Jumper's Journal

Now We Know Our ZYXs

2011-07-18T11:44:00.003-04:00

Once I memorized the alphabet backwards, just for the heck of it. I used the "ABC" song after a while to fix it in my memory. Years later, I was pulled over for a random license check / sobriety check. The policeman wrapped it up by asking me, yes, to recite the alphabet backwards --"starting with Q."

I mentally began singing the "ZYX" song as fast as I could, got my place, and recited the alphabet aloud backwards from there. Smart aleck cop asked me "why I hesitated." I said something like "are you kidding?" or "wouldn't you hesitate?" He let me go and deeply satisfied, I left.

Years later I found children of a certain age go ballistic when I sing the "ZYX" song. "NO, NO, NO!" they scream in amazement, dismay, horror and a little glee.

I had the opportunity with my friends' kids this weekend. I even added a bit at the end. "Now we know our ZYXs. That's why we are nervous wreckses."

The Nose On Your Facebook

2011-06-20T16:37:00.005-04:00

We are still in the midst of a computer revolution. But I sense a curious inertia among the computer-using public, unwilling to keep learning. One hopes we are not weary of progress. Here are a few things I do which improve my life or finances or convenience which others seem unwilling to do, and I'm unsure why.

Skype. Free telephoning on the internet. It requires a trip to a consumer electronics store, a computer with little input-output jacks, the internet, and the microphone and or speakers you buy at the store, which you likely will be surprised to find very inexpensive. Like under $16 for both if you are lucky. Peanuts in most cases. You find Skype, log in, they test your little rig, and you are on. It's free. You talk to other people like you are on the phone. They are on Skype. For free.

Besides Skype, there is something completely different: emailing to your friends' text messaging phone. That's right, if you are at your computer, there is an email address you can use and send them a text message on their phone. It's usually something like 9082345678@Sproink.com. If you are determined to find it you can. Obviously you explain to your friend when you do this. They might be interested in this ability. You can check the Google on "how to email text to Sproink customers" or "Dingdong customers," or "Mojorizen customers." You'll find it. That way you can text them without using your minutes.

By the way, those texting maniacs can also send texts to your email inbox from their phones. Instead of a phone number, usually they can send it directly to your email address. And note that's true even if they don't pay for internet access on their phone plans. If they pay for texting, they have this option. Hey, it might cost them a dime but it's better than both of you paying it. I think text maniacs have a certain number of texts they can use anyway.

Of course you can also send free homemade audio files via email just like leaving a voice mail message if you prefer to talk. You have to download a free audio file program and use your microphone to speak a message. Attach it to the email. I've done it, and it's been appreciated, but I have other options such as Skype. My minutes are so over the limit now, I might do that with a friend who prefers voice contact.

Sesame Seed Bun

2011-06-19T09:54:00.008-04:00

The sesame seed bun, it is becoming clear, is not well understood. So I will illuminate the arcane nature of its greatness.

Many hamburger lovers don't get it. The tasteless and meaningless things seen on certain fast food hamburgers do nothing for anybody. Check out the Big Mac, in the first photo. Why they actually brag about the sesame seeds on this thing, I have no idea. They are functionally useless. This is the source of the confusion.

The second photo is of my favorite hamburger buns. They have lots of sesame seeds.

(For this article, I realized I didn't know much about the sesame seed plant or its cultivation. Wikipedia's article on sesame seeds informs me that the seeds, African in origin, grow in pods, seen on another site. )

The problem is, the sesame seeds, stuck to the top of the bun prior to baking, never get toasted. I'm not sure why; I suggest it's the moisture in the baking bread which might have something to do with it, but I'm only guessing. Even if the bun is perfectly browned, the seeds remain a bland white, or at best very light yellow. But once you toast the seeds, their wonderful taste reveals itself. Mind you, I have been promised nutty goodness from all sorts of foods, but in this case it's true.

