Chewy Chocolate Cookies

These chewy chocolate cookies are one of my favorites. They’re just a little crunchy on the outside and chewy — almost creamy — on the inside and full of chocolatey goodness.

Growing up we always called these Hershey Cookies, because they get their chocolate flavor from Hershey’s Cocoa powder. I’m sure you could use any brand of cocoa powder, but why would you want to use anything else? As far as I’m concerned Hershey is chocolate and chocolate is Hershey.

These cookies are perfect for just about any occasion, because who doesn’t like chocolate? They’re not at all temperamental and very easy to make. Whether you have a hankering for cookies or chocolate or both (usually I have both) these fit the bill nicely.

One word of caution. This recipe makes up to 4 dozen cookies, (depending on how big you make them) but they won’t last long. They’re addictive, and you might polish off the first half-dozen or so before the last batch is cool. Consider yourself warned.

And a final word, don’t let the 2 1/4 sticks of butter deter you. It’s the buttery goodness that gives them the soft, creamy texture inside. It is a necessary evil. Use organic, artisan butter and tell yourself it’s healthy and you’re supporting local farmers. These are the lies we have to tell ourselves.

Now onto the recipe to make these delicious treats.

Chewy Chocolate Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Directions

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream together butter, sugar and eggs. Mix in the rest of the ingredients.

Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets leaving space between cookies because they will spread. Bake 8-9 minutes. The cookies are very soft right out of the oven. Let them cool a few minutes before taking them off the pan or they’ll fall apart. They’ll looked puffed up when they come out, then flatten and crack a bit. That’s what you want.

Finally, get a glass of milk and eat one.  Or two. Or three…

Disclosure: This post was not sponsored by Hershey, but if they want to send me free chocolate I’d gladly sell out to them.

Detroit Zoo’s Summer Safari camps for kids start June 24

ROYAL OAK, Mich. – The Detroit Zoo is offering a lineup of new and past-favorite Summer Safari camps to keep kids occupied all summer long. From June 24 through Aug. 16, 2013, children ages 4 to 12 can explore the wonders of nature and wildlife with tours of the Zoo, hands-on activities, games and crafts.

Parents can choose from a variety of weeklong half-day and weeklong full-day sessions geared toward specific age groups. Weeklong morning and afternoon sessions can be paired for full-day experiences.

Prices for the Summer Safari camp sessions range from $130 to $250 for Detroit Zoological Society members and $140 to $270 for non-members.

Busy parents can drop daytime campers off early or pick them up late to enjoy before- and after-camp activities. Early Bird drop-off starts at7:30 a.m. and Late Owl pick-up runs until 5:30 p.m. Costs range from $6 for a single session to $60 for Monday through Friday mornings and afternoons.

Visit http://www.detroitzoo.org/education/safari-day-camps for class availability and to register. For questions, emaileducation@detroitzoo.org or call (248) 541-5717, ext. 3800.

Eco-Friendly Bubble Time Fun

photo credit: cupcakes2 Children love bubbles. I love bubbles. They’re fun to try and catch, a challenge to blow really large without popping and the shapes and colors are so beautiful to watch. I’ve learned over the years that bubbles make a great bath time activity, outdoor activity and yes even in the car on [...]

Post from: Green and Clean Mom (TM) all rights reserved.

Eco-Friendly Bubble Time Fun

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2014 Mini Board: The Defensive Ends

Championship teams are built from the inside out, regardless of what system you run. Michigan transitioned from Rich Rodriguez's what-the-hell-am-I-looking-at defense to Greg Mattison's 4-3 under, and the move to a consistent defense has lead to an increase in depth and talent across the defensive line.

There are still some voids that need filling. First, Michigan couldn't get to the quarterback without overload blitzes in 2012: it needs weak side defensive ends who can get around tackles. Second, there is a lack of elite talent on the strong side, where no one is creating separation in the race for playing time.

Michigan already has weak side defensive end Lawrence Marshall on board, which means the WDE recruiting will come down to elite players and elite players only. The staff will probably only take two strong side players if their names are McDowell and Hand.

Already In the Bag: Lawrence Marshall

Marshall is Michigan's newest commitment, pulling the trigger on an unofficial visit to Ann Arbor on May 11th. He's a weak side defensive end all the way, possessing enough length and explosiveness to become a serious pass rusher down the line. He's a fringe three- to four-star player because he's extremely raw and is a touch less explosive than someone like Taco Charlton.

Most Talented: Da'Shawn Hand

Capable of playing on both ends of the line, Hand will likely end up on the strong side, where he can make more of an impact in the run game. He isn't the consensus overall number one, but he's a consensus top five player because of his combination of length, brute strength and sheer explosiveness. He comes off of the ball faster than Marshall and is nearly as strong as McDowell despite weighing only 255 pounds. He isn't the next Jadeveon Clowney by any stretch of the imagination, but he still has massive upside.

