Iran targets $75 oil amid plans for post-sanctions output boost

“Nobody is satisfied with current prices and instabilities and fluctuations,” Zanganeh said Wednesday at a news conference in Tehran.

“I think everyone is very satisfied with $70 to $75,” he told reporters later.

Iran would start to boost crude output in 10 days if international economic sanctions against it are removed, Zanganeh said. Production would climb to 3.8 million barrels a day within six months and 4 million in less than a year, he said, enough to propel Iran to second-biggest in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Iran pumped 2.78 million barrels a day in April, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

More Iranian crude may threaten a price recovery with Brent crude rising 20 percent this year after tumbling 48 percent in 2014. Iran’s exports have dropped more than 60 percent because of the sanctions imposed over its nuclear program, Zanganeh said. Nuclear talks are to resume May 12 in Vienna with a deadline for an agreement by June 30.

“We have sent significant signals to OPEC” on the plan to raise output, Zanganeh said. “Our main market is Asia. Our priority is Asia. After Asia, it’s Europe. We aren’t by any means worried about seeing oil left on our hands. The name of the game is marketing.”

State-run National Iranian Oil Co. is “facing very difficult conditions” because of “payment problems and the drop in oil,” Zanganeh said.

Iran is determined to continue nuclear talks on a “serious basis,” First Vice President Eshagh Jahangiri said earlier Wednesday in a speech at the opening of an international oil and gas exhibition in Tehran. Under a preliminary accord outlined in April, the U.S. and European Union would lift sanctions if inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency verify Iran’s compliance with curbs on its nuclear work.

Iran needs $200 billion of investment in its oil industry, with $70 billion of that for petrochemicals, Zanganeh said.

“Under no circumstances will Iran relinquish its drive to restore its lost share of the oil market,” he said.

The best way to compliment little girls

“You cut your hair! So cute!” “Oh my gosh, I LOVE that bag.

Where did you get it?” “Have you lost weight? You look amazing!” “Ooooh, those boots. I want.”

The compliments flew fast between old friends, zinging across our crowded table and returned just as enthusiastically. It was our way of greeting one another, connecting after time apart, and re-establishing the bond of friendship now that we could see each other in the flesh, and not just in a Facebook photo or Instagram stream.

For women, exchanging compliments is a sort of culturally hardwired ritual, not unlike the way dogs sniff each other’s butts and apes groom one another lovingly. For many of us, it’s become so automatic that while the compliments themselves may be genuine, the instinct to produce them is more habit than anything else. And for most grown women who have reached a certain level of self-acceptance through time or age or by watching enough Oprah!, the exchange game is pretty harmless. Most of us don’t live or die by every stamp of approval; we haven’t attached our self-worth to what somebody says about our handbag.

But what about our daughters?

Knowing what we do now about young girls and self-esteem – that body image issues start as early as preschool, that girls who feel good about themselves are more likely to wait longer to experiment with sex and alcohol – compliments become more problematic. I want my daughters to feel beautiful, but I don’t want them to tie their worth to the way they look. I believe that paying a genuine compliment is a gracious way to connect with another person, but I don’t want them to place more importance on flattery than it deserves. I want them to learn to say “thank you” when they receive a compliment, but I don’t want them to feel slighted if they don’t. It’s a tricky balance.

Is the solution to stop complimenting our girls on the way they look or their sparkly shoes or their divinely creative hairdos? To stick to empowering them by focusing on their inner beauty and growing minds? Maybe, strictly speaking. But in the real world – the one where my girlfriends and I also fall into flattery as an easy means of female connection – I’m not sure that eliminating comments about appearance solves the problem. Yes, it’s important to ask great questions and treat our girls as the bright young people they are. But I also think there are ways to compliment a young girl on the way she looks that helps to teach her what to value about herself and other women.

When it comes to my own two daughters, I’m not trying to stop complimenting, I’m just trying to do it better. Here’s how.

Oh, the outfits

It’s easy to see how a preschooler who hears again and again how pretty she looks in her princess dress will begin to draw the conclusion that without it she is less so.

I steer my compliments in the direction of creativity and activity, two traits I want my daughters to own with pride. “I love all the colors you have going on today! What’s your favorite?” sends the message that her creative choices matter. “You look so pretty in pink!” reduces the outfit to a single color and her to that loaded adjective. I also say things like, “Those shoes look like they’d help you run really FAST!” or “I love dresses in the summertime because they’re so comfortable and cool, don’t you?”

Natural beauties

My 7-year-old has amazing eyelashes: long, dark, and impossibly thick. She’s so used to being told that her eyes are beautiful that she shrugs it off with a quick “thanks” and moves on. When it comes to complimenting little girls on their natural beauty – darling dimples, gorgeous curls or flawless skin – I think we have to tread carefully for two reasons. One, often the features we covet as women are just the ones young girls wish they could do without, so remarking on her sweet freckles may not be what a tween girl wants to hear. And two, Mother Nature is a fickle lady (as those of us approaching middle age know too well): straight hair turns curly, porcelain skin meets puberty, and someday my daughter may choose to fixate on her well-endowed brows over her luscious lashes.

I try to stay away from complimenting little girls on their pretty hair or long legs, but I do find ways to admire their natural beauty as it relates to their whole self. “I love the way your whole face lights up when you smile,” or “You looked so confident up there on the stage” takes the focus off the features and onto the person they belong to.

Size doesn’t matter

It’s the first thing we often say to a child we haven’t seen in a while: “Wow! You’re getting so big!” It isn’t even a compliment, really, but it often comes out sounding like a general appreciation of a kid having successfully outgrown her last year’s pajamas (as if she had anything to do with it). But compliments that involve a girl’s size lead down a slippery slope, even when we think we’re being careful about “fat talk” and hot-button body image issues.

Instead of commenting on growing girls or size in general, I love to point out what they can DO with those growing bodies. “You’re tall enough to ride the roller coaster now – how fun!” puts the emphasis where it belongs – on all the things she can do with her body, not how big or small it is.

Model great compliments

I can’t change the fact that it’s ingrained in our culture to gush over big blue eyes or fawn over a pretty dress. Like it or not, my daughters are going to receive those kinds of compliments in their growing years. But I can be intentional about the way I compliment other girls and women. Recently I’ve made a point of saying out loud some of the things that run through my head when I see a particularly poised or stylish woman – especially when it goes against the grain of conventional beauty.

“I loved chatting with that woman in the bookstore,” I might say. “She was so passionate about her job, and so helpful to us. And didn’t she have a cool collection of bracelets on her arm?”

At my recent girls’ catch-up lunch, the compliments were just the warm up act. After a flurry of hugs and flattery, we got into the real meat of life, the sticky stuff reserved for in-person conversations. We talked about kids, mothering, marriages and our parents’ health. We asked hard questions and laughed loudly. We left feeling full, and also lighter.

There was intelligence, honesty, bravery and hilarity around the table that afternoon. There were also some amazing shoes, gorgeous eyes and at least one enviable handbag. All of it was worthy of praise.

That’s what I want my daughters to know. Your outfit doesn’t define you, nor does your size, or the coincidental proximity of your God-given beauty to a man-made aesthetic. On the other hand, your outfit is fabulous because it reflects your creativity, and your lashes are gorgeous because they are a part of you, and your long legs can take you to the top of a mountain or the front of a stage, if that’s where you want to go. You look great, and you are great. You are beautiful because of who you are, not who you are because you are beautiful.

(And sparkly shoes are just plain fun.)

— — —

Sarah Powers lives, writes, and wrangles three young children in Southern California. She also cohosts The Mom Hour podcast and tweets @powersofmine.