Many will argue the grilled burger is the best burger, and I won't argue. And it's not too hard with a little practice to toast the tops of the buns, and so the sesame seeds, perfectly, on the grill right before serving the burger. But in truth this method sometimes fails, and some parts are too dark, or the seeds are too light. But they do pick up some smoky goodness.

I suggest at least use a toaster oven for grilled burgers' buns. The buns' tops will toast pretty uniformly, as seen in the third photo.

I often cook my burgers, though, in an iron frying pan. A griddle is usually used in a restaurant without an actual grill. Here is where the sesame seed bun can really reach greatness. After the burger is done, I take the buns and toast them top side down in some of the burger fat. This unleashes the wonderful nutty taste of the sesame seeds, and also adds deliciousness to the bread. I recommend this method highly.

The last photo is not pretty, but it was delicious. It was a jalapeño cheeseburger, with a thick slice of raw onion, lettuce and mayonnaise. I split and cooked the peppers in the skillet with the burgers. The buns were toasted in the skillet after the burgers were cooked in it.

(What's the best way to assemble a hamburger?)

Mechanical Resistance to Esthetics of Intelligence

2011-06-07T14:06:00.004-04:00

Progress along the long and difficult road to correctly designing a reading machine such as the Kindle has been beset by a continuous onslaught of negative paradigms. That ballast, that small percentage of critical mass that causes the ship to sink, of the general new-product-developers' ethos that includes this meme: they don't like to read.

As long as my devices are designed by teams which include people who don't like to read, they will not manage to design a device that satisfies me. Because I like to read. And significant percentages of their design teams possess an anti-intellectual ethos. Who'd have thought it?

They seem to be convinced that at every instant of my reading experience, somehow I would be happier watching cartoons, playing a mindless game, or listening to music or watching a TV show. Perhaps Twittering. The usual stuff marginally literate people do with the Internet. And when I occasionally have the advantage of easily identifying these people, they usually react like cockroaches exposed to the light, and begin scurrying. They scurry and hurl insults at me. They will shovel out a mass of implication, implying I am the oddball, I am the square peg, I am the loser.

This is from people who have insinuated themselves professionally into an industry, into designing a product based on reading, which they themselves don't really like. In short, illiterates run the boardroom.

So I still await the $45 portable reading tablet. It was basically invented 15 years ago, but you are not allowed to buy it.

Bandwagon Jumper

2011-05-17T09:39:00.001-04:00

Mitt Graham

2011-05-14T14:41:00.004-04:00

It has long seemed to me that Mitt Romney looks a lot like Billy Graham. So much so that I suspect some of the Republican base likes him a bit more than they would otherwise, subconsciously. A morph was born. I guess you can call him Billy Romney if you like.

sqirlz morph

Pictures

2011-05-05T11:48:00.002-04:00

Shell Game

2011-04-24T13:11:00.007-04:00

It was clear this one had to be done, as Mitch McConnell does resemble a turtle.

What the heck, here's the second take on it, too.
Sqirlz morph

The Bunker

2011-04-07T15:46:00.002-04:00

Thoughts on Emergency Food Supply

2011-04-06T12:17:00.002-04:00

A friend came by and we got into a discussion about emergency food storage. I opined most people are clueless about how to do this both reasonably and on the cheap.

A shed tends to get hot in the summer and is not a good place to store food, even canned food, in much of the U.S. And you need to keep your food away from varmints, so some planning or construction, simple but effective, is needed.

If you have a basement, you are already set. If it's unheated, even better. If it is, you should partition off a space, insulate it, and let it come to ground temperature. If you have no basement, you ideally want something like a root cellar. In the U.S. ground temperatures won't go much over 70 F. and that's in Florida. At higher latitudes, lower than that. It should have several feet of soil atop and surrounding it to keep out the summer heat. A dry crawlspace is suitable but an annoyance to access. It will do, though.

The old root cellar, ideal for long-term storage, is unfortunately passe. It was a well-sealed below ground pantry. It should be in well-drained soil which won't fill with water regardless of recent rains. If that's not possible, I have seen on the internet simple buried steel trash cans. My opinion is that you should enjoy a root cellar for regular life even when there are no emergencies going on, so it should be easy to get to on a routine basis. If you wanted to go to the trouble of building one right under your kitchen, with a hatch and a few steps down into it, I think that would be excellent. I know, that's not cheap, and it's old-school. I wish more people demanded such from builders.

