• A 13-year-old girl became the youngestsuicide bomber in Iraq yesterday when she blew herself up in Baquba, killing five Iraqi guards. • School bake sales may be a thing of the past, as hundreds of schools have instituted policies to limit the amount of junk food consumed by students. • Several new studies suggest that babies born from frozen embryos are less likely to be premature and underweight than those that develop from fresh embryos, possibly because only the strongest embryos survive the freezing process. • A topless portrait of a Tahitian girl painted on one of Captain Cook's journeys will be given a public exhibit for the first time in 200 years before being auctioned in December. • A movie based on the best selling memoir My Friend Anne Frank by Frank's best friend Jopie is being developed by an indie studio. • According to a new study, obese women have less impulse control than normal-weight women, but obese men aren't any more impulsive than normal-weight men. • New research suggests that the anti-depressant Paxil, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, may reduce male fertility by increasing DNA fragmentation in sperm. • Doctors say that crying may make us healthier by literally expelling certain chemicals from our bodies. The compounds found in emotional tears are different from those caused by eye watering. Tears may be how the body removes chemicals that build up from emotional stress. • Under a new law in Australia, partners together for two years will get the same rights as married couples to seek "spousal maintenance" claims. The could mean philandering husbands will be forced to keep paying for their mistresses after their affair ends. • John and Jenny Deaves, a father and daughter who revealed that they were having an incestuous love affair and had a child together have split up. The Jenny is now engaged to a bisexual man and they both live still with her father and the former couple's one-year-old daughter. • New research on pre-eclampsia found that women who have had two or more abortions reduced their risk for pre-eclampsia by 60 percent, meaning they are as well protected as women who have previously given birth. • Soon women will be able to delay motherhood into their 40s and beyond by having one of their ovaries removed, stored in a freezer, and re-implanted. • The New York Times visits the thong and gold lamé strewn dressing room at Larry Flynt's Hustler Club, a Manhattan strip club. • British food writer Fiona Beckett has tips for surviving the hard economic times by stretching your food budget, including by buying cheaper cuts of meat, watering down salad dressing, and cutting down on second helpings. • Scientists have found that hormonal changes caused by menopause change the way older women judge the attractiveness of younger women and decreases competitive feelings toward other women for male partners. • Though abortion is largely banned in Latin America, Uruguay's Senate voted today to decriminalize abortions during the first 12 weeks of presidency. However, the president is expected to veto the bill. • Lonesome George, a giant tortoise from the Galapagos island who is the last of his kind, may not become a father, thus saving his species from extinction. He mated with two females of a different subspecies this year, but 80 percent of their eggs appear infertile. •

