a new copier. Do you need it to be the top-of-the-line $8,000+ model? Do you want to buy it outright, make payments, or lease? You have to balance the initial and ongoing costs with the return. How much do you have to spend to get the functionality you require? And what is the best way to get it? Are you making an investment in the machine you need or are you incurring an expense by adding superfluous features or disadvantageous owning or leasing conditions?

This same line of questioning applies to office furniture, to cloud computing vs. internal servers, to computers, to people. Your A-players aren’t afraid to challenge your assumptions and ideas. They will help inform these decisions, telling you that you’re wasting money — or that you’re being a cheapskate.

Very few items are straight expenses. If they are, why are you spending the money? Here’s an example: say I’m paying for direct mail, and it is generating just 1 percent of my leads. At this point, it’s not an investment. When it’s not paying for itself, it becomes an expense — one that I should clear from the books. There is a better use for those funds, an investment that can be made instead of an expense that has to be paid.

The Most Important Investment

The single most important investment you will ever make is in people. When we get cheap here, the business suffers. CEOs tend to drop the ball, asking themselves, “What will it cost to hire this person?” The employee, then, becomes an expense. What we should be asking is, “What is this person worth?” While we’re at it, what are we worth? What kind of investment can we make in our own leadership and develop that will benefit both our careers and our organizations?

With Vistage, for instance, there is an upfront cost associated with membership. The advantage — the investment — is that you will make more money, make better decisions, and run a more successful business. Here’s another example: what if you spent $20,000 a year to have an advisory board? That’s a significant expenditure but it is not an expense. For $20,000, or about 2 and a half copy machines, that advisory board could keep you from making one $200,000 mistake.

Par down your expenses, and put your money into places — and people — that will drive your business forward. An investment in A-players, in an advisory board or peer group, or even a good cloud-computing system or other assets will repay your business and help accomplish key goals. If they don’t, they’re expenses you can do without.

Mike Harden has developed exceptional depth and breadth of knowledge over his 40+ year career as an entrepreneur, executive, teacher, mentor, and coach. Today, as one of DC’s premier Executive Coaches, Mike helps good executives become great leaders. Contact Mike for an executive coaching session.

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

Helicopters have been dubbed “magic carpets” for their ability to traverse through any terrain, and this was never more true than in the Magic City.

Miami’s undergoing an unprecedented boom — the magnitude of which can best be grasped from a bird’s eye view. Real estate is exploding, an art revival has taken hold in an area that was once home only to gangs and drugs, and its beaches are drawing hordes of tourists even during summer’s sweltering months.

To get the full picture of Miami’s evolution, locals and tourists can now in a moment — peer at Brickell’s construction and take in the breathtaking turquoise ocean. Impressed with Miami’s varied landscape, New York On Air — a company that provides helicopter rides to the public and creates aerial multimedia — recently branched out to New York City’s “Sixth Borough.”

“It’s a region that hasn’t been explored,” Vin Farrell, global chief content officer for Havas Worldwide and NYonAir board member, said of the company’s decision to open up shop in Miami.

The helicopters fly at about 100 knots (which is pilot lingo for 120 miles per hour), but can also slow down to a complete stop for a passenger to take an amazing shot of where the looming buildings meet the ocean.

The pilots often double as photographers, so they know where to take passengers to get the best photos and at which altitude to fly to capture them.

For the brave souls, the pilot will remove the doors before take off so the stunning views are completely unadulterated.

The aircrafts “only” ascend about 400 feet, giving passengers the chance to see kite surfers battling waves in the ocean, peek at the vast mansions on exclusive islands and then swoop down to catch a glimpse of a manatee eating lunch.

“The helicopters are the only machines that can go really, really anywhere,” Juan Vasquez, director of regional operations in Miami, told The Huffington Post. “That’s what I love about the helicopters.”

Like Us On Facebook
Follow Us On Twitter

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.