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The online magazine Ozy covers people, places and trends on the horizon. Co-founder Carlos Watson joins All Things Considered regularly to tell us about the site's latest discoveries.

This week, he tells NPR's Arun Rath about a humanitarian who doesn't hate war, the unlikely love story between two punk rock icons and the most sensible scary movie ever made.

"Tom Neely, an artist, a couple of years ago said, 'What if you take these hardcore rockers: Henry Rollins, Glenn Danzig. They're known as tough, tough, tough guys. And instead of making them friends and buddies and sometimes competitors, why not make them lovers? He made a cartoon out of it and called it 'Henry and Glenn Forever.'

"And while Henry Rollins laughed at it and kind of enjoyed it, Glenn Danzig didn't find it quite so funny."

Read "Love Ageless + Evergreen" at Ozy.com

The 1973 oil embargo, which began 40 years ago Sunday, forced Americans to start thinking differently about U.S. dependence on imported oil. Decades later, the U.S. is in the midst of a homegrown energy boom.

The United States had long taken cheap and plentiful oil for granted, until Saudi Arabia shocked the country by suddenly cutting off all direct oil shipments in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel. Other Arab countries followed suit.

Prices soared. Gasoline lines stretched for blocks. And Richard Nixon became the first of many U.S. presidents to call for energy independence.

"Whenever the American people are faced with a clear goal and they are challenged to meet it, we can do extraordinary things," he said.

One outgrowth of that '73 embargo was a new, bipartisan group in Washington dedicated to energy efficiency. The Alliance to Save Energy still exists, and its president, Kateri Callahan, says there has been a lot of progress.

"Since the 1970s, our economy has doubled its energy productivity. We're producing twice as much for each unit of energy that we use," she says.

But the commitment to efficiency has been uneven, rising and falling with the price of gasoline. When gas prices tumbled in the 1990s, Americans traded in their fuel-efficient cars for SUVs. Callahan says the U.S. still lags other developed countries in its energy-efficiency gains.

"We had a flurry of activity. And then, because of cheap oil and easy and abundant resources, we were lulled into complacency. So it takes a crisis to mobilize the United States, unfortunately," she says.

After dipping during the recent recession, crude oil prices are now back around $100 a barrel, and Americans are rediscovering the benefits of fuel efficiency. Two years ago, automakers agreed to develop cars that will go twice as far on a gallon of gas by 2025.

Parallels

The 1973 Arab Oil Embargo: The Old Rules No Longer Apply

After successfully staring down congressional Republicans in the shutdown-debt ceiling fight, President Obama pivoted to immigration in a move with almost no downside risk.

That makes it perfect as the next vehicle for him to use to cause the GOP major indigestion.

Before being re-elected last year, President Obama said he hoped the Republican "fever" of opposition to him would break during his second term. But if the just-completed standoff is any indication, that temperature is still spiking.

The immediate shift to immigration could be Dr. Obama's way of trying to effect a cure.

What the White House and immigration advocates working with it hope is that the political loss Republicans suffered in the recent fiscal fight will make GOP leaders desperate to show that the party can govern.

"One can hear the debate within the GOP, which is, 'Do we continue confrontational tactics that make us look bad? Or do we find a way to pragmatically govern and work more cooperatively with Democrats to do so?' " said Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigration advocacy group.

Even during the shutdown, groups backing the overhaul of the nation's immigration laws never hit the pause button. They continued to stage demonstrations in Washington and elsewhere.

They were supported by House Democrats who introduced an immigration overhaul bill during a news conference that drew less attention than it might have otherwise because of approaching fiscal Armageddon.

Sharry explained the strategy: "We just want to be ready if [House Republicans] decide that it's in their political self-interest to govern responsibly and, when necessary, work with Democrats to pass legislation, that immigration reform will be first up. So we think we've got a shot. The central question is whether we're dealing with a rational political party or not."

Obama was certainly acting as though the House Republicans would view it in their self-interest when he said on Thursday:

"The majority of Americans think this is the right thing to do. And it's sitting there waiting for the House to pass it," he said, referring to a Senate-passed immigration bill. "Now, if the House has ideas on how to improve the Senate bill, let's hear them. Let's start the negotiations. But let's not leave this problem to keep festering for another year, or two years, or three years. This can and should get done by the end of this year."

That proposed timetable could be overly optimistic, to put it mildly, given the present mood among Republicans.

True, House Speaker John Boehner has said in the past that he favors fixing the nation's immigration system but he supports a piecemeal approach, not the Senate's comprehensive legislation.

In an emailed statement, Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman, said: "The Speaker remains committed to a step-by-step process to fix our broken immigration system."

But a senior House GOP aide who asked not to be identified suggested that by turning the screws on Republicans by refusing to negotiate until the shutdown ended and the debt ceiling was raised, Obama made immigration a heavier lift.

"The president's attitude and actions over the past few weeks have certainly made getting anything done on immigration considerably harder," the aide said.

Tea Party Republican Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho echoed that sentiment Wednesday at a monthly Heritage Foundation forum.

Dripping with sarcasm, he told the journalists: "If the president is going to show the same kind of good-faith efforts that he has shown in the last couple of weeks, I think it would be crazy for the House Republican leadership to enter into negotiations with him on immigration.

"He has tried to destroy the Republican Party, and I think that anything that we do right now with this president on immigration will be with that same goal in mind, which is to destroy the Republican Party and not to get good policies."

Coming from Labrador, that was ominous. He had been in a bipartisan House group working on immigration legislation but dropped out in June because of a disagreement over health insurance for immigrants.

To that Republican response, Obama and Democrats could easily respond, fine, in the long run, we win either way.

It would obviously be a major domestic policy accomplishment for Obama's legacy if he could sign into law a comprehensive immigration overhaul of the sort that has eluded Washington policymakers for the better part of a decade.

He also would be redeeming a campaign promise to Latino voters, an important part of the Democratic Party's base, by making a major revision to the nation's immigration system a top second-term priority.

Congressional Democrats could also benefit in the 2014 midterm elections by pushing immigration.

Those benefits to Democrats would be magnified if Republicans wound up in another internecine battle, this time over immigration.

And such a fight seems nearly assured, with the establishment wing of the party favoring an immigration overhaul containing a path to citizenship, which congressional Tea Partiers generally oppose.

An ugly, divisive debate within the GOP could make the Republican Party even less attractive than it has been to Latino voters in recent years.

Those GOP divisions would put it at an obvious disadvantage versus a mostly unified Democratic Party heading into the midterms.

Immigration advocates hope that the desire of GOP leaders to broaden the party's appeal to minorities and remake its brand can overwhelm the opposition to an immigration overhaul.

Sharry said immigration groups plan to pressure a number of House Republicans who sit in districts where the fastest growing voter group is Latinos. They include Jeff Denham and David Valadao in California, Mike Coffman in Colorado, Joe Heck in Nevada, Mike Grimm on Staten Island, Peter King on Long Island and Daniel Webster in Florida. And they see a path to victory that runs through the same group of lawmakers who voted to end the fiscal stalemate.

The groups also plan actions and civil disobedience to raise the heat.

"If they want to take advantage of the get-out-of-jail card Democrats have offered them, this would be the perfect opportunity to do it," Sharry said. "We're going to throw down until they either say 'yes' or they make it clear they're not going to get to yes and then we'll pivot to try to un-elect them."

It's time for your Friday week in review, a look at the big headlines and conversation in the tech and culture space.

ICYMI

On the air, we continued to follow the ongoing failures of websites designed to sign people up for the new health insurance exchanges. I chatted with All Things Considered about how an old technology — pen and paper — is what a lot of folks are turning to in light of repeated issues with trying to sign up online. (The folks at Reason magazine say we have no idea when the problems will be fixed.) Steve Henn looked at how Silicon Valley may have been able to do the job much better than the tech contractors who built the healthcare.gov behemoth.

Also this week, Steve introduced us to new technology that gives parents a better way to track their teen drivers. On the blog, our pals at Turnstyle featured an innovative Indian man whose helping women in rural areas with his maxi pad machine, and our weekly innovation pick was a USB charger that's powered by fire.