Root crops such as carrots, produce, potatoes, and apples will last very well. Canned food, either home-preserved in jars, or commercial canned food, will last nicely at ground temperatures. Excessive dampness must be controlled to keep cans and lids from rusting, though. Plastic bags should work well, preferably clear so you can see inside easily to read labels or see what's in jars.

Unfortunately, wholesale foods are disappearing. By wholesale, I mean 50 lb. bags of flour, cornmeal, oatmeal, dried field corn for making tortillas. Rice, beans, and dried peas. Even the one gallon cans of prepared beans have disappeared from many grocery stores.

Restaurant supply houses are your friend. By hook or by crook, you have to get them to sell to you. Rural communities might still have some working mills for some of this, such as cornmeal and flour.

Ideally you should store food you actually use and know how to use. You won't end up with a ten year old bag of rice if you regularly eat from your supply and replace it off and on.

Keep in mind that a 25 lb. bag of wholesale cornmeal, per dollar, is hugely cheaper than 25 lbs. of cornflakes.

And five gallon metal buckets with lids - or five gallon food grade plastic buckets with lids - are your friend. I wouldn't store food in a metal paint bucket unless it was super-cleaned to zero residue. Or sandblasted inside even. And even then I'd line it with a plastic bag. Again, think wholesale. Buckets are ridiculously priced at big box stores, and aren't necessarily food-grade, if plastic. Try to find a wholesaler, and they should go for much cheaper. Find a restaurant that serves lots of pickles or something that they get in five gallon buckets, and see if you can get some free used buckets. Don't forget the lids.

Fancy That

2011-04-03T16:26:00.005-04:00

This dogwood was planted by me from seed maybe nine years ago. It's been through hell, chewed by a bulldog and savaged nearly to death twice by weed whackers. This year is the first it has bloomed. I'm very
pleased.

photos by Carl Miller

Posting Pictures with HTML

2011-03-27T08:49:00.004-04:00

Here, as promised, is the method to post pictures on various sites which host such activities. I found too many online guides overly short and not quite explanatory enough.

Let's just use my friend TBG's explanation: she knows everything.

img src="http://www.conbio.org/Resources/tips/images/v18n5_..."

surrounded by these < brackets >

If you think the size is bigger than around 400 pixels, add only
a width and it will remain the correct proportions, like this.

img src="http://www.conbio.org/Resources/tips/images/v18n5_..."
width="350"

Don't forget the brackets!

And I should note, those arrow-brackets do not have spaces between them and the target URL! And same thing with the quotes around the target URL. And, in her example she put ... at the end, but anyone else should use the entire URL.

And, at least with Microsoft, to get the URL of most pictures on a website, right-click on it, and choose "copy link location" and regular-click on it. Then you can paste it in between the quotation marks you'll be adding.

On this site, though, one must open the picture in its own window by clicking on it, then doing the right-click.

As I mentioned, my long-ago decision to not learn HTML often comes back and bites me.

Russell Platt and the Cabin

2011-02-21T12:40:00.005-05:00

It's been a long time. I dug this up and cleaned it up in Photoshop for a friend, who now owns the old site. It's a very large pic; I am not sure the site manager will let us view the whole thing in high resolution. Old Russell left not much of a trail on the internet, having died before its main onset. Here's a story in which he is mentioned.

One Odd Bird

2011-02-16T13:07:00.009-05:00

So I'm sitting in my living room with the door open to the world. And believe me, I've had to hustle and pull a few strings. I searched long and hard for my little secluded apartment backed up against the woods and the creek. God knows the crap I've taken from my totally inept landlord.

But I like nature. This I tell myself. I think of my little secret woodsy neighborhood right smack-dab in the middle of Charlotte with smug glee.