Under the Radar: Gelen Robinson

The younger brother of future NBA player Glenn Robinson III, Gelen is a a poor man's Brandon Graham. He only stands at 6'1" and might end up at linebacker, but he plays bigger than his listed height and has above average burst off the line of scrimmage. He's an all-state wrestler, which automatically puts him under the category of technician.

Most Likely to Commit: Malik McDowell

Michigan has been up and down in Malik's recruitment, but recent trends have the Wolverines moving up. McDowell could end up at the strong side defensive end spot or the three-tech defensive tackle position; he's currently pushing 295 pounds and will need to clean up his frame if he wishes to stay on the outside. He's a true 6'6", giving him plenty of length to deal with tackles if he ends up at the five-tech, and he's more explosive than the majority of prospects his size. He would be the best in-state defender to commit to Michigan since Brandon Graham and could easily end up being a five-star player.

Pipe Dream: Andrew Williams

When was the last time Michigan went into the South to pluck an elite defensive end? Greg Mattison has been on Williams for quite some time now, but I still don't see him leaving the area when he has offers from Alabama, Auburn, Florida, Florida State, LSU, Oklahoma, Ole Miss and countless others.

The One Who Got Away: Old Lawrence Marshall

At one point Marshall was committed to Ohio State, and Brady Hoke was losing all of his precious in-state recruits. Weeks later he was decommitted and considered a lock to end up in East Lansing, where he was seen visiting for weeks in a row. He visited Michigan once and committed immediately after, sending Spartan fans into their usual THE WORLD IS ENDING AND MICHIGAN IS CHEATING rants:

Yeah, it seems a little shady. Fortunately, UM's sterling history of integrity in such matters makes them above suspicion.

They are cheating. Color me shocked. The return to the good ol Ed Martin days at U of Money.

The NCAA and the media are both complicit in UM's hype machine. What can a school like Michigan State do? Not much.

He used us for girls, parties, and basketball games. End of story.

Perhaps dantonio needs to stop being such a white knight when recruiting these kids and put the pressure on for once.

So, yea. Michigan is much better academically and has an elite staff assembled, but they're cheating, man. The commitment of Lawrence Marshall was sweet. Very sweet.

--

Best Case

Michigan adds McDowell and Hand to the class, giving it a small yet extremely versatile group of young defensive ends. Notre Dame fails to overtake Michigan for McDowell down the stretch, and Virginia Tech loses out on Hand after Jabrill Peppers does his best to recruit his fellow five-star to Ann Arbor. I rejoice, and Brian posts muppets over at MGoBlog.

Worst Case

Lawrence Marshall decides that Michigan isn't for him, opting out and heading to East Lansing. Malik McDowell realizes that 3-4 defensive ends make bank in the NFL and rushes to Notre Dame, where he becomes yet another we-almost-had-that-guy guy on another team's roster. Da'Shawn Hand picks Virginia Tech, forcing Michigan to reach and offer Gelen Robinson and a handful of lesser-known ends. I throw my hands up in the air and wonder why Michigan's clear efforts to pay these kids under the table aren't working.

Final Prediction For the Position

Lawrence Marshall stays on board, Malik McDowell goes blue before the start of his senior season, and Da'Shawn Hand picks favorite Virginia Tech. Yes, I predicted that Hand would end up at Michigan weeks ago, but things have changed. They could change once again if someone like Jabrill Peppers picks up the phone to say something like, "Hey, uh.. you could crush the passer and I'll pick off whatever he throws up out of desperation. You can even get in on my next rap video, which won't include us dancing around like goons in a shed." I'm hoping said phone call works, but I'm counting against it as of now.

There Are 99 Days to Michigan Football

In the era of non-cupcake nonconference scheduling, team 99 had a colossal top-five match-up on the first day of October. Number five Texas A&M came to Ann Arbor to play Rick Leach and Company. Sixty minutes later, Michigan put up 41 points on A&M and allowed a measly field goal to run the Aggies out of Ann Arbor, 41-3. Two weeks later, Michigan regained the number one spot in the rankings after beating Michigan State.

Thank you isn’t enough

Employers responding to skill shortages II

As we explored in our last post, in a market economy its employers, not the government, who have the most effective levers to deal with skill shortages. Its not government or educators who are responsible for steering new entrants into the labor market to particular occupations or industries. And certainly not as a way to allow employers to keep wages low or barriers to employment high.

Two recent articles highlight practices (along with many others) by employers inconsistent with the complaints about labor shortages. A New York Times article on employers using long term internships as a substitute to hiring recent college grads. The article notes: “Once a short-term commitment at most, internships have become an obligatory rite of passage that often drags on for years.” And quotes an employer : “We need to hire a 22-22-22,” one new-media manager was overheard saying recently, meaning a 22-year-old willing to work 22-hour days for $22,000 a year.”  And there is the increased utilization by employers of temporary workers as Crain’s Detroit Business reports in an article entitled Temporary workers nearing U.S. record makes Kelly Services a winner.

