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Get recipes for Tropical Amaranth Porridge With Coconut Milk, Mango And Ginger, Saffron-Scented Millet Porridge, Savory Polenta Porridge With Poached Egg and Sunflower Apple Oat Bran Porridge.

Since what's said and written about a State of the Union address on the morning after can determine what's most remembered about such speeches, let's look at Wednesday's headlines:

— NPR's It's All Politics: "Obama To Congress: With Or Without You."

— The New York Times: "Obama Pledges Push to Lift Economy for Middle Class."

— CNN: "State Of The Union Brings Out More Of The 'Same Old, Same Old.' "

— Politico: "Obama Calls For 'Common Sense' Solutions."

— The Wall Street Journal: "Obama Urges Action On Expansive Agenda."

— Fox News: "Obama Presses For New Spending, Says Gun Control Bills 'Deserve A Vote.' "

— Bloomberg News: "Obama Paints Wider Role For Government In Middle Class."

— BBC News: "Obama Pledges To Reignite Economy."

— The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes (conservative): "There He Goes Again."

— Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola (liberal): "Afghanistan Drawdown & the Covert Drone War."

We welcome headline suggestions. Add them in the comments thread.

In honor of Valentine's Day, we're going to spend this week on 13.7 publishing love letters (really, chaste appreciations) to some of our biggest intellectual crushes.

These are the people our bloggers think you should know about, people who have had a significant influence on their lives and their thinking. As they're published, I'll keep a running list of the posts right here:

Stuart Kauffman on Conrad H. Waddington

Tania Lombrozo on Edward C. Tolman

Adam Frank on Karen Armstrong

Marcelo Gleiser on Johannes Kepler

I'll kick things off with my own quick nod to a fictional character. She's the unreal combination of brains and brawn from the Ghost in the Shell oeuvre known as "The Major."

A cyborg with the "ghost" of the real human she used to be, The Major could have been just another empty, entertaining action figure, fighting for all that's right in a world full of wrong. What we get with this character, instead, is a guide to the question: What does it mean to be human?

Adventure and intrigue lurk just around every corner for The Major and her team, known as Public Security Section 9. But what makes both Ghost in the Shell and The Major so interesting is the constant questioning of what it means to be human in a world where it is possible to leave your natural body behind to live inside a machine, or even out on the network as an un-embodied ghost.

Let the action, the big guns and cliffhangers, the futuristic world, pull you into the vortex. Once you're there, join The Major as she dives ever deeper into the human question. The answers you find will be your own, but you wouldn't have gotten there without her guiding hand.

How many points do you get for the word "scandale"?

A sidelight scandale flared in France this week after a deputy in the French National Assembly was shown playing Scrabble on his iPad during the ongoing debate over same-sex marriage.

Among the words that could be deciphered in photographs were "gache," which is French for wasted, and "mufle," which is cad or oaf.

The Scrabble player, Deputy Thomas Thevenoud, was as unapologetic as a French politician caught with a mistress, telling Le Parisien newspaper that he was part of a group of legislators who played the word game as debate rumbled on.

"I confirm that we were trying to keep our brain cells working at 3 in the morning," declared Mr. Thevenoud. "When we manage to get 102 points at 3 in the morning, I wouldn't say we are proud of our achievements, but it does reassure us somewhat."

Another deputy, Jerome Guedj, tweeted from the Assembly floor that he sometimes plays Scrabble, reads a newspaper and phones his plumber because drawn-out debates drift and drone into what he called "endless amendments" and "pointless discussions."

Lawmaker Marc Le Fur's Tweet

Oups ! Il ne s'agit pas de Guillaume Bachelay mais d'un autre Dput Socialiste ! Mes excuses Guillaume Bachelay. twitter.com/marclefur/stat…

— Marc Le Fur (@marclefur) February 5, 2013

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