I met Bill Nye, the global warming guy.

Herman Cain went from "That guy who debated Clinton?" to candidate for the Republican nomination for president of the United States of America to frontrunner in that race to the "Cain Train!" to walking embarrassing quote machine to "Sexual Harassment Train" to "Whatever happened to that guy who debated Clinton and then ran for president?" That took place in about nine months.

But all was not lost. Along the way, Herman met a great gang of people. And as they say, what's important is the journey, not the destination. Let's look back on a scrapbook of Herman Cain's two semesters spent studying abroad in Legitimacystan.

I was extremely honored to meet Trace Shelton.

I promised I would pass along the esteemed former surgeon general C. Everett Koop's concerns to my campaign manager.

As I told Mr. Puck, the more toppings a man has on his pizza, the more manly he is. Wolfgang agreed and told me his restaurants definitely don't serve any sissy pizzas.

Now why on earth do newspapers keep getting skinnier while I keep getting chubbier? You can use that one!

I told President Bush my Anita Hill joke.

Congresswoman Bachmann taught me how to eat fried chicken on a plane.

This is my I.R.S. face. Hhhrrrrrmmmmmm.

It didn't occur to me until now, but "Trump" is an onomatopoeia.

Now that I'm out of the race I can say this: If Newt just pulled his pants up he wouldn't look so hefty.

When I meet really smart people, I like to rest my chin in my hand, like how a sniper steadies his rifle. Because that's what my mind is, a sniper rifle.

My detractors liked to paint me as a pawn of white conservatives. And then when I spend a whole afternoon with a black Iowan, the media looks the other way!

This nice woman kept coming to my events and bugging me for a photo. So, here it is.

When you run into Jon Voight in Israel, you know the path He has chosen for you is right and justified.

You know they've got Pillsbury in Israel? Crazy!

I don't know what this crazy world has in store for me next. But whatever it is, I sure ticked a whole bunch of things off my bucket list this last year. You like the hat? I think I'm going to stick with the hat.

There are even more wonderful photos of this year on Herman Cain's Facebook page.

Abe Sauer is the author of the book How to be: North Dakota. He is on Twitter. Email him at abesauer @ gmail.com.

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The best cat of the day was naked. Tinkerbell is a Sphynx breed; she has no coat. She looked like a wrinkly eggplant with eyes. To the touch she felt like a microwaved peach. Or a hot water bottle wrapped in suede. This Sphynx breed has only now been in existence for about thirty years, however, the Cat Fancier’s Association stopped recognizing the pink-skinned kitties as a legitimate breed briefly in the 1980s because of rampant inbreeding. Cats like Tinkerbell are from some other bloodline that does not involve mating cousins. She was my favorite cat of the whole show.

There are seven rings where the cats are judged. Their owners bring the cats into one of the large vestibules off the side of the main floor and place their cats in separate cages. Then the cat is put on a small inspection table (lined with Hawaiian flowers, elephant grass and tiki masks) before a judge. Some judges will snuggle the cats and even kiss their paws. Some cats seem to know to butter up to a judge by pushing their faces into judges or closing their eyes blissfully while purring loudly. There was no such canoodling at Ring 3. The judge at Ring 3 would grab hold of each cat by their bellies and drop them with a thud on the table, to see how squarely each could land on his feet. This judge was a man in his 60s with a gray thinning crew cut, tweezed eyebrows and a small silver ring in his ear. During his silent inspection of the cats, he would run his hands down their spine, tug their ears and pluck their tails with his pinky in the air. His small mouth would purse, then he would squint and dismiss the cat. Needless to say, the tension at Ring 3 was immense. When it finally came time for him to announce his winners, he broke into a passionate eloquence for each cat. “He sparkles, he glistens, he glows,” he said about a champagne-colored Burmese cat. Thrusting a prize-winning American Wirehair into the air he said: “Look at her gentle profile and her scooped-out nose. Her bones are balanced and she is a winner.”

Spectators walked the floor of the grand exhibition hall with peacock feathers in their hands. The feather is used to draw the attention of the competing cats without petting them. Owners do not like it when you pet their cats because they have spent a lot of time grooming them to perfection. Persian and Himalayan cats have particularly leaky eyes that congeal into goo and so they require constant de-gooing throughout the day. Their faces are so flat and small that many essentially have their nose resting right between their eyes.