US says manatee no longer endangered

The manatee, a species long considered at risk of extinction, has recovered in sufficient numbers to move from endangered to threatened status.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to reclassify the protection status of the West Indian manatee, including a Florida subspecies listed as endangered since 1967.

The decision, announced at the Miami Seaquarium, reflects a finding that about 6,300 manatees live off the Florida coast today, compared with roughly 1,200 counted when aerial surveys began in the early 1990s.

Federal and state officials described the likely reclassification as good news for the whiskered “sea cow” popular among Floridians.

“Based on the best available scientific information, we believe the manatee is no longer in danger of extinction,” Michael Oetker, deputy regional director for the US wildlife agency’s southeast office, told a news conference on Thursday.

Federal regulators were petitioned to downgrade the status of the manatee by the Pacific Legal Foundation acting on behalf of Save Crystal River Inc, a non-profit advocating for the rights of recreational water users in west central Florida.

Motorboat propellers and speedboats are a leading cause of death and injury to Florida’s manatees.

The West Indian manatee, related to the African and Amazon species and to the dugong of Australia, grows to three metres and more than 450kg.

It has no natural predators, but is vulnerable to prolonged exposure to water temperatures below 20 C degrees.

The 2012 petition noted that US regulators in 2007 had recommended downgrading the manatee to threatened status, but never took action to reclassify the species.

“It’s taken eight years and two lawsuits to get the government to follow up on its own experts’ recommendation to reclassify the manatee,” Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer Christina Martin said in a statement.

To be defined as endangered, a species must face imminent risk of extinction, wildlife regulators said, while being threatened indicates they could become endangered in the future.

If finalised, the classification change would not diminish protections for the manatee under the Endangered Species Act, wildlife officials said.

Manatees also are protected under another federal law for the conservation of marine mammals.

The range of the West Indian manatee extends into the US southeast, the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America.

Regulators are seeking public comment on the proposed reclassification.

The agency has 12 months to adopt the change, or explain why it will not do so, said Martin of the Pacific Legal Foundation.

Q&A with a manager who wants to get rid of managers

“Zappos said about 14 percent, or 210, of its roughly 1,500 employees had decided Holacracy wasn’t for them, and they will leave the retailer.

“They were offered at least three months of severance pay by Zappos Chief Executive Tony Hsieh, who wrote in a 4,700-word memo in March that the company hadn’t ‘made fast enough progress towards self-management.’ Buyouts are part of an accelerating effort to ‘rip the bandaid,’ he wrote.”

Holacracy is the brainchild of former software entrepreneur Brian Robertson, who is now “Constitution Steward,” “Holacracy Spokesperson,” “People & Partnership Lead Link,” “Compensation Architect” and about 20 other things at HolacracyOne, the consulting firm he co-founded.

The name Holacracy is derived from author Arthur Koestler’s term “holon,” which means a whole that is part of a larger whole, but Robertson says the approach is less a grand philosophical scheme than the product of trial and error. The experimentation continues at Zappos, publishing platform Medium, the office of the Chief Information Officer of the state of Washington and more than 300 other organizations.

Following, a condensed, edited transcript of our conversation last week in New York.

Question: Why do we need a new way to manage organizations?

Answer: If you think about the way they’re managed today, it looks a little bit like a feudal empire. There’s kings, there’s lords, there’s barons, there’s peasants and serfs. In our societies we’ve seen the shift from top-down management, from feudal systems and dictatorships, to where people have the freedom to pursue their individual purposes within a framework of rules and interconnection and order. I want to see the same benefits that we’ve seen societally, in an organization.

Q: But corporate organizations are often get lauded for being quick-moving, at least in comparison with governments. They can change direction quickly.

A: I’m not saying that management hierarchies are necessarily bad at that. I just want to know what’s better. In our society, innovation comes when government provides a framework within which people can actually self-organize. Innovation doesn’t come from top-down bureaucracy. It comes from individual actors within a system free to pursue whatever makes sense to them locally.

Q: So what do you think is the best way to go about organizing that framework in a business?

A: That’s the question we explored when we came up with Holacracy. Holacracy is sometimes misunderstood as any system that has no managers. It’s not. It’s a specific system that replaces the management hierarchy with a different framework of rules for how we can work together. Our best answer is captured in the Holacracy Constitution. That itself is evolving. It’s an open-source system.

Holacracy is sometimes mistaken for a consensus-based system. It’s not. The meetings are only used to define authority and boundaries. Kind of like in a society, where you don’t have to come to consensus with your neighbors every time you want to take your car and drive it somewhere. Now if you want to take your neighbor’s car, you need permission. There are boundaries. Holacracy brings that into a company. The meetings are used to clarify those boundaries so you know exactly what’s yours to lead. Then we don’t need to meet about it; you don’t need to build buy-in or consensus; you can get whatever input you want and lead.

Q: In a Holacratic organization, then, the person formerly known as the CEO could conceivably have a huge amount of authority to change the direction of the organization.

A: Absolutely, yes they could. They also have limits on that authority. Here’s the interesting thing: others have lots of authority too. In my company I know I have a lot of freedom to do whatever makes sense to me, but I know where I need to get someone else’s permission. I am the founder, but when I want to make a change on our website, I know that our website manager role has the authority. I can’t tell him what to do. I have to pitch him like I’m pitching my boss.

Q: If you want a change on your company’s website and you can’t persuade your website manager, how is conflict like that dealt with?

A: The first line of defense is I just go to him and talk to him, and pitch him. … [Then] I go to what’s called a governance meeting, and I think about what I need to expect from him. Not the specific decision but the pattern, the expectations. Maybe I fill a spokesperson role, and I really want to expect our website manager to provide space on the website for me to share my presentations. He still has the autonomy to figure out how to do that, but in that governance process any of his colleagues can propose new expectations for his role. He has a voice in that process, and there’s kind of a cool conflict resolution process to sort that out.

Q: What if there’s somebody who’s just not doing their job very well?

A: Somebody needs to get someone out of the role if they’re not a good fit. That need doesn’t magically go away because you have Holacracy in place. So there’s another role that is specifically watching for performance. Now, the difference is that role doesn’t have the authority to micromanage them and tell them what to do, but they do have the authority to choose the best person for the role, and to make a change if it’s needed.

What’s a little different is that they’re also not firing the person, because in Holacracy people fill many roles. I fill 20-some roles in my company, and somebody might be removing me from one of them, and I might be grateful, right? I might be a terrible fit, and yet a great fit for 19 others.

Q: Holacracy evolved from your previous company, right?

A: Yeah, it was a software company I started specifically from a hunger to find a better way.

Q: What did you discover there that you thought, “Oh, it’s going to work like this,” and it totally didn’t?

A: A lot of the ideas I had didn’t work out so well. For example, we wanted to make sure that if anyone anywhere in the company had wisdom that it got integrated. We thought, you know, then let’s just make sure everybody gets a voice in lots of key decisions. It was disaster. It was more meetings, painful meetings, egos at play.

We tried less structure, which a lot of startups nowadays do. At very small companies I think that can work to a point, but what quickly emerges is some political structure for how power really works, and that’s hard to change. It makes it easier for that CEO/founder/whatever to show up and really control everything without looking like it, and it makes it harder to actually grow and scale a business.

We realized that absence of structure is not the answer any more than the bureaucratic structure that we were trying to move past. Holacracy is actually more structured than a typical management hierarchy. It’s just a different kind of structure and one that gives you a lot more clarity on who makes decisions and who does what.

