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Ukrainian forces were reportedly advancing on rebel positions near the key eastern town of Donetsk on Saturday, as they try to retake the separatist stronghold.

Donetsk is the region where Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down on July 17, killing nearly 300 people. Pro-Russian rebels have been blamed for downing the plane and they have hampered international efforts to access the site of the wreckage.

The Washington Post says: "Government troops are currently battling rebels in the nearby town of Horlivka and have blocked all roads leading out of Donetsk to prevent the insurgents from replenishing supplies and fighters or escaping, said Andriy Lysenko of the Ukrainian Security and Defense Council. Once Horlivka is under Ukrainian control again, he said, the army will move to retake Donetsk, a city where pro-Russian separatists have held sway for months while declaring it the Donetsk People's Republic. The Ukrainian military has ousted rebels from 10 surrounding villages and towns in the past week."

According to the AP, the move comes "as Ukrainian forces appear to have gained some momentum recently by retaking control of territory from the rebels. But Russia also appears to becoming more involved in the fighting, with the U.S. and Ukraine accusing Moscow of moving heavily artillery across the border to the rebels."

As we reported earlier this week, the U.S. has said it has "new evidence" that Russian forces were lobbing artillery across the border and that Moscow was planning to ship powerful multiple rocket launcher systems to the pro-Russian separatists fighting in eastern Ukraine.

NPR's Corey Flintoff, reporting from Donetsk, says Ukrainian officials have been accusing Russian troops for days of firing across the border

"The allegations come as separatists appear to be losing ground in the face of a Ukrainian offensive," Corey says.

Amazon is now twenty years old!

In 1994, Jeff Bezos walked out of the Wall Street hedge fund where he worked after they declined to invest in his idea, and began to sell books out of his garage.

Today, Amazon is a retail and entertainment empire, selling books and shoes, computers, overcoats, band saws, sofa beds, kimchi, canned beans, artwork, wine, grills, generators, drones, kitty litter, pool filter pumps and garden gnomes, etc., etc., and more.

Type in "kitchen sink"- you'll find dozens.

Bezos chose the name Amazon, incidentally, because it begins with an A, to pop up to the top of alphabetical listings, and because it has a Z, to convey that the company would sell everything from A to.

Amazon has become a controversial company as it expands, now producing as well as selling entertainment; even providing cloud storage for the Department of Defense. But we might use Amazon's anniversary as a way to mark how much buying and selling has changed in just twenty years; and how our personal sense of privacy may have changed, too.

Amazon has prospered by amassing enough information to create a commercial portrait of each customer. Algorithms calculate that if we buy, for example, a pair of blue suede shoes, gargle with Cool Mint mouthwash, and listen to Miranda Lambert, we might want to purchase a certain brand of refrigerator one day.

Sometimes, these instantaneous calculations may make you feel like the victim of a peeping Tom. This week, I mentioned my admiration for the movie Lawrence of Arabia on Twitter. When I later went to Amazon to look at a children's book, they had already lined up DVD's of Peter O' Toole movies- and suggested a pair of desert boots.

But there is nothing truly sneaky about this. We agree to let online enterprises absorb the information we can register with each keystroke — what we search for on the web, like or dislike on a social media platform, or simply browse through — and try to mine our curiosity for sales.

There may be a real generational difference in outrage. Older people may squirm to think that their curiosities and interests are being so monitored and measured. Some who have grown up with the web may wonder why older people are so fussy.

Even so, it's a young Australian writer, JR Hennessy, who wrote in The Guardian this week, "We trained ourselves to value Facebook's 'open society' without privacy."

The San Diego Comic-Con is in full swing — celebrating not just comics, but movies, TV, books, video games and really cool costumes. It's called cosplay: The art and science of dressing up like your favorite character.

I've got a confession to make. I'm a cosplayer myself, though without any sewing skills, my costumes are a little hacked together. Luckily for me, there are some truly fantastic sights out on the convention floor, like zombie Teletubbies or an army of Daenerys Targaryens (Daenerii?). And so many Frozen princesses I can't keep track. There are classic Star Trek uniforms, Doctors Who, lady Thors and Lokis in gorgeous armor, and a truly impressive Silver Surfer in head-to-toe body paint that must have taken him hours.

“ The happy faces and everyone complimenting me on the costume, it's just awesome.

Behind all the nerd billionaires and trendy restaurants in today's San Francisco, there is another city, where the most interesting people aren't wearing hoodies — they're wearing spike heels, glitter catsuits and fantastic hair.

We've invited Peaches Christ, Queen of San Francisco Drag Queens, to play a game called "Fuggedaboutit!" Three questions for a drag queen about Queens — that borough of New York City destined to be the next hipster capital now that Brooklyn is old news.

While testing whether a dash of yeast could keep you from getting drunk, we discovered that it's pretty entertaining — and revealing — to track your blood alcohol while drinking.

Using a Breathalyzer, we watched the alcohol in our bodies soar as we drank two beers on empty stomachs. And we noticed there's a place on the curve — about 0.04 or 0.05 BAC — when the buzz is the sweetest.

The quantified self movement has turned monitoring steps, sleep and other activities with technology into a self-improvement pastime. Could the next frontier be alcohol consumption?

It turns out that the breathalyzer industry has been trying to turn us into quantified drinkers for years. And new products on the market are making blood alcohol monitoring even easier by linking it to your smartphone.

One company, BACTrack, has just released a keychain breathalyzer about the size of a lighter for $50.

