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"It just felt like you were watching your life up on screen, it really did," said Kimiko Matsuda-Lawrence, a junior at Harvard majoring in History, Literature and African-American Studies. "I really related to a lot of the characters, especially Sam White. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, that's me, this mixed girl who is super militant with her own identity issues."

Simien says he was also Lionel his freshman year at Chapman University, a private college in Southern California. But he graduated as the militant Sam. In a Q and A with the students after the screening, he said he wanted to write characters and situations that were relatable to him. But in an earlier version of the script he took out the blackface party telling himself it was over the top. "I'm doing way too much, I need to pull back a bit," he told the audience. "But, a few months later that happened and I was like, 'Oh, okay. Got it, universe.'"

The universe brought Simien a string of real blackface parties at colleges across the country. Tiffany Loftin was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz in 2010 and remembers them well. Loftin says it was affirming to see art imitate life at the screening, but she worries Simien might just be preaching to the choir.

"I would love to see a balanced body of white and black people in the theater," said Loftin. "If you have all white people, its problematic because they don't get it; if you have all black people, it's funny and we already get it." And she said, while provocative, the title Dear White People just might scare off folks who need to see it most.

In his question and answer session, Simien responded to that sentiment, saying that the title was provocative on purpose — to create buzz. And he told the Harvard audience they also need to do their part to get people to see it.

"If you are passionate about this and you want to see more complicated, interesting characters of color on the screen, if you want to see yourself represented and reflected in the culture, then you've got to drag your friends to see this movie," he said. "We don't get more of these unless we support it."

A synod of Catholic bishops gathered at the Vatican has decided to eliminate a landmark opening to gays that had appeared in an interim summary of discussions made public earlier this week that had appeared to signal a possible shift in the tone of the church.

The move to scrap the message about gays, as well as one that would have signaled more acceptance of divorced church members, is seen as a sign of deep division in the ranks of the bishops.

The Associated Press reports:

"The bishops failed to approve even a watered-down section on ministering to gays that stripped away the welcoming tone contained in a draft document earlier in the week.

"Two other paragraphs concerning the other hot-button issue at the synod - whether divorced and civilly remarried Catholics can receive communion - also failed to pass."

As The National Catholic Reporter's Vatican correspondent Joshua McElwee told NPR when Tuesday's preliminary summary was released, the bishops had said they wanted "to reach out to modern society and walk with people as they apply church doctrine alongside mercy."

But by the time of the their final report today, the language on gays and divorced members was gone.

Meanwhile, NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome that the mayor of the Italian capital, Ignazio Marino, has defied the a law against gay marriage in the country by registering 16 same-sex marriages celebrated abroad.

"Marino said his decision ... is an important step in the fight for equal rights for all," Sylvia reports.

"The move came after the interior minister, Angelino Alfano, sent a notice to local prefects saying registrations of gay marriages would be voided," Sylvia says. "Registrations had already been under way in several Italian municipalities, including Milan and Bologna."

The Vatican

Pope Francis

Roman Catholic Church

Divorce

same-sex marriage

The U.S. unemployment rate has been falling steadily over the years. Down from the recession peak of 10 percent in 2009, it reached 5.9 percent in September.

That's getting close to what economists call the natural unemployment rate — the normal level of joblessness you'd expect in a healthy economy.

But a lot of economists are asking whether the old rules about full employment still apply.

It might seem counterintuitive, but there is always going to be some unemployment. People are always out there looking for work, says former Federal Reserve Governor Randall Kroszner.

"Even in the best of times you're going to have some positive unemployment rate. There's always going to be some churning in the labor market and that's actually a sign of health," he says.

But how much unemployment is too much? It's not a question people asked much three or four years ago, when the unemployment rate was obviously, painfully too high.

But now that it's dropped so much the question is coming up again. For a long time it was conventional wisdom that unemployment should be around 5.5 percent. If it fell too far below that, economists said, trouble would occur.

"The problem is you can't sustain an unemployment rate that's superlow without some other bad things happening, principally a rise in inflation," former Fed Governor Alan Blinder says.

If the unemployment rate fell below 5.5 percent, economists feared there would be a scarcity of workers. Employers would have to raise wages, and prices would go up.

NPR/Bureau of Labor Statistics

Then in the 1990s something baffling happened: Unemployment actually dipped below 5.5 percent and then kept dipping — below 5 percent, even below 4 percent — with no significant uptick in inflation, Blinder says.

"First thing to say is it was a big surprise to most economists," he says.

How could unemployment fall so low without a significant surge in inflation? Economists have lots of theories. John Canally of LPL Financial says inflation isn't the threat it used to be. He says wage pressures have eased, in part because of globalization.

"In the mid-'70s if you went to your boss and said, 'Hey boss, I need a raise,' the boss would go, 'Yeah, there's probably not anyone else around here who can do your job, so OK I'll give you a raise.' Today if you go to your boss in a lot of jobs the boss goes, 'Eh, you know what? Someone in India can do it for half your price and do it twice as fast. OK, so you're fired,' " Canally says.

Whatever the explanation, economists were forced to reassess their notions of full employment. And today they disagree about just what the natural unemployment rate is. The disagreement extends to the Fed, Kroszner says.

"Some members of the Federal Open Market Committee [the central bank's policymaking body] have said we're very close to our goal, our long-run goal of the unemployment rate being close to the mid-5s and that would be roughly full employment," he says.

Even though inflation remains very low, these Fed members worry that it could resurface.