The Big Conversations

Tech companies are business titans, and this week Apple's hire of Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts as the tech giant's new retail chief signaled the company's interest in fast-growth in Asia. As Twitter readies for its IPO, it continues to roll out changes to user capabilities and its platform. This week, it announced a change to who can send you direct messages (it's no longer only people you follow). And more revelations about the scope of NSA surveillance — The Washington Post reported that the NSA is collecting hundreds of millions of email and instant messaging contact lists. The New Yorker explained why these stories are troubling.

Other Curiosities

Vice: Online Booksellers Are Increasingly Afraid of Selling Smut

The dark corner of the Amazon Kindle store gets some attention.

The Atlantic: Someone Has Solved The Supreme Court's Angry Email Problem

Good ol' pen and paper seems to be a theme, eh? At the Supreme Court, justices avoid firing off angry emails with their innovative system: only handwritten memos.

Finally, your blogger is on the road today, in Atlanta with 1,200 other journalists, technologists and educators for the Online News Association annual confab. The conversations here focus heavily on the tech-powered reporting and distribution methods that are changing the game for traditional journalism — data, mobile and networks. "2014 is about anticipatory computing revolution for the masses," predicts digital strategist Amy Webb, who spoke Friday morning about how predictive elements like Google Now and smart virtual personal assistants are taking over. Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard will be covering other big themes to emerge from here. Stay tuned.

President Obama said Thursday that the government shutdown and threat of default did unnecessary damage to both the U.S. economy and the country's reputation abroad.

Standard & Poor's concluded that the disruption subtracted about $24 billion from the economy and is likely to trim more than half a percentage point off growth in the final three months of the year.

Some of the businesses that lost money during the shutdown will gain it back, as federal workers and the government make up for spending that was deferred. But there are likely to be longer-term repercussions, according to Beth Ann Bovino, S&P's chief U.S. economist.

She says the fact that the agreement only keeps the government funded until mid-December is a worry and leaves hundreds of thousands of federal workers with lots of uncertainty.

"Will you get your paycheck, or will we go back on furlough without pay again? Concerns of a repeat, I am sure, are on people's minds and that's coming in to the holiday season," she says.

Bovino says that could make the most important shopping season of the year pretty ho-hum. And it's not just federal workers who will hold back because of that uncertainty. Other workers will, too, as well as businesses that might decide to put off hiring and investment.

Related Stories

It's All Politics

10 Takeaways From The Fiscal Fight

The crash of a turboprop in southern Laos that killed all 49 people aboard was caused by a violent storm that prompted the pilot to miss a runway and careen into the Mekong River, authorities say.

"Upon preparing to land at Pakse Airport the aircraft ran into extreme bad weather conditions and was reportedly crashed into the Mekong River," the Laos Ministry of Public Works and Transport said in a statement.

The Lao Airlines' ATR-72 had 44 passengers aboard. In addition to 17 Lao nationals, the flight included several passengers from France, Australia and Thailand; three from Korea; two from Vietnam; and one person each from the United States, Canada, Malaysia, China and Taiwan. Five crew members were also killed.

The state-run news agency of Laos quoted an eyewitness to the crash as saying that the plane "appeared to be hit by a strong wind, causing its head to ascend and pushing it away from the airport area."

The Bangkok Post reports that one of the plane's propellers, as well as passengers' backpacks and passports, were among the debris in the Mekong River:

" 'So far eight bodies have been found. We don't yet know their nationalities,' said Yakao Lopangkao, director-general of Lao's Department of Civil Aviation, who was at the crash site in Pakse, the main town in the southern Lao province of Champassak. 'We haven't found the plane yet. It is underwater. We're trying to use divers to locate it.'

"He ruled out finding survivors. 'There is no hope. The plane appears to have crashed very hard before entering the water.' "

In recent weeks, economists have been worrying about the negative impact of the now-ended government shutdown and potential debt crisis.

But away from Capitol Hill, the economy has been getting a big boost: gasoline prices have been declining, week after week. In some parts of the country, a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline is now down to less than $3 a gallon — a price most Americans haven't seen in three years.

And any time the pump price starts dropping, consumer spirits start rising.

"When it falls, everyone has a smile on their face, and when it goes up, nobody is happy," said Mike Thornbrugh, spokesman for QuikTrip, a Tulsa, Okla.-based company that operates nearly 700 gas stations nationwide. Dozens of them are located in the Tulsa area, where many stations sell gas for around $2.99 a gallon, thanks to low fuel taxes and nearby refineries.

Chuck Mai, spokesman for the AAA auto club in Oklahoma, says the lowering of geopolitical tensions involving Iran, Syria, Egypt and other places in the Middle East has helped cut prices.

"Tensions seem to have cooled there," Mai said. "And no hurricanes threatening the Gulf (of Mexico), so everything looks good for continued lower prices."

Mai's assessment is shared by most economists, who are predicting prices will be heading even lower over the next several months. Analysts point to a number of triggers that shot down gas prices, allowing the average price of a gallon to slide from $3.74 in March to $3.37 a gallon this week.

President Obama slammed the partisan standoff "spectacle" that he said had damaged the economy as well as America's international credibility and called for a renewed effort to pass a comprehensive budget, immigration reform and a farm bill by year's end.

He praised "Democrats and responsible Republicans who came together" to pass a last-minute deal to reverse a partial government shutdown and narrowly avert the expiration of the federal borrowing authority.

"Let's be clear, there are no winners here," he said. "These last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage to our economy," he said.

"The American people are completely fed up with Washington," he added.

The president's remarks follow a 16-day hiatus in many government operations that he said had cost billions of dollars.

"There was no economic rationale for this," the president said of the shutdown.

"Today I want our people, our businesses and the rest of the world to know that our faith and credit remains unquestioned," the president said.

He called for a renewed, bipartisan effort to pass a comprehensive budget, fix the "broken" immigration system and get a farm bill passed.

"This can and should get done by the end of this year," he said.

Finally, he said he had a message for federal workers, who were either furloughed or kept working without pay: "Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters."

Amnesty International is urging Iranian authorities not to go ahead with the execution of convicted drug smuggler after the man survived a botched hanging last week.

The 37-year-old man, identified as "Alireza M", was found alive in a morgue after he was hanged at a jail in Iran's northeastern city of Bojnord.

A news release from Amnesty International says:

"According to official state media, a doctor declared him dead after the 12 minute-hanging, but when the prisoner's family went to collect his body the following day he was found to still be breathing.

He is currently in hospital, but a judge reportedly said he would be executed again 'once medical staff confirm his health condition is good enough'."

In 1953, for the first and only time in history, two brothers were appointed to head the overt and covert sides of American foreign policy. President Dwight Eisenhower appointed John Foster Dulles secretary of state, and Allen Dulles director of the CIA.

Journalist Stephen Kinzer says the Dulles brothers shaped America's standoff with the Soviet Union, led the U.S. into war in Vietnam, and helped topple governments they thought unfriendly to American interests in Guatemala, Iran, the Congo and Indonesia. In his new book, The Brothers, Kinzer says the Dulles' actions "helped set off some of the world's most profound long-term crises."

John Dulles died in 1959. President Kennedy replaced Allen Dulles after the covert operation he recommended to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba ended disastrously in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

Kinzer tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that the Dulles' shared background and ideology played out in their policy decisions: "They had this view of the world that was implanted in them from a very young age," Kinzer says. "That there's good and evil, and it's the obligation of the good people to go out into the world and destroy the evil ones."

We have been reporting for several weeks now on small businesses in America. Today, we explore a business system where entrepreneurs and corporations come together: franchising. Franchising is a bit like marriage. It takes a good long-term relationship to succeed.

It makes sense to begin a story about franchising and the hairstyling business by looking to Martha Matilda Harper, a servant living in Rochester, N.Y., in the late 19th century. In her spare time, she developed a special hair tonic. The tonic sold well. So she quit and opened a hair salon.

"The women just adored it," says Jane Plitt, a researcher and author of Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream: How One Woman Changed the Face of Modern Business. "This was a time in 1888 when, usually, wealthy women had their hair dressed in the privacy of their home. But Martha was now doing it boldly in public, and there was a lot of buzz. It was the showcase."

The White House is insisting, publicly at least, that nobody emerged victorious from the government shutdown/debt crisis debacle.

"There are no winners here," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday after Senate leaders announced they had a deal to end the budget impasse.

"And nobody's who's sent here to Washington by the American people can call themselves a winner," Carney said, "if the American people have paid a price for what's happened."