Neither practice is consistent with how markets deal with supply and demand imbalances. Where when supply is too low, Economics 101 teaches that you get to equilibrium by prices (in this case wages and benefits) going up. Not to mention other efforts to increase the attractiveness of what is in demand.

Two local employers have written about ways employers can deal with skill shortages. Both worth reading. In a Crain’s op ed entitled Businesses must do their part to find talent Mat Ishbia of United Shore Financial Services writes:

This positive spirit is needed to overcome the tired refrain that there’s a “skills gap” — that is, a lack of talent that matches up with employers’ needs — and that employers are powerless to do anything about it. At United Shore Financial Services, we’ve been able to successfully fill 500 positions since March 2011, and are on track to hire another 600 people this year. … There are three things in particular that employers can do to attract people with the right mix of talent and skills:

• Do our fair share of the work. Employers can’t just complain there are no skilled workers. Instead, we need to invest more of our time in finding the right graduates. If we do a better job of defining the exact skill sets we want, including “soft” areas like motivation, we can also screen more effectively. We also need to forge stronger ties with universities and community colleges, including making the effort to get to know administrators.

• Invest in supplementary training. It’s smart to look for employees who may not have all the skills they will ultimately need but who are highly motivated and willing to learn. Once you’ve found these highly motivated people, boosting your training budget for existing and new employees can then make a big difference.

• Be more flexible in creating great work environments. Our experience suggests that so-called perks can be valuable if they are extended to all employees. For example, free beverages, valet parking, concierge services and a fitness center not only help attract employees but free employees to do their best work.

In a post Nathan Hughes, responsible for recruiting at Detroit Labs, writes:

I think that worse than a skills gap, we’ve got a culture gap at companies that are looking for specific skills (i.e. resume keywords) and not finding them. I believe (know?) there are enough smart, talented, driven professionals in Michigan to fill all the jobs. But there’s not a culture in enough companies to identify and select people based on their potential, hire them, and then allow and help them learn/train/experiment/make mistakes to get them proficient in the skills. … What if we spent all our time finding the people that want our companies to succeed as much or more than we do and then trusted that drive to propel them into learning the specific fiddly bits necessary for them to succeed? (Emphasis added.)

 

 

 

 

The post Employers responding to skill shortages II appeared first on Michigan Future Inc..

Beauty in the D

When you live outside of a major city, you often answer the question “where are you from?” with the name of whatever big city is closest to you.  For me, I have become used to answering that question with one word, Detroit.  Am I really from within the city limits [...]

Rafsanjani’s Exclusion from Iran’s Presidential Race a Sign of Creeping Totalitarianism

Iran’s Guardian Council startled that country when it announced that Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the former president (1989-1997) who was among the founders of the Islamic Republic, would not be allowed to run for president in the June election. Less surprising, it struck down the candidacy of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaie, a confidant of outgoing president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Their exclusion is a further step toward authoritarianism and perhaps totalitarianism in Iran. For all its flaws and illiberal tendencies, the Islamic Republic did have, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a democratic side to it. Even though the presidential candidates and those running for parliament were vetted, and many excluded, a spectrum of candidates did run and elections did produce surprises. Now, the ideological litmus test for office is becoming more and more narrow, and the regime seems determined to prevent surprises even if it means ballot-stuffing.

A major challenge for the remaining 8 presidential candidates will to get anyone to care about an election conducted on a vary narrow basis, which might well be fixed anyway.

The two excluded candidates had something in common. They had caused headaches for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Rafsanjani had argued in summer of 2009 during the Green Movement that Ruhollah Khomeini’s vision of the Islamic Republic had had a strong popular and democratic dimension, and acknowledged a limited form of popular sovereignty. Rafsanjani is no democrat, and is a billionaire elitist, but he did not approve of the election being stolen that year, and he clearly did not approve of Khamenei’s authoritarian interpretation of the meaning of the Islamic Republic. I wrote at that time, in 2009, of a major sermon by Rafsanjani:

“Another piece of evidence for the popular character of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani says, is Khomeini’s own haste to establish lay, elected institutions and to implement a republican constitution. He maintains that Khomeini actually strengthened some of the popular institutions when he made suggestions for revision of the draft constitution. Even having a constitution is a bow to popular sovereignty, he implies, and he contrasts the haste with which revolutionary Iran established a rule of law and popular input into government with the slowness of these processes in countries such as Algeria.