BACTrack claims its newest product, the Vio, will be a "game changer" for people who want to drink more responsibly. Technology like this, which can help people find out if they're around or over 0.08 BAC, the limit for driving, might even help make a dent in drunk driving rates and the 10,000 related deaths every year, the company's president and CEO Keith Nothacker tells us.

"Previously there was a stigma with alcohol testing, and we've been fighting that stigma," says Nothacker, who started the company in 2001 as a college senior, and is now based in San Francisco. "We want people to talk about their BAC and not be embarrassed."

What Nothacker envisions is that people will use the Vio to beat back peers pressuring them to have another drink or drive under the influence. The BACTrack app that goes with the Vio takes a reading of you BAC after you blow into the device. But it also allows you to text your friends your BAC. "So someone can say, 'I am two drinks in, I'm not meeting you there, here's my BAC,' " Nothacker says.

Other companies have also begun marketing smartphone breathalyzers to quantified self enthusiasts. For example, there's the Breathometer, a device that plugs into the audio jack of the smartphone and connects with an app. It's also about $50.

Nothacker might be right that more breathalyzers in the hands of consumers — rather than just law enforcement — could help bring down consumption of alcohol. But the reading you get will be, at best, a ballpark figure of your actual BAC.

None of the smartphone breathalyzers are as precise or accurate as what the police will use to test your BAC if they pull you over under suspicion of intoxication. According to Nothacker, those devices can compensate for more variables, such as altitude.

But one interesting feature of both the Vio and the Breathometer tells you how long it will take to reach 0.0 BAC from wherever you are over 0. "So if you're drinking late, you'll see that you won't sober up until the next day in a lot of cases," Nothacker says.

But these companies are clear in their marketing materials about one thing: Don't use this tool to decide whether you should "operate a motor vehicle or equipment." And it's never safe to drink any amount of alcohol and drive, partly because there's a huge variation in how alcohol impairs individuals, even at very low BAC.

So if these breathalyzers can't help you decide definitively if you're too drunk to drive, why would you use it?

One public health researcher, who's familiar with the technology, says he thinks these new tools could help people make better decisions.

"The keychain breathalyzer allows people to find out how much they've had to drink objectively. And they can get a pretty good sense of whether it's a good idea to drive," Michael McDonell, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington, tells The Salt. "In study after study, we see that just objectively tracking your use of [a substance] will reduce your use."

And while a super accurate breathalyzer is essential if you're using it to decide whether to send someone to jail, knowing your BAC is 0.041 versus 0.047 is less important for a personal tool, says McDonell.

"If the outcome is to help a person stop using or reduce their use of alcohol, accuracy is less important," he says. "And those expensive devices are never going to get out there to everybody."

McDonell is planning to use the Vio in a study of incentive-based alcohol addiction treatment. He'll give patients the device. They'll measure their BAC and then send it to him through the app. If they blow a zero, they get a reward of some kind.

"It should allow us to deliver alcohol treatment in people's home, without having them come into the clinic. And that's big because we know most people don't come in," he says. It's too far or too time-consuming or they fear the stigma of being there, he says.

Our anecdotal playtime with the the Vio certainly made us more aware of the degree of our intoxication. Soon, we were able to more accurately guess our BAC, which the Vio asks you do to before every measurement.

We also became more aware of just how much the amount of food in your stomach influences the rate at which you absorb alcohol — the more food you eat, and the slower you drink while eating, the slower your BAC will rise. Check out the graphs from our yeast experiment: The variation between three people of about the same age and weight is pretty significant.

But these tools are far from perfect. It turns out that it's a bit awkward to operate both a breathalyzer and a smartphone app in a noisy bar with drunk people around you. And if you're lending the tool to a friend who's never used it before, it can be hard to tell if they're blowing hard enough into the device – the likely cause of several faulty readings of 0.0 one of our friends got with the Vio.

The Vio is also a bit fussy. We got a lot of error messages. And the company recommends you use it at least once a month to keep it moist and in working order. The texting feature is also a bit clunky, and there's some mixed messages with the marketing of the device. If BACTrack is trying to discourage people from going overboard with alcohol, why encourage them to post pictures of their drunk selves on the internet through the app?

And while BACTrack says to wait at least 20 minutes after eating, drinking or smoking before blowing into the device, that can be inconvenient if you're already intoxicated and need a quick reading. And Nothacker notes it can take up to an hour for alcohol to be absorbed, so your BAC could continue to rise for 40 minutes after a reading.

All in all, though, a keychain breathalyzer a handy tool to have around. And we can easily imagine a future where people sign their texts and emails with their BAC: "This email was composed at BAC .06."

Maybe we should even try that here at The Salt: Over and out, with a BAC of 0.0.

Two items that are essential to most Indian households are a bucket and a pitcher. They are to Indians what showers are to Americans, an integral part of the daily ritual of bathing. In a country where you can't count on running water, the vast majority of people bathe using a bucket of water, and a plastic pitcher to pour the water over your head and body.

Like every other Indian I know, I grew up with bucket bathing. But by the time I was 10, indoor showers had started to become more common in bathrooms as did a regular water supply, at least in urban India.

For my younger brother and me, showers were the cool, new way to bathe. It made time in the bathroom much more fun than the bucket bathing ways of the old India. Much to my mother's annoyance, we stayed in the bathroom longer, wasting time and water, as she would put it. As a result, she spent her time yelling at whoever was in the bathroom to hurry up and get out.

When I moved to the United States in my twenties, I was glad to bid goodbye to bucket bathing. I was thrilled to have a hot and cold water supply any time of the day, any time of the year, with no fear of the water running out.