Well, yes and no.

As the curtain comes down on the latest, but certainly not the last, partisan convulsion, there's no question that the shutdown and debt crisis will affect the political calculus in Washington.

Here's our list of winners and losers. Let us know if you have suggestions of your own.

Winners

Kentucky's Senators

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the state's wily senior senator, and his junior GOP colleague, Sen. Rand Paul, both emerged from their party's awful interlude with reputations intact, if not enhanced. McConnell employed his sharp political instincts, and once again forged a late-hour deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to sidestep financial chaos. And Paul astutely tended to his 2016 presidential ambitions by largely steering clear of the doomed defund-Obamacare-or-else strategy embraced by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz

The Texas senator held a fake filibuster, persuaded like-minded House members to jump off the shutdown/debt crisis ledge, harvested Tea Party cash and gathered names for fundraising lists. Wednesday's Pew Research Center poll results show his popularity among Tea Party Republicans soaring — and he's solidified his role as the undisputed face of the Obamacare resistance and the voice of a motivated and aggravated slice of the party's base.

GOP Speaker John Boehner

In allowing his more conservative members to drive a losing battle, the Ohio Republican has enhanced his standing with that faction and solidified his hold on the GOP conference. Boehner on Tuesday looked every inch the blundering loser; by Wednesday, his speakership remained secure, and he was basking in the praise of some of the hardliners who have been making his life so difficult.

GOP Rep. Tom Graves

Graves, a conservative from north Georgia, emerged from national obscurity to win notice as a leader of the defund Obamacare movement in the House. He leveraged the crisis to go from "Representative Who?" status — he was first elected in a 2010 special election — to a seat at television talk show tables and a reputation as a leading Tea Party voice.

GOP Rep. Devin Nunes

The California Republican won national attention for his now-famous characterization of fellow party members willing to shut down government over Obamacare as "lemmings with suicide vests." After that memorable description, Nunes became a go-to Republican for the media because of his willingness to criticize his party's positions while remaining loyal to leadership.

Obamacare

How could we list the Affordable Care Act as a winner, when its rollout has been beset by such enormous problems? It's simple: think of all the "president's health care launch is an unmitigated fiasco" stories that weren't written, or received minor play, because the program start coincided with the government shutdown. Thus the administration has had cover while it hustles to fix the worst of the problems.

Senate Women

GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona was among those who gave props to his female colleagues for their role in leading a bipartisan group of 14 senators (it included six women) to help provide Reid and McConnell a framework for their deal to end the government shutdown. Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine won particular notice. "Leadership, I must fully admit," McCain said, "was provided primarily by women in the Senate."

Wall Street, Eventually

A late Wednesday headline on CNN said it all: "Debt Ceiling Deal Sends Stocks Soaring."

Senate Chaplain Barry Black

In Senate floor prayers during the crisis, the 64-year-old former Navy chaplain drew national attention — and inspired a Saturday Night Live skit — with his ardent pleas for reason and faith. "Save us from the madness," he prayed one day, "and deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable."

Robert Costa

No one covered the crisis with more consistency and insight than the National Review's Washington editor, Robert Costa. He used his must-read Twitter feed to break news, and provided deep, dispassionate insight into Republican strategy for his conservative publication. Costa, 28, was one of five conservative journalists who Obama invited to the White House for a private briefing.

Losers

(In addition to the American people, federal and government contract employees, tourists and those with businesses reliant on the visitors to the nation's national parks.)

GOP Sen. Ted Cruz

Yes, the Texas senator was both a winner and a loser. He's been excoriated by members of his own party over his approach, and Wednesday's Pew Research Center poll results show his popularity dropping among those not aligned with the GOP Tea Party wing. While he's established himself as a Tea Party force, Cruz lost the immediate battle, and may have fatally damaged his general election brand.

GOP Speaker John Boehner

Bad boy political columnist Roger Simon in a widely read piece this weak took aim at Cruz and Boehner for allowing, if not orchestrating, the shutdown and leading the nation to the brink of financial calamity. Boehner, he wrote, "does not bend to the will of his Kamikaze Caucus because he is an evil man. He does so because he is a weak man. To borrow a line from Theodore Roosevelt, I could carve a better man out of a banana." In allowing his more conservative members to drive a losing battle, Boehner looked weak, blundering and barely in control of his conference. And in the end, he opened the door to a deal that will likely require a majority of Democrats to get passed.

House GOP Hardliners

It took the Wall Street Journal to lay it out succinctly: "They picked a goal they couldn't achieve in trying to defund ObamaCare from one House of Congress," it editorialized Wednesday, "and then they picked a means they couldn't sustain politically by pursuing a long government shutdown and threatening to blow through the debt limit."

The Tea Party Brand

Pew Research Center poll results released Wednesday showed that unfavorable views of the Tea Party have nearly doubled since 2010. Negative opinions have accelerated in recent months, particularly among moderate and liberal Republicans, and now nearly half of the American public has an unfavorable view of the Tea Party.

Immigration Overhaul

Remember that? President Obama says he does, and this week told Univision's Los Angeles affiliate that he's going to push for House Speaker John Boehner to take up the Senate-approved immigration overhaul bill. But here's how one conservative House Republican framed the upcoming debate on Wednesday: "If the president is going to show the same kind of good faith efforts that he has shown in the last couple of weeks, I think it would be crazy for the House Republican leadership to enter into negotiations with him on immigration," said Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho. "He has tried to destroy the Republican Party and I think that anything that we do right now with this president on immigration will be with that same goal in mind, which is to destroy the Republican Party and not to get good policies."

Ken Cuccinelli

Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor in Virginia, was in a pretty close race with Democrat Terry McAuliffe before the Oct. 1 shutdown and impending debt crisis. But polls show that support for the social conservative has eroded in the past two weeks, driven in part by antipathy of many of the huge swath of federal workers living in the purple state Obama won twice.

Vice President Joe Biden

The garrulous vice president was a key player in brokering a bipartisan deal to avoid the nation's last almost-default two years ago. This time, he's been nowhere to be seen - except during a shopping trip Tuesday to the local Brooks Brothers. The White House insists he in the loop, and attended meetings with members of Congress. But it's been reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Democrats weren't so crazy about former Sen. Biden's last deal, and preferred to go it alone.

Michelle Obama's Garden

The nation's most famous vegetable plot has gone to seed, literally, during the shutdown. With no groundskeepers or gardeners working to keep up the garden and White House grounds, vegetables on the 1,500-square-foot plot are rotting, weeds are taking over, and critters are having a ball, reports the blog Obama Foodorama.

If you are at all interested in travel or photography, then you probably know National Geographic for the stunning images that take you around the world, introducing you to remarkable cultures and people. Over the past decade, some of the most powerful images in the magazine — and the stories behind them — have been captured by women photojournalists. National Geographic Museum is honoring 11 of these women in a new exhibition called "Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment." It covers issues ranging from the impact of war, to child brides, to breathtaking landscapes and wildlife.

Two of the celebrated photojournalists spoke with Tell Me More host Michel Martin about the dangers and advantages of being a woman in the field, and the stories behind some of their most popular images.

Day 15 of the government shutdown started with as much promise as any recently: There was a bipartisan proposal by Senate leaders to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.

But any hopes were quickly dashed when leaders of the Republican-controlled House said they would offer a competing proposal because of their dissatisfaction with the Senate effort.

The Senate's Bipartisan Proposal

The Senate agreement between Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., came after weekend negotiations.

It would reopen the government until Jan. 15, 2014, and extend the debt ceiling until February. Among its provisions, it would require income verification for individuals and families seeking subsidies in health care exchanges through the Affordable Care Act.

The House Responds

That Senate agreement was viewed as weak tea by House Republicans, however, particularly those affiliated with the Tea Party: They wanted more to show for the political hits they've taken in the fiscal fights. Yet it was clear early Tuesday they weren't sure what they wanted.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters: "Our leadership team met with our members today trying to find a way forward in a bipartisan way that would continue to provide fairness to the American people under Obamacare. There are a lot of opinions about what direction to go. There have been no decisions about what exactly we will do."

Eventually, House Republicans coalesced around a proposal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit with some Obamacare-related features to which Democrats hotly objected.

For instance, it would ban members of Congress and the White House staff from receiving the same employer-paid tax subsidies for health insurance received by other U.S. employees. And it would stop a fix in the Senate proposal meant to placate unions whose members must pay a fee under the new health care law.

