Matthew Amsden

High Protein Cookies

These are a modified low fat cookie from cook-book author Jane Brody who was big back in the late 80s. I think her cookbooks are still pretty good - she proposes a high complex carbohydrate moderate protein and low fat diet. It is one of the few 'special diet' cookbooks that I go back to over and over again. These cookies aren't that sweet, and I use them as a substitute for protien bars. They do need some kind of dried fruit or semi-sweet chocolate in my opinion to make them dessert like.

I modified the recipe replacing the butter with a combination of peanut butter and oil, the flour with a combination of protien powder, almond meal, and oatmeal (which adds a slight crunch and moistness that is lost without the gluten in the wheat flour). Finally I replaced the sugar with sugar alcohols which are treated in your body not unlike fiber. Sugar alcohols are a natural product - derived from tree bark. Many low carbohydrate food producers use them extensively.

1/4 cup canola oil (olive oil works too - but has a
slight taste to it)
1/2 natural peanut butter
1/3 cup xylitol or other sugar alcohol (you can find it at Vitamin Shoppe or online)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 egg or 2 egg whites
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (get real vanilla it is so much better not imitation. Because of the civil war in Madagascar it is expensive now - but worth it.)
1 cup milk/egg protien powder or whey protien powder (not soy protien)
1 cup almond meal
1/4 cup oatmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

6 ounces of either chocolate chips, raisins, cranberries, other dried fruit or candy

Directions:
Mix together the oil through eggs until very well blended with a wire wisk. Measure dry ingredients in bowl and mix all adding dried fruit peices or chocolate chips. Bake on a lightly greased baking sheet at 350 for ten minutes or until desired
doneness. These cookies tend to be a bit on the dryside so don't overcook.

One variation i"m thinking of trying. Reduce the protien powder by a couple of tablespoons and replace with an equal amount of chocolate powder. Use dried cranberries in place of raisins or chocolate.

Re-Entry Blog Re-Launches

Over the past six months, I've been doing a little experiment with blogs in social policy. The Re-Entry Blog, at www.tpci.us, is a site for people across government and social service who support those leaving prison and re-entering the community.

Andy Towle provided some valuable consulting to make the site not only interesting and useful to policy makers - but insightful to people who aren't aware of what a major force ex-offenders have on our communities, services - and our culture in general.

Take a look - until I got involved with this project, I had no concept of the challenges almost 600,000 people being released from prison each year face. The US has the worlds largest prison population - 98% of them will be released. This website, sponsored by the National Institute of Corrections is part of a major effort to redefine how we handle this challenge.

Gay Marriage Would Ad $1 Billion to Federal Coffers

Anti-gay marriage republicans hoped to ad another argument against same sex marriage when they asked the congressional budget office to look into the costs of allowing same sex marriage.

They didn't get what they hoped for.

Some of the 1,138 federal statutes in which marriage is a factor in determining eligibility would increase costs, some would reduce them. Overall, the Congressional budget office found Gay Marriage would ad $1 Billion in federal revenue each year.

Just so it's clear, as we hear about adding to the budget deficit all the time - Gay Marriage would actually reduce the budget deficit - by $1 billion a year.

Banner Ad Prototypes

Here are a couple of test ads for a online survey campaign aimed at men who have sex with men (who may not actually identify as gay). They survey is being supported by the Centers for Disease Control and is meant to be a mirror of the nationwide brick and mortar survey that AIDS action conducts at gay clubs and bars. The CDC is concerned that survey recruiting at gay clubs over emphasizes urban men who self identify as gay - and almost completely ignores those that are less connected with the gay community.

So we've created a couple of prototypes to recruit for the survey online. The ads will run primarily at Manhunt, Gay.com, and Friendster, with additional recruiting at several other lesser known sites. These are just prototypes - and I need your input.

Let me know what you think - would you click on any of these? Click the comments button below, or send me an e-mail with your thoughts. Keep returning as I'll post new prototypes an changes as we come up with them.

Also, if you have any ideas - let me know.

Prototype ! - We don't want to label you

and for different ages/ethnic groups

Prototype 2 - I Want You

Talk is Cheap

" Talk is cheap because supply exceeds demand" Anonymous

"When ideas fail, words come in very handy" Goethe

"There are very few people who don't become more interesting when they stop talking" Mary Lowry

Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act" James Thurber

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reaches only to the end of the bar." Edward R. Morrow

"The hand that ruleds the press, the radio, the screen and the far spread magazine rules the country." Learned Hand

What you do with Nothing

"You say I started with practically nothing, that isn't correct. We all start with all there is. It's how we use it that makes things possible."