Long hot showers early in the morning quickly became a necessary ritual. Over the 11 years that I spent in the U.S., I conveniently forgot what bucket bathing was like. That is, until this summer, when I was forced to return to that old practice in order to survive the scorching heat of New Delhi.

You see, houses in New Delhi still don't have a 24-hour water supply. The city supplies water once or twice a day, and homeowners store that water in an overhead tank.

But as summer progresses and temperatures rise to 90, then 100, then 110 and beyond, this stored water in the tank heats up. So does the water in the metal pipes that deliver it to your bathroom. The only shower you can have in this brutal weather is a hot shower, or more accurately, a boiling hot shower.

When I first complained about this to a friend, she suggested storing water in buckets overnight to cool it down and using it to bathe the next morning. "That's what I've been doing," she said. "It's the only way to survive the summer."

I was horrified. How could I bathe with just a bucket or two of water? It just didn't seem enough. But then my inner voice spoke up, scolding me for being so bratty. I am an environmental journalist. Shouldn't I be in favor of an option that uses less water — especially since millions of Indians still don't have a regular water supply or even a bathroom. Besides, my friends and parents still bucket bathe, despite having showers, either out of habit or because of the unreliability of the water supply. The voice yelled at me. If they can do it, why couldn't I?

Soon, I had no choice but to try, simply because the water coming out of the faucet was scalding. It didn't matter whether it was seven in the morning or 11 at night. The water was always too hot for a shower.

My first few bucket baths this summer were awkward. I was reluctantly relearning to do something I'd done regularly as a child. But soon, the water pouring down my head and body began to feel comforting. The water was indeed cold and refreshing, a welcome if momentary break from the unbearable heat.

Within a couple of weeks, I'd not only become comfortable with my bucket bathing ritual, I'd even begun to enjoy it.

There is something about pouring pitchers of cold water on yourself that is better than the drizzle of a cold shower. Each pitcherful feels like a sheet of water hitting you at once. It's a bit like standing under a water fall, albeit a very small one. You're startled at first, but the cold water racing down your head and body cools you instantly, releasing you from the stupor of the Delhi summer. And because there is a limited amount of water, I now appreciate every drop in a way that I never appreciated water when I used the shower.

So, for now I've taken to bucket bathing. Although I can't promise I'll stick to it when winter comes around. It's possible that my need to stay warm will make me temporarily abandon my water-saving ways to return to the wasteful practice of long, hot showers.

The Netherlands and Australia — countries that lost large numbers of citizens in last week's downing of Flight MH17 — are planning to send police to eastern Ukraine to help secure the debris field there.

NPR's Corey Flintoff, reporting from the site of the downed Malaysian airliner in Donetsk, says Australian premier Tony Abbott is close to a deal that would allow dozens of police to guard the wreckage site. Corey says, and the Netherlands, which lost 193 of its citizens on MH17, is also negotiating to send unarmed police to the approximately 20-square mile site.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Thursday that he would send 40 unarmed military police to eastern Ukraine "to investigated the crash and seek the remaining victims," the BBC says.

Abbott ordered a further 100 Australian Federal Police to the wreckage site, where 37 Australians in last Wednesday's shoot-down of the plane by a surface-to-air missile. Some 90 AFP were sent earlier, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

The newspaper reports:

"The group of 100 will be pre-deployed to the Netherlands and Mr Abbott said a small number of ADF (Australian Defence Force) members would travel with the group.

"Mr Abbott said Australia was close to finalising an agreement with Ukraine for the deployment of police to assist in the investigation around MH-17 and to secure the crash site.

"He stressed that the Australian deployment had 'one purpose and one purpose only' which was to 'bring our people home'.

"Mr Abbott said Australia had no desire to get involved in European politics.

"'All we want to do is claim our dead and to bring them back."'

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Women and girls are less likely to undergo female genital mutilation, or FGM, than 30 years ago. That's the encouraging news from a UNICEF report on the controversial practice, presented this week at London's first Girl Summit.

The rate has dropped in many of the 29 countries across Africa and the Middle East where FGM is practiced. In Kenya, for example, nearly half the girls age 15 to 19 were circumcised in 1980; in 2010 the rate was just under 20 percent.

But there's a sobering side to the report. In countries like Somalia the rate has gone down slightly but is still over 90 percent.

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Despite a public outcry that resulted in more than a half-million petition signatures and a personal appeal by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Arturo, Argentina's "sad bear," has been deemed too old to migrate to Canada.

As we reported on Saturday, Arturo the polar bear, dubbed the "world's saddest animal" lost his enclosure mate two years ago and appears to have fallen into a deep depression. Pictures of the animal moping around his habitat at the Mendoza Zoo attracted international concern and launched a petition to have him moved to a facility in Winnipeg.

But the Mendoza Zoo says at 28 (some sources say 29), Arturo is just "too old" to be sedated and moved.

The BBC says:

"The director of Mendoza zoo in western Argentina, Gustavo Pronotto, said that moving him would be a risk.

"'Arturo is close to his caretakers,' Mr Pronotto told Associated Press news agency. 'We just want everyone to stop bothering the bear.'

"A panel of vets in Argentina also decided that keeping him in Argentina was the best option."

Backpacks are making a comeback. Which shouldn't be surprising. We're so obsessed with athletic wear designed to be worn everywhere but the gym, so it would seem inevitable that sports bags would make an appearance, too.

But it's not the bag filled with American history books that kids heave to school. Nor is it the rugged, nylon thing athletes carry around. These backpacks are clever examples of fashion following function.

