'Lincoln,' 'Les Miserables,' 'Playbook' lead SAG nominees

Steven Spielberg’s historical biography “Lincoln,” the musical epic “Les Miserables” and the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook” dominated the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations Wednesday morning, receiving four nominations apiece.

“Lincoln” scored nominations in the lead actor category for Daniel Day-Lewis, supporting actress for Sally Field, supporting actor for Tommy Lee Jones and best ensemble in a motion picture. “Les Miserables,” which opens Christmas Day, earned nominations for lead actor Hugh Jackman, supporting actress Anne Hathaway, for best acting ensemble and best stunt ensemble.

And “Silver Linings Playbook” picked up nominations for lead actor Bradley Cooper, actress Jennifer Lawrence, supporting actor Robert De Niro, and best ensemble.

With the SAG nods, the three films and their stars are instantly positioned as front-runners in the race for Academy Award nominations and possibly Oscar gold.

Also honored Wednesday with ensemble nominations were the casts from “Argo” and “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” “Argo” also received a nomination for supporting actor Alan Arkin, and Maggie Smith was nominated for supporting actress for “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

Also nominated in the lead actor category are John Hawkes for “The Sessions” and Denzel Washington for “Flight.” Notably missing from the list of nominees was Joaquin Phoenix for “The Master.” (Just earlier this week, Phoenix had won the L.A. Film Critics Assn. best actor honors.)

FULL COVERAGE: SAG AWARDS 2013

Vying with Lawrence in lead actress field are Marion Cotillard for “Rust and Bone,” Jessica Chastain for “Zero Dark Thirty,” Helen Mirren for “Hitchcock” and Naomi Watts for “The Impossible.”

Rounding out the supporting categories are Javier Bardem for “Skyfall,” Philip Seymour Hoffman in “The Master,” Helen Hunt in “The Sessions” and Nicole Kidman for “The Paperboy.” Not making the list: Amy Adams for “The Master,” a role that earned her a supporting actress honor from the L.A. Film Critics.

The nominations come during one of the mostly hotly anticipated weeks of the awards season. Monday kicked off with the announcement of nominations for the Critics’ Choice Movie Awards,  followed quickly by Wednesday’s SAG nominations. In just 24 hours, the Golden Globe nominations are to be announced. When the dust settles, those with the most nominations will be considered favorites for Academy Award nominations, which are to be announced Jan. 10.

SAG AWARDS: TV nominees

Unlike other honors, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are strictly for the performers.

The SAG Awards are considered one of the leading indicators for the Academy Awards in the acting categories. But the two don’t always match. The biggest difference came earlier this year, when Viola Davis won the SAG Award for best actress for “The Help”  but Meryl Streep took home her third Oscar for “The Iron Lady.”

The SAG Awards also honor performances in TV dramatic and comedy series, as well as movies and miniseries. There were very few surprises in the TV nominations.

The casts of the dramas “Boardwalk Empire,” “Breaking Bad,” “Downton Abby,” “Homeland” and “Mad Men” were honored with nominations. On the comedy side, there were six nominees due to a tie: “30 Rock,” “The Big Bang Theory,” “Glee,” “Modern Family,” “Nurse Jackie” and “The Office.”

Other TV honorees included Kevin Costner, Jim Parsons, Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman, Jon Hamm, Tina Fey, Betty White, and Bryan Cranston.

The 19th Screen Actors Guild Awards presentation is to be carried live on TNT and TBS on Jan. 27 from the Shrine Auditorium & Exposition Center in Los Angeles. As previously announced, Dick Van Dyke is set to receive the guild’s lifetime achievement award.

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susan.king@latimes.com and rene.lynch@latimes.com

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Here’s the Pope’s First Tweet

The long wait is over and we’ve finally got the first words of Twitter wisdom from Pope Benedict XVI. 

Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart.

— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

Ok, so not that funny, but it was all spelled right and we got blessed by a pope, so that’s a good start. And the Pope did actually send the message himself. Pope Benedict appeared on Wednesday morning for his regular weekly address in front of throngs of media and worshipers, and personally hit the tweet button himself on his iPad. Vatican officials say that before the end of the day he will be answering three questions that were submitted to the #askpontifex hashtag earlier this month. Here’s the first of those:

How can we celebrate the Year of Faith better in our daily lives?

— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

By speaking with Jesus in prayer, listening to what he tells you in the Gospel and looking for him in those in need

— Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

He actually tweeted in Italian first and his other language accounts weren’t far behind. Follow @Pontifex for more 140 character sermons.

Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Publisher Bonnier, Flingo partner to make Smart TV Apps

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Bonnier, the publisher of magazines like Savuer and Popular Science, and Flingo, the largest publisher of apps for Smart TVs, have partnered to create a series of apps extending Bonnier’s titles onto Internet-enabled TV sets and set-tops boxes like the Roku.

Together, they will release a new app for each magazine, offering videos, images and archival content for fans. Savuer has a couple of web series, including “The Test Kitchen” which helps home chefs learn how to peel garlic or dice an onion. Those videos, currently on Saveur’s website YouTube channel, will resurface in the apps, which will be distributed for free in app markets thanks to advertising and sponsors.

Though smart TVs remain a small segment of the TV market, Bonnier believes it is an ideal platform for leading media companies to extend their brand.

“This is about going after new technologies and being at the forefront,” Sean Holzman, Bonnier’s Chief Brand Development Officer, told TheWrap. “We don’t look closely at what other publishing companies may be doing. Flingo has a universe of 15 million devices and that should double in 2013.”

The emphasis will be on video since research demonstrates that it remains the top activity, even more than gaming.

Ashwin Navin, CEO of Flingo, said that while many media companies are putting secondary titles on Internet-enabled TVs, Bonnier is using its top titles.

“Major media companies aren’t putting their crown jewels on smart TVs,” Navin told TheWrap. He added that when they measure how long users spend online with certain brands, websites register just a few minutes.

“You see 10 times that in a TV app. People are more captive and less ADD.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: The Gift of Reading

This is the year of the tablet, David Pogue of The Times has told us, and that may be good news for seniors who open holiday wrappings to find one tucked inside. They see better with tablets’ adjustable type size, new research shows. Reading becomes easier again.

This may seem obvious — find me someone over 40 who doesn’t see better when fonts are larger — but it’s the business of science to test our assumptions.

Dr. Daniel Roth, an eye specialist and clinical associate professor at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J., offered new evidence of tablets’ potential benefits last month at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

His findings, based on tests conducted with 66 adults age 50 and over: older people read faster (a mean reading speed of 128 words per minute) when using an iPad, compared to a newspaper with the same 10-point font size (114 words per minute).

When the font was increased to 18 points — easy to do on an iPad — reading speed increased to 137 words per minute.

“If you read more slowly, it’s tedious,” Dr. Roth said, explaining why reading speed is important. “If you can read more fluidly, it’s more comfortable.”

What makes the real difference, Dr. Roth theorizes, is tablets’ illuminated screen, which heightens contrast between words and the background on which they sit.

Contrast sensitivity — the visual ability to differentiate between foreground and background information — becomes poorer as we age, as does the ability to discriminate fine visual detail, notes Dr. Kevin Paterson, a psychologist at the University of Leicester, who recently published a separate study on why older people struggle to read fine print.

“There are several explanations for the loss of sensitivity to fine detail that occurs with older age,” Dr. Paterson explained in an e-mail. “This may be due to greater opacity of the fluid in the eye, which will scatter incoming light and reduce the quality of the projection of light onto the retina. It’s also hypothesized that changes in neural transmission affect the processing of fine visual detail.”

Combine these changes with a greater prevalence of eye conditions like macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy in older adults, and you get millions of people who cannot easily do what they have done all their lives — read and stay connected to the world of ideas, imagination and human experience.

“The No. 1 complaint I get from older patients is that they love to read but can’t, and this really bothers them,” Dr. Roth said. The main option has been magnifying glasses, which many people find cumbersome and inconvenient.