The most popular breed this year seemed to be the Japanese Bobtail. There were countless members of this breed in the competition. I do not care for this breed one bit. They lack personality and tails. They are prized for their angularity and high cheekbones, two features I neither possess nor actively covet. They have wedge-shaped heads, tubular bodies and lemon-shaped eyes. These are cats with light bones. All these Japanese Bobtails seemed haughty and their owners were ornery. I am biased towards cats with dense bones, snub noses, round faces and girth, like this astonishing British Short Hair.

Household pets are the most popular and beloved category among the cat fanciers. This is a category for rescued cats, shelter mutts, domesticated strays; the genetic riffraff of the feline world. (Of course no such category exists in the Westminster Dog Show.) The crowd gets rowdy for this lot and the owners take particular pride in being, pardon the phrase, the underdogs. The judge for the Households told the crowd that he picked his winners based on their health, their personality and if they seemed like the sort of cat who would "curl up on a Vermont night in a rocking chair and read a book with you.” He said of Lancelot, a mustachioed mutt who was rescued from a shelter this March, “This cat has a gentle personality even though he had no one to love him. He lived on the streets and now he is cared for, he is alert, and he wants to know all your names.” Before making his final selection, the judge would take a pen and run it along the bars of each cat’s cage. When someone from the crowd asked about the mysterious ritual, the judge said, "That’s when I let the cats tell me what place they should get.” Lancelot placed third in the Household category.

Natasha Vargas-Cooper likes cats but is far more interested in gibbons and marmosets and men.

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The food porn party creates two works of art at once: the edibles, and the documentation of that which is eaten. The dishes are chosen for their potential attractiveness. The food, after it is created, must be styled—and then it must be shot to be glowingly attractive. But unlike actual magazine-level food porn, you can't use hairspray to make your pork look shiny, because you're actually going to eat this. In real-life food porn, you can only fight fair.

We met at my friend Jake's apartment—he's a first rate photographer and a Bushwick resident. He was to be the James Cameron of my food porn Titanic dreams. (Obviously, I was cognizant that shooting the pictures in Bushwick would contribute to the success of my trendsetting.)

The food chosen to star in the pictures, naturally, had to be seasonal. After some debate—"Should we just put bacon on top of a lot of stuff and call it a day?"—the theme of "summer's feast" was chosen for the porn at hand.

A note on bacon: it's is to food porn what "Don't Stop Believin'" is to karaoke: a standby that's sure to get a rise out of even the dullest and drunkest. Even if people don't like the song and/or food that much, it's exciting for everyone! But it's really a tired trick, in both cases, and should be approached with caution.

The menu was fairly easy to pick out once there was the "Summer Feast" theme to play around with. For a main course we had lobster rolls, which were paired with a pickled watermelon salad with heirloom tomatoes, creamed corn and cheddar biscuits (an homage to Red Lobster, naturally). Oh and a huge dish of Magnolia-style banana pudding for dessert, because I'm gross like that. (And pudding? This is a tricky choice, visually speaking! But a gamble well worth it.)

Riding the L train to the Dekalb stop with arms of groceries and a huge dish full of banana pudding is a harrowing experience. People really gawk at you when you're holding something with a clear plastic wrap covering. (The worst is when the man next to you hovers his nose over your dish to catch a whiff.)

After a couple hours of cooking in the Bushwick summer heat, all of the plates were prepared and Jake got to work. He rigged up a light in the kitchen to successfully backlight the food and shot some closeups of my smutty little stars.

Food porn, like real food or real porn, is actually quite difficult labor! It's not so much the cooking that's tough—but there was a lot of styling: wiping plates totally clean, stacking biscuits ever so perfectly. Your perspective on cooking shifts a bit: instead of prodding that thing in the oven to find out if it's done, you're thinking: does this look done? Does it have just a little delightful browning?

The trend legitimacy quotient is pretty high here. There's artistry afoot, as well as Internet sensationalism—and some choice niche travel. It could really take off anywhere from "the eastern end of Long Island," in the trend piece vernacular, as well as "in Greenpoint" or even NoLIta. Really, anywhere that people like to perform their lives by way of Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr or Facebook. A surefire trend! Just remember that bacon themes are already over.

Myles Tanzer might do absolutely anything this weekend. Photographs by Jake Moore.

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I wanted to love SlutWalks, the viral protest movement that began this spring after a Toronto police officer told a group of college women that if they hoped to escape sexual assault, they should avoid dressing like “sluts.” In angry response, young women (and men) have marched in more than 70 cities around the world, often dressed in bras, halter tops and garter belts.