Backpacks' hobo heritage gives wearers a patina of daring and freedom. A briefcase? That's so company woman. This age of bold (or pragmatic) entrepreneurialism calls for a bag that bellows adventure. Plus, what are you supposed to carry when you're already wearing sweatpants to work? A backpack.

Here's who's diving into the fray:

Not content with conquering the shoe world, Vince Camuto's handbag collection boasts three great-looking and utility-friendly backpack styles. There's a small, butter-soft, black pouch with a zippered strap. A crisp white and black number might remind you of 1920s men in linen suits taking seaside strolls and thus is well-suited to summer.

You may prefer the clean lines and smooth leather of a midsize handbag from Alexander Wang or Proenza Schouler. Proenza Schouler has one with a generous top flap and square bottom. It comes in red, black or dove gray with gold or silver trim.

Several big fashion names have gotten creative with what may become the new "it" bag. Unusual prints, pebbled leather and other distinctive treatments like studs, beading and fringe are everywhere. Emerging designer Sarah Law has some of the best-looking backpacks around. Her collection, sold under the name "Kara," includes eclectic combinations of shearling and pebble leather and others in painterly hues of wine or sky blue.

Generally, there's a lot more whimsy in backpacks this go-round than existed in the '90s. Though the fluffy backpacks and kiddie colors of Clueless would be an exception — or maybe an inspiration — for designers like Law.

The year 2014 is well on its way to being Malaysia Airlines' annus horribilis. Flight 17, shot down last week over eastern Ukraine, is the second Boeing 777 the airline has lost in the last five months, after MH370 disappeared, it's believed, somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

But even before the double calamity, Malaysia's national carrier was struggling to adapt to momentous shifts in Asia's aviation industry.

It was expected to announce a restructuring plan even before MH17 was shot down. That plan is expected very soon. Other than bankruptcy or privatization, analysts say, the airline doesn't have many options.

"To recover from a double incident like this, it's unprecedented in the history of aviation," says Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank Investment Bank.

Mohshin figures that Malaysia Airlines is losing about $1.7 million a day, and he expects that figure to rise after the recent plane crash.

"So if there were a recovery, suffice it to say it will take a substantial amount of time, perhaps a year, two, maybe more," he says. "The unfortunate thing is Malaysia Airlines doesn't have the balance sheet to sustain anything beyond a year."

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The year 2014 is well on its way to being Malaysia Airlines' annus horribilis. Flight 17, shot down last week over eastern Ukraine, is the second Boeing 777 the airline has lost in the last five months, after MH370 disappeared, it's believed, somewhere over the Indian Ocean.

But even before the double calamity, Malaysia's national carrier was struggling to adapt to momentous shifts in Asia's aviation industry.

It was expected to announce a restructuring plan even before MH17 was shot down. That plan is expected very soon. Other than bankruptcy or privatization, analysts say, the airline doesn't have many options.

"To recover from a double incident like this, it's unprecedented in the history of aviation," says Mohshin Aziz, an aviation analyst at Maybank Investment Bank.

Mohshin figures that Malaysia Airlines is losing about $1.7 million a day, and he expects that figure to rise after the recent plane crash.

"So if there were a recovery, suffice it to say it will take a substantial amount of time, perhaps a year, two, maybe more," he says. "The unfortunate thing is Malaysia Airlines doesn't have the balance sheet to sustain anything beyond a year."

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Ancient peoples sent their dead to the grave with their prized possessions — precious stones, gilded weapons and terracotta armies. But unlike these treasures, our digital property won't get buried with us. Our archived Facebook messages, old email chains and even Tinder exchanges will hover untouched in the online cloud when we die.

Or maybe not.

Last week, the Uniform Law Commission drafted the Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act, a model law that would let relatives access the social media accounts of the deceased. A national lawyers' group, the ULC aims to standardize law across the country by recommending legislation for states to adopt, particularly when it comes to timely, fast-evolving issues.

All Tech Considered

The Effort To Write Laws For Your Digital Life After Death

We love cooking on our grills, especially in the summertime. Keeping the house cool and avoiding the dish pile up are two major draws – not to mention the flavor of food cooked over fire.

When we saw a glass-topped grill, shining like Cinderella's slipper in a YouTube video posted by commercial glass maker SCHOTT, we were intrigued. But, we wondered, how the heck do you clean it?

First, let's back up. Glass embedded in gas grill lids is nothing new — small windows allowing you to peek at the food on the grate without opening the lid have been around for more than a decade, says Craig Goldwyn. He writes under the name Meathead on his blog about the science of grilling, www.amazingribs.com.

But the glass windows of yore have not been without problems. Due to the buildup of smoke inside the lid, the glass often turns dark and grimy pretty fast, rendering it useless as a food-spying device. Meathead has been using one of these grills with a glass window. It sits next to 11 other grills on his Chicagoland testing site, also known as his deck.

"The front of that lid is brown, and it went within a week," he tells The Salt.

But Ted Wegert, director of applications engineering at SCHOTT North America, says that doesn't have to be the case. His company's large glass grill windows – still in the prototype stage but showing up at trade shows — are very different, he says, thanks to the material.

The Salt

The Great Charcoal Debate: Briquettes Or Lumps?

Want to borrow money for a car or a home this fall?

Oddly enough, the interest rates available months from now for big-ticket items may be determined by the prices you pay today for everyday consumer goods. When store prices are rising rapidly, policymakers start pushing interest rates higher, too.

But for the moment, at least, inflation appears mild enough to keep interest rates low for a long while.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index for June shows inflation running at an annual rate of just 2.1 percent — well below the historical average of 3.2 percent.