MEGAN: So, you want to talk Lebanon for a second? Also, are my eyes deceiving me or is the guy in that picture carrying his big machine gun with an arm that is no longer attached to a hand? And is that a statement on how intractable this conflict is that even people who have lost limbs in it and can't afford prosthetics just learn how to fire big ass guns with their stumps?
SPENCER: hezbollah has the most extensive social-service network in lebanon
it would hardly surprise me that an amputee, grateful for hezb's help after, say, an israeli artillery barrage decimated his home in tyre in summer 06, would grip up and help hezbollah seize beirut
those shiite militia groups are really good at hearts and minds
MEGAN: And, yet, reportedly, not great husbands. Probably also shit boyfriends. Anyway, so, moving on, how exciting it that, for the first time since the Cold War, Russia has decided to put its armory on display for a big political event! Political rallies: not just for goosestepping anymore!
SPENCER: wait wait why move on?
i don't do russia
my friends chris and rania are reporters in beirut
i turn to them for my lebanon news
but those assholes had to be in dubai when the shit went down
so, sigh
MEGAN: Except for the whole "it's safer in Dubai" thing.
SPENCER: ok now we can move on. what do you think of this russia stuff?
MEGAN: I think the new guy is cute except for the way that Putin's constantly elbow-deep in his ass to make him talk. That's a little off-putting.
SPENCER: did Putin work something out where he'll be prime minister or something after Medevedevedev becomes president? Or am I confused?
MEGAN: You're not confused, and he is PM right now, Meddie was inaugurated earlier this week as Pres and Pooty-Poot as PM (and, yes, I did watch Lil Bush last night, the second season is hilariously good).
Also, I'm sort of out of things to say on Russia unless the time I recount trying to negotiate with their guy on what should've been to them a relatively minor point in their WTO accession package when I was a lobbyist. It was minor to them, it was major to my industry and we were going to oppose the finalization of any agreement without them giving us something and the dude was super happy to talk to me about it because he wanted to stare at my tits. When he realized that I knew what I was talking about, he decided he didn't speak English and walked away, and the guy from the embassy just smiled at me with embarrassment.
SPENCER: the only point i can add about russia
yesterday at the bar a journo friend told me that the FBI got in touch with him
because they're "concerned" about a russian he MIGHT have come in contact with
MEGAN: I know something that will excite you to talk about though... the Pakistanis and Jay Hood.
SPENCER: he was commander of JTF-GTMO when i was there on a visit in 2005
MEGAN: Well, and the Pakistanis for some crazy reason don't want him in their country...
SPENCER: i mean
who was the genius that decided it would be a good idea to send the ex-commander of an island prison for muslims to the most volatile and restive muslim country on the planet
hood is not the problem
if you want a real military villain for gtmo, look no further than Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller
miller is more Legacy of Brutality than the fucking Misfits
MEGAN: I mean, is anyone involved in Gitmo, like, good?
SPENCER: he's the guy who told ricardo sanchez the most fateful mixed-message in the war on terror: "Gitmo-ize" Abu Ghraib, and here's how we do it over there, but oh by the way, we don't have to follow the Geneva Conventions and you do
kthxbai wink wink
the Navy guards who walk the blocks, they're good
those guys are like 18 yrs old and have to deal with detainees throwing shit-blood-puke cocktails at them
this one guard in 2005, she told me, you wouldn't believe what i go through to wash that out of my hair
MEGAN: Yeah, that sucks, it doesn't seem like it's their fault.
SPENCER: no more than it's the fault of the bank teller for your house going into forclosure
MEGAN: Not my house! I'm still solvent! Knocking wood furiously right now.
SPENCER: one quick gtmo story:
this one soldier who was my minder at the base was given liberty to get drunk with us at the officers club — and omfg is gtmo a weird but awesome place to get shitfaced — started to get rowdy when he learned that i had been to his favorite montreal strip club
"fuck yeah! you're my BOY!"
yelling at the top of his lungs at 3 am
then he quit the army and ran for congress in pennsylvania. true story.
MEGAN: Why have you been to a strip club in Montreal? Also, who has a favorite strip club in Montreal?
SPENCER: club supersex
it rules, that's why
me and my friends went there for the millenium & liked it so much we went the next year
the next new year's that is
btw
great job not talking about the primary!
after yesterday's comment-thread disaster
MEGAN: Like, how big of a strip-club afficianado do you have to be to have picked out a favorite?
SPENCER: i think when you go to supersex there really is no close second
unless you count the lusty lady in SF which i hear is kickass and feminist but i've never been
my friend's exgf used to dance there
christ she was hot
MEGAN: You and I are pretty much going to disagree on the greatness of strip clubs.
I'm not deliberately ignoring, but, like what's happened in the last 24 hours? Clinton's still not getting out, Obama's ignoring that, McCain's still walking around being McCain. And Clinton doesn't have that much money right now.
SPENCER: did you see mccain's ad with his mom?
it's eerie how he looks older than his mother
MEGAN: I think that's just makeup. I saw his mother at the White House Correspondents Dinner. She looked old.
Oh, and Arianna Huffington says that McCain didn't vote for Bush in 2000, or he told a bunch of Hollywood types he didn't but he says she's full of shit.
SPENCER: i happen to know but only in an off the record way that arianna is right
MEGAN: I'm sure she's right, I just think it's funny that she's the only one out campaigning against McCain right now, and is less likely to be believed by the people she's trying to convince than even the other candidates.
SPENCER: you would have to be a saint to vote for the man who called racists in south carolina to say you fathered a black baby with a prostitute
or have no self-respect
MEGAN: Yeah, and McCain's no saint and he definitely has plenty of ego to go around.

We're not sure what to make of the recent spate of mainstream food critics giving the thumbs up to the food at Manhattan mammary meccas (preceding term stolen from Page Six). First, New York Magazine's Gael Greene gave a nicely-manicured thumbs up to Hawaiian Tropic Zone, singling out its veal chop as "splendid" and its banana split as "sensational". We're willing to forgive Gael: she's kinda eccentric in a bawdy, been-there, done-that sort of way and after all, with Mario Batali and Danny Meyer running most of the city's restaurants, it's kind of admirable for her to offer a critical take on a Times Square tourist magnet.

Then the Times came out. Today's lead restaurant review has Frank Bruni visiting the Penthouse Executive Club...for its food. For those of you (blessedly) living outside of New York, the "Penthouse" in the name refers to, yes, Penthouse Magazine. Nor is there anything remotely "Executive" about the place (it's on the far west side of the city, near the Hudson River — not in some swanky midtown office tower) other than the fact that well-dressed male execs go there. However, according to Frank, the club's restaurant, Robert's Steakhouse, is deserving of one star (not bad for a Times review) for its steaks, which are "some of the very best...in New York City".

At Robert's Steakhouse I got char, richness, depth and a more pronounced degree of aging, an unmistakable tanginess that accentuated and stretched out the beef's flavor.

But that's not all! There are strippers named Indica and Brianna...and Dr. Foxy! Oh, and a crazy-ass dessert that's sinful in more ways than one.

It's called a buttery nipple, and it involves one of the women straddling your lap, tilting your head back, pouring a combination of Baileys Irish Cream and butterscotch schnapps down your throat, and squirting Reddi-wip into your mouth. It costs $20 in cash.

Carole J. Adams must be shitting her pants.

Where Only The Salad Is Properly Dressed [NY Times]
Hawaiian Tropic Zone[NY Mag]
The Pornography of Meat[Amazon]