Q: Is Zappos the biggest organization that’s doing this?

A: They’re the biggest one that’s doing it end-to-end across the whole company.

Q: They’ve been getting lots of attention, and it’s clearly a painful process.

A: It’s a huge change. This isn’t something you do in a few months. This is a multiyear journey. But the press reports this Zappos thing as if people walked out up in arms, and that’s not what happened at all. Zappos consciously said that if you’re not on board with this 100 percent, we’ll give you a huge buyout if you leave now. The amount of people that left probably is not that different than any major reorg, except typically it would be over a year or two after they were initially resisting the process.

[Begin optional add end]

Q: What happened to you in your career that made you think, “Dang, we need this?”

A: An aerospace company I worked at won an award for being the best mid-sized company in America to work for. … It had phenomenal benefits, great culture, all the stuff you’d expect from a company winning that award. Yet even with all that, I felt like I couldn’t use all my talents. I wanted to be creative and contribute, yet I had bosses to satisfy and politics to play to get change enacted, and everything was a little calcified.

That was one of the things. Then I had another experience that just became a metaphor for me. I’m a pilot, and I was flying a plane as a student pilot when my low-voltage light came on. Every other instrument said nothing’s wrong, so I ignored it, I kept flying and I nearly crashed the plane. I realized that the low-voltage light is tuned into information no one else has.

When we show up in companies, we become the sensors, the instruments. If we can’t use what we sense, or if one person who senses that something’s off doesn’t have anything they can do with it, we risk crashing the organization. … How can we create a company where anyone anywhere in the organization who senses something that could be improved, can act on it and get meaningful change enacted, without obstacles in the way?

Fertility medicine bring babies — and tough decisions

Loblein was 35 when she walked down the aisle for the second time, and she was already a mother to three children from her first marriage.

But the meteorological satellite operator knew that she wanted a child with her new husband, and in vitro fertilization was necessary.

Today they have a little boy and a little girl — and, despite Loblein’s best efforts not to create more than they needed, that extra embryo she’d wanted to avoid. Waiting in limbo for her decide its fate.

The Lobleins are among thousands of couples and individuals grappling with difficult choices regarding their stored genetic material. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that more than 600,000 frozen embryos are stored in the United States, in addition to countless more cryo-preserved eggs and sperm.

The issue made for dramatic headlines recently as “Modern Family” star Sofia Vergara was hit with a lawsuit by her ex-fiance, who wants custody of their two fertilized embryos to use for a potential pregnancy. But for most people who have used assisted reproductive technologies, the question of what to do with frozen eggs, sperm and embryos plays out in a much more private, if no less wrenching, manner.

“Having embryos in limbo is a huge problem for our field,” says Eric Widra, medical director at Shady Grove Fertility Center, which has locations throughout the Washington area. “Parents are apprehensive or conflicted and don’t know what to do.”

Most couples never consider the fate of excess embryos when they start down the path of fertility medicine. Especially for childless pairs, longing to conceive, “addressing that is not on the list of priorities,” Widra says. “Many of them take a ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it’ approach.”

A 2005 study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that of 58 couples with leftover embryos, 72 percent hadn’t decided what to do with them.

— — —

The possibility of extra embryos never occurred to Elizabeth, a 42-year-old lawyer in Northern Virginia who asked that only her middle name be used because not all of her family members and colleagues are aware of her decisions. She married at 36 and soon became pregnant. But she always thought that if she had one child, she’d want to have another and was surprised when she had trouble conceiving a second time.

After nearly a year of trying, she and her husband consulted a fertility specialist, who first attempted the less invasive and less costly process of intrauterine insemination. When that didn’t work, they moved on to a round of in vitro fertilization that resulted in nine fertilized embryos.

The first two implanted didn’t take. The doctors then implanted three, one of which resulted in a viable pregnancy. Forty weeks later, Elizabeth’s second son was born. Family life felt full and busy, she says, “but then it started weighing on me that we have four frozen embryos that potentially could be another sibling for the two that we have.”

It’s not that Elizabeth or her husband are desperate for a third child — it would stretch them financially and add to their already hectic schedules — but Elizabeth was raised a Catholic, and it gnawed at her that a potential new life sat frozen in a storage facility.

“I did not think we’d be in a position where we had to think about, ‘Oh, now we have leftover, what do we do?’ ” she says. “I was more concerned with, ‘We only have three attempts covered by insurance — are we going to spend money after that if we don’t have a kid?’ “

If it were solely up to her husband, they might try to donate the remaining embryos to scientific research, but that option doesn’t sit well with Elizabeth. “I felt this need to know whether there was potentially another viable life among the embryos,” she says. The couple decided to have the four embryos thawed and tested to see whether any were chromosomally normal and would thus have a significantly higher likelihood of surviving. One of the four was.

So last week, Elizabeth had one healthy embryo implanted. The couple will find out at the end of the month whether she is pregnant.

“I don’t want to say that I felt like I had no option,” she says. “But it felt like the best option for me, personally.”

— — —

A fter becoming pregnant with twins, Teresa Crawford and her husband, Michael Hess, didn’t want more children. Hess already had two from a previous marriage, and the twins were born 10 weeks early. “We felt very lucky to have two healthy kids, especially because they were born premature,” says Crawford, who works in international development.

In 2006, a year after their IVF cycle, the Washington couple received a bill in the mail for nearly $1,000, with a letter asking what they wanted the clinic to do with their six remaining embryos. The options, they were informed, were to implant them, offer them for donation to another couple, pay the hefty annual storage fee or have them destroyed.

“And we did not like those options at all,” Crawford says. They would have preferred to donate the embryos to science, but at the time, embryonic stem cell research was banned, so that choice was off the table.

Ultimately, the couple decided to have the embryos destroyed, as neither felt a strong emotional attachment to them.

But for some people, the decision to destroy is much more fraught.

On DC Urban Moms and Dads, an online parenting message board, one woman posted that after debating the options for her leftover embryos, she brought the vials home, “burned some incense, held them and cried. I could’ve had the lab dispose of them, but this felt better to me, for whatever it’s worth.”

Meryl Rosenberg, a lawyer in Potomac, Md., who specializes in assisted reproductive technology law, says that as the use of fertility medicine becomes more common, these issues are increasingly making their way through the judicial system. They become particularly complicated when a couple divorces or someone dies, and the interested parties are at odds over the fate of the stored material.

“The relationship sours,” she says, “and one person wants to use the embryos and the other partner does not want to use them.”

“Generally,” she says, “courts have found that the right not to procreate outweighs the right to procreate. But there have been exceptions to that.”

Widra, of Shady Grove, says that his clinic tries to get patients to address the topic proactively, “without drama and with good legal advice.” They sign consent forms acknowledging that embryos are jointly held property, and that “once you make these they are made forever. They are yours and it’s your problem to solve should it come to separation or death.”

Widra says the clinic is trying to offer clients more options. Since President Barack Obama repealed the ban on stem cell research in 2009, there has been some resurgence of interest in donated embryos from the scientific community, he says. And although donating embryos to other people has for many years been arduous and time-consuming, leaders in the field are trying to streamline the process to make it easier “to offer more embryos for adoption and for [adoptive parents] to find them.”

But even that option comes with its own calculations. Loblein was so conscious of the possibility of having extra embryos that when she and her husband had trouble conceiving, they first attempted natural-cycle IVF, fertilizing only one egg at a time. But after two attempts, each costing $5,000, they moved on to traditional IVF.