But instead of celebrating this low-inflation news, many economists are fretting about it. They look past consumer prices to see financial-asset prices. And they think too many of those, say tech stocks, are getting too expensive. They want interest rates to rise more quickly to tamp down those asset "bubbles."

This is turning into a huge, heated debate. Let's listen in.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress that maintaining low rates "likely will be appropriate for a considerable period" since inflation remains so tame. But Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire hedge fund manager, gave a televised speech criticizing the Fed, saying "the current policy makes no sense."

Fed critics see "bubbles" involving everything from stock prices to artworks to real estate in the Hamptons. They want the Fed to slow further price increases by making borrowed money more expensive.

Many economists say that's exactly what the Fed did back in 2000 when its interest rate hikes were followed by the sudden deflation of tech-stock prices.

Related NPR Stories

Business

Economists Say Inflation Is Tame; Consumers Aren't Buying It

Want to borrow money for a car or a home this fall?

Oddly enough, the interest rates available months from now for big-ticket items may be determined by the prices you pay today for everyday consumer goods. When store prices are rising rapidly, policymakers start pushing interest rates higher, too.

But for the moment, at least, inflation appears mild enough to keep interest rates low for a long while.

The Labor Department said Tuesday that its consumer price index for June shows inflation running at an annual rate of just 2.1 percent — well below the historical average of 3.2 percent.

But instead of celebrating this low-inflation news, many economists are fretting about it. They look past consumer prices to see financial-asset prices. And they think too many of those, say tech stocks, are getting too expensive. They want interest rates to rise more quickly to tamp down those asset "bubbles."

This is turning into a huge, heated debate. Let's listen in.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen told Congress that maintaining low rates "likely will be appropriate for a considerable period" since inflation remains so tame. But Stanley Druckenmiller, a billionaire hedge fund manager, gave a televised speech criticizing the Fed, saying "the current policy makes no sense."

Fed critics see "bubbles" involving everything from stock prices to artworks to real estate in the Hamptons. They want the Fed to slow further price increases by making borrowed money more expensive.

Many economists say that's exactly what the Fed did back in 2000 when its interest rate hikes were followed by the sudden deflation of tech-stock prices.

Related NPR Stories

Business

Economists Say Inflation Is Tame; Consumers Aren't Buying It

If the Television Critics Association press tour of 2014, wrapping up Tuesday and Wednesday with presentations from PBS, has had a catchphrase, it's "audience measurement."

Critics heard an extended presentation from Nielsen on the very first day of tour about the company's plans to begin measuring viewership on mobile devices and, more generally, about its scramble to keep up – catch up, really – with the way television works now. Many days later, a panel of research analysts from broadcast as well as premium and basic cable outlets made what was in part a pitch to reporters to stop relying on overnight ratings, given the fact that it's not unusual for shows to increase their audiences 40 or 50 percent (or more) once DVR viewing from even the next three days is included. FX, in fact, has committed to not releasing overnight ratings for its shows at all, arguing that they're simply too misleading to be taken seriously. It will make its ratings announcements a few days later.

The easy read on the FX decision, of course, is that they don't want bad overnight ratings to be reported, and it's not that that isn't any part of it – they certainly aren't doing this so that you don't report in haste on their out-of-the-gate smashes. And networks have complained for a long time that this show or that one is misreported as a disaster because nobody waits for the reliable numbers; this is not a new phenomenon.

But it does require a bit of a shift in perspective when you realize that time-shifting has evolved to the point where watching a new episode of a show is only sort of something that happens at a particular time, such that you can meaningfully describe it in terms of what happened at that time. (That being true, while again not a new phenomenon, is a newer phenomenon than the chatter about it being true.) If you're only talking about measuring shows relative to each other, it might seem unimportant provided that all shows grow by roughly the same percentage. If everybody gains the same advantage from DVR viewing, the relative numbers are still right.

Everybody doesn't, though. And while it is an insistent battle cry of fans of low-rated shows that whatever they love is secretly hugely popular but not being measured properly, what emerged from the data was that it's more a matter of there being kinds of shows that are vastly more time-shifted than others. Reality shows are time-shifted relatively little, presumably because people want to know what happened before they get spoiled. Comedies are time-shifted more, and then dramas are time-shifted the most, meaning that if you take a reality show and a drama that are neck and neck in overnight ratings, the odds are that a few days later, a lot more people will have watched the drama.

Of course, the looming question is: assuming those numbers are in fact wonky in exactly the same way everybody is telling us they are, what difference does it make?

Readers are curious about ratings for two reasons, in my experience. The first is that they want to know whether shows are going to be canceled or not. The second is that they're curious about cultural stuff: whether a weird thing is a hit, whether a terrible thing tanks, and, fundamentally, what other people are interested in. (Some are also interested in the ins and outs of industry successes and failures in terms of producers' and executives' fates, but not many.)

That's where you find the nut of the problem, really. It's not only a measurement problem. It's also a contextual problem. Even in a hypothetical world of perfect information in which everybody could instantly know what how many people are watching what show, on what platform, at what time, with what fast-forwarding capability, what numbers are meaningful?

David Poltrack, the Chief Research Officer at CBS, made this pitch in talking about different kinds of numbers and whether Live +3 ratings (which include live viewing and the next three days on DVR, but do not count VOD, do not count apps, do not count Hulu and so forth): "I would like to make the point that your responsibility as reporters is, for most of you, is to report television as the social, cultural phenomenon that it is as well as the economic phenomenon it is. So Live+3 ratings are an economic phenomenon, but they don't reflect the cultural phenomenon of the medium, since they are only a limited part of the audience. If you're reporting on the economics of the business, Live+3 ratings are relevant. If you're reporting on cultural phenomenon called television, Live+3 ratings are far less relevant."