Some words of caution are in order. First, Dr. Roth’s study has not been published yet; it was presented as a poster at the scientific meeting and publicized by the academy, but it has not yet gone through comprehensive, rigorous peer review.

Second, Dr. Roth’s study was completed before the newest wave of tablets from Microsoft, Google, Samsung and others became available. The doctor made no attempt to compare different products, with one exception. In the second part of his study, he compared results for the iPad with those for a Kindle. But it was not an apples to apples comparison, because the Kindle did not have a back-lit screen.

This section of his study involved 100 adults age 50 and older who read materials in a book, on an iPad and on the Kindle. Book readers recorded a mean reading speed of 187 words per minute when the font size was set at 12; Kindle readers clocked in at 196 words per minute and iPad readers at 224 words per minute at the same type size. Reading speed improved even more drastically for a subset of adults with the poorest vision.

Again, Apple’s product came out on top, but that should not be taken as evidence that it is superior to other tablets with back-lit screens and adjustable font sizes. Both the eye academy and Dr. Roth assert that they have no financial relationship with Apple. My attempts to get in touch with the company were not successful.

A final cautionary note should be sounded. Some older adults find digital technology baffling and simply do not feel comfortable using it. For them, a tablet may sit on a shelf and get little if any use.

Others, however, find the technology fascinating. If you want to see an example that went viral on YouTube, watch this video from 2010 of Virginia Campbell, then 99 years old, and today still going strong at the Mary’s Woods Retirement Community in Lake Oswego, Ore.

Ms. Campbell’s glaucoma made it difficult for her to read, and for her the iPad was a blessing, as she wrote in this tribute quoted in an article in The Oregonian newspaper:

To this technology-ninny it’s clear
In my compromised 100th year,
That to read and to write
Are again within sight
Of this Apple iPad pioneer

Caregivers might be delighted — as Ms. Campbell’s daughter was — by older relatives’ response to this new technology, a potential source of entertainment and engagement for those who can negotiate its demands. Or, they might find that old habits die hard and that their relatives continue to prefer a book or newspaper they can hold in their hands to one that appears on a screen.

Which reading enhancement products have you used, and what experiences have you had?

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Chicago best housing market -- for buyers

A sign stands outside a house for sale in the 4400 block of North Mozart Avenue in Chicago. (Chris Sweda/ Chicago Tribune / December 12, 2012)

Tribune staff reporter

5:58 a.m. CST, December 12, 2012

The Chicago area again took the top spot in Zillow's ranking of the best real estate markets for homebuyers, an accolade that is unwelcome news to homeowners trying to sell their properties.

The real estate web site also tapped Chicago in July as the best buyer's market among the nation's 30 largest metropolitan areas.

To calculate its rankings, Zillow looked at selling prices versus list prices, the number of days a listing was on Zillow and the percentage of homes in a market with a price cut. Its ranking as the top buyer's market means properties in the Chicago area stay on the market longer, with more frequent price cuts and sell for less than their listing price, all factors that give prospective buyers more power at the negotiating table.

Among the local municipalities, Inverness, Lansing, Rolling Meadows, Winnetka and Darien were ranked as the top five markets for homebuyers. Sellers had the most negotiating power in Plano, Sycamore, Carpentersville, Elgin and Matteson, according to Zillow.

In November, Zillow identified Chicago as the only market of 30 it follows that experienced month-over-month home value declines in October.

mepodmolik@tribune.com | Twitter @mepodmolik

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Pilot, 2 nurses killed in medical helicopter crash

Three people were killed when a medical helicopter crashed Monday night near the city of Rochelle.

A medical helicopter crashed Monday night on its way to a hospital in Mendota, killing the pilot and two nurses on board, officials said.

The helicopter was registered to Rockford Memorial Hospital and was enroute to pick up a patient at Mendota Community Hospital, officials said.

The helicopter crashed about 8:30 p.m. in a field in the small town of Compton, near the city of Rochelle. The helicopter was destroyed in the crash, according to the FAA.

The Rockford hospital identified the helicopter's occupants as pilot Andy Olesen and flight nurses Jim Dillow and Karen Hollis.