The couple wound up with three embryos, implanted two and had a boy. A little more than a year later, Loblein became pregnant naturally, this time with a girl. That left her and her husband with one frozen embryo. They talked about donating it, but Loblein fears that she would always wonder whether a child was born and how he or she was being cared for.

Now, with two kids younger than 4, the thought of adding a third sometimes seems overwhelming, especially to Loblein’s husband. “It’s the stressed-out times when both the kids are screaming and he’s like, ‘I don’t know if I can handle another,’ ” she says.

“But at the end of the day I always come back to, ‘Well we just need to try it because I don’t know if I can live with all the other decisions and options.’ “

So sometime early next year, they’ve agreed, the final embryo will be implanted. And then, regardless of the outcome, their family will be complete.

Defense cuts stirring Republican Congress confronting new budget

The Alabama Republican, who’s in line to take over the Senate Budget Committee in January, and other lawmakers seeking to lower the U.

S. deficit say they aren’t convinced the Pentagon needs more money. Even if they agree, restoring funds to the military would require comparable cuts to domestic programs, which Democrats reject.

“I’m going to be pushing to examine what their needs are,” Sessions, who’s planning a series of hearings, said in an interview. “We don’t want to add additional monies until we know what we want to add it for and be sure that we need it.”

While most major legislation has been stalled in Congress for four years, some budget analysts say they’re optimistic that Republican leaders will at least try to reduce the $35 billion in automatic defense cuts slated for the fiscal year starting next October. The Pentagon says those reductions would affect popular programs and personnel.

The automatic cuts in the 2011 budget deal, known as sequestration, are a potential area for compromise because they’re unpopular with both parties, and the deficit that triggered them has shrunk by two-thirds since 2009. Sequestration slashes $1.1 trillion in spending through 2021, divided equally between domestic and defense programs.

Hostilities in Ukraine, the beheadings of Americans in Syria and a bigger U.S. military footprint in Iraq also could sway lawmakers to support more Pentagon spending. Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work recently asked Congress to “stop this madness.”

“What’s happening in terms of the security situation of this country will hopefully change people’s minds,” said Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican who voted against the 2011 Budget Control Act.

The debate will occur in a new Congress controlled by Republicans. The party swept both chambers in the Nov. 4 election, which will empower lawmakers like Sessions committed to reducing the budget deficit.

His insistence that reductions would have to come elsewhere in federal spending to subsidize added Pentagon funding can’t easily be met. A bipartisan budget deal reached in late 2013 already used many of the politically easy fixes such as raising airline fees.

An agreement would require trading cuts in areas such as education and scientific research — or programs like Social Security and Medicare, all of which Democrats will resist. And Republicans will need the other party’s support because their Senate majority will fall short of the 60 votes required to advance most major legislation.

Undersecretary of Defense Michael McCord, the Pentagon’s comptroller, said he doesn’t see an end to sequestration soon, even with a Republican-led Congress. “Just knowing whether the Senate flipped or not was not going to bring us any huge amount of enlightenment,” McCord said in an interview.

Chris Chadwick, chief executive officer of Boeing’s defense, space and security unit, agreed. “We may see some lessening of the pressures of sequestration but we just don’t foresee a wholesale change at this point,” he told Bloomberg reporters and editors in an interview before the election.

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, one of the authors of the 2011 act, said at a Nov. 15 California conference that only a national security crisis would “shake Congress out of its funk” on the spending caps, according to National Defense, an industry group publication.

The history of sequestration shows how hard it will be for lawmakers to make a deal.

Created by Congress in 2011 as part of an agreement to raise the nation’s borrowing limit, it was the product of failed attempts by lawmakers and President Barack Obama to negotiate a grand bargain to rein in the deficit — and was never intended to take effect.

The reductions were designed to be so unpalatable and arbitrary that lawmakers would be compelled to come up with a way to replace them. That didn’t happen.

The congressional budget agreement reached in December 2013 eased sequestration cuts for fiscal 2014 and fiscal 2015, the current year. Without further action, the reductions will take full effect again for fiscal 2016.

If that happens, the Pentagon will be forced to lower its proposed $535.1 billion request for fiscal 2016 to about $500 billion. That’s on top of the $37 billion in cuts for fiscal 2013 and $25 billion for 2014.

The spending battle will pick up next year as lawmakers start deliberations on the fiscal 2016 budget. That’s because the budget deal struck last December by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Senator Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who heads the budget panel, set spending levels through 2015.

Some Republicans are trying to lay the groundwork for a deal. Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas said sequestration was a topic of discussion during the party’s first post-election gathering last week in which they elected new leaders.

Instead of lifting the spending cap, Republicans may try to negotiate another smaller budget accord to lessen its bite, said Ed Lorenzen, a senior adviser to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates for fiscal responsibility.

“The sequester has the potential to be the impetus for budget negotiations on a moderate-sized package that replaces part of the cuts with longer-term savings,” Lorenzen said.

Republicans led by Sessions will insist that health care and other domestic programs absorb some of the Pentagon’s share of cuts. That would be a deal breaker for Senate Democrats.

That means Republicans will ultimately have to compromise, said former Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, who was the second-ranking Republican before leaving Congress in 2013.

Murray said Democrats want to address “these senseless automatic cuts” in a way that strengthens domestic and defense programs.

“I’m hopeful Republican leaders can continue to push aside the Tea Party and work with us,” she said in a statement.

Sen. Mike Crapo, an Idaho Republican, said that won’t be easy. “There’s a pretty strong commitment to hold the bottom- line numbers,” said Crapo, who served on a bipartisan group of senators that tried for several years to negotiate a budget deal.

The funding reductions are at a point where popular military programs would be hit.

The Pentagon says it would have to scale back the number of aircraft carriers to 10 from 11 and adjust the number of helicopters and fighter jets such as F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets made by Chicago-based Boeing and possibly F-35 Joint Strike Fighters made by Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp.

Instead of the planned reduction to about 450,000 troops by 2019, the Army would have to pare its force to 420,000. The Marine Corps would have to be prepared to reduce personnel to 175,000 from an initial reduction to 182,000, the Pentagon says.

Those making the case to ease cuts will cite a declining deficit. The fiscal 2014 budget gap was $483 billion, about 66 percent below its 2009 high.

The advances by Islamic State terrorists in Iraq and Syria and the specter of several more years of U.S. involvement in the Middle East may aid the case for compromise, said Boeing’s Chadwick.

“With the emerging threats worldwide it absolutely will evolve the debate, and there could well be opportunity and a lessening of the sequestration budget caps,” Chadwick said in an interview.

_ With assistance from Tony Capaccio and Kathleen Hunter in Washington.

Homeless people show an instructor their lyrical hearts and epic realities

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said, breaking into a grin. “I got barred from the building.”

This particular student — I’m going to call him James for his privacy — smiles so frequently that had I not gotten to know him, I’d have thought it was something pathological with his cheeks. He’s the kind of person for whom giggling is punctuation. At about 6-foot-3, he outweighs me by an easy 80 pounds, but when I was in a room alone with him, or the four or five other homeless students who took my poetry class at Community Vision in Silver Spring, Maryland, it was never his size I noticed. It was his willingness to be creative with a pen.

I felt protective of that creativity. I tried to treat it gently. Yet, for James to have been barred from the building meant that he had been anything but gentle. At the least, he had leveled a threat against someone. Just as likely, he had used his fists.

I taught poetry at Community Vision, an assistance center for the homeless, once a week for two years. At the same time, I was teaching writing classes at a university 50 miles north. In both cases, there were pressures on my students that I couldn’t see. Within both sets, I’m sure, there were fights with partners, illnesses and the loss of people they loved. But the pressures on my students at Community Vision felt larger: sleeping outdoors, hustling a few dollars, avoiding police, having their blankets stolen.