- Henry Ford

Crowds and History

Our generation (Generation X/Y) grew up in a time of extreme calm. No major wars that had a real impact on most of us. No major civil rights battles that caused any major stir. Most of us grew up fairly comfortably. Any struggles we may have encountered were on a smaller more personal scale – divorce, illness … Nothing really galvanized us. During high-school history classes, I often wondered what it would be like to be in a time when there were social and political issues that people actually cared about. Our great grandparents had WWI and the great depression, our grandparents WWII, and the Korean War, our parents Vietnam and African American civil rights. What did we come together and make a stand for other than MTV? I can’t think of anything until now.

Last night I was part of one of the most amazing crowds I’ve ever seen. Thousands on the steps and grass outside Cambridge City Hall witnessed and cheered on history - the first state-sanctioned gay marriages in America. Thousands wanted to see history first hand. For most of the evening I said nothing. It was simply incredible to feel part of a larger movement that will forever change the world as a whole and individuals personally. What do you say to that except experience it? I wonder, did it feel the same to be at Woodstock, or the civil rights march on Washington? Or was this even better because this was a realization of success?

Cambridge City hall sits on top of a small hill on Mass Ave one block from Central Square, several blocks from Harvard. I stood near the top of that hill looking down over throngs of people cheering a slow procession walk up City Hall steps two by two while riot police politely did their best to keep well wishers from blocking their path. Long before midnight, the streets were full of people. The sidewalks, buildings across the street, lawns, rooftops – people everywhere showing their support.

At 11:59, the crowd hushed as a Cambridge City employee gave instructions to those who intended to marry through a loudspeaker. Cheers from large crowds are powerful. Silence from thousands is earth shattering.

As couples exited the building, thousands applauded their union. It made me really proud to be an American – and the powers that be have not given us much help with that lately. I realized that We have not lost our ability to come together and be part of historical change and create real stories that will become part fact part folklore someday. This is a crowd that will take this story to the farthest corners of the country. Through word of mouth, the story will change in innumerable ways. What doesn’t change is the fact thousands experienced a change that will go down in history. A change that affects the world as a whole and each one of us individually.

The Giggle Loop

I've been watching the original British series, Coupling on DVD the past couple of nights. While it took me a couple of episodes to get into it, and the characters are simply not likable, I am finding it funny, and will continue to watch.

One of the aspects that makes it worthwhile entertainment are the catch-phrases. Like BBC's Metrosexual, the series script writers provide an endless stream of new popular jargon that isn't as over used on this side of the pond as the jargon we still fall back on from Sienfeid.

My two favorites:

The first from Metrosexuals, "Cheese on Bread!" in place of "give me a break and just relax". Odd? Trust me, it makes someone who is being irrational and stressed out snap out of it - at least for a second.

From the first season of Coupling comes, "The Giggle-Loop." It describes the impetitus towards uncontrolled laugher in the most inappropriate situations. When you think, "wouldn't this be the worst place to start laughing," at a funeral, or other dire occassion, you continue to stifle that laugh, until it just absolutely becomes impossible to stop - and you burst out anyway.

Rent the DVD, it's available at Netflix - the episode, "The Giggle Loop," explains it better than I can.

'We'll Be Fine Come Spring'

My mother named me after a character in her very favorite novel, Come Spring, by Ben Ames if I remember correctly. The story about three generations of colonists who settle in what is now Maine just prior to the Revolution, is long out of print. Yet, each female member of my family cherishes one of the few remaining copies.

The book is long. Close to 700 pages - at it ain't a page turner or supermarket romance.

While I have not read the entire book, each time the weather turns at this point of the year, I am reminded of it - particularly the dialog on the very last page:

"We'll be fine come spring."

While I did not experience famine as early colonists in Maine did during the last winter chronicled in this book, the past couple of New England winters have been difficult. It is easy to become a hermit, maybe even get a little depressed. For me, the winter of 2003/2004 will be marked by boredom brought by my unwillingness to try anything really different. I'll remember it as a time when everything was good, but artificially unable to take a risk, wasn't great.

Spring in New England is a misnomer. However, by the end of March, regardless of how trying the past couple of months have been, the sky remains fully bright long after I've left the office - even thought the weather may remind that winter is still a possibility. The world begins to change, reminding that you can change too.

After a long borning winter, everything will be fine come spring.

Coming Home

In an e-mail, and friend of mine, who had been traveling a lot over the past couple of months remarked how glad he was to be home.

I really like to travel - even to places not considered travel worthy - Cleveland in March, the Dakotas in February ... However, regardless of how amazing my trip was, I find one of the nicest moments of any trip I take is that final stretch between the airport and my apartment. I'll maybe take the water taxi to Long Warf, or the subway to Quincy Market, and walk up in to the North End - rolling luggage is a must, and mine is definitely very beat up from the brick and cobblestone.

I'm not completely sure why this transition makes such an impression on me. I think in part it comes from the fact air travel to me doesn't really count as time somehow. I live fairly close to the airport, so that moment I am home is a moment to reflect how accessible and small the world really is, while being so diverse and vast.