"At Rockford Health System, our hearts are heavy," hospital spokesman Wester Wuori said in a statement. "We grieve the loss of three heroes who dedicated their careers to serving others."

On the hospital's Facebook page, hundreds of people, many of them paramedics and other emergency responders, offered their condolences to the victims' families.

Authorities established a staging area near the intersection of U.S. Route 30 and Illinois Route 251, a dispatcher with the Lee County Sheriff's Office said. The intersection lies between Rochelle and Mendota.

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation into what caused the crash, according to the FAA.

The nurses and pilots who work in air ambulances are among the best trained in their fields, said Stephen Richey, a former flight respiratory therapist who lives in Indianapolis.

Pilots must be able to land on improvised landing sites on short notice, and the flight nurses on board often must deliver advance medical care to critically injured trauma patients.

The work draws those with years of experience and a deep commitment to helping patients, Richey said.

"You’ll never find a more dedicated group of professionals in your entire life," Richey said.

Medical flight crews also face daily risks. Richey became an aviation safety researcher after losing several friends in crashes, he said.

In October 2008, a medical helicopter crashed after striking a radio tower in Aurora, killing three crew members and a 1-year-old girl.

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Rate of Childhood Obesity Falls in Several Cities

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

At William H. Ziegler Elementary in Northeast Philadelphia, students are getting acquainted with vegetables and healthy snacks.

PHILADELPHIA — After decades of rising childhood obesity rates, several American cities are reporting their first declines.

The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white students.

“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011.

The drops are small, just 5 percent here in Philadelphia and 3 percent in Los Angeles. But experts say they are significant because they offer the first indication that the obesity epidemic, one of the nation’s most intractable health problems, may actually be reversing course.

The first dips — noted in a September report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation — were so surprising that some researchers did not believe them.

Deanna M. Hoelscher, a researcher at the University of Texas, who in 2010 recorded one of the earliest declines — among mostly poor Hispanic fourth graders in the El Paso area — did a double-take. “We reran the numbers a couple of times,” she said. “I kept saying, ‘Will you please check that again for me?’ ”

Researchers say they are not sure what is behind the declines. They may be an early sign of a national shift that is visible only in cities that routinely measure the height and weight of schoolchildren. The decline in Los Angeles, for instance, was for fifth, seventh and ninth graders — the grades that are measured each year — between 2005 and 2010. Nor is it clear whether the drops have more to do with fewer obese children entering school or currently enrolled children losing weight. But researchers note that declines occurred in cities that have had obesity reduction policies in place for a number of years.

Though obesity is now part of the national conversation, with aggressive advertising campaigns in major cities and a push by Michelle Obama, many scientists doubt that anti-obesity programs actually work. Individual efforts like one-time exercise programs have rarely produced results. Researchers say that it will take a broad set of policies applied systematically to effectively reverse the trend, a conclusion underscored by an Institute of Medicine report released in May.

Philadelphia has undertaken a broad assault on childhood obesity for years. Sugary drinks like sweetened iced tea, fruit punch and sports drinks started to disappear from school vending machines in 2004. A year later, new snack guidelines set calorie and fat limits, which reduced the size of snack foods like potato chips to single servings. By 2009, deep fryers were gone from cafeterias and whole milk had been replaced by one percent and skim.

Change has been slow. Schools made money on sugary drinks, and some set up rogue drink machines that had to be hunted down. Deep fat fryers, favored by school administrators who did not want to lose popular items like French fries, were unplugged only after Wayne T. Grasela, the head of food services for the school district, stopped buying oil to fill them.

But the message seems to be getting through, even if acting on it is daunting. Josh Monserrat, an eighth grader at John Welsh Elementary, uses words like “carbs,” and “portion size.” He is part of a student group that promotes healthy eating. He has even dressed as an orange to try to get other children to eat better. Still, he struggles with his own weight. He is 5-foot-3 but weighed nearly 200 pounds at his last doctor’s visit.

“I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’m obese for my age,’ ” said Josh, who is 13. “I set a goal for myself to lose 50 pounds.”