Then Rafsanjani says:

“As you are aware, according to the constitution, everything in the country is determined by people’s vote. People elect the members of the Assembly of Expert[s] and then they elect leader, that is, the leader is (indirectly) elected by people’s vote. Presidents, MPs, members of the councils are elected by direct votes of the people. Other officials are also appointed (indirectly) through people’s vote. Everything depends on people. This is the religious system. The title of Islamic Republic is not used as a formality. It includes both the republican and Islamic nature.”

He points out that the parliament, president and members of municipal councils are drectly elected. But the Supreme Leader is indirectly elected, since he is chosen by the Assembly of Experts. But they in turn are directly elected by the people (i.e. the Experts are a sort of electoral college in American terms).

Opinion polling shows that Iranians mostly want the Supreme Leader to be directly elected. But Rafsanjani’s point is that even the Supreme Leader, whom some see as a theocratic dictator, derives his position from the operation of popular sovereignty.”

Rafsanjani was roundly condemned for the thrust of this sermon, which leant nuanced support to the Green Movement (who supported Mirhossein Mousavi, the candidate the regime said had lost).

Still, the exclusion of one of the founders of the Islamic Republic, and a former president, from running for this office, shocked many Iranians (see at end).

As for Rahim Mashaie, he was widely seen as a way that Ahmadinejad sought to extend his influence into the future. Ahmadinejad is a right wing populist, often having campaigned against the wealthy ayatollahs and businessmen of Khamenei’s Establishment. He also tried to maintain at least some autonomy from the Supreme Leader, insisting on making his own cabinet appointments, and was slapped down for it.

The exclusion of these two is a sign that Khamenei does not want an independent-minded president who might appeal to the people in any contest of will with the Supreme Leader.

Some observers believe that Khamenei intends to abolish the presidency and go to a parliamentary system, with a prime minister. The Supreme Leader would have more unchallenged power in such an arrangement, and would in a sense combine the powers of Theocrat and president. In this reading, Khamenei only wants a yes man as president, since this election is a way station toward ending the office.

Aljazeera English interviews Trita Parsi on the development:

The USG Open Source Center translates an article from Persian on the exclusion of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani from running for president of Iran again, which I though had some humorous lines:

Iranian MP Says Vetting Body’s Move ‘Politically Driven’
Mehr News Agency
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 …
Document Type: OSC Summary …

Tehran Mehr News Agency in Persian at 0918 GMT on 22 May reported that Iranian conservative MP Ali Motahhari has said that the Guardian Council’s move to bar former President Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani from running in the June polls was “politically-driven.”

Motahhari said that it was “wrong” for the vetting body to disqualify Hashemi-Rafsanjani and approve the candidacy of nuclear negotiator Sa’id Jalili.

“This showed that the Guardian Council’s approach is political rather than legal or ideological,” the MP told Mehr.

“They have provided two reasons for the disqualification of Mr Hashemi, both of which are unsubstantiated. The first one is the lack of physical fitness, and the second one is that he played a role in the 88 sedition (unrest after the 2009 elections).”

“In order to measure the physical fitness of Mr Hashemi, I propose a 100-metre running competition between him and Mr Jalili, and a wrestling match between Mr Hashemi and Mr Haddad,” Mehr further quoted the MP as saying.

Sa’id Jalili, an approved presidential candidate who is currently the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, lost his right leg in the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

“Regarding the 88 sedition too, there were slanders against Mr Hashemi and his family in the live televised presidential debates then. He asked the state broadcaster to give him air time to defend himself and they did not,” Motahhari added.

“Also, how did Mr Jalili’s candidacy get approved, given his lack of experience? Can a few meetings and negotiations with Catherine Ashton (EU’s foreign policy chief) qualify anyone to become the president?”

“I think the only solution is that the Supreme Leader approves Mr Hashemi’s eligibility to run in the election with an official decree. This is not far from imagination: After he registered his candidacy, Mr Hashemi told him (the Supreme Leader) that he would withdraw if the Leader was against it, and the Leader had said that he was not against it.”

(Description of Source: Tehran Mehr News Agency in Persian — Conservative news agency, run by the Islamic Propagation Office, and affiliated with the conservative Qom seminary; in October 2010, prominent long-time journalist Reza Moqaddasi, previously an executive director of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, was appointed to a four-year term as managing director; URL: www.mehrnews.com)

This Weekend I Have A 3 Day Appointment with Movement

It’s getting close to Movement time and I’m getting super excited just thinking about it. In a couple more days Detroit will be inundated (not that we aren't already) with electronic music fans, artists, DJ, dancers etc. I’ll be there for some of all 3 days taking photos, talking to artists and hanging out. You might even catch me moving around a little doing something that might be called dancing (that’s a stretch when you consider it’s me.) Movement will have 5 stages this year, each with their own flavor and atmosphere. I’ll be sampling a little bit of each stage. Here’s a short list of the artists I’m making sure I catch:

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