But if you saw my students on the street, in daylight hours, you’d have no idea where they had slept the night before. When I saw them in downtown Silver Spring, they weren’t standing on corners with cups. Most didn’t have wild, tangled hair or grime-darkened clothing. If you’d run into James, what you’d most likely have noticed was that sheepish grin — like a child trying to get one over on you, but willing to play along. A good sport.

And a willing student, too.

When I’d walk up to Community Vision, I’d find him standing outside with three or four other young men. If it was cold, they’d have on knit caps, their hands thrust into their pockets. Loitering, is what it was.

“James, you coming to class?” I’d say, and he’d grin — as if caught red-handed.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll be in there.”

“How ’bout you guys?” I’d say to the others.

“What is it?”

“Writing poetry. About your own life. You can’t do it wrong.”

“Nah.”

“Nah. Not me. Not me. Maybe next time, though.”

There was always a host of maybe-next-timers, who never next-timed. But James was true to his word, and after I’d staked out a table in one of the utility rooms, and set up notebooks and ballpoints, he’d find his way in, plop himself down, giggle and say, “So, what are we writing about?”

During our exercises, he’d stare deeply at the page, chuckle to himself and dig in with his pen in the manner of a focused eater. I’d often give students a prompt, then 15 minutes of silence to respond to it. Almost always, I’d be forced to cut the exercise short by saying, “Let’s stop where you are. It’s OK if you aren’t finished,” because invariably, no one was.

Then I’d ask if anyone wanted to share. Again, invariably, hands would rise. This has been the surprise of my career as a creative-writing teacher: Students, wherever I’ve taught, are excited to read what they’ve written. It has happened across all ages, all majors, but none with such enthusiasm as the pupils at Community Vision. As a student, myself, at the University of Wisconsin, I remember turning crimson just thinking of reading my work aloud.

But there is an earnestness in students volunteering to read their work. It might simply be a button I’ve pushed on a basic human instinct: In sharing their work, they seemed to be announcing that what they’d spent the past 15 minutes doing was intrinsically good. That putting pen to paper to write about what was happening inside their brains is a healthy endeavor — something their lives had, to that point, been missing.

The students at Community Vision wanted to make up for that absence as if they were making up for a Vitamin D deficiency, coming more to life as they did so. When I asked, “Who wants to read?” it was as if I’d said, “Who wants a trip to the Caribbean?”

Again, I don’t take credit for this. Life outside Community Vision is traffic noise, street grit and faces that, early in the day, are nothing but commuter-intensity, and later, the whimsy of the gainfully employed on lunch break. The classroom where I taught was a quiet place with books lining the walls. Often, before we assembled, staff members would shoo men from the chairs, their heads pitched ceilingward as they slept. The room was a sanctuary, certainly, but also a slate as blank as the page.

At first, I tried to structure these classes the way I structure my college classes. I’d bring in poems we could read as a group, then discuss. But many of my students hadn’t graduated high school, and some had spent time in special education. Though they always listened intently as someone read, I was met with silence when I asked about meter or word choice or even theme. The most frequent question I received was a student holding up his or her copy of the poem, asking, “Can I keep this?” Often, they returned the next week with that same poem, creased with folds and dirty at the edges from pulling it in and out of a crowded shopping bag. With my college students, the end of a class leaves with it a smattering of abandoned handouts. Though I know it shouldn’t, it always hurts my feelings a bit — something precious being treated carelessly.

Our discussions at Community Vision revolved around a search for a poem’s meaning. More often than not, the meanings that rose to the surface were the platitudes and bromides I would go to great lengths to avoid in my college classes, but that at Community Vision became an affirmation of the time we spent around the table. “He’s saying we’ll all be happier if we aren’t so selfish.” “It looks dark, but if you see what you really have, you should be grateful and happy.”

One of my difficulties was finding poetry that wasn’t overly chipper or that didn’t rejoice too heartily in the life of the housed. It seemed that everything I considered expressed an unrelenting joy at being in one’s own kitchen or being warm and dry in a bed. I felt responsible for my students’ mood and didn’t want them leaving that classroom under a cloud of Sylvia Plath.

So, I found poems that spoke to hard living but that sought at least a fragment of hope. I used “Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits” by Martín Espada; “Blues,” “To Anita” and “Poem No. 8” by Sonia Sanchez; and “April Rain Song” by Langston Hughes, a beautiful poem I couldn’t resist on a rainy Wednesday, though the speaker does, indeed, seem to luxuriate in being warm and dry.

Finally, I began searching for poems written by homeless people. These were the most successful. Though some of the poems were moving, I wouldn’t have taught them in a college classroom. Often, the language was more emotional than crafted, giving the lines a simplicity I generally urge my students beyond. This is the start of a perfect day. / The city is just ten miles away. / And i think of the joy a nice walk brings. / To the heart of a boy as the blackbird sings.

But after teaching at Community Vision for a year or so, simplicity of language was beside the point. The poems were inspirational. That my students might have their own writing in print was the source of great excitement. And we did, ultimately, print a literary zine, Visions and Voices, that came out in four volumes.

It was a heady time, when those little journals started coming off the press (I use the term “press” loosely here — the zines were “published” in my basement). We started selling them at a coffee shop (and made 18 bucks … enough for another half-dozen editions), and there was talk of staging a poetry reading. But before we could iron out the details, our numbers began to dwindle. I was used to having between four and seven students each week, then suddenly I had two. One student was arrested. One student no one has heard from since. Another called to say she was fighting cancer again. James was barred from the building. A couple of weeks later, I showed up to an empty classroom.

When I saw James in the Resource Window just the other day, he asked me, “You’re not having class anymore?”

“Nobody’s here,” I said. “Everyone disappeared.”

“Yeah,” he said, the smile leaving his face. “I know.”

For more information about getting involved or volunteering at Community Vision or any Interfaith Works program, contact Yvonne Esipila, Interfaith Works volunteer coordinator, [email protected]杭州桑拿按摩,, 301-315-1097.

To volunteer or donate canned vegetables, deodorant or travel-size toothpaste to Shepherd’s Table, visit 杭州桑拿,shepherdstable杭州桑拿按摩,.

Benjamin Warner teaches writing classes at Towson University in Maryland. His first novel, “Thirst,” is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Publishing.

A timely conversation for the season of light

Q.

I am renovating an old Depression-era cabin. We tore out the seven-foot ceilings and are leaving the rafters exposed to open the space up. What kind of lighting would you recommend?

A. Track lighting would be a great choice because you have exposed wood ceilings. If you like the look of pendants, there are a number of pendant light designs that fit into track systems. Just make sure that pendants will work with the track system you pick.

Q. I have used old torchiere-style floor lamps for good reading light next to a sofa or chair where I cannot place a table. Is there anything more updated that can still serve the purpose?

A. Torchiere lamps are great for general room lighting, because they aim light up toward the ceiling. We offer a number of new updated designs that come with adjustable side lights on the lamp pole, making them ideal for reading. If you want to go LED, there are an increasing number of floor lamp designs, many of them with very thin profiles. You can also find combo tray table/floor lamps so you can have your light and table in one design.

Q. I want to make the switch to LED bulbs, but I’m not sure how to get the same look and brightness as I’m getting with my old bulbs. What should I be looking for?