Nationally, about 17 percent of children under 20 are obese, or about 12.5 million people, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which defines childhood obesity as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for children of the same age and sex. That rate, which has tripled since 1980, has leveled off in recent years but has remained at historical highs, and public health experts warn that it could bring long-term health risks.

Obese children are more likely to be obese as adults, creating a higher risk of heart disease and stroke. The American Cancer Society says that being overweight or obese is the culprit in one of seven cancer deaths. Diabetes in children is up by a fifth since 2000, according to federal data.

“I’m deeply worried about it,” said Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, who added that obesity is “almost certain to result in a serious downturn in longevity based on the risks people are taking on.”

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HSBC to pay record $1.9B fine

HSBC has agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion fine to settle a multi-year probe by U.S. prosecutors, who accused Europe's biggest bank of failing to enforce rules designed to prevent the laundering of criminal cash.

HSBC Holdings Plc admitted to a breakdown of controls and apologised in a statement on Tuesday announcing it had reached a deferred-prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, as first reported by Reuters last week.

"We accept responsibility for our past mistakes. We have said we are profoundly sorry for them, and we do so again. The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes," said Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver.

"Over the last two years, under new senior leadership, we have been taking concrete steps to put right what went wrong and to participate actively with government authorities in bringing to light and addressing these matters."

The deferred prosecution agreement, when detailed by U.S. Justice Department officials later on Tuesday, could yield new information about a failure at HSBC to police transactions linked to Mexico, sources familiar with the matter said.

Details of those dealings were reported this summer in a sweeping U.S. Senate probe. 

The Senate panel alleged that HSBC failed to maintain controls designed to prevent money laundering by drug cartels, terrorists a nd tax cheats, when acting as a financier to clients routing funds from places including Mexico, Iran and Syria.

The bank was unable to properly monitor $15 billion in bulk cash transactions between mid-2006 and mid-2009, and had i nadequate staffin g a nd high turnover in it s c ompliance units, July's re port said.

HSBC on Tuesday said it expected to also reach a settlement with British watchdog the Financial Services Authority. The FSA declined to comment.

U.S. and European banks have now agreed to settlements with U.S. regulators totalling some $5 billion in recent years on charges they violated U.S. sanctions and failed to police potentially illicit transactions.

No bank or bank executives, however, have been indicted, as prosecutors have instead used deferred prosecutions - under which criminal charges against a firm are set aside if it agrees to conditions such as paying fines and changing behaviour.

HSBC's settlement also includes agreements or consent orders with the Manhattan district attorney, the Federal Reserve and three U.S. Treasury Department units: the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Comptroller of the Currency and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.

HSBC said it would pay $1.921 billion, continue to cooperate fully with regulatory and law enforcement authorities and take further action to strengthen its compliance policies and procedures. U.S. prosecutors have agreed to defer or forego prosecution.

The settlement is the third time in a decade that HSBC has been penalized for lax controls and ordered by U.S. authorities to better monitor suspicious transactions. Directives by regulators to improve oversight came in 2003 and again in 2010.

Last month, HSBC told investors it had set aside $1.5 billion to cover fines or penalties stemming from the inquiry and warned costs could be significantly higher.

Analyst Jim Antos of Mizuho Securities said the settlement costs were "trivial" in terms of the company's book value.

"But in terms of real cash terms, that's a huge fine to pay," said Antos, who rates HSBC a "buy".

HSBC shares dipped 0.3 percent in early London trading to 63 9 pe nce, in line with a slightly weaker European bank index . I ts Ho ng Kong stock nudged up 0.3 percent to HK$79.70.

"It has been damaging for the brand, albeit not as bad as it might have been," said Ian Gordon, analyst at Investec Securities in London.

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Off-duty Chicago cop shot in robbery attempt

A veteran Chicago police officer was shot twice early Monday during an attempted robbery outside his car as a young child sat inside, authorities said.

While the 34-year-old officer sustained gunshot wounds to the chest and wrist, his wounds did not appear to be life-threatening, Chicago Police Department Superintendent Garry McCarthy said.

