Anne Rice, the author who penned such classic vampire novels as 'Interview with a Vampire' and 'The Queen of the Damned,' recently made a very public exit from organized religion-- Christianity, to be exact; Roman Catholocism, to be even more exact.

In the late 90s she recommitted her life to Christ after years of vocal atheism, and in 2004, she publically announced that she had returned to the faith of her youth, Roman Catholocism, and would henceforth be writing only for the Lord. She followed up that statement with the first two in a series of novels chronicling the life of Jesus Christ.

But last month, on her Facebook page, Rice bid adieu to the world of organized religion. "Today I quit being a Christian. I’m out," she wrote. "I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being 'Christian' or to being part of Christianity. It’s simply impossible for me to 'belong' to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I’ve tried. I’ve failed. I’m an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else."

A few hours later she added, "In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

As a liberal Christian myself, I know where she's coming from. It's hard to be around my fellow believers and constantly hear disparaging remarks about "Obamacare" or "queers" or "illegals." I'm tired of feeling like the only way to be a Christian these days is to embrace free market economics, small government, low taxes, inequality for gays and lesbians, and the Republican label.

A while back, I took an introductory Thai cooking class with a friend who wanted to immerse herself in the Asian kitchen. The instructor served sticky rice with the dishes each of us had prepared. I instinctively grabbed a dollop of rice (with my right hand), rolled it into a compact ball, and dipped it into a plate of green papaya salad. My classmates eyed me with curiosity. What in the world was I doing?

This got me thinking about the etiquette of Asian eating. Through the years, I’ve fielded many questions  from first-time travelers about propriety at the Asian table. There’s a lot to remember—so many mores that vary from region to region, dish to dish. Many Asians are quite forgiving when it comes to culinary faux pas among foreign eaters. Still, it’s good to know the ground rules when traveling (or when you want to wow the proprietor of that great new Thai restaurant up the road). Here’s a primer that should get you started:

I had thought my movie renting days were behind me. I couldn’t tell you the last time I had set foot in a Blockbuster, and Netflix was fun for a while but the problem with having movies sent to you from a queue is that you don’t necessarily get the movie you want to watch right now. I’m very much a person that has to be in the mood for a movie to want to watch it.

So for the past couple years I’ve pretty much just gotten my DVDs from the library. They’re free, and going there to pick out your movie is very reminiscent of being a kid and going to the video store to pick something out on a Friday night.

But recently, I discovered the magic that is RedBox. Like I said before, I rely on my mood to dictate my movie selections, and if I want to watch “Up in the Air” right now, then by golly, I’m going to watch it right now! Unfortunately the libraries aren’t a 24-hour a day operation, so if that mood strikes at 10 at night, there’s not much I could do to get it.

Enter the RedBox.

I’d seen them around for a couple years, but never really gave them much attention until a day last week when I was leaving Kroger at Michigan and Outer Drive. As I walked past the RedBox located there, I thought “Hmm, I wonder how this thing works….and I wonder if it has anything good.”

So I stepped up to the little screen and started scrolling through the selections. I was amazed at the number of movies they offered. I decided I’d give it a whirl and I tapped on “The Blind Side.” The confirmation page popped up, it said it would cost $1.06 ($1 + tax) for one night, and prompted me to slide my debit card. I did, and the movie came sliding out! Wham, bam, thank you RedBox!

I have been thinking a lot about my declining use of Facebook recently, and what might be driving it. The answer lies in two core issues that just did not cross my mind when I signed up four years ago. Social networks are about sharing and about connections.

Friends can be broken into two parts - close and distant. Close friends are the people you have known for years, that you grew up with, went to school with, or that you have become close to through work. Distant friends are acquaintances that you have connected with at some point in life, and make some effort to stay in contact with. For most people, there is some migration between the groups over time, but broadly they stay the consistent.

The explosion of Facebook and online social media has presented each of us with a wealth of options for staying connected to both of these groups. The challenge is that the type of information I want to share with one group, is not information I necessarily want to share with the other. My list of Facebook friends incorporates members of both groups, which is why I find it hard to figure out what to post there. In part because of this, I have resorted to posting pretty much nothing over the last year.

For a good number of my Facebook “friends,” I see communications that I imagine were really designed for members of the close group, but that end up being broadcast to both. The result is that I just don’t care about 80% of what appears in my friend feed. And when you consider that Facebook is essentially a public forum, the issue is exacerbated further.

There are many big changes people can make to save money – cut back on all entertainment, for example. But there are also a number of smaller things people can do to save money, and with the economy not yet turning around, it seems many Americans have opted for this approach. Almost two-thirds of U.S. (65%) adults say they are purchasing more generic brands to save money, slightly up from February when 63% said they were doing this.

These are some of the results of The Harris Poll of 2,227 adults surveyed online between June 14 and 21, 2010 by Harris Interactive.

Almost half of Americans (48%) say they are brown bagging lunch instead of purchasing it to save money, also slightly up from February when 45% said they were doing this. Two in five U.S. adults each say they have switched to refillable water bottles instead of purchasing bottles of water (39%) and are going to the hairdresser less often (38%). In February, one-third of Americans (34%) had switched to refillable water bottles to save money. Also, one-quarter (24%) have cut down on dry cleaning.