A. You’re not alone in being confused. The best way to think about LEDs is to look at how much light they output. So if you have an existing incandescent bulb that outputs 1,000 lumens, which is about what you get from a 75-watt bulb, look for an LED that has the same lumens. You’ll be swapping a bulb that uses 75 watts for one that uses only 20, but getting the same amount of light. The LED will last far longer, too, so that’s a win-win. You’ll also want to look at the color temperature of the new LED bulb, which means the color of the light output — yellowish, blue, etc. Most of us like a warm yellow tone that we get with incandescents, so look for an LED in the 2,000 range. The lower the color temperature, the warmer the bulb.

Q. What major trends do you see emerging in lighting and home decor in the next year?

A. There are some great new trends emerging, from luxe and industrial to French inspiration. Mixed metals are going to play a strong role, with profiles becoming thinner with the integration of LED. We see luxe as lighting with crystal and silver finishes. Industrial draws inspiration from utilitarian and agrarian settings with the use of cages, aged metals and weathered woods. French inspiration has decorative details and soft lines.

Q. I am renting an older home, and the bedrooms don’t have any overhead lighting and I can’t add any. I am mostly concerned about my kids’ bedrooms. Right now, they have only an old halogen floor lamp.

A. If you can’t install overhead lighting, a swag plug-in chandelier is a great choice. These don’t require any electrical installation; they just hang from hooks you install in the ceiling, then plug into any standard household outlet. Lots of colors and patterns are available, so you can match the light to your child’s personality. I’d also recommend a swing-arm wall lamp; these also plug into a wall outlet and are easy to install.

Q. Can you talk about CFLs vs. LEDs?

A. CFLs have been around a little longer and are generally less expensive. They come in different color temperatures, as do LEDs, so if you want a warm incandescent look, choose a bulb that has a rating around 2,000. Newer CFLs have a more bulblike look, with a glass enclosure around the twist tubing. They do have to be properly disposed of. I recommend LEDs over CFLs. They are much longer-lasting and use far less energy.

Q. My husband and I are always fighting over the one good reading chair in our house. I think because it is next to a floor lamp. Is it possible to get the same effect from a tall end table and lamp? I am thinking of a 28-inch-tall end table with one of your 28-inch-tall double gourd lamps on top.

A. You are on the right track. Reading lights should be at eye level when sitting, and your measurements are perfect.

Q. My husband and I are replacing our dining-room chandelier and are debating the best size for the room and how low to the dining table it should be hung. Our room is about 12 by 14 feet with an eight-foot ceiling.

A. A chandelier in a dining room should be positioned in the center of the dining table and room proportions. Avoid purchasing a chandelier that’s larger than the width of your table, as people may bump into it when getting up. A handy rule of thumb is that a chandelier should be 12 inches narrower than a table and have at least 48 inches of space from each of the room walls or edges. Hang a chandelier approximately 30 to 34 inches over a table with an eight-foot ceiling height. If your ceiling is higher, mount the chandelier an additional three inches higher for each foot over eight feet. If you are out shopping and can’t remember all this, take your room measurements (12 by 14 feet) and add them together: 26. That number, in inches (not feet) is about the width your chandelier should be.

Q. I am trying to determine which paint color I can use in a kitchen with honey oak cabinets, beige countertops and tan flooring. The room is large and currently has two (non-cabinet) walls painted a mustardy yellow, but that is too close to the cabinet color. Sage green/cornflower blue seems so 1990s to me. Is there anything to freshen up this color palette?

A. That’s a fairly large space you have there, but a couple of ideas come to mind. You are on the right track with softer greens and blues — very in-style colors for 2015. A great designer tip: Always go one shade darker than you think will look best. Colors always look different on a swatch than on a wall. Also, if the room is very sunny, the paint color will absorb more of the light and look lighter. For a complete designer look, paint your ceiling two shades lighter than your wall color.

Q. We have a flush-mount light fixture in our foyer, and we can’t find the right bulb for it. The light is either too bright and glaring or too gray and overcast-looking. Any ideas?

A. We would suggest using a frosted bulb for this application. That will reduce the glare you are seeing. And put the light on a dimmer switch. This will allow you to set the light level for different times of day, different functions, etc.

Q. In magazines, I’ve seen lamp shades that match wallpaper. In my small town there is nowhere that would even know what I was talking about. I don’t really want to glue stuff to the shade. Do you have any ideas for customizing lamp shades?

A. Wallpaper is very in right now and is a great decorating look. If you have wallpaper, you want to complement it vs. trying to match it directly. We have a made-to-order custom lamp shade program that lets you pick a shade pattern and then select your own custom colors. Just remember that the pattern on the shade should be the opposite of the pattern size on the wall — big on wall, small on shade.

Q. (The holidays are) coming up. Any ideas on setting the perfect table? I usually start off with two candles, and then people complain that they can’t see what they’re eating and all the lights come back on.

A. For any room, you want multiple lighting layers. So by all means have the candles on the table to set the mood, but also include other light sources. You can dim the overhead chandelier or light. If you don’t have a dimmer, use lower-wattage bulbs. An accent lamp on a side table also works well in a dining room setting.

Q. I’ve noticed when going to hotels that often the lamps have power outlets in the base. This is such a good idea. I’d like the same thing in my home but can’t find them in any of the stores.

A. These types of lights are handy, aren’t they?! Hotel chic is in right now, and we do have a few desk lamps that have power outlets in the base. They’re perfect for desk or computer table use.

Q. I bought a big house with a ton of ceiling fans but no light kits. Can you typically install a light kit on any fan that has the removable cover? Also, one of the many fans is not hard-wired, it is plugged into a wall socket. Is there any reason I couldn’t hardwire it?

A. For the light kit, the fan needs to be designed to accept a light kit. One of our fan experts will be able to tell you for sure if your fan can take a light kit. As far as the plug-in fan goes, we don’t see why you can’t hard-wire it. Consult an electrician to be sure.

Q. I live in Southern California, and I want to add some versatile lighting in my back yard. I like the look of string lights and I’d like to have something I can keep up year-round and that can be fancied up if necessary. Do you have any suggestions?

A. Low-voltage lighting is ideal for backyard settings. Look for a landscape light kit to get started. This is a simple DIY installation job, and the kit comes complete with lights, plug-in transformer and cable. There are solar lights as well that don’t require any wiring. These look especially great on decks and patios. (Look for cap lights.)

Ashley Madison faked female profiles to lure men in, hacked data suggest

But the user records laid bare by hackers last week tell a very different story: Of the more than 35 million records released, only 5 million — a mere 15 percent — actually belonged to women.

This discrepancy may be the smoking gun that proves something angry users, industry insiders and government watchdogs have alleged for some time: that when it comes to reporting their own user numbers, paid-dating sites distort, manipulate … and sometimes straight-up lie.

“Ashley Madison has paid people to write profiles, and they’ve allowed fake profiles to proliferate on their site,” said David Evans, an industry consultant who has contracted with Ashley Madison in the past and has tracked the business of online dating since 2002. “Tons of sites are guilty of that. That’s not news.”

It may be news, however, to the legions of paying online daters who have treated tales of “date bait” as message-board apocrypha — and not as a tangible, industry-wide practice that they themselves have encountered.

Ryan Pitcher, who spent two years in the late aughts running a fake-profile team for Global Personals — parent of the massive, multinational dating platform WhiteLabelDating杭州桑拿会所, — explains the scheme like this: Paid-dating sites only make money when potential customers believe they’re sitting on a huge pot of available dates — so many dates, in fact, that it’s worth ponying up 20 or 30 dollars a month just to message them.