The officer's wrist was broken, but the bullet that struck his chest inflicted only superficial damage, the superintendent said. The officer has been with the police department for 10 years.

"He's obviously shaken up, [but] he's in good spirits," McCarthy said, after visiting the officer at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. "Right now it's as good as it could possibly be."

The shooting happened about 12:30 a.m. in the 6300 block of South Nashville Avenue, Chicago Police Department News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro said.

The officer had just parked his car and was preparing to take a child out of a car seat when the attacker approached, according to a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation.

The officer, who was off-duty at the time, fired in self-defense and may have struck his attacker, McCarthy said.

Early reports suggested the officer's wrist had sustained significant damage in the shooting, said the law enforcement source, who asked to remain anonymous.

Squad cars combed the area after the shooting, but police did not immediately take anyone into custody.

Despite some reports that police were looking for multiple suspects, police were searching for a single attacker, the law enforcement source said.

Police were reviewing video footage and robbery patterns in the area in hopes of identifying a suspect, McCarthy said.

"We're going to catch the guy [who did this]," the superintendent said.  "We're going to hold them accountable."

Several family members joined the officer in the hospital after the shooting, the superintendent said. The officer, whose name has not been released, also received a visit from Rev. Daniel J. Brandt, the police department's chaplain.

"I'll say this: God is good," Brandt said afterward. "It could have been a lot worse."

More than a dozen police vehicles responded to the area of the shooting, including a mobile command unit and squad cars from neighboring Oak Lawn.

As they stood across the street from the cordoned-off shooting site, neighbors awakened by the commotion said they had heard about a half a dozen gunshots.

A couple that lives nearby said the officer lives in the neighborhood and had been returning from work.

asege@tribune.com

Twitter: @AdamSege

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#OccupyCheerios: A Facebook Revolt

It wasn’t an obvious forum for an anti-GMO protest.

A YouTube video posted on Cheerio’s Facebook page depicts an elderly woman leaning over the highchair of her infant grandchild, cooing about family and the holidays, drawing a map with pieces of cereal representing relative’s far-flung houses. “But don’t you worry,” the grandmother says, pushing two Cheerios together, “we’ll always be together for Christmas.”

More than 1,200 users have commented on the vintage Cheerios commercial since it was posted last week, expressing outrage over the General Mills-owned brand’s use of genetically modified ingredients. Commenters have also been critical—like heavy-exclamation-points-use critical—of General Mills’ significant financial support of Prop. 37, California’s defeated GMO-labeling ballot initiative

Comments like “Can you please inform the public exactly why it is that General Mills spent $ 1.2 million to keep consumers in the dark about GMOs????” and “Nostalgic old commercials are no substitute for healthy ingredients. I won’t buy Cheerios until they are GMO-free” are a far cry from the stories of spending holidays with family—and perhaps a bit of Cheerios nostalgia—the post was surely intended to elicit.

The protest campaign was stoked by GMO Inside, an organization born of the failed Yes on 37 campaign. The group also called on people to comment-bomb a Cheerios app, which has since been removed from the company’s Facebook page. But beyond that, Cheerios’ response to the criticism has been . . . nothing. Anti-GMO comments are still piling up on the post, and no new material has been added to page in order to bury the video in the timeline.

Do 1,256 comments (and counting) cancel out $ 1.2 million of anti-Prop. 37 funding? Of course not. But just as the Occupy-style tactics being employed by protesters at Cooper Union and the Michigan State Capitol exhibit, showing up and voicing an opinion can be a powerful gesture, even if it’s not overpowering. 

Similar stories on TakePart

• Will GMOs Spell the End of Mexican Maize?

• Kellogg Recalls 2.8 Million Boxes of Cereal Due to Hazardous Metallic ‘Surprise’

• Anna Breslaw’s 600-Word Sprint: Nude Protests, Stripped Down

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Willy Blackmore is the food editor at TakePart. He has also written about food, art, and agriculture for such publications as Los Angeles Magazine, The Awl, GOOD, LA Weekly, The New Inquiry, and BlackBook. Email Willy | TakePart.com

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