Yet now the mockingbird right outside sets out to entertain me with his song. We are looking right into each others' eyes. He's singing to me. At least, that's what I anthropomorphise its intentions to mean. But slowly the horror grows as I realize the mockingbird's song consists of imitations of car alarms, cell phone ring tones, the walkie-talkie beeps the construction people use, and the curious sounds of brakes and tires squealing and motors growling or purring from a distance. I realize this is now what he knows.

Today it's just this one odd bird. But more birds will soon fly into my yard, and repeat the sounds of the city to me; the sounds I have tried so hard to arrange not to hear.

"Listen!" this one says: "This is my song for you!"

Written by me, Jumper. First appeared in QZ magazine, June 2005, in slightly different form, under the byline of Paavo.

Ropes and Cords

2011-02-14T14:53:00.010-05:00

I should pass along a handy tip: Don't coil your ropes to store them, simply feed one end in a bag and hand-over-hand the rope into it steadily. And by bag, I mean a burlap bag, or even an old pillow case. You want a good cloth bag, though. (Or a woven plastic bag. Whatever livestock feed comes in should work. I don't know if potatoes are still shipped in burlap.)

Without cramming loops into it; instead just feed it in straight. Any which way it lies after you feed it in is okay. It will not tangle, or acquire a twist such as coiling will do. It is also better than "figure-eight-ing" your rope, which tends to acquire tangles thus requiring time-consuming hand-ties with string or whatnot. I guarantee it will come out of the bag as easily as it went in. No tangles and easy to store.

The funny thing is, I worked for a third generation timber man for a while, doing tree work, and we always had a hard time with storing the ropes. The "good way" took time, and even then tended to tangle when uncoiling the ropes.

We parted company, and I went on to start my flooring business. There, I had the same tangling problem with my electrical extension cords. I tried every way I knew of, including the famous "chain stitch" method, coiling, tying, and figure-eight-ing.

None were ideal. Either I'd spend far too much time stowing them, or else they'd get tangles. I finally came up with the idea to store them in four- or five-gallon buckets I would find for free and clean out.

When packing up, I would retain one plug end, then feed the straight cord in hand-over-hand letting it curl up any which way it wanted to in the bottom of the bucket. Takes practically no time at all. And comes out of the bucket completely straight. You can store one cord right on top of the other, or stack your buckets if you have several, nesting them so they take up less space. Often I'd just leave part of the cord in the bucket next to the receptacle and only take out the length I needed.

I saw my friend a few years later, and told him of my discovery, at which point he mentioned he had, in that time, discovered independently the value of storing his climbing ropes in a bag.

Needless to say, it seems one could use either buckets or bags for either one.

Here's a YouTube video of someone storing rope in a rope bag. A bit hoity-toity in that he uses a special-purpose, needlessly expensive bag for this, but his willy-nilly technique seems the correct one.

Post-Election Cruising

2011-02-12T13:05:00.007-05:00

Here we have another piece from the archives, written in late 1994, by me, Jumper, under the byline "Paavo Dekker," for Lost Dog magazine. My mother might not want to read this. I'm re-printing this today because I'm avoiding writing about Beverly Benninghoff.

by Paavo Dekker

"I did what I was supposed to do, and I would do it again." - Thomas Ferebee, the N.C. native who, as bombardier of the Enola Gay, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

"You don't want to know, you don't want to see. You want to hide it 'cause it is a can of shit. Everything they told us... 'go fight, go kill'... It's all a lie, a fucking lie... we killed women and children... With all your God and your bullshit dreams... Fuck you. Tell them all, they told us to go... Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not kill women and children, remember? Is this what you taught us?" - Tom Cruise, as Ron Kovik, paralyzed Vietnam war veteran, in Born on the Fourth of July

I like Luther, although he does go off a bit. I saw him late the other night, just like he always is, as long as I've known him, reeling down the gutter, shouting and mumbling in another of his drunken, monstrous fits of loathing and hopelessness. "Turning on the tube, man, opening the paper... it's finally happened," he mumbles.