Perhaps most objectionable to many, and not just Democrats, was a provision in the proposal that would limit the power President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew would have to take extraordinary measures to prevent a future default. In recent months, the Treasury has taken such financial steps to remain under the debt ceiling.

"Extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo the Senate's bipartisan progress with a bill that can't pass the Senate ... and won't pass the Senate," said Reid.

It wasn't just Democrats who opposed the House proposal. The conservative advocacy organization, the Heritage Action for America, said it would score the proposal as a "key vote," thus dinging the conservative credentials of any Republican who didn't vote "no."

House leadership had scheduled a Tuesday evening vote on its proposal, despite the fact that it had no chance of passing in the Senate. After it became clear it also had no chance of passing in the House following Heritage's grenade, it appeared to be another instance of sound and fury in the House, signifying nothing.

Obama Meets Democratic Leadership

President Obama met with House Democratic leaders at the White House Tuesday afternoon. Following the meeting, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House minority leader, struck an optimistic tone. Vaguely echoing something Winston Churchill once said of Americans, she said: "I have confidence, and I'm optimistic, because I believe that at the end of the day, they will do the right thing even if they have to have a — do contortions to get to that place. That's unfortunate, because it doesn't inspire confidence, but if that's how they have to get there, that's a path."

Wall Street Sounds An Alarm

Pelosi's optimism wasn't universally shared. The Wall Street credit rating service, Fitch Ratings, placed the U.S.'s AAA rating on a negative watch because of the debt ceiling uncertainty.

Day 15 of the government shutdown started with as much promise as any recently: There was a bipartisan proposal by Senate leaders to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling.

But any hopes were quickly dashed when leaders of the Republican-controlled House said they would offer a competing proposal because of their dissatisfaction with the Senate effort.

The Senate's Bipartisan Proposal

The Senate agreement between Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., came after weekend negotiations.

It would reopen the government until Jan. 15, 2014, and extend the debt ceiling until February. Among its provisions, it would require income verification for individuals and families seeking subsidies in health care exchanges through the Affordable Care Act.

The House Responds

That Senate agreement was viewed as weak tea by House Republicans, however, particularly those affiliated with the Tea Party: They wanted more to show for the political hits they've taken in the fiscal fights. Yet it was clear early Tuesday they weren't sure what they wanted.

Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters: "Our leadership team met with our members today trying to find a way forward in a bipartisan way that would continue to provide fairness to the American people under Obamacare. There are a lot of opinions about what direction to go. There have been no decisions about what exactly we will do."

Eventually, House Republicans coalesced around a proposal to reopen the government and raise the debt limit with some Obamacare-related features to which Democrats hotly objected.

For instance, it would ban members of Congress and the White House staff from receiving the same employer-paid tax subsidies for health insurance received by other U.S. employees. And it would stop a fix in the Senate proposal meant to placate unions whose members must pay a fee under the new health care law.

Perhaps most objectionable to many, and not just Democrats, was a provision in the proposal that would limit the power President Obama and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew would have to take extraordinary measures to prevent a future default. In recent months, the Treasury has taken such financial steps to remain under the debt ceiling.

"Extremist Republicans in the House of Representatives are attempting to torpedo the Senate's bipartisan progress with a bill that can't pass the Senate ... and won't pass the Senate," said Reid.

It wasn't just Democrats who opposed the House proposal. The conservative advocacy organization, the Heritage Action for America, said it would score the proposal as a "key vote," thus dinging the conservative credentials of any Republican who didn't vote "no."

House leadership had scheduled a Tuesday evening vote on its proposal, despite the fact that it had no chance of passing in the Senate. After it became clear it also had no chance of passing in the House following Heritage's grenade, it appeared to be another instance of sound and fury in the House, signifying nothing.

Obama Meets Democratic Leadership

President Obama met with House Democratic leaders at the White House Tuesday afternoon. Following the meeting, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House minority leader, struck an optimistic tone. Vaguely echoing something Winston Churchill once said of Americans, she said: "I have confidence, and I'm optimistic, because I believe that at the end of the day, they will do the right thing even if they have to have a — do contortions to get to that place. That's unfortunate, because it doesn't inspire confidence, but if that's how they have to get there, that's a path."

Wall Street Sounds An Alarm

Pelosi's optimism wasn't universally shared. The Wall Street credit rating service, Fitch Ratings, placed the U.S.'s AAA rating on a negative watch because of the debt ceiling uncertainty.

The cult following behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been largely underground, but has been no secret. Fans have been going to midnight screenings of the film since 1975 to do The Time Warp again (and again). Presumably, that joke has also been written again (and again).

But something new occurred to me last time I saw Rocky Horror. Dragging some friends who hadn't seen the movie before to a midnight screening (the poor souls), I remembered my own first experience as a college freshman, somewhere between amused and alarmed by the pieces of toast hitting my head. One important difference between the two screenings was that my first was on Halloween, and many more people — nearly everyone — in the theatre had dressed appropriately for the occasion in makeup and fishnets and, in some cases, pretty much just lingerie. But while it wasn't the first time I had gone to a midnight screening, it was the first time I had gone to one with a shadow cast: a group of extra-dedicated fans reenacting the film as it projected behind them.

I knew these shows existed, again, thanks to how Rocky's underground culture has been well-documented in more mainstream culture – as in Perks of Being a Wallflower, where it appears as a sort of safe haven for high school outcasts. As the show went on and actors and actresses of various body types, in contrast to the thin stars on the screen, went through various states of undress, that idea of a safe space seemed more relevant. Everybody seemed very comfortable — even the audience was encouraged to participate in an underwear run, which the majority did. Rocky Horror is a pretty notoriously jarring and sometimes offensive movie, but has the community surrounding it become a forum for body positivity somewhere along the way?

"That can mean different things to different activists. That's generally a term that's used by fat activists, though somewhat scholars as well, to talk about kind of a claiming of one's own body," Amy Farrell, Professor of Women's and Gender studies at Dickinson College and author of the book Fat Shame, explains. "In a fat studies context or a fat activist context, that's really used to talk about the ways that the fat body — so someone with a fat body — is often shamed ... So body positivity is challenging that and claiming one's own body, whatever size it is, so that might be a thin body or that might be a fat body ... to say that my body is fine the way it is."

As a very activist-driven philosophy, body positivity is both social and personal, and communities naturally form around it. "Body positivity is about encouraging people to cultivate positive relationships with their body," explains Cat Pause, an activist on the board of the journal Fat Studies. "For me, as a fat activist, I am more interested in encouraging people to accept a diversity in body sizes as natural."

Rocky Horror shadow casts with plus-size performers reenacting the scantily-clad antics of the film would certainly seem to portray a positive body relationship, and those involved in these communities are nothing but enthusiastic about their experiences.

"I keep doing Rocky because I can go out there and rock it. I am a big girl and I accept that. It doesn't stop me from wearing lingerie and dancing around in my underwear," says Leandra Lynn, who performs in a shadow cast located in Washington, D.C., The Sonic Transducers. "I have gotten cheered and applauded. Audience members have told me that I am gorgeous, and it's because I own my body and refuse to feel like I have to apologize for it."
Lynn has been involved with Rocky for almost nine years, and explains that it is the community itself which has been an integral source of encouragement for her own body positivity.

"I know I couldn't have felt this way without Rocky. Before Rocky, I was so shy and embarrassed about myself. There's just no place for that in Rocky."
Other cast members share similar views, and say that the experience has been the norm within their own circle of the shadow cast community, both for the cast and for the audience.

"Some of our own performers have mentioned gaining extensive confidence in their own bodies and appearance after performing," says Niusha Nawab, who regularly plays the title role of Rocky in the Sonic Transducers. "The underwear run is part of what makes it a 'forum' for body positivity. We take the whole show to show the audience how it's OK to be declothed in public and to appreciate what you have, then we give them an opportunity to explore those feelings themselves, asking them to strip down to their skivvies and run about a movie theatre. It's a challenge for them."

At the same time, Nawab points out the importance of not making people uncomfortable in the wrong way. "Sometimes we get people who are unwilling to participate," he says. "We don't force or pressure them to do anything."