In other words, he says, what numbers are meaningful depends on what you're using them for. If you're talking about what makes money and what might get canceled, maybe you only care about those Live +3 ratings (which are already much more inclusive than what they call "live plus same day" or "Live +SD," which is basically just everybody who time-shifts until later on that same evening). But if you're actually trying to figure out what the viewership of something is, and what its cultural penetration is, and how many people like it, that number isn't so helpful. It seems self-evident, but also unsatisfying. What is the cultural relevance of audience size, past "huge hit" stories?

Furthermore, there we were, listening to four network research folks talk about ratings when ratings do not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean the same thing at every network. Kim Lemon, the Executive Vice President of Program Planning and Scheduling and Research for Showtime, made the point himself that Showtime doesn't really care in the same way about ratings, since it's not ad-supported, and it certainly doesn't have the same issues with online versus on-television viewing. As long as you have to be a Showtime subscriber to do it, they don't care whether you watch on your TV or on your phone or on a plane. All enthusiasm, for them, is of equal monetary value, essentially. It just has to make you subscribe. (Incidentally, their numbers are even more slanted toward time-shifted viewing — in part, probably, because their top stuff airs on the crammed-full Sunday night schedule.)

At CBS, on the other hand, it's very squishy to get information about how much it matters to them if you watch a show online. You're a viewer from a cultural standpoint, but you're not worth money the same way you are if you're eyeballing ads and watching live. (You will watch ads online too, but different ones.)

The bottom line is this: it's not as simple as "measurement." It has to with the placing of data in context, which is a lot harder than figuring out how to count up video views. I spoke to a showrunner who talked about the frustration of having a show that's good, that everybody thinks is good, that is never mentioned without the parenthetical that it is ratings-challenged or little-watched. And very often, those perceptions come from initial overnight ratings.

But what if they didn't? What if the ratings were perfectly accurate and complete, and your show was little-watched or ratings-challenged? When movies are discussed in terms of their quality, there is no expectation that you always mention their low box office, except perhaps in the case of high-budget intended blockbusters.

Creative and economic success have been uncoupled in critical discussions of film (and music and books) to a greater degree than in television. That's in part because shows are ongoing business concerns with futures to consider, but it's also in part because television's populist reputation and history has created an environment in which, if you are not being widely seen, there is a perception that you are failing in whatever your project is. Which, from an economic standpoint, if you are on a broadcast network in particular, you are. But which, from a creative standpoint, you are not, necessarily. (Consider the fact that in film, people who analyze box office and people who act as critics are mostly different people; in television, they're often the same hybrid critic/reporters, only some of whom have a strong background in ratings and scheduling and such.) It's not that people don't separate good from popular, but there's always that "struggling"/"cult" caveat, more than in other fields.

Nina Tassler of CBS talked in her executive session about what the network's job is, and this is what she said: "We are still broadcasters. We're still looking [at] No. 1, are we entertaining the greatest number of people, and are we making the most amount of money doing that? Those are the two boxes we have to check." She still talked about trying to make great content, she still talked about how great some of their shows (like The Good Wife) are. But she was straightforward about it: the most people, the most money. So if your show is not making the most money by appealing to the most people, your show is not succeeding as a business concern. But I think writing about television is perhaps more likely than writing about other creative fields to surround projects with a stench of general failure (or irrelevance) based on instant popularity or the lack thereof, which doesn't follow logically.

All these folks phrased their objections to the way ratings are being reported as issues of accuracy: overnight ratings are terribly incomplete, they argued. The subtext, of course, feels completely self-interested: overnight ratings make things look like they're being watched by fewer people than they are. But the actual lesson felt a little more nuanced: it's not just what the numbers are, but what the numbers communicate, that's gotten progressively foggier. The economic value proposition has very much come unglued from sheer viewer counts on Showtime; it's even shaky on FX, where there is ad support to consider but also the degree to which your viewers consider your network an essential part of their cable package. Consider what's happened when networks face off with cable companies over carriage deals — the network needs you to not just like their shows, but love their shows.

It's not just that we don't know what the real audience size is (though we don't). It's also that it wouldn't entirely be clear yet, to anybody, what it would mean if we did.

Close to 60,000 children have crossed illegally into the U.S. since last October. They've sparked a crisis. But is it a humanitarian crisis or a public health one?

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If all goes according to plan, next year many Arkansas Medicaid beneficiaries will be required to make monthly contributions to so-called Health Independence Accounts. Those who don't may have to pay more of the cost of their medical services, and in some cases may be refused services.

Supporters say it will help nudge Medicaid beneficiaries toward becoming more cost-conscious health care consumers. Patient advocates are skeptical, pointing to studies showing that such financial "skin-in-the-game" requirements discourage low-income people from getting care that they need.

The states of Michigan and Indiana have already implemented health savings accounts for their Medicaid programs, modeled after the accounts that are increasingly popular in the private market.

In Michigan and Indiana, people can use the funds, which may be supplemented by the state, to pay for services subject to the plan deductible, for example, or to cover the cost of other medical services.

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Real men eat meat. They kill it and then they grill it.

That's the stereotype, or cliche, that's about as old as time.

At a recent barbecue in Brooklyn, N.Y., a half-dozen guys who resist that particular cultural stereotype gathered together. Many of them are muscled semi-professional athletes, including triathlete Dominic Thompson, competitive bodybuilder Giacomo Marchese and mixed martial arts fighter Cornell Ward.