"No more news. The TV only does gossip, sport, infoid items... they're all just anal-retentive teasers. It's all vacuous horseshit. Anti-intellectual in the worst sense; man, they're against fact altogether. I turn it off before I hurl chunks.. CNN is just the OJ Simpson Network now..." He coughs, leans his forehead against the coolness of the yield sign, and continues in a low rasp:
"Complete informational blackouts. The cold war is over and we lost. 'We the people'... yeah, right. All the various mafias of the world have won. From Russia, Europe, from Martin Marietta to Morton Thiokol, George Bush's boys, Newt Fucking Nazi Gingrich, and Helms and Myrick and Robertson and the DEA and god damned Noriega and Cedras and the cocaine distribution networks... The entire network of transnational business and finance, national governments, the states, insurance companies, communications, manufacturing, banks, it's all corrupt now. When they come to your door, wanting your pound of flesh, your pint of blood, what do you do? What do you say? Man, they're ravaging the world; all the killing, and pollution... extinctions and destruction. The waste." He's sobbing now, the weight of the evening and all the beer just coming on too much for him.

"All the innocent people, man, they're getting fucked. The cops say nobody is innocent, but it's not true, man, it's not true. Like the State Department in their damned policy releases that all our boycotts and blockades -Iraq, Haiti, Bosnia -that it's the peoples' fault when they get no medicines, no milk or baby formula. 'Cause they allow Saddam Hussein or whoever else to stay in power. By the same logic the whole fucking world has a moral right to come and start killing all of us because of the things we allow to occur in the name of the U.S.? Kill us all 'cause we didn't overthrow Reagan... How can we be so blind, man. How can we be so blind? The unspoken thing, man, is that Reagan and the CIA were giving him the fucking nerve gas to slaughter his own people."

I tried to cheer him; mentioned the losses of Ollie North and Rostenkowski, but he'd not hear it. He was on his knees now, far gone into the darkness of the soul that hits after some elections. He shook his head. "Anomalies. Too little; too late. I thought there was no mandate, except for the anti-incumbent sentiment. That people just didn't want the same freeloading bastards in anymore. That there's no real support for the fucking Republicans. I was wrong.

"It's a pro-vengeance vote. Playing on the dark side of the human psyche, the meanness and bitterness of the rednecks and vanishing middle class. They've got the people into total human-sacrifice mode now. They want literal blood, crucifixions, or mass executions on TV. Helms is a sly rat, broadcasting for some lone nut to assassinate Clinton... casting his hate onto the waters of random psychosis, in the hopes of getting Clinton shot...It's typical wicker-man, sacrifice-the-scapegoat stuff. Heathen idolatry. The people aren't satisfied until there are sacrificial deaths, and lots of them, usually their own sons, in war. It makes them feel holy, like fucking Abraham."

His eyes were teary, but I knew he could see very, very well now. "The scarecrow must be burned alive, all that. There's no war now, so the object of sacrificial hatred may as well be the President...after all, he escaped the ritual sacrifice once before.. But they're masters of the psychology. Anything, any crime, to advance their agenda...bastards. Evil bastards!" Spit slowly trickled down his chin, now.

"Their corporate-welfare military rip-off kickback shmooze schemes are bankrupting the country as much as any damned Democrats. Liars, all liars." He was slurring heavily. "It's just like Germany in the '30s. It's all happening again." A spasm passed softly through his frame, and he retched quietly, slumped over, and lost consciousness. I dragged him to the car and, after I was quite sure he had finished vomiting, shoved him in, and we drove off into the dark night.

Are You Experienced? Well, I Yam.

2011-02-04T21:58:00.007-05:00

The Mexican grocery is where I went searching for real, authentic yams. As noted below, this is not the American sweet potato sometimes called "yams."

I found them in a bin, ranging in size from the one pictured to almost American football-sized. I got one the size of a big regular potato, seen here. Although not apparent, some of the skins are markedly shaggier than this one was.

It's difficult to find recipes by searching the internet, because of all the confusion. "African yam" turned up some rewarding hits. But once I discovered that the basic dish is known as fufu, I searched for that. Most of the recipes described are pretty similar; it's a simple method: mashed with butter.