Economy

Turmoil Continues In Financial Markets As Dow Plunges

But the new Fed chair, Janet Yellen, has made clear she sees things differently. The 5.9 percent unemployment rate, she says, masks an unusual amount of hidden weakness in the economy. There are millions of people working part time who want to work full time. And there are the much-discussed discouraged workers, who have simply given up looking for work and aren't counted on the unemployment rolls.

"Janet Yellen's view, also my view and the view of many economists — but not all — is that for a variety of reasons, some understandable and some mysterious, the unemployment rate is kind of out of step relative to other indicators of the state of the labor market," Blinder says.

That's important because Fed officials will have to decide soon when to begin raising interest rates. And that will depend on how close the U.S. economy is to full employment. That means the officials will have to decide just how relevant the jobless rate is and whether old notions of full employment still apply.

employment

unemployment rate

Federal Reserve

In the heart of London's Soho sits a gleaming new restaurant — Tincan. The premise is simple: No kitchen, very few staff, and the menu all comes out of a can. Specifically, canned fish.

To many people, canned food conjures up images of stocking up for winter, emergency rations, or — for Brits — the deprivations of World War II.

"The big challenge we had was how to change the perception of tinned food in the U.K.," says Max Arrocet, one of the directors of AL_A, the architecture firm behind Tincan. He and his team, he says, wanted to "elevate the tin to an object of desire."

Indeed, there's a strong element of buying with your eyes at Tincan. Rows of gourmet-quality tins, beautifully packaged in collectible-worthy cans, are displayed at eye level.

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Tincan sells gourmet canned fish from around the world, though many of the items come from Portugal and Spain, where tinned delicacies have long been appreciated as culinary luxuries. Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan

Tincan sells gourmet canned fish from around the world, though many of the items come from Portugal and Spain, where tinned delicacies have long been appreciated as culinary luxuries.

Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan

"This combines our two passions: design and food," Arrocet tells me when I meet him for lunch at Tincan.

The products are carefully chosen not just for taste, but for presentation. "If we have two products that are very close in terms of taste, we will definitely go for the tin that looks better," he says.

Most products on the menu come from Portugal and Spain, Arrocet's native country, where tinned delicacies have long been appreciated as culinary luxuries. On the day I visit, there are over 20 different varieties of tinned delicacies on display. The shelves in the shop behind the counter boast even more options.

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The writer's meal included anchovies and baby squid in their own ink, served with sides of bread and small bowls of salad greens, chopped onions and peppers. Rich Preston hide caption

itoggle caption Rich Preston

The writer's meal included anchovies and baby squid in their own ink, served with sides of bread and small bowls of salad greens, chopped onions and peppers.

Rich Preston

We order the baby squid served in its own ink, some anchovies and cod liver. The food arrives quickly, unsurprising given that no preparation is needed.

Arrocet recommends the cod with a drop of oil and some sea salt. The squid is my favorite, and goes well with the plate of bread that comes as a standard side dish at Tincan, along with a very small bowl of salad greens. The anchovies taste nothing like what I was expecting: Instead of sharp, salty, "pizza anchovies," these are fleshy, smooth-textured.

Sourcing is a big deal for Tincan, Arrocet says. "Family-run businesses make better products," he comments. His team, he says, scrutinizes the credentials of all of their suppliers. When they first opened Tincan, the owners faced criticism over one of their bluefin tuna products — so they stopped stocking it.

Arrocet thinks canned food is one of the greenest options around: Tinned fish has a long shelf life, there's no refrigeration required in the transportation phase, and even in the restaurant itself, the products don't need to be cooled. Only the anchovies are kept at a low temperature. "But in reality, you don't really need to — we're doing it because that's what they suggest you do," Max says. "So if you think about it in terms of energy efficiency, this is really energy efficient."

Some popular canned fish species, like sardines, can also be a relatively more sustainable option, as well as a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids, which is why celebrity chefs like England's Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall have been advocating their use in recent years. In Paris, Alain Ducasse has said he plans to use "humbler" fish in his newly reopened, three-Michelin-starred restaurant.

i i

Max Arrocet, one of the directors of AL_A, the architecture firm behind Tincan, says he and his team wanted to "elevate the tin to an object of desire." Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan hide caption

itoggle caption Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan

Max Arrocet, one of the directors of AL_A, the architecture firm behind Tincan, says he and his team wanted to "elevate the tin to an object of desire."

Paul Winch-Furness/Courtesy of Tincan

"I think there's been a revival in Spain and Portugal in the past few years," says Arrocet, holding up a cookbook dedicated to canned food. "[The Spanish] are getting well-known chefs to give them really simple recipes."

With prices anywhere between $10 and $30 a tin, a meal at Tincan doesn't come cheap. And while fish, bread and a few greens aren't unhealthful per se, critics have noted that they hardly constitute a balanced meal.

"We have a lot of people that just disagree with the whole point of not having a kitchen," Arrocet acknowledges. But, he argues, "most really good restaurants actually use a lot of products from tins. There's no difference with what we do here. There's a sense of honesty: We're saying, 'The product is so good, the chef for this one is behind the tin.' "

Tincan is a pop-up. It's in Soho for six months, and if all goes well, Arrocet says he and his team will consider their options. He'd like to take the concept to other cities — he mentioned visiting the Venice Biennale — and would be open to discussing possible ventures with high-market food halls, or perhaps even a more permanent restaurant.

london restaurants

pop-up dinners

canned food