C
    Chris Spurlock

    Chris Spurlock

    Contributor

  • What's In Dunkin' Donuts' New Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich?

    You may have heard, Dunkin' Donuts is offering a limited edition breakfast sandwich at a few locations in the outer Boston area. The sandwich’s contents of a pepper fried egg and bacon -- both mainstays of the company’s breakfast menu -- are encased in a glazed yeast donut ring. As HuffPost’s Carey Polis pointed out, donut-sandwiches are nothing new -- Paula Deen created a popular donut burger recipe, and she wasn’t the first person to do so.

  • The Basic Work Perk Americans Don't Get

    Vacations have been shown to benefit sleep, improve mental health and productivity year-round, cut the risk of heart attack and strengthen connections with loved ones — all good reasons take Stress Awareness Month as a chance to plan one. The problem is, the U.S. doesn't guarantee its workers any paid vacation time or even paid holidays, making it the only industrialized country not to mandate this basic benefit. Many American workers with higher-paying jobs get vacation time in their compensation packages, of course, but others may not be able to afford to take time off even when they're sick, let alone to relax for a week or two.

  • The Worst States For Kids Of Gay Parents

    Justice Anthony Kennedy invoked the children of gay parents this week during the Supreme Court hearing on Proposition 8, California's gay marriage ban. Discriminatory laws cause these children "immediate legal injury," Kennedy said. In states where same-sex relationships are not legally recognized, children who are born to or adopted by one parent must be adopted by the other in order to have two legal parents. Only 13 states and Washington, D.C., allow same-sex parents to petition for "second-parent adoption" statewide, while the availability of the practice is uncertain in most states and filled with legal obstacles in others, according to the Family Equality Council.

  • What's Really In Your Easter Basket?

    You'll never look at jelly beans and Cadbury eggs the same way again.

  • Why Working Moms Are Tired

    As Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg encourages women to "lean in" and seek leadership roles, she points out one reason the tug between work and family affects men and women differently. Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, learned this lesson a few years ago after she fainted from exhaustion. When she started setting personal limits, she found she had more room for creativity and taking on new challenges.

  • What Our Kids Will Be Paying For Decades

    The Iraq war has cost the United States $1.7 trillion — in addition to catastrophic human, social and political losses — and that number could climb to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades, according to the Costs of War Project. One cost that has just begun to accumulate is Iraq veterans' medical care and disability payments, which could top out in yearly spending around 2050 and total in the hundreds of billions of dollars. A look at previous wars shows that VA spending continues to climb for decades after a conflict is over then falls off as veterans die in old age.

  • $800 Billion Thrown Away On Iraq War

    For the past few months, a strange thing has been happening in the central Iraq town of Fallujah. Thousands of citizens, virtually all of them Sunni Muslims, have been gathering in public squares to protest the oppressive Shiite-led government in Baghdad. Sleeping in tents and wielding Twitter feeds and YouTube accounts, the young Sunnis have attempted to take democracy, and a certain sectarian disaffection, into their own hands.

  • A Guide To The Shamrock Shake

    The number of ingredients is staggering.

  • This Is Embarrassing For Americans

    New York City's ban on giant sodas was struck down by a judge this week, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to appeal the ruling. Bloomberg, who pioneered the 2008 requirement that chain restaurants post calorie counts on their menus, sees the soda law as another way to help those who can't help themselves from overindulging. "There's one public health crisis that has grown worse and worse over the years and that's obesity," he said Monday.

  • Why College Students Should Be Worried

    The February jobs report released Friday showed the unemployment rate at 7.7 percent, its lowest level in four years. Employment rose for college graduates as it did for most people — but not fast enough to keep up with growth in the college-educated work force, leaving this group with a slight net rise in unemployment. College students and graduates have watched debt levels and tuition costs rise during the recession as they reach into their own pockets to make up for reduced state educational appropriations that used to cover most of the cost of public four-year colleges.

  • Keystone XL May Only Support 35 Permanent Jobs, New Report Says

    If President Barack Obama approves the Keystone XL project, the 875-mile pipeline extension from the oil sands in Alberta, Canada, through Nebraska could create an array of environmental problems. It could also provide jobs for some of the 12 million unemployed Americans -- hundreds of thousands of them -- according to some supporters of the project and TransCanada, the company behind it. The long and partisan debate over the project has at times been reduced to a matter of balancing environmental and economic concerns.

  • How Many Teachers Could Your State Lose To Sequestration?

    Sequestration could cost thousands of teachers their jobs, according to a grim report the White House released Sunday. Last week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan warned that the looming cuts to schools are "very, very worrying" and that there is nothing he can do to prevent teachers from losing their jobs should sequestration take effect. Sunday on "Face the Nation" Duncan said that some teachers are already receiving pink slips as schools start to figure sequester cuts into their fall budgets.

  • Why All Women Need VAWA

    The version of the Violence Against Women Act that House Republicans unveiled Friday is not the same bill the Senate passed 78 to 22 last week. Gone are protections for LGBT victims, and a provision to help Native American women seek justice is watered down. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.

  • How Your Phone Might Be Stealing Your Sleep

    Most people who own iPhones use them as their alarm clock — making it all too easy to check email one last time before falling asleep and hard to ever feel unplugged from work and social networks. Several years ago my boss, Arianna Huffington, passed out from exhaustion after staying up late to catch up on work. "I sent all my friends the same Christmas gift — a Pottery Barn alarm clock — so they could stop using the excuse that they needed their very tempting iPhone by their bed to wake them up in the morning," she said.

  • LOOK: We've Come A Long Way Since 2000

    Most people in the world will celebrate this Valentine's Day in countries that do not recognize gay marriage. The Netherlands became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage on April 1, 2001, and ten other countries have followed.

  • Why Working Families Could Be Better Off In Sweden

    When Australia passed a parental leave law in 2010, it left the U.S. as the only industrialized nation not to mandate paid leave for mothers of newborns. Lesotho, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea are the only other countries that do not. Many countries give new fathers paid time off as well or allow parents to share paid leave.

  • Which Oscar-Nominated Character Are You?

    The real question of Oscar season is not "Will Argo win Best Picture?" or "Was Kathryn Bigelow robbed?" but this: "Which Oscar-nominated character are you?"

  • The Worst States For Pregnant Rape Victims

    A Republican state representative in New Mexico introduced a bill Wednesday that classified abortions for rape victims as "tampering with evidence," effectively requiring women to carry their pregnancies to term in order to prove their case in a sexual assault trial. This bill will not pass, as Democrats control both chambers of New Mexico's state legislature, but there are plenty of other state laws that extend the nightmare for women who are impregnated through rape. Of the 26 states that require a waiting period (usually 24 hours) for women seeking abortions, only Utah makes an exception for cases of rape or incest.

  • One Shocking Way Americans Lead The World

    Several people were wounded Tuesday in a shooting at Lone Star College in Houston, Texas. President Obama signed 23 executive orders for gun safety last week, and none of them would reduce the number of firearms Americans already own. With a current population around 315.2 million, the U.S. has about 86 guns for every 100 people — far more than any other nation.

  • Are More People Arrested For Pot Possession Or Violent Crimes?

    Americans are shifting on marijuana. More than half of them think it should be regulated like alcohol and cigarettes, 18 states have passed legislation approving it for medical use and Washington State and Colorado have legalized it for recreational use, but it remains illegal under federal law. In 2011, marijuana possession arrests totaled 663,032 — more than arrests for all violent crimes combined.