Fat positivity in the Rocky Horror community extends beyond the fan community. In the 2000 Broadway revival of the musical, the roles of Eddie and Dr. Scott were played by Orange Is The New Black actress Lea DeLaria, whose own material as a comedian has notably covered fat stigma.

"I've always thought that Rocky was a very comfortable place for fatties," DeLaria explains. "I'm very comfortable in my own skin, and I think that's a gift that I give fat people, and I certainly am told that on the street by people who are fat. That I'm the first kind of positive image of a fat person that they've ever seen, and it made them feel better about themselves."

Despite the body positive experiences Rocky Horror communities enjoy today, Rocky Horror shadow casts have a history of not always being so accepting.
"When I think about Rocky Horror, and the times I have seen it with a shadow cast ... there is usually only one body type represented," Pause says of her own experiences. "With the exception of Eddie (who is a fat male — and carries male privilege) and possibly Magenta (who can be larger than the other females/women on stage — but still not too large)."

Although such stigma has existed within Rocky Horror's community despite its proudly misfit attitudes, it has been challenged over time. Angel Martine joined a shadow cast when he moved to Austin, Texas in the '80s, and played a part in this shift from the limited body representations into a community more recognizable as the body positive one it has become.

"You had to wear a blonde wig to play Janet if you weren't blonde, gender bending was pretty much confined to special shows, and if you were over a certain size, you were never going to play anything but Magenta, Eddie, Dr. Scott, or the Criminologist. That part I was never happy about," Martine explains. "I changed the rules (unwritten but pretty ironclad for years) when I ended up cast director because I had seen so many people play parts really well and enjoy them on a gender bender night that I knew they wouldn't be cast for on a regular basis. ... Occasionally people in the audience made boorish comments, but that hasn't happened in a long time."

And while Martine has witnessed improvement in the Rocky Horror community itself, society hasn't progressed as quickly.

"I think our society is beginning to become more open-minded and accepting of us, but fat people are one of the few groups people can still bash and mock publicly and not be called on it."

If the Rocky Horror community is not just body positive, but ahead of the curve, then is there some legitimacy to the idea that the Rocky Horror community somehow became a safe space for body positivity?

"The folks who do the Time Warp are this fantastic array of sizes, wearing tails and party hats, happily doing the steps, pelvic thrust and all, and entering an altered reality because of it. I always looked for the fat people in the group. They're there," says Susan Stinson, a novelist whose work focuses on fat and queer characters. "Brad and Janet are allowed to enter this world: beginners welcome."

At the same time, Rocky Horror has never been the easiest film to get into, and its potential as a safe space might carry that weight as well.

"It is a very comfortable space for 'freaks' but it is probably a bit off putting for the 'Brad' and 'Janets' of the world who might be taken aback at the radical expression taking place," says Nat Pyle, who studies gender and sexuality at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "For the freaks that go regularly I have no doubt that the space has therapeutic value for them. It rejuvenates a sense of verve and lust for expression that then many take with them into their daily lives where they might be ostracized for the very thing that in the Rocky community they are celebrated for."

While often connected with fat acceptance and fat activism, body positivity is not a term limited to a person's weight. The idea of encouraging comfort with people's bodies also resonates with the LGBT community, especially for transgender and transsexual persons. When DeLaria played Eddie and Dr. Scott in the 2000 Broadway revival, she became the first woman to play the male roles.

"I personally just think that it brought us a little bit more into the 21st century, you know, challenging gender norms," DeLaria explains. "I think that what we did was we took that transvestite thing maybe just a step further than they'd ever seen it done before."

Challenging gender norms has always been an important element of Rocky, much more so than mainstream culture has as a whole.

"Western Culture has inundated individuals with images of what has been put on a pedestal as an 'ideal body type' which is thin and gender specific," Pyle explains. "In the case of people with gender non-conforming bodies, there is also an alienation that takes place as these individuals don't see themselves as having a place within society."

Before joining a shadow cast in Austin, Martine started attending Rocky Horror screenings in the late 70s in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he experienced such alienation.

"At the time, Corpus Christi was a very conservative, religious city that sort of tended to eat its young, and we Rocky kids were mostly outsiders there, the 'different' ones who were bullied, told we were going to hell, and considered 'weird,'" Martine describes. "It was our safe place ... but not always, since we had to contend with rednecks yelling 'Faggots!' at us and throwing eggs, tomatoes, beer, etc at us during the show."

Despite the varying levels of acceptance seen throughout its history, Rocky Horror seems to have always offered an important sense of community, one willing to progress and better itself.

"Safe spaces for fat bodies, trans bodies, etc., are pretty rare," Pause explains. "I do believe that Rocky Horror is/has become a safe space for many people ... I'm honestly not sure how this has happened."

While others are more hesitant to deem Rocky a "safe space," many believe it does have a unique and supportive quality.

"I have a lot of concern about the idea of 'safe space' ... But I will say that I think Rocky Horror is a reclaimed space. The movie is indeed sometimes jarring and/or uncomfortable, and a concerted effort has been made to take the sting out of the hard parts," says S. Bear Bergman, a transgender contributor to the Fat Studies Reader. "Body positivity boils down to the same things for fat people, trans people, and also all other kinds of people - it means pursuing what will make you feel most well, regardless of conflicting social or cultural imperatives about how your body is 'supposed to' be."

So despite its sometimes "rocky" history, Rocky Horror fans have made a supportive, body-positive community — out of shouting awful things at an awful, but lovably awful, film.

"The whole show is about embracing who we are for what we are and not to be ashamed of ourselves," Pyle says. "To hear someone chastise another about weight or to tell a boy he's too femme or a girl she's too butch would counteract the overarching sentiment of 'Don't dream it, Be it!'"

What is James Franco doing?

People started asking this question, in earnest, somewhere around the time he went on General Hospital in 2009. Up until then, he'd been a young actor whose path was relatively normal: he was on Freaks & Geeks, and in Never Been Kissed, and he played James Dean on cable. He was in the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies, and then into Apatow country. Occasional forays into super-artsy stuff like films that showed in museums? No big deal. Nothing you wouldn't see from, say, Ethan Hawke or somebody like that. Swerves between, say, Pineapple Express and Milk, but that happens. Mork wound up in Good Morning, Vietnam, after all.

But then: General Hospital.

Appearances in mainstream stoner comedies are one thing, when it comes to changing up the highness of your brow and toying with the expectations people have of what you would and wouldn't do. But ... a soap? A real, straight-up soap? The same one Luke and Laura were on? Even knowing that he called the appearance a form of performance art, it continued to raise the question...

What is James Franco doing?

Right now, he's releasing his first alleged novel, Actors Anonymous, but we'll get back to that.

It's not like he needs another line of work. He has a band. He writes short stories. He hosted the Oscars. He was roasted on Comedy Central. He's taken many, many classes — and taught some, too. He makes offbeat art and appears in other people's offbeat art. He's played a hot guy on single-woman network sitcoms (both Tina Fey's and Mindy Kaling's).

At the time of a 2010 profile in New York Magazine, the question Franco predicted would be asked about him — and the writer told him was already being asked — was whether he was spreading himself too thin. But in fact, by doing so much, Franco may have achieved something that's almost impossible: he has no meaningful image other than as himself. There is nothing James Franco could do at this point that would move the needle.

If you're not in the habit of watching MTV's Catfish, which ends its second season Tuesday night with a new episode and a reunion special, you might be surprised by how many interesting questions it raises.

Of course, you might be even more surprised by how blithely it ignores them.

Catfish as a television show is spun off from Catfish the 2010 documentary, in which handsome smoothie Nev Schulman (the kind of handsome smoothie who's very into how handsome and smooth he is) fell for a gorgeous woman online and then found out that it was a ruse by a substantially older, sadder, plainer woman impersonating a version of her own daughter. A lot of people questioned the veracity of some or all of the events in Catfish, but that didn't prevent it from sparking a lot of conversation.

So MTV, of course, made it into a TV show where Nev and his friend Max — and Max's utterly unnecessary little point-and-shoot camera, which he carries around constantly but could be fired into the sun without affecting the show at all — go around and visit other people who are in online relationships to, the show claims, help them learn the truth about whether the object of their affection is what he or she claims to be.