They're also all vegans and eschew all animal products. Because these guys are so seriously, well, built, they say some people find it hard to believe they never eat meat, fish, dairy or eggs.

"Everyone always thinks vegans are weak, skinny, frail, pale," Thompson says. "I get people that think, 'You're like Gwyneth Paltrow.' "

Unlike Paltrow (who is no longer vegan), Thompson grew up in a rough Chicago housing project. He was he kind of kid who would rush in to save stray cats or dogs if he saw people picking on them.

"[There's] nothing more cowardly to me than taking advantage of something that's defenseless," he says.

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On his family's conflicting attitudes about its slaveholding past

My grandfather took almost a perverse pride in being the grandson of slaveholders. It was something for him to brag about. In Texas, countless people will tell you that they're fourth generation, fifth generation, sixth generation Texans. There's this amazing sense of pride in your family being an early settler. During the civil rights era, my grandfather — who as a young man I suspect was a member of the Klan — liked to provoke people by saying, "My family owned slaves — and they loved it so much, they took our last name." He was very proud of that.

My father, on the other hand, was not. In fact, he considered it something shameful. And it was strange growing up as a child, hearing my grandfather take this one view and my father telling me, "You know, that's not really something you should be so proud of."

On how he was taught about slavery in school in Texas

We learned slavery was bad. Roots came on television while I was learning about slavery, but the teachers always used the passive voice to talk about it. Slavery was evil but no one was responsible. There was no agency. There was no confrontation of the fact that maybe our ancestors had held slaves.

It was: "Mistakes were made. Slavery was a thing and it's not anymore and that's good and slavery is bad. Let's move on and go sing [the Confederate anthem] Dixie and be proud of our heritage."

On how he was inspired by post-apartheid South Africa

It was inspiring to me to be in South Africa after the election [of Nelson Mandela] and to see that reckoning. Bishop Desmond Tutu established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and at the time, his argument was that before there can be reconciliation, you have to have a sharing of the truth and it has to be a common truth. One community can't have one idea of what happened and the other community ... a different idea. If you want them to reconcile, they have to agree about what happened. And that requires — for lack of a better word — confession and contrition. ...

I don't think that's something that's happened in the United States. And it certainly didn't happen in my life. And so writing this book was my opportunity to go through that process — if, for no one else, [than] for the African-American Tomlinsons and my side of the family, that we have that truth and reconciliation.

If you go to France this summer, you might notice a new logo in restaurant windows or on menus. It's a simple graphic of a rooftop covering a saucepan, and it's supposed to designate fait maison, or homemade. It's designed to highlight places that make their own dishes rather than bringing in frozen or sous vide — prepared meals cooked in a water bath, sealed in airtight plastic bags and designed to be heated up later.

I know, you're thinking, French restaurants don't cook their own food? A recent catering union survey shows some 31 percent of restaurants in France use at least some prepared foods, but others suggest the number is much higher.

Regardless, now the establishments that use shortcuts will have to own up to it.

Jean-Paul Arabian is the owner of Le Cameleon, a cozy bistro tucked into a side street in Paris' Montparnasse neighborhood. He's thrilled about the new law.

"Homemade will be the war against restaurants that buy their food already cooked and in plastic bags, ready to heat up and serve to clients at ten times the price," he says.

It's not hard to understand Arabian's frustration and relief. He makes everything from scratch and everything is seasonal and fresh. And it's not hard to verify. His bustling, stainless steel kitchen is part of the dining room dcor. Diners can peer in at preparations as they sink their teeth into succulent, sauced meats and perfectly cooked vegetables.

Starting next January, if you don't see the logo on the menu - the food is not homemade.

But what does that really mean? Just days after the measure was passed, it's already stirring controversy. Many wonder if the fait maison label will really guarantee better eating.

The linchpin of the new rule is that homemade fare must be made only from "raw ingredients," meaning the food product has undergone no significant modification, including being heated, marinated, assembled or a combination of those procedures. But the definition does allow for "smoked, salted, refrigerated, frozen or deep-frozen" produce as well as vacuum packed food as ingredients for dishes other dishes.

In Le Monde newspaper, one restaurant critic called it a "dud decree" that pandered to frozen food lobbies because "any frozen raw product from spinach stalks to shrimp can figure in a dish dubbed 'home-made.'"

Except for potatoes. Frozen fries can never be called homemade.

"That's because French restaurants don't want to be called fast food," says Stanislas Vilgrain, who operates three sous vide food packaging plants in France and the U.S. and is totally against the new measure.

Vilgrain sells high quality meats, sauces and prepared dishes to restaurants on both sides of the Atlantic under the name Cuisine Solutions.

Vilgrain says the new measure is pointless and misleading.

"The important thing in a restaurant is that you get high quality food served in the most efficient way. Why stigmatize someone who is using a sous vide product?"

Vilgrain prepares dishes such as Beef Bourguignon and Coq au Vin. He says his meals have fresh, quality ingredients and the new homemade label ignores that.

"We do a short rib from a Michelin three-star chef's recipe. We cook it 72 hours at low temperatures. No restaurateur can do that in his restaurant because he can't tie up his ovens for that long. It's an outstanding product backed by some of the world's best chefs," says Vilgrain. "But under this new law, it wouldn't qualify for homemade."

But, of course, frozen green beans would.

The annual progressive gathering known as Netroots Nation wraps up its annual conference in Detroit this weekend.