For lots of sites, acquiring such a pot is pretty easy. If you’re a niche site running off a platform like White Label — which thousands of niche dating sites do — that partnership will frequently come preloaded with a database of real users. Meanwhile, if you’re peddling run-of-the-mill, straight-laced dating, a la Match or eHarmony, you can just buy Facebook ads and run 10-second spots on TV.

“Adult dating” and hook-up sites have a serious problem, though, Pitcher says: While they have no problem attracting interested guys, they absolutely bomb when it comes to women. Some of that has to do with openly misogynist marketing; some of it relates to women’s well-conditioned social and sexual roles; much of it has to do with the fact that being a rare woman on a site full of desperate, oversexed, uninhibited dudes is objectively terrible.

Whatever the exact cause, on the adult sites Pitcher worked on, real women accounted for less than 2 percent of total profiles. And so he and a 28-person team, working in Global Personals’ vaguely named “admin” department, spent their work hours crafting very sexy, very fictional profiles and messaging users from them. Profile-writers made roughly $25,000 a year, with bonuses for hitting certain monthly subscription targets.

“There is, undoubtedly, widespread pseudo profiling and fake messages still going on in the industry,” Pitcher said. “If you don’t have pseudos to try and fulfill the sexual desires of these men … men wouldn’t keep signing up.”

Evans, the industry consultant, agreed: “Look at Fling杭州桑拿会所, or Adult Friend Finder, the two big sex and hook-up sites,” he said. “You know after five minutes that there isn’t a single real woman on there. Somebody like Fling, they make money by BSing everything.”

Unfortunately, despite even the allegations of insiders, it’s very difficult to prove the extent of fake-profiling. While Pitcher says some companies fake their profiles in-house, as his did, it’s also common for firms to outsource this work abroad — where it’s more difficult to track.

Eastern Europe does a bustling, well-documented trade in quote-unquote “translators” — college students and other English-speaking women who receive a small fee to pose, to Western men, as interested daters. Russian-language job sites brim with the postings: “Needed: an interpreter … (to) correspond with foreigners in chat rooms and by letter,” reads one listing that appeared on Vkontakte recently. “Knowledge of English is a must . . . initiative and the ability to keep the conversation going are welcome!”

The going rate for this kind of work, the Kyiv Post’s Daryna Shevchenko reported in 2013, is between 50 cents and $5 a message. Many young women work out of agencies that interface between them and their dating site clients — which have reportedly included sites like Cupid杭州桑拿会所, and Flirt杭州桑拿会所,, two major international dating sites.

None of this has escaped the notice of the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. agency responsible for protecting consumers against fraud. In 2014, the agency fined JDI Dating, a group of 18 dating sites, for messaging visitors from computer-generated “profiles,” and then charging them money to respond. The FTC’s equivalents in Australia and the U.K. have also investigated dating sites for the same practice — but without solid results.

A spokesman for the British Information Commissioner’s Office said that, despite a popular BBC documentary that raised concerns about the practice in 2013, the ICO eventually concluded that policing fake-profiles wasn’t a priority. Even in the U.S. — where the FTC’s Midwest director, Steven Baker, says industry executives have repeatedly approached him with “concerns about the use of fake profiles” at some sites — the practice remains more or less unchecked.

“We’re a small agency, we really are,” Baker said. “I can’t comment on specific cases … (but) we continue to be concerned about this.”

The Ashley Madison hack would only seem to prove that such concern is warranted: It’s pretty clear that fake profiles played a role in the site’s operation at one point, even if they don’t any longer. Until mid-2014, the company openly ran a program called “Ashley’s Angels,” in which paid AM employees messaged visitors from sexy female profiles that weren’t conspicuously identified as fictional. (They were disclaimed, of course, in the company’s small print, where AM explained the program was just an attempt to “provide entertainment.”)

Disgruntled ex-employees have also blown the whistle on what one described, in a 2013 legal filing, as an industry-wide practice. In emails revealed by the recent hack and surfaced by the Daily Dot, Louise Van der Velde, a former spokeswoman for the site, threatens to go to the media with the claim that there are “really no women” on the site and that they “simply rip people off.”

That same year, Doriana Silva — who worked in Ashley Madison’s Toronto offices — sued the company for $20 million, claiming she’d injured her wrists churning out fake profiles for them. While Ashley Madison’s legal team contested the wrist damage vigorously in court, they stopped short of explicitly denying that they paid people to write profiles. Evans, the dating consultant, said he was actually introduced to one of these writers on a visit to Ashley Madison’s headquarters.

“Clearly we aren’t talking about any kind of Mother Teresa organization,” said Silva’s former attorney, Paul Dollak, who represented her against Ashley Madison. “I don’t think that you need to be an insider or a person of great insight or intelligence to arrive at the opinion that AM cares a lot more about profits than about people, including its own members.”

Ashley Madison disputes that characterization, of course; in an interview with The Washington Post, a company executive insisted that its advertised user numbers were genuine, and suggested that the hackers had released only selective records that, when taken together, threw off the gender averages. (When The Post sampled 3,600 verified records belonging to Ashley Madison users in Washington, D.C., and Northern Virginia, it also found that women represented 15.6 percent of users.)

He declined to elaborate on the fake-profile issue — which the company has previously blamed on outside spammers and scammers — or to provide any further data on Ashley Madison’s gender ratio, refusing even to confirm whether the company’s most recently announced gender statistics were still accurate.

“These numbers are being taken out of context,” the executive said, repeatedly. “These criminals have no idea how our business works. You’re not seeing everything.”

He may very well be right, of course: While most security experts now agree that the hacked data is legitimate, plenty of questions still remain about how complete and accurate it is.

But on Aug. 20, hackers released a second trove of data; and on Aug. 21, a third. As security researchers, journalists and law enforcement continue combing through that deluge, patterns are beginning to emerge. The Telegraph reported Aug. 21, citing a source close to the FBI’s hack investigation, that “many of the female profiles on the site were created by a relatively small amount of individuals.”

Were those individuals working for Ashley Madison — or against it, as scammers? There’s little doubt that, as the hacked data is untangled, we’ll finally know the real answer.

San Francisco: Where to go

Aziza

5800 Geary Blvd.

, 415-752-2222

aziza-sf杭州桑拿会所,

Chef Mourad Lahlou’s contemporary take on the food of his homeland garnered him a Michelin star, a first for a Moroccan restaurant in the United States. Gracious service accompanies his basteeya, duck confit wrapped in pastry and dusted with confectioners’ sugar. Creating a buzz since January: Mourad, the chef’s plush new baby in SoMa.

Boulevard

1 Mission St., 415-543-6084

boulevardrestaurant杭州桑拿会所,

Award-winning chef-owner Nancy Oakes serves her refined American cooking in a romantic belle époque setting that takes in views of the Bay Bridge. Open — and beloved — since 1993.

Cafe @ Chez Panisse

1517 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley; 510-548-5049

chezpanisse杭州桑拿会所,

Alice Waters’s ground-floor dining room and set menu get more attention, but insiders prefer the upstairs cafe, with its a la carte list and wood-fired oven. The three-course menu du jour is a seasonal deal at $32. Sign of the times: a shout-out to ceramicists on the daily-changing script.

Frances

3870 17th St., 415-621-3870

frances-sf杭州桑拿会所,

A tribute to the chef Melissa Perello’s grandmother in a slim, unfussy dining room in the Castro. Spinach and green garlic soup with Parmesan sablé is a poem to spring; Sonoma duck breast with toasted farro, figs and walnuts reveals a Mediterranean bent. Another detail worth toasting: The house white and red wines are poured by the ounce for $1.50.