When I peeled it, it became very obvious it was not a potato, or sweet potato either. Very slimy under that skin. I decided to not exactly make fufu. I sliced it, roasted it in foil at 400° F. for an hour, and then set it aside. I sliced it up and refried it in some hamburger fat and butter, and then added the extra pat of butter.

A bright taste, if not much to it. Brighter than a regular potato, slightly acidic but pleasantly so.

Certainly good for a hungry person with work to do. It's your basic starchy side dish.

I preferred the malanga.

Anderson Maher

2011-01-21T19:39:00.008-05:00

Or is it Bill Cooper?
Sqirlz morph

Radiatore

2011-01-21T15:31:00.005-05:00

This odd and cunning pasta is called "radiatore," meaning "radiator," of course. I saw some in the grocery store and had to try it.

It's the most interesting thing in pasta I've seen lately. Higher in surface area than rotini or fusilli, it has a unique "mouth feel" I found most excellent. It reminds me of ground beef, in fact.

In researching, I stumbled upon this site, the National Pasta Association.

There, we can see several types of pasta which are new to me. I found especially interesting the pipe rigate, the gigli, ("little ears"), and campanelle (“bells”).

And I really need to get some rotelle, also known as "wagon wheels." I haven't had them since I was a kid, and maybe only once.

The Horror

2011-01-13T10:20:00.006-05:00

Perhaps here we quote Dusty Springfield:

"Something in your eyes I see
Is all I ever wanted
And something in your smile for me
Is calling out my name
Your eyes, it seems
Are mirrors of my dreams
In ways I can't explain.
And my heart will never be the same."

Or maybe we should just listen to Iggy Pop.
Sqirlz morph

Finally, Indian

2011-01-11T14:30:00.003-05:00

I'm very choosy over which food sites to read regularly or even semi-regularly. Today I found this site on Indian cooking, Hooked on Heat.

Rarely have I added a site to my "favorites" list so quickly. Yum!

Effect of Effects

2011-01-11T13:23:00.005-05:00

Decided Maori masks and face tattoos are good for Photoshop filters. Little Shiva comments that such effects are getting old, or words to that effect. I tend to agree. Still, I like this result.

We would have killed for such technology a few years ago. Now it's old hat.

Mike Brown Lives

2011-01-10T11:39:00.004-05:00

Little Shiva thought Mike Brown was a fictitious character. How's that workin' out for ya, Mike?

The Word is Fuzz

2011-01-08T10:17:00.005-05:00

It was around 1964. The wave receded and was gone. We didn't quite sense it, because the British boys were here and we weren't paying attention.

Jimi Hendrix saw it. A lament wrapped in a joke? I like to think so.

So the years passed, and life got busy, and I never much thought about surf music again.

But like a lot of people, when I saw Pulp Fiction, the sound of Dick Dale's "Miserlou" was a strange magnet from the past.

A revisit to surf music was called for. I was hooked. I filled up my MP3 player with surf music, and it is good.

Mike Brown, I discovered, also loves surf music. He is making it now. One of my favorites is "Moonlight Mountain." Listen to it here. Or search YouTube for "The Man from RavCon." Or listen to this alternate number:

Strange Tubers

2011-01-06T11:54:00.007-05:00

After the recent post on yams, I decided I wanted to try some exotic tubers. I commenced with what is labeled malanga in my U.S. market.

Wikipedia's article on malanga has it as a relative of elephant ears. Thought to be originally South American, it's grown all over Middle America and is a main ingredient in a popular fritter eaten in Cuba, for one, known as alcapurias.

I took mine, peeled it, and gave it four minutes in the microwave. Tasted a piece. Flying by the seat of my pants, I sliced it and then decided to brown it in a skillet in a little sesame oil and butter along with a sliced banana.