In the hallways and the meeting rooms, much of the buzz was about the presidential race in 2016 — and who might run on the Democratic side.

But Vice President Joe Biden, who gave the keynote address on opening day, didn't factor much into that speculation, despite being President Obama's wingman on everything from the stimulus package to the Affordable Care Act.

Biden was even ahead of the administration's position on same-sex marriage.

"We literally saved this country from moving from a great recession into a depression," he said in his speech Thursday. "And we established that progressive government did and does have a role in the economic health and well being of the American people."

On foreign policy, Biden has been a key player for decades dating back to his days in the Senate — he showcased those credentials as he explained why he was late to his Netroots speech.

It turns out he was on the phone, getting details about the Malaysia Airlines plane crash from the president of Ukraine.

"I was on the phone for a better part of a half an hour with President Poroshenko, and I've been in contact with our president as well as our national security team," he said.

Biden has more than just experience. His political style is one-of-a-kind.

He's known to give it to you straight. No filler.

It's exactly what people say they want in presidential candidate. But here, among the party's progressive wing, that candidate ain't Joe Biden.

Outside the main ballroom, where Biden spoke the day before, the group Ready for Warren is hard at work. They are passing out hats and signs trying to draft Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for a White House run.

Another group that backs former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton co-sponsored a party last night.

There was nothing like that for Biden.

Gabriela Lemus says she's been working in the progressive movement for years. She talks of the vice president almost like they are related.

"Uncle Joe ... yeah. That's what we lovingly call him," she said. "He's our uncle. I look at it from a familial term. Like he's part of the family, you know."

Lemus says Biden's been a good adviser to the president. But she admits that as a potential candidate, Biden just isn't resonating with her.

"Maybe sometimes if it's too familiar, you kind of overlook it even if it is the right person," she said.

That's not the case for Rick Massell. He says there are many reasons why Biden shouldn't be the party's nominee in 2016.

The main reason? Too many gaffes, he says.

"Maybe I'm being too hard on the guy, maybe it does make him more human and maybe we should have someone that is more human, but he also misspeaks a lot. I don't know if you can ever overcome that," said Massell.

Sandra Kurtz, on the other hand, says she's glad the vice president came to Netroots.

Kurtz says he's got the right experience on both foreign and domestic issues but she's just not quite sure what to make of a potential Biden run. And then it hits her — she's got the perfect job for him.

"For Joe? I don't know, I'd personally like to see him as VP for life, but that's just me," she laughs.

The election is still a long way off. The vice president hasn't announced any plans for 2016 just yet.

But if Biden is doing his due diligence — kicking the tires on what would be his third run at the White House — he's still got quite a bit of work to do to excite the Democrat base.

The Senate is expected to vote on a temporary transportation spending bill later this week — with an emphasis on the word temporary.

The bill would keep highway funding flowing through May of next year, and avert a looming infrastructure crisis. Without congressional action, the highway trust fund would run out of cash in August.

The short-term fix follows a familiar pattern. It goes something like this:

First, panic erupts because the government is going to shut down — or a program is going to run out of money — or a tax will automatically rise. Whatever it is, without congressional action, something really terrible will happen.

Then, just when it seems like there's no hope, a deal emerges. Often it's a bipartisan solution, not a big one, and not a permanent fix. A temporary one, for a few weeks or a few months.

Then when the next deadline draws near, the countdown clocks come out once again.

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As part of a series called "My Big Break," All Things Considered is collecting stories of triumph, big and small. These are the moments when everything seems to click, and people leap forward into their careers.

Shaun Thompson, better known as Shaun T, is the man behind the fast-paced, strenuous fitness programs Insanity, Focus T25 and Hip Hop Abs. He got his start as a choreographer. The story of his big break begins with someone breaking him down.

Thompson says he was in an emotionally and physically abusive relationship for "four years too long." When he got his first big choreography job in his home state of New Jersey, his partner was not supportive.

"After the show, I mean, people wanted my autograph, and I was really no one," says Thompson. "My partner at the time said, 'You'll never be a professional dancer so you can immediately delete that dream from your head.' "

That was the final straw in the relationship.

"No one out there is going to stop me from living the life that I want to live," says Thompson. "I gained up enough strength to leave that relationship."

A friend invited him to come to Los Angeles for a vacation at his beach house. His friend had one demand: He wanted Thompson to get some headshots taken before making the trip.

"Let me tell you, those abs were poppin' on those shots," Thompson says.

When he got to Los Angeles, he checked out a dance school in North Hollywood and found out about an audition for a new dance agency that was happening around the corner.

With his headshots in his car, Thompson decided to go in.

"I was frickin' living in these dance moves. I was like, 'I don't care what happens. They're gonna remember me even thought I don't live here,' " he says.

Out of hundreds of people auditioning, seven men and five women were left at the end of the cuts. Thompson was one of them. The judges said they would contact the dancers in a couple weeks if the agency was interested.

"I literally left there like, 'Whatever, this doesn't really matter. I don't even really care,' " he says.

He returned home to New Jersey and two weeks later, found out that audition would change his life.

"I was at the laundry mat, with my pocket full of quarters, when I got the phone call that the agency wanted me to move to LA to pursue a career in dance," Thompson says.

When he moved to LA, he was teaching workout dance classes at the gym, in between auditions and dance gigs. His classes got really popular.

"My big break came when a friend called me and said, 'Hey, there's this company called Beach Body that wants you to see if you can develop a project with them,' " Thompson says.

Thompson had a two-hour meeting with Beach Body, which produces many popular in-home fitness workouts, and left with a contract for his first video, Hip Hop Abs.

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