The structure of any given episode is that Nev and Max meet the Fished Person, who is earnest and hopeful and in love. Fished Person mentions a few obvious red flags — they've never video chatted with the Beloved, the Beloved has canceled three different phone numbers, the Beloved asks for money, whatever. Nev and Max look meaningfully at each other, because they've concluded that This Sounds Fishy (pun intended).

And then Nev and Max do some sleuthing, which literally consists essentially of using Google and Facebook to poke around, much like you might if you undertook such a project yourself and had a fourth-grade knowledge of the internet. They track down the Beloved and take the Fished Person to meet him or her. Usually, one or more of the following things happens:

1. The Beloved is much larger than the photos suggested. (This is the case for probably at least half, if not three-quarters, of episodes, to the point where Lovable Or Size 24? would make a decent alternate title if they ever need one.)

2. The Beloved is actually male [or female] when The Beloved was believed to be female [or male].

3. The Beloved is socially awkward.

4. The Beloved is in some other way not at all what was advertised.

Max and Nev and the Fished Person spend a lot of time saying HOW DARE YOU! to the Beloved, and the Beloved weakly apologizes and pleads insecurity or fear or tragedy. Max and Nev cart off the Fished Person, who vows not to give up on love but, in most cases, is through with the Beloved.

The moral is always the same: Lying is terrible, and liars are a menace, and it's easy to be taken advantage on the internet, so make sure you use Google at least as well as a fourth-grader.

The focus is consistently — perhaps not unerringly, but consistently — on the Fished Person as victim and the Beloved as betrayer. Over and over, the same sadness comes over Max and Nev as they realize they must break it to yet another completely innocent victim that they are just too good and pure for this earth.

Here are the kinds of questions that are almost never asked:

Why were you so eager to believe that a person who had only what looked like modeling photos on her Facebook page was exactly who she said she was?

Why did you ignore every sign that this wasn't on the up and up, and do you think it's possible that you have an unrealistic set of expectations?

If this person had told you the truth about who he really was, and had shown you a real photo, would you have given him the time of day? If not, does that provoke any remotely interesting thoughts in you about how you process first impressions?

Would you have told this girl that your affection for her was contingent on her appearance if she had asked you? If you would not, were you not leading her on as well?

And this question is not put to the audience: This person believed her real self would be rejected out of hand, so she presented a false self. What do you think about the fact that she was exactly right that her real self would be rejected out of hand? If we all agree that this is in no way an excuse for lying, can we still sit with it and understand that it probably hurts to live that way, and that perhaps the desire to be loved overwhelmed the desire to be ethical, which is perhaps not as open-and-shut as Nev and Max suggest?

Maybe it's not surprising that Nev, whose entire bio is based around feeling victimized because his hot internet girlfriend didn't turn out to be as advertised, isn't much interested in turning things around on the Fished Person to investigate how their expectations and wants and small dishonesties allowed the entire situation to continue.

It's sad, though, that so often, the show has it right in the palm of its hand, the fact that Everybody Hurts, Everybody Cries, and so forth, and while it often allows the Beloved to make a sincere apology followed by a sort of repenting dignity (he's decided to stop lying forever, hooray!), it rarely takes any interest in interrogating how, exactly, a Fished Person winds up falling in love with someone who never was. Instead, it retains the smug sense that every heartbreak has a victim and a perpetrator, and while the perpetrator may apologize and make good, she'll be the perpetrator forever.

Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.

Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.

Women in Muruganantham's village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.

The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families' meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.

A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virmani points out, the product's traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.

Women whose self-help groups buy Muruganantham's machine can make more than a dollar a day — close to a global poverty line — selling the pads.

Sanitary napkins from global companies are in Indian stores for about $1.50 for an eight-pack. The ones from Murugantham's machine wholesale at about 25 cents for an eight-pack; the women's groups can sell them at whatever retail price they choose, retaining the profit. The cost of the machines ranges from about $1,200 to $6,000, depending on the features.

"The primary impulse when people are struggling to make a living is either, 'How can I make more money?,' or 'How can I save more money?'," Virmani said. "If you address those needs, your innovation stands a better chance to be adopted, to spread."

The Picture Show

Rural Indian School Profits Off Another Kind Of I-Pad

JPMorgan Chase says it will cover Social Security and Welfare payments for its customers if the government goes into default or the shutdown continues.

If nothing else, it's good public relations for a company which hasn't had much lately.

The bank spent nearly 40 percent of the company's revenue over the last quarter — more than $9 billion — on legal expenses. Money paid to fight government investigations and on fines.

The Wall Street Journal reports JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon is pledging to let customers draw on their accounts for free to cover Social Security and Welfare payments if the government is unable to send them starting later this month.

"It's a very smart idea by a bank that's being punished in the press," says consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

JPMorgan would almost certainly get its money back once Congress comes to an agreement.

Even if there's no agreement, Alex Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute says it's unlikely the government would stop paying Social Security and Welfare. But he says it's reassuring for people who need that money.

"I guess it won't be necessary but you know whenever people are worried about contingencies, to have some kind of hedge or insurance is good," he says.

If it comes to it, JPMorgan Chase would temporarily lay out between $6 billion and $8 billion. Plus it would gain some good will.

Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.

Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.

Women in Muruganantham's village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.

The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families' meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.

A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virmani points out, the product's traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.

Women whose self-help groups buy Muruganantham's machine can make more than a dollar a day — close to a global poverty line — selling the pads.

Sanitary napkins from global companies are in Indian stores for about $1.50 for an eight-pack. The ones from Murugantham's machine wholesale at about 25 cents for an eight-pack; the women's groups can sell them at whatever retail price they choose, retaining the profit. The cost of the machines ranges from about $1,200 to $6,000, depending on the features.

"The primary impulse when people are struggling to make a living is either, 'How can I make more money?,' or 'How can I save more money?'," Virmani said. "If you address those needs, your innovation stands a better chance to be adopted, to spread."

The Picture Show

Rural Indian School Profits Off Another Kind Of I-Pad

The cult following behind The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been largely underground, but has been no secret. Fans have been going to midnight screenings of the film since 1975 to do The Time Warp again (and again). Presumably, that joke has also been written again (and again).

But something new occurred to me last time I saw Rocky Horror. Dragging some friends who hadn't seen the movie before to a midnight screening (the poor souls), I remembered my own first experience as a college freshman, somewhere between amused and alarmed by the pieces of toast hitting my head. One important difference between the two screenings was that my first was on Halloween, and many more people — nearly everyone — in the theatre had dressed appropriately for the occasion in makeup and fishnets and, in some cases, pretty much just lingerie. But while it wasn't the first time I had gone to a midnight screening, it was the first time I had gone to one with a shadow cast: a group of extra-dedicated fans reenacting the film as it projected behind them.

I knew these shows existed, again, thanks to how Rocky's underground culture has been well-documented in more mainstream culture – as in Perks of Being a Wallflower, where it appears as a sort of safe haven for high school outcasts. As the show went on and actors and actresses of various body types, in contrast to the thin stars on the screen, went through various states of undress, that idea of a safe space seemed more relevant. Everybody seemed very comfortable — even the audience was encouraged to participate in an underwear run, which the majority did. Rocky Horror is a pretty notoriously jarring and sometimes offensive movie, but has the community surrounding it become a forum for body positivity somewhere along the way?

"That can mean different things to different activists. That's generally a term that's used by fat activists, though somewhat scholars as well, to talk about kind of a claiming of one's own body," Amy Farrell, Professor of Women's and Gender studies at Dickinson College and author of the book Fat Shame, explains. "In a fat studies context or a fat activist context, that's really used to talk about the ways that the fat body — so someone with a fat body — is often shamed ... So body positivity is challenging that and claiming one's own body, whatever size it is, so that might be a thin body or that might be a fat body ... to say that my body is fine the way it is."

As a very activist-driven philosophy, body positivity is both social and personal, and communities naturally form around it. "Body positivity is about encouraging people to cultivate positive relationships with their body," explains Cat Pause, an activist on the board of the journal Fat Studies. "For me, as a fat activist, I am more interested in encouraging people to accept a diversity in body sizes as natural."

Rocky Horror shadow casts with plus-size performers reenacting the scantily-clad antics of the film would certainly seem to portray a positive body relationship, and those involved in these communities are nothing but enthusiastic about their experiences.