Looking at media habits, three in ten U.S. adults (31%) have cancelled one or more magazine subscriptions and just under one in five (17%) have cancelled a newspaper subscription. It’s not just reading habits that are changing in these economic times, though. One in five Americans (22%) have cancelled or cut back cable television service while an additional 22% say they have considered doing so.

In addition to brown-bagging it, other work habits have also changed. One in five Americans (22%) have stopped purchasing coffee in the morning, while 12% have begun carpooling or using mass transit (but this is not applicable to 48% of Americans who may not be working or may not have the ability to carpool or use mass transit).

Phone service has also changed as 15% have cancelled their landline service and are only using cell phones, with an additional 22% saying they have considered this to save money. Cell phone usage is also changing as 15% say they have changed or cancelled cell service to save money, with an additional 17% of Americans saying they have considered doing so.

"The stress of how to pay for a college education leaves many students and families feeling overwhelmed and frustrated," said Kevin Walker, co-founder and CEO of SimpleTuition.com. "It can be a challenge figuring out all the options that are available."

SimpleTuition offers seven steps that students and families should take in paying for college:

It's been a big summer for Muslim women from Dearborn-- first we had Rima Fakih named Miss USA-- awesome, by the way!

And then it was announced that 21-year-old Dearborn resident Sahar "Hollywood" Dika would appear on the new season of MTV's 'The Real World' (Wednesdays at 10p on MTV).

Her cast bio from MTV reads, "Sahar grew up in a conservative Arab community in Dearborn, MI. It would be easy to assume that because of that she's a submissive, conservative girl. But that would not be the case. She's a strong-willed, liberal Muslim who is not easily intimidated. Expect her to speak her mind. Sahar was fortunate to have parents who allowed her a bit more space to be herself; however, there are still things that she was forced to hide from her community, like her virginity... or lack thereof. Although in a vague long-distance relationship, Sahar is used to turning heads and is constantly crushing on boys-- but just wait until she meets roommate Eric! A budding singer/songwriter, Sahar looks to explore more of this career in New Orleans, no matter what anyone in her conservative community thinks."

Additional info I've found out about her includes: she gradutated from Fordson in '06, where she was a member of the International Thespian Society, and she appeared in a horror short called 'Secluded.'

But anyway... so far this season of 'The Real World' has been a blast-- high emotions, fights, feuds, hotties, drinking, sluttiness-- but our homegirl has been a real bore. A real non-factor. Jay Sutel from The Faster Times summarized the players and the drama thus far this season, and Dearborn's own Sahar merited no more than a passing sentence. Read on for his take on the things.

More than six weeks into the worst environmental catastrophe the U.S. has ever faced, if you want to go deeper into the causes, risks, possible fixes and latest developments, you have to move beyond the big news outlets.

Here are ten web sites worth bookmarking for regular reference.

BP: Gulf of Mexico Response: Not as current as one would like (updated every 12-15 hours), but they're literally on the scene.

NOAA: Office of Response and Restoration: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is tracking the spill and its impact.

Deepwater Horizon Response: This is "the official site of the Deepwater Horizon Unified Command," and it's cranking out a lot of information.

EPA Response to BP Spill in the Gulf of Mexico: The Environmental Protection Agency is really slow to update, but the data on air, water and sediment contamination are important.

An April 28 showing of the documentary "City of Borders," which follows the lives of gay Israelis and Palestinians, and the subsequent panel discussion brought several prominent ideas to the table concerning life as an LGBT Middle Easterner - including differences between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, interfaith relationships and weighing civil rights against social acceptance.

The Jewish Gay Network and Middle Eastern LGBT organization AL GAMEA co-hosted the event as part of the annual Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival. Through a diverse panel comprised of Israeli Jew Matan Farris, Jordanian Christian "Steven"* and Lebanese Muslim "Charlie,"* it aimed to bridge the gaps between religions and nationalities through the commonality of sexual orientation and gender identity.

*names were changed by request

Farris, who lived in Tel Aviv before moving to the U.S. several years ago, spoke of actually visiting Shushan, Jerusalem's only gay bar that served as the focal point of "City of Borders."

"It's very much like you saw in the movie," he said of the now-closed location, which still holds a similar gay night once a month.

"It's a really strong group of people that came together every month, every week - sometimes twice a week when it was in its prime - to get together and just be happier, be at peace and spread the love."

Conversely, the panelists spoke of violence against gays and lesbians in Israel and Palestine - another issue raised in the film.

Mikel Ellcessor, WDET's General Manager says, "The explosive growth of three distinct groups, the Tea Party movement, the Patriot movement, with the militias as their paramilitary arms, and the nativist anti-immigration movement has been underway for the past year. While these are distinct movements with their own animus, there is a well documented, and rising, level of extreme rhetoric coming from all three groups. This rhetoric has contributed to an environment that is fostering violence from the extreme right and multiple instances of domestic terrorism."

“Are you doing this for a boy?” was the reaction of one of my shrewder friends.

I stalled. “Well—”

And this friend, whose Bulgarian origins lend a delightfully cynical Old World wisdom to her girl talk, was frank: “Don’t worry about it. I know his type, and he doesn’t care how smart you are; he just loves to hear himself talk.”

But then she added, “Read Anna Karenina first.”