Greens

2 Marina Blvd., Fort Mason Building A, 415-771-6222

greensrestaurant杭州桑拿会所,

Set in a former machine shop with views of the Golden Gate Bridge, the city’s most famous vegetarian restaurant opened 36 years ago. Yet its menu — colorful spring rolls, a vivid Indian sampler, asparagus pizza brightened with lemon zest — tastes very much of today.

Kin Khao

55 Cyril Magnin, 415-362-7456

kinkhao杭州桑拿会所,

Combine the talents of a Bangkok-born blogger, Pim Techamuanvivit, and a former Manresa chef, Michael Gaines, and you get a gem of a Thai eatery in the Parc 55 hotel. Hits include Pretty Hot Wings — chicken, tangy with tamarind — and lovely rabbit meatballs bobbing in green curry balanced with coconut milk.

Lazy Bear

3416 19th St., 415-874-9921

lazybearsf杭州桑拿会所,

Guests are asked to buy tickets and prepay online for a shot at one of two communal tables and a dinner party that stretches a dozen or so courses long. The evening starts with snacks on the mezzanine and continues in a lofty hall where every dish is announced by a cook. Worth your while: sweet pea custard with mint sauce, and rabbit and snails with stinging nettles.

Quince

470 Pacific Ave., 415-775-8500

quincerestaurant杭州桑拿会所,

Everything about the restaurant created by chef Michael Tusk, an alumnus of Chez Panisse and Oliveto in the East Bay, spells luxe: the hush, the theater-length curtains, the delicate stemware, the $200, nine-course, French-Italian tasting menus that revel in the garden (or not; your choice). No detail escapes the restaurant’s attention. Dishes come with house-baked breads tailored to specific courses, and the confections trolley is the Rolls Royce of sweets delivery systems. Did we mention that one staff member’s sole task is to polish those fragile glasses?

Tadich Grill

240 California St., 415-391-1849

tadichgrill杭州桑拿会所,

Much of the charm of one of the city’s longest-lived, no-reservations landmarks comes from the white-jacketed servers, straight out of Central Casting, and the scenery, all dark wood, snug alcoves and epic counter. Some dishes (sand dabs and crab cake) don’t taste as good as they used to, but you can count on the cioppino to brim with seafood and the rice custard pudding to make you smile.

Yank Sing

49 Stevenson St., 415-541-4949

101 Spear St., 415-781-1111

yanksing杭州桑拿会所,

Deemed an American Classic by the James Beard Foundation, this iconic Chinese brand, started in 1958 and with two locations, bustles with dim sum carts and chopsticks hoisting steamed pork buns, pearly shrimp dumplings and Peking duck. With some 60 dishes offered every day, there’s no getting bored.

Zuni Café

1658 Market St., 415-552-2522

zunicafe杭州桑拿会所,

If there’s one restaurant that sums up the city, it’s this airy, two-story magnet for socialites, bohemians and other local characters. Musts include the fresh lime margarita, Caesar salad, roast chicken for two (be patient, it takes an hour) and espresso granita.

BARS

Bar Agricole

355 11th St., 415-355-9400

baragricole杭州桑拿会所,

The handcrafted cocktails here in the SoMa neighborhood all cost $15 — and prove worth the price. The food (ricotta toast with brandied prunes, pork and lamb meatballs with fried herbs) is equal to the drinks. Belly up to the long bar, or grab a seat at the enticing front patio.

Trick Dog

3010 20th St., 415-471-2999

trickdogbar杭州桑拿会所,

The menu at this industrial-looking Mission bar changes twice a year. One visit, the selections are based on a Pantone wheel; another time, they’re printed on record jackets. Currently, patrons are handed what looks like a Chinese menu. Surprise No. 1: Tequila blends well with absinthe, carrot and lemon. Surprise No. 2: The choice hamburger shows up in a hot dog bun.

CAFES AND BAKERIES

Blue Bottle Coffee

Multiple locations

bluebottlecoffee杭州桑拿会所,

Now available on two coasts and in Japan, this popular coffee roaster/cafe got its start in Oakland, where founder James Freeman vowed to sell only coffee that had been roasted within the past 48 hours. Lines form wherever the pour-over coffee is sold, including the Ferry Building.

B. Patisserie

2821 California St., 415-440-1700

bpatisserie杭州桑拿会所,

Pastry chef Belinda Leong re-creates a Parisian salon de thé with her first-class croissants, macarons, tartines and kouign-amann, the last a sugar rush by way of Brittany. My current fascination, tomato sablés, brings to mind cheese straws gone to finishing school. “My favorite!” cries a clerk. “I even keep them in my car!”

Craftsman and Wolves

746 Valencia St., 415-913-7713

craftsman-wolves杭州桑拿会所,

This sleek Mission bakery is a shout-out to artisans, recognizing the challenges they face in pursuit of their handiwork. Here, the handiwork includes the Travel Cake, made with coconut and roasted banana, and the Rebel Within, a sausage-cheese muffin that breaks open to reveal a soft-cooked farm egg. For the road: dark sipping chocolate, yuzu-almond caramels and pâtes de fruits in such intoxicating flavors as blood orange-campari and pineapple-mezcal.

Sightglass Coffee

270 Seventh St., 3014 20th St.; 415-861-1313

sightglasscoffee杭州桑拿会所,

The SoMa flagship of this sibling-owned treasure (now with a newer, smaller location in the Mission) brings together the company offices, a handsome roaster and a sleek coffee bar under one timbered roof. Credit the airy feel to Sightglass’s predecessor, a sign manufacturing shop.

SHOPS AND MARKETS

Bi-Rite Market

550 Divisadero St., 415-551-7900

3639 18th St., 415-241-9760

biritemarket杭州桑拿会所,

If Bi-Rite doesn’t make you want to cook, no store will. Set off with an art deco front, the family-run shop — now in two locations — bursts with artisanal goods and produce, meat and fish that farmers and ranchers deliver themselves. From the kitchen: house-smoked salmon, and risotto made from scratch. Don’t miss the ice cream (inside the newer Divisadero Street shop and across 18th Street from the original location).

Ferry Building Marketplace

1 Ferry Building, 415-983-8030

ferrybuildingmarketplace杭州桑拿会所,

Set off with a soaring clock tower based on one in Seville, this is a crown jewel among the nation’s food halls. The shops inside — Acme Bread Company, Cowgirl Creamery, McEvoy Ranch Olive Oil — carry some of our favorite labels, while the eateries entice with fresh seafood (Hog Island Oysters) and first-rate Southeast Asian fare (Slanted Door). On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, the outside plaza plays host to a fabulous farmers market whose shoppers include some of the Bay Area’s top chefs.

Omnivore Books on Food

3885a Cesar Chavez St., 415-282-4712

omnivorebooks杭州桑拿会所,

Rare-books specialist Celia Sack removed the preciousness of shopping for old food works by putting everything on display, encouraging people to touch the wares and turning the shop into a meeting place for authors. The 2,000 or so titles run the gamut, including a 1753 edition of “The Compleat Housewife” by Eliza Smith ($500) and a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” signed by Julia Child ($1,200). Omnivore also stocks the best contemporary cookbooks, including hard-to-find titles from chefs and restaurants in Europe and Australia.

The (Twitter) Market

1355 Market St., 415-767-5130

visitthemarket杭州桑拿会所,

The founders of this collection of gourmet food counters and grocery aisles gathered at the base of the Twitter building want shoppers to think of the destination as the Eataly of Northern California. Items from fish to flowers are available in the sprawl of the former San Francisco Furniture Mart — for a price. An organic cold-pressed juice will set you back $10.