"I keep doing Rocky because I can go out there and rock it. I am a big girl and I accept that. It doesn't stop me from wearing lingerie and dancing around in my underwear," says Leandra Lynn, who performs in a shadow cast located in Washington, D.C., The Sonic Transducers. "I have gotten cheered and applauded. Audience members have told me that I am gorgeous, and it's because I own my body and refuse to feel like I have to apologize for it."
Lynn has been involved with Rocky for almost nine years, and explains that it is the community itself which has been an integral source of encouragement for her own body positivity.

"I know I couldn't have felt this way without Rocky. Before Rocky, I was so shy and embarrassed about myself. There's just no place for that in Rocky."
Other cast members share similar views, and say that the experience has been the norm within their own circle of the shadow cast community, both for the cast and for the audience.

"Some of our own performers have mentioned gaining extensive confidence in their own bodies and appearance after performing," says Niusha Nawab, who regularly plays the title role of Rocky in the Sonic Transducers. "The underwear run is part of what makes it a 'forum' for body positivity. We take the whole show to show the audience how it's OK to be declothed in public and to appreciate what you have, then we give them an opportunity to explore those feelings themselves, asking them to strip down to their skivvies and run about a movie theatre. It's a challenge for them."

At the same time, Nawab points out the importance of not making people uncomfortable in the wrong way. "Sometimes we get people who are unwilling to participate," he says. "We don't force or pressure them to do anything."

Fat positivity in the Rocky Horror community extends beyond the fan community. In the 2000 Broadway revival of the musical, the roles of Eddie and Dr. Scott were played by Orange Is The New Black actress Lea DeLaria, whose own material as a comedian has notably covered fat stigma.

"I've always thought that Rocky was a very comfortable place for fatties," DeLaria explains. "I'm very comfortable in my own skin, and I think that's a gift that I give fat people, and I certainly am told that on the street by people who are fat. That I'm the first kind of positive image of a fat person that they've ever seen, and it made them feel better about themselves."

Despite the body positive experiences Rocky Horror communities enjoy today, Rocky Horror shadow casts have a history of not always being so accepting.
"When I think about Rocky Horror, and the times I have seen it with a shadow cast ... there is usually only one body type represented," Pause says of her own experiences. "With the exception of Eddie (who is a fat male — and carries male privilege) and possibly Magenta (who can be larger than the other females/women on stage — but still not too large)."

Although such stigma has existed within Rocky Horror's community despite its proudly misfit attitudes, it has been challenged over time. Angel Martine joined a shadow cast when he moved to Austin, Texas in the '80s, and played a part in this shift from the limited body representations into a community more recognizable as the body positive one it has become.

"You had to wear a blonde wig to play Janet if you weren't blonde, gender bending was pretty much confined to special shows, and if you were over a certain size, you were never going to play anything but Magenta, Eddie, Dr. Scott, or the Criminologist. That part I was never happy about," Martine explains. "I changed the rules (unwritten but pretty ironclad for years) when I ended up cast director because I had seen so many people play parts really well and enjoy them on a gender bender night that I knew they wouldn't be cast for on a regular basis. ... Occasionally people in the audience made boorish comments, but that hasn't happened in a long time."

And while Martine has witnessed improvement in the Rocky Horror community itself, society hasn't progressed as quickly.

"I think our society is beginning to become more open-minded and accepting of us, but fat people are one of the few groups people can still bash and mock publicly and not be called on it."

If the Rocky Horror community is not just body positive, but ahead of the curve, then is there some legitimacy to the idea that the Rocky Horror community somehow became a safe space for body positivity?

"The folks who do the Time Warp are this fantastic array of sizes, wearing tails and party hats, happily doing the steps, pelvic thrust and all, and entering an altered reality because of it. I always looked for the fat people in the group. They're there," says Susan Stinson, a novelist whose work focuses on fat and queer characters. "Brad and Janet are allowed to enter this world: beginners welcome."

At the same time, Rocky Horror has never been the easiest film to get into, and its potential as a safe space might carry that weight as well.

"It is a very comfortable space for 'freaks' but it is probably a bit off putting for the 'Brad' and 'Janets' of the world who might be taken aback at the radical expression taking place," says Nat Pyle, who studies gender and sexuality at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "For the freaks that go regularly I have no doubt that the space has therapeutic value for them. It rejuvenates a sense of verve and lust for expression that then many take with them into their daily lives where they might be ostracized for the very thing that in the Rocky community they are celebrated for."

While often connected with fat acceptance and fat activism, body positivity is not a term limited to a person's weight. The idea of encouraging comfort with people's bodies also resonates with the LGBT community, especially for transgender and transsexual persons. When DeLaria played Eddie and Dr. Scott in the 2000 Broadway revival, she became the first woman to play the male roles.

"I personally just think that it brought us a little bit more into the 21st century, you know, challenging gender norms," DeLaria explains. "I think that what we did was we took that transvestite thing maybe just a step further than they'd ever seen it done before."

Challenging gender norms has always been an important element of Rocky, much more so than mainstream culture has as a whole.

"Western Culture has inundated individuals with images of what has been put on a pedestal as an 'ideal body type' which is thin and gender specific," Pyle explains. "In the case of people with gender non-conforming bodies, there is also an alienation that takes place as these individuals don't see themselves as having a place within society."

Before joining a shadow cast in Austin, Martine started attending Rocky Horror screenings in the late 70s in Corpus Christi, Texas, where he experienced such alienation.

"At the time, Corpus Christi was a very conservative, religious city that sort of tended to eat its young, and we Rocky kids were mostly outsiders there, the 'different' ones who were bullied, told we were going to hell, and considered 'weird,'" Martine describes. "It was our safe place ... but not always, since we had to contend with rednecks yelling 'Faggots!' at us and throwing eggs, tomatoes, beer, etc at us during the show."

Despite the varying levels of acceptance seen throughout its history, Rocky Horror seems to have always offered an important sense of community, one willing to progress and better itself.

"Safe spaces for fat bodies, trans bodies, etc., are pretty rare," Pause explains. "I do believe that Rocky Horror is/has become a safe space for many people ... I'm honestly not sure how this has happened."

While others are more hesitant to deem Rocky a "safe space," many believe it does have a unique and supportive quality.

"I have a lot of concern about the idea of 'safe space' ... But I will say that I think Rocky Horror is a reclaimed space. The movie is indeed sometimes jarring and/or uncomfortable, and a concerted effort has been made to take the sting out of the hard parts," says S. Bear Bergman, a transgender contributor to the Fat Studies Reader. "Body positivity boils down to the same things for fat people, trans people, and also all other kinds of people - it means pursuing what will make you feel most well, regardless of conflicting social or cultural imperatives about how your body is 'supposed to' be."

So despite its sometimes "rocky" history, Rocky Horror fans have made a supportive, body-positive community — out of shouting awful things at an awful, but lovably awful, film.

"The whole show is about embracing who we are for what we are and not to be ashamed of ourselves," Pyle says. "To hear someone chastise another about weight or to tell a boy he's too femme or a girl she's too butch would counteract the overarching sentiment of 'Don't dream it, Be it!'"

Arunachalam Muruganantham had his light bulb moment when he was 29 years old, and holding a sanitary napkin for the first time.

Examining the cotton pads he was buying as a gift for his new wife, the Indian entrepreneur realized that the multinational company that produced them was probably spending cents on raw materials, and making a huge profit.

Women in Muruganantham's village in Tamil Nadu, including his wife, would often forego these expensive pads for rags they used repeatedly through their cycles. Even more uncomfortably, sometimes they utilized husks or leaves during menstruation.

The exorbitant cost of the foreign-made pads cut into their families' meal budget. Given a choice between fresh pads and fresh milk, they chose the latter.

A new movie, Menstrual Man, documents how, at great personal cost, Muruganantham created a cheap machine to address persistent menstrual hygiene challenges for rural women on the subcontinent. But, as director Amit Virmani points out, the product's traction may have more to do with social entrepreneurship than with health concerns.

Women whose self-help groups buy Muruganantham's machine can make more than a dollar a day — close to a global poverty line — selling the pads.

Sanitary napkins from global companies are in Indian stores for about $1.50 for an eight-pack. The ones from Murugantham's machine wholesale at about 25 cents for an eight-pack; the women's groups can sell them at whatever retail price they choose, retaining the profit. The cost of the machines ranges from about $1,200 to $6,000, depending on the features.