But at a moment when questions of sex and power, blame and credibility, and gender and justice are so ubiquitous and so urgent, I have mostly felt irritation that stripping down to skivvies and calling ourselves sluts is passing for keen retort.

And... so what if they were? Traister's real concern is this:

To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers. So while the mission of SlutWalks is crucial, the package is confusing and leaves young feminists open to the very kinds of attacks they are battling.

Anyway! This lady showed up in Seattle in tassels and a graduation cap! Some people wore some pretty crazy things!

And then...

Slutwalk Seattle

Slutwalk Manchester.

Slutwalk London

Slutwalk Ottawa

But I'd say this photo, by David Jackmanson, taken in Australia, is plenty rebuttal to those cringing.

Just a couple more things?

The web headline "Clumsy Young Feminists" is... really not working for me. And then?

[Lara] Logan was herself trashed as an attention monger and for dressing in a manner that invited assault. A young woman who pressed rape charges against two New York City police officers could not be believed, in part, because she was drunk. When an 11-year-old Texas girl was allegedly gang-raped by 19 men, The New York Times ran a story quoting neighbors saying that she habitually wore makeup and dressed in clothes more appropriate for a 20-year-old. The maid who accused Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape has been discredited for being a liar, and The New York Post claimed she was a prostitute. The young French woman who is pressing charges of attempted rape against Strauss-Kahn — an event she has recounted in a novel — has been painted as an unreliable narrator, young, overdramatic and unstable.

None of us can know the veracity of any of these women’s claims.

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Rockaway Beach, on Beach 96th Street, 2 to 3 p.m.

Fort Greene, Dekalb and Carlton Avenues, 4:15 to 5:15 p.m.

Williamsburg, Bedford and South 5th Street, 5:45 to 6:45 p.m.

Upper East Side, 76th and Madison, 7:15 to 8: 15 p.m.

Andrew Piccone is a photographer in New York City. You can write him at andrewpiccone at gmail dot com.

Sponsored posts are purely editorial content that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor—in this case, Braun.

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Also, Columbus Circle has been transformed into... Ghent? It's very attractive, if very foreign-feeling! It completely distracts from the nightmare that is the Time Warner Center. Bloomberg: always he takes with one hand and gives with the other.

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Likewise, Hipstamatic is the #3 paid app right now. Hipstamatic also "processes" your digital pictures to make them look old-timey film-ey. So this is a look that won't be going away anytime soon. But sometimes you need to do things to pictures that are actually useful. For instance, maybe you want to just crop an edge out of a photo; maybe you have a great photo but the focus is slightly off and you want to cheat it a little by sharpening. Or say you're on top of a mountain and you want to shoot 360. Your Instamatic won't help you then!

Read the rest here.

(Sponsored posts are purely editorial projects that we are pleased to have presented by a participating sponsor, in this case Intel: My Life Scoop; advertisers do not produce the content.)

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On this dusty highway, celebration was in the air. A flood of Egyptians were packed into flat bed trucks and traditional third world, go-cart passenger cars. Horns honked. Hands flashed victory signs out car windows. Alongside Sharif, three teenagers on a motorcycle sped between lanes. The center passenger held an eight-foot Egyptian flag high in the air, billowing as they rode. It was Friday and so most of these cars were headed to Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands were expected to attend the "Day of Victory," a celebration of the 18-day standoff that dethroned a president and has shaken dictators across the region.

But at his steering wheel, Sharif’s face was somber. His eyes were fixed blankly on the road. He drove past the exit for Tahrir, continuing on to a counter rally for Mubarak supporters at the Moustafa Mahmoud Mosque in Mohandeseen City.

"My friends are afraid, maybe the people from Tahrir come here," Sharif said. It was noon and a few hundred supporters had gathered outside the mosque. Securing the grounds were fifteen army infantrymen standing in a line across the distance. Wearing flack-jackets, with AK-47’s strapped across their chests, spaced six feet apart, the soldiers directed arriving cars to parking zones near the rally.

Three weeks ago Mubarak operatives were dispatched to assault, arrest, detain, intimidate and silence the international press. I experienced this personally when I was shot in the leg with a plastic round in a drive-by outside the Ramses Hilton. But in the midday heat, before the Mostafa Machmoud mosque, amid thousands Mubarak supporters—freedom of the press had never found more ardent champions. In the backdrop of chants and songs, flanked by banners of homage, reporters were surrounded by Mubarak loyalists, all eager to praise their leader and register dismay at the revolution that has made him the exile of Sharm el-Sheikh.