I'm not sure if the fried banana next to it added to the sensation I experienced, but the malanga sure reminded me of refried plantain. The texture was similar and the starch reminded me of it. It was good. I may have it again. Next time I'll boil it

Offshore Water Survival

2010-12-28T06:35:00.007-05:00

The recent Macondo fire and blowout reminded me of the school Dresser Atlas sent me to. We were, among other things, required to jump off a 50' platform into a deep pool, wearing coveralls, (I guess we were to shed our steel-toed boots), and in the "correct" position: one hand holding the nose, legs crossed, ankles locked, one hand shielding the groin. Head straight, eyes on the horizon: looking up or down throws one off the vertical.

I had to go twice before the instructor approved. I looked down, and sure enough went in at a slight angle. Next time, as hard as it was, I kept my eyes straight forward and went in straight. Perfect. I plunged all the way to the bottom of the 10' pool, and my rear end touched the bottom before I swam up. One guy could barely swim and was scared, but he was tough and overcame his fear and finally made it.

I grew up in Florida for a while, and we swam a lot and jumped off ropes into the water, and I had been off the high dive a lot at pools but 50' seems a lot higher.

On a drilling rig, the floor is about 100' off the water, at the least. I spent a couple of years working on the offshore rigs (or on land). Looking over the railing on breaks we would contemplate the possible eventuality of jumping. Someone said if you feel the flames licking at your ass, jumping gets a lot simpler. I don't know. Anyway, that was years ago.

One of the surviving crewmen on the Deepwater Horizon jumped from the heliport deck, which is higher, maybe over 120'. I can barely imagine this. I'm not sure I want to.

The patch is mine. I saved it.

The Beast that Shouted Love at the Heart of the World

2010-12-27T15:39:00.003-05:00

Here's my first large multimedia piece from '91. I stole the name of it from Harlan Ellison's short story. It's about 3' x 4'. Acrylic paint, colored ink, polyurethane, glue, and fragments of Cannon color copies.

It has many, many layers and normally defies attempts to confine itself to the picture plane. Additionally, it is the first piece I ever deliberately did to accommodate glare. It looks good from any angle or lighting.

It's a bit scary. I have no ability to judge this one. It is in many ways simply atrocious. In others, it's mighty interesting work.

Why, yes, it is for sale.

Boxing Day

2010-12-26T12:09:00.002-05:00

Failed to Achieve Mission

2010-12-16T22:17:00.005-05:00

January 28, 1986

I left the mobile home I lived in and got in my '76 Corolla and drove to the dealership. My plan was to shop for a new car.

On arrival at the dealership, I entered the front glass door and encountered an empty showroom. Looking around I discerned a group in a rear office with the door open, huddled before a television, intent. One guy was saying something but I didn't make it out.

I assumed some sort of sales meeting was going on, with a motivational video playing. My thought was that they ought to schedule such things so that customers aren't given short shrift. Annoyed, I spoke up. "Hey, how about some service?" or something. A man scurried out and attended to me, as I asked about various models. He seemed distracted, fretting, and I soon disengaged and left, disgusted by the lack of customer care. "What is going wrong in society?" I asked myself.

Traffic was likely bad on the way home. No doubt I encountered distracted drivers not paying attention.

I was always proud of my sound systems I installed in my cars. Good stereo and amp, with a large choice of prime rock 'n' roll, and radio was never on my menu. Radio was for squares.

I arrived home and encountered my roommate, distraught, on the verge of tears. "My god, my god, it's awful. The TV... What, you don't know? The Challenger just blew up. Oh my god..."

I turned to the TV and within seconds I ascertained the news of the awful explosion of the Challenger. I too, then, came close to tears and went into that shock of horrible emotion of the tragedy. Being a space program supporter my whole life, I felt what everyone in our community felt. Awful.

"Have you heard?" No, the man at the car dealership never asked that as he ushered me around. So I didn't know. Looking back, I'm convinced he somehow thought that I had heard the news.

I wonder how he remembers it: the day the bastard who didn't give a damn came in on Challenger disaster day.

They Yam Still Confused

2010-12-07T12:07:00.011-05:00

Apparently, some still confuse yams and sweet potatoes. I have tracked down most of the history that explains why.