"The primary impulse when people are struggling to make a living is either, 'How can I make more money?,' or 'How can I save more money?'," Virmani said. "If you address those needs, your innovation stands a better chance to be adopted, to spread."

The Picture Show

Rural Indian School Profits Off Another Kind Of I-Pad

Three months ago, a train carrying American crude oil derailed and exploded in the heart of Lac-Mgantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.

Local leaders now say recovering from the disaster will take much more time, effort, and money than they expected.

Industry experts say the accident could change the way oil and other dangerous chemicals are transported on trains in North America.

An Empty Village

"It's been left for weeks, everybody quit so fast," says Robert Mercier, head of Lac-Mgantic's environment department, as he walks down his town's main street.

He grew up here. In a normal year, he says, the street cafes and tourist shops would have been busy with visitors who come to see the colorful fall leaves. Now, it's a ghost town.

People fled in the early morning of July 6 as massive fireballs rolled into the sky. Mercier says he was sleeping in an apartment nearby when the first tank car erupted in flames.

Enlarge image i

As a bilateral security agreement between the U.S. and Afghanistan begins an approval process, the Taliban's leader urged Afghans to reject the deal, calling it a colonial arrangement with elements of slavery.

The message came in an email on the eve of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday. In it, Mullah Mohammad Omar told Afghans to keep fighting, as NPR's Sean Carberry reports for our Newscast unit:

"In an email statement, Mullah Omar calls the draft security deal a colonial agreement and a document of slavery that will only prolong war in Afghanistan. He says that the Afghan people must continue to oppose the Afghan government and foreign powers.

"Omar again calls on the Afghan people to reject next year's presidential election, calling it a western exercise. President Karzai continues to push for reconciliation with the Taliban and claims that Afghanistan will not compromise human rights to entice them to negotiate.

"Yet, the Taliban statement calls for an Islamic Emirate where women wear the veil and the sexes don't mingle."

Three months ago, a train carrying American crude oil derailed and exploded in the heart of Lac-Mgantic, Quebec, killing 47 people.

Local leaders now say recovering from the disaster will take much more time, effort, and money than they expected.

Industry experts say the accident could change the way oil and other dangerous chemicals are transported on trains in North America.

An Empty Village

"It's been left for weeks, everybody quit so fast," says Robert Mercier, head of Lac-Mgantic's environment department, as he walks down his town's main street.

He grew up here. In a normal year, he says, the street cafes and tourist shops would have been busy with visitors who come to see the colorful fall leaves. Now, it's a ghost town.

People fled in the early morning of July 6 as massive fireballs rolled into the sky. Mercier says he was sleeping in an apartment nearby when the first tank car erupted in flames.

Enlarge image i

New homes are back in a big way — literally. This summer, a typical new house in Phoenix was more than 20 percent larger than a resale home as builders across the country add more space to accommodate post-recession lifestyles.

Take Jacque Ruggles' family, for example. Four women from three generations live under one roof.

"I'm the matriarch," Ruggles says. "I'm grandma."

Ruggles makes the monthly $1,789 mortgage payment on the 2,900-square-foot home in Gilbert, Ariz., which she bought new about a year and a half ago. Her daughter Marci Dusseault lives here, too, along with her college-aged daughter named Jamie.

"I'll eventually move out, but right now it's nice to not have to worry about a lot of bills and stuff, and I can focus on school," says Jamie, a student at Mesa Community College.

But the family affair did not stop there. Jamie's older sister moved in last November. Chelsie, 22, had been living on her own for a while, but ...

Family Matters: The Money Squeeze

For many online and other small businesses, getting a loan or a big cash advance is tough. Banks and other traditional lenders are often leery of those without years of financial statements and solid credit scores.

But some lenders and other financial services companies are beginning to assess credit risk differently — using criteria you might not expect.

Jeffrey Grossman is an acupuncturist in Bellingham, Wash. He's also a small businessman. He creates media marketing materials for other acupuncturists hoping to expand their practice.

Over the years, Grossman has borrowed money from family and from bank lines of credit, but recently, he needed a quick infusion of extra cash. He turned to a company called Kabbage, an online financing firm for small businesses.

He found the concept interesting, but the application also made him skeptical. "They wanted all this information about QuickBooks [accounting software] and UPS accounts and all this stuff," he says.

Such details, says Kathryn Petralia, a co-founder of Kabbage, allows the company to "effectively build a financial statement." The firm provides financing to small businesses — such as online merchants — that banks typically don't lend to. Petralia says Kabbage uses real-time and verifiable data from things like UPS shipments, eBay and PayPal accounts to assess creditworthiness.

"We can see historical data and current data, and we can see tomorrow's data. And we are looking at information that could be as detailed as what people are actually buying from you," Petralia says.

And she says that can be more useful than static financial documents that banks and other traditional lenders typically rely on.

“ Are customers saying that you are doing a good job? Are consumers complaining about you?

JPMorgan Chase says it will cover Social Security and Welfare payments for its customers if the government goes into default or the shutdown continues.

If nothing else, it's good public relations for a company which hasn't had much lately.

The bank spent nearly 40 percent of the company's revenue over the last quarter — more than $9 billion — on legal expenses. Money paid to fight government investigations and on fines.

The Wall Street Journal reports JPMorgan's CEO Jamie Dimon is pledging to let customers draw on their accounts for free to cover Social Security and Welfare payments if the government is unable to send them starting later this month.

"It's a very smart idea by a bank that's being punished in the press," says Consumer advocate Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. Public Interest Research Group likes the move.

JPMorgan would almost certainly get its money back once Washington comes to an agreement.

Even if there's no agreement, Alex Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute says it's unlikely the government would stop paying Social Security and Welfare. But he says it's reassuring for people who need that money.

"I guess it won't be necessary but you know whenever people are worried about contingencies, to have some kind of hedge or insurance is good," he says.

If it comes to it, JPMorgan Chase would temporarily lay out between $6 billion and $8 billion. Plus it would gain some good will.

50 years ago today — October 14, 1963 — President Kennedy hosted a ceremony in the Rose Garden, and I was there. 14-year-old me, with my family. This was a fluke. The President had cracked a politically uncool Mafia joke a few days before. Not wanting to offend Italian-American voters, the White House quickly mounted a charm offensive — inviting government workers like my dad, with Italian surnames like Mondello, to celebrate a great Italian explorer, with the president himself.

He was expansive, I remember, in his welcome, introducing a few prominent Italian-Americans from his administration and speaking of his own fondness for sailing, and respect for Columbus as a great navigator. This was, let's note, a comparatively innocent era, especially when it came to the impact of Europeans on the American continent. My history classes did not mention Native Americans much in connection with Columbus, and neither did Mr. Kennedy. Instead he spoke of "first voyages" being "the more difficult, whether it's going into space, going to the bottom of the ocean, building a better country here."

There were many kind words about an Italian heritage I'd barely given any thought, and a good deal of laughter, despite the fact that it was an unwise ethnic joke that had brought us all together. He introduced the Spanish ambassador, for instance, with the quip about Spain having "something to do with this voyage."

Two days of talks between U.S. and Afghan officials have yielded a partial security agreement between the two countries. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Hamid Karzai held discussions Friday and Saturday on a deal to keep the U.S. military in the country beyond the 2014 pullout date for most U.S. and NATO troops.

The next step for the tentative bilateral security agreement is for it to be reviewed by Afghanistan's parliament and the Loya Jirga, an assembly of public and tribal leaders.

Under the deal, as many as 10,000 U.S. troops could be deployed in Afghanistan after the NATO mission ends. It would also represent a shift in the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, according to Kerry.

"We will not be conducting combat operations," he said of the deal. "We will be engaged in training, assisting, and equipping the Afghan forces who will defend their country."

As we reported Saturday, the agreement's main challenges were concerns over Afghanistan's sovereignty and assurances that the U.S. would act as a protector should the country come under attack.

Those delicate issues have been addressed in the current draft agreement, reports NPR's Sean Carberry, who's in Kabul. But another snag still persists.

"One thing that was not included in the deal is the U.S. demand that it have jurisdiction to prosecute any American troops remaining after 2014 who commit a crime," Sean says in a report for our Newscast unit. "Karzai says that issue will be turned over to a council of elders for a decision. Kerry says if it's not approved, the entire deal is off, and all U.S. troops will leave the country."