"His wife made a great project, with reading for all," said Ranra, 27, a communications engineer. "Because of her, I love to read. She began a program. We could buy books for one pound [20 cents U.S.] She made hospital for children with cancer—the biggest in the Middle East."

A 52-year-old woman stood cradling the framed portrait of her 19-year-old son, Abanoub Kamal Nashed, one of the eight Copts murdered leaving New Year's services in the Nag Hammadi massacre of January, 2010. Asked what brought her out to Mohandeseen she replied with bitterness: "They are against our culture with their disrespect of our president."

"Everyone loves Mubarak," an elderly woman said, dabbing the tears from her eyes. "We hope he comes back to us."

In the crowd, supporters held posters of the dethroned. There was Mubarak the young, slim air force commander, standing confidently beside Sadat; Mubarak the diplomat in Ray Bans and European suits; Mubarak the tired and aged with slicked back dyed hair, Botoxed forehead and pruned eyes.

If the gossip swirling through Cairo’s elite circles is to be believed (and the city runs on such gossip), the final face of Hosni Mubarak can be found in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the leader has fallen into a coma, refusing to take the medications that manage a myriad of health conditions related to his bout with pancreatic cancer.

He is there with Alaa, the one-time prodigal son who became a devout Muslim after losing his child to a heart condition. There are reports that on the night of Mubarak's confused final televised address (it's widely believed that he fainted during tapings) the Mubarak brothers had to be pulled away from each other after Alaa accused the younger Gamal of ruining his father's legacy by appointing corrupt associates to influential ministry and cabinet positions in the NDP.

The names and biographies of Gamil's appointees are well known across Egypt. Among them are Anas El Feky, Minister of Mass Media (and one time lead singer of the Egyptian rock band Riddle); Safwat El Sherif, a head of the congress found guilty of being a pimp in 1967; Ahmed Ezz, a close friend of Gamil Mubarak who controlled two-thirds of the Egyptian steel market (Egyptians torched his company three times during the revolution), leader of the parliament budget committee, and a former drummer.

By 2 p.m., two to three thousand Egyptians had amassed. Supporters formed a line along the back of a black main-stage, waiting to pay their final respects to Hosni Mubarak. At the end of each speech there was applause. After the applause came a few minutes of chanting the refrain, "Mubarak, the world and history will place you on high," while the next speaker prepared their eulogy.

The messages were scattered and defiant.

One man drew a roar, screaming, " Al Jazeera! All the people are here!"

A loud ovation came when a woman reminded the audience that "Mubarak would not let America build its military bases here!"

The crowd cheered when a woman suggested, "After this, we should all go to Sharm el-Sheikh and thank President Mubarak for all he has done!"

Standing in the back, away from the noise and the jeers, with arms folded across his round belly, stood a 51-year-old named Achmad.

"He’s a good man. He loves his country," he said. "I am a diving instructor. I had a business in Sharm el-Sheikh and he came for a visit. It was 1983. I was very young and he had only four people security. It was very simple."

"You know, he’s a pilot," he said. "He explained that flying is similar to diving. When he left he said, 'next week I will send you my sons, to teach them.’"

He did. "The next week he sent me Gamal and Alaa," he said. "I taught them diving. Good guys. Very polite. They talked about sports. But we were young, so we talked about girls you know...."

Seven years later, in Hurghada, Achmad ran into Gamal and Alaa Mubarak again.

"They had a lot of security. I didn’t like it. They started to become big," he said. "They were involved in business. I didn’t like the way they started to behave. They changed, like having big cars and talking high. And ten years after that I had a problem. I tried to contact them. I couldn’t get them."

At center stage, a woman held a bundle of red, white and black helium balloons. The DJ cued one of Egypt’s patriotic hymns, "My Country." The woman released the balloons. They floated away while the people clapped and sang along to the lyrics, "My country, my beautiful country, my sons and my daughters are for you."

"God will protect Egypt," Achmad said, watching the balloons drift away into clear blue sky, "The only thing I hope is that the army is not controlling us."

Gordon Reynolds is the pseudonym of a teacher in Cairo. He also posts regularly to Twitter, if you follow him there.

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