The Huffington Post

A crucial fact thus far left out of the debate surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin is that Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which is keeping George Zimmerman out of jail, affects more people from outside the state than it does Floridians.

According to census data, 19,057,542 Americans lived in Florida in 2011, a year in which the state claims 85.9 million tourists visited. Florida law must, in short, not only protect the liberties of Floridians, but also the wellbeing of tourists and tourism, the state’s largest sector. The piece of legislation allowing residents “to stand [their] ground and meet force with force, including deadly force,” which left Zimmerman legally unencumbered to shoot an unarmed teen, has consequences for all those visitors. The law’s existence also ought to have consequences for the state.

These days, households with iPads, iPods, iPhones and other Apple creations outnumber traditional households: just 20 percent of U.S. households in 2011 had a married couple living with children, while 34 percent now own at least two Apple products. There’s plenty of overlap, to be sure, and more than 60 percent of households that are home to an Apple product are also home to children.

Here’s one more stat to make you squirm (albeit from a decidedly unscientific study): 28 percent of iPhone users would rather go a week without seeing their significant other than give up their phone.

What does America believe?

Most Americans believe in God. A majority pray. More than a third go to religious services every week.

Yes, religion is a fundamental part of the American experience.

Yet we are in a moment of unprecedented upheaval and religious transformation, fueled by changes in immigration, population shifts, secularization, and increasingly liberal social and theological attitudes among young people. At the same time, the political conversation is dominated by conservative Christian ideas that are finding a new audience. These shifts are affecting everybody’s lives, whether they are believers or not.

Today, The Huffington Post begins a year-long series, called “Faith Shift,” to explore and examine this changing landscape. Through on the ground, character-driven stories, our religion reporter Jaweed Kaleem will show us how people of varied faiths and cultures are reacting and adapting to contemporary issues. Our coverage will focus on the one essential question: “Does religion still matter?” We have our own answer: Yes, but not in the ways that you think.

Lynn is suing McDonald’s along with her ex-husband and his company Ivernia, which owned the local McDonald’s franchise where Lynn was employed as a cashier 20 years ago, according to the complaint obtained by Courthouse News Service.

Handley “emotionally and psychologically” coerced Lynn into prostitution in part because McDonald’s paid her minimum wage, offered a poor health care plans and no benefits and had no system for filing grievances against employers who abused their power, according to the complaint. All of these factors allowed Handley, her employer when the two began dating, to unjustly terminate her employment and browbeat her into sex work, Lynn claims.

McDonald’s did not return calls for comment.

After George, the two-year-old Basset Hound from West Yorkshire, England got so tangled in a phone cord that he began choking, the frantic pup somehow managed to alert authorities by dialing 999 — the British equivalent to 911, the Sun reports.

Concerned by the heavy breathing on the other end, the emergency operator dispatched police to the home.

Since George’s owners, Steve Brown and his daughter Lydia, weren’t home, their neighbor let the police into the house, where George was choking on the living room floor.

“He was absolutely terrified and could not free himself,” Walker told the Sun. “I knew I had to get him free quickly so I just ripped the wire out. Incredibly you could see where his paw print was on the phone to ring 999 — he literally saved his own life.”

And he unwrapped the little package himself and showed me what was there: a third of a sandwich, maybe. A piece of salami between slices of brown bread. A feast, this was—meat and bread to bite and chew, meat and bread to be rolled on my tongue, the salt and the fat of it. Two bites, three bites—it was a banquet.

I don’t think I had much to tell him. I confirmed, eyes down, lips barely moving, yes, they are gassing people in Auschwitz. But what else did I have to say?

He came every night and gave me a portion of his sandwich. And he came with news, too: that the war would soon be over, that the Americans and the English were on their way, and that the Russians, too, were coming from the other side.

I did believe him about this, because for some weeks already, we could hear the bombs falling not far off. We figured the Allies knew that there were slave-laborers at the factory, because the bombs landed all around, but never in, the factory complex itself. The German civilians must have known, too, because people from the town came to the factory during the raids to hide in the bomb shelters there. The Jews and Russian prisoners, of course, had to stay in the factory as the bombs fell. I told my friend Fela that I wouldn’t mind dying in a bomb blast; it would be quick at least, and I suspected it wouldn’t hurt too much.

Every night, I took the piece of sandwich and shared it with Fela; she was the girl who some months later would discourage me from spending time with Jack when we were in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Fela had a little gold ring that she asked me to offer to the German; she wanted to give him something to thank him for the piece of sandwich he was giving me. When I offered it to him, I explained that I was sharing the piece of sandwich with my friend; she and I were partners and shared everything we had. I could tell that he was impressed by this—that I was sharing what little he was able to give me. I know he wished he could have brought more for us to eat, but he said he couldn’t bring another sandwich with him to the factory; he was checked by the guards every morning. He wouldn’t take the ring. He said we should keep it, in case we might have need of it in the future.

The following evening, when I opened the package, I saw that this man had given me a full half of his sandwich, so there would be more to share. He was now taking less for himself—he was giving up even more—so that I could share his gift with another Jew.

This was astonishing to me, the kindness of this German, the good-heartedness of this man who wanted to do what he could to help two Jews eat. I have thought about this man many times over the years. I am sorry that I was too scared to look at his face; I am sorry that I never asked his name. This man risked his own well-being for my sake—for surely he would have been punished had he been caught giving food to a Jew. Zwirek had extended such goodness two years before; Katz had done so as well. Now, yet another. A Pole, a Jew, and a German: men with kindness harbored in their hearts.

Apparently, this fantasy is not universal, and some people don’t agree that Jennifer Lawrence conjures up the exact picture of the Katniss they know from the books.

But it’s not Lawrence’s acting chops that are called into question — quite the opposite; she’s almost universally praised for her ability to evoke the inner life of this complex, dark character. But there’s something else about this award-winning actress that critics are evaluating and finding wanting: her weight.

Reviewers have commented on Lawrence’s “womanly figure,” her “baby fat,” and even implied she is a bad physical representation of “people starved into submission.”

So, I can’t help but wonder if they actually think Lawrence doesn’t portray Katniss correctly or if they’re upset she doesn’t portray the ideal we are all so used to seeing when young women star in blockbuster action films — that of the quite literally starving actress.

Had hunger had nothing to do with Katniss’s poverty in the movie, the disturbing truth is that Jennifer Lawrence’s figure would likely still have been a point of criticism. Had Gary Ross cast someone as Katniss who looked emaciated, would the audience really have approved because it made her look more downtrodden — or because it made her look more attractive?

As L.V. Anderson on Slate.com puts it: “Just as living in a world with abundant calories does not automatically make everyone fat, living in a dystopian world like Panem with sporadic food access would not automatically make everyone skinny. Some bodies, I daresay, would be even bigger than Lawrence’s.”

Moreover, whether or not Gary Ross’s Katniss is actually starving is not made clear — and it’s also beside the point. The Hunger Games movie refocuses our attention from the symptom — hunger — to its root cause: poverty. Gary Ross does not focus on starvation as a stronger visual marker than anything else, which includes the clothing, physical labor, and dilapidated architecture of District 12. In fact, for all the times we see Katniss and Peeta sitting down for a meal in The Capitol, we barely see them touch their food, and the gluttony of the city is most powerfully depicted through the spectacle of its technology and its inhabitants’ extravagant lifestyles.