The picture you see now is sweet potatoes.

Click on real yams for a picture of them. You can see they are not sold in most U.S. grocery stores.

Anyone can find out that the tropical yam is a completely different vegetable. African in origin, the most widely cultivated true yam is Dioscorea rotundata. There are pictures of them, but interspersed are pictures of, yes, sweet potatoes.

The sweet potato was a pre-Columbian food of both North and South America and the Carribbean, called batata. It was discovered by Europeans before the recognition of the Incan white potato, the completely different species, but that is the one which became known as the potato, because it was also called batata by the Europeans in the pidgin of the region.

The bright orange-fleshed sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) are relatively new in the U.S. Before introducing these cultivars, the sweet potato had yellowish, pale flesh. At the time of introduction, the new orange varieties were termed "yams" to indicate they were a different thing. Which they were: better tasting, creamier and smoother, and all the other benefits of modern breeding programs in which the U.S. excelled during the 20th century.

Here's a little history of the sweet potato in the U.S.

The mystery of the Polynesian sweet potato.

Here's an odd statement from this page: "The "Jersey" and related varieties having dry mealy flesh are favored in the northern states. The other type, more watery but richer in sugar and more soft and gelatinous when cooked, is favored in our southern states where they are called "yams". I'm not sure I want to try this "Jersey" thing. And it may explain why some of my Northern friends claim to despise sweet potatoes. That, and the overpoweringly sweet preparations of the basically decent orange Southern sweet potatoes -the "candied yam" - served in institutional cooking. You know what I mean. Yech.

Nine varieties of sweet potatoes grown in North Carolina. The purple one is intriguing.

The sweet potato does not have a shelf life as long as regular potatoes. I didn't realize that, although experience should have indicated that as a general rule.

I often cook sweet potatoes in the microwave. They come out best wrapped in plastic wrap. I find they need no salt, butter, or anything. I eat them as is, and I'm usually willing to jazz things up as necessary. I just don't think they need it. I just scrub them clean and poke a hole, although when I haven't, they have never exploded like regular white potatoes may.

I am going to cook some real yams soon. I have never had them.

Girawolf Redux

2010-12-02T20:29:00.007-05:00

Girawolf is half wolf, half baby giraffe, morphed with Sqirlzmorph software. I plucked him from the dim recesses of the past and gave him some new attention.
Sqirlz morph

Chow Puppy

2010-11-28T14:16:00.003-05:00

He was apparently abandoned on our dead-end street by a bad sort of person. He needs a good home, as my neighbor and I each already have more dogs than we can handle.

He is, incidentally, VERY sweet natured.

UPDATE: Rocko has been adopted.

Honing In on Meaning

2010-11-22T17:21:00.003-05:00

"Honing in." I paid attention when suddenly the expression's use was criticized. Perhaps I used it once or twice myself, in hurried conversation, trying to express something but subconsciously trying to jam two concepts into one phrase. It ends up seeming a stupid phrase; an error.

Although writers Bob Greene and George Plimpton have used it.

Because one "homes in" on targets or destinations, but one hones a knife or blade.

"Hone" seems to come from Old English, a word for "whetstone." This seems like a tautology. (What about "wet?" That is, a wet stone? Unclear, but possible.)
"Home" comes from words such as "haims" (Gothic) and "khaim" (Fris. [I guess they mean Old Frisian])

So to examine this, I got out the old scalpel of logic and went to work. Another writer mentioned it but didn't go very far into it.

Get a knife and cut the tiniest slice possible. You will be limited by two things, the sharpness of the edge and your ability to see. You can make a sharper more perfect lens if you sharpen your blade. (to make marks on your calipers). You can sharpen your blade better if you have a new more perfectly cut lens. Ad infinitum.

So "hone in on" is not completely daft. Still, its chain of logic is too obscure and the phrase is doomed.

2010-11-11T09:07:00.002-05:00

Love this music.

The Choice

2010-11-09T13:45:00.010-05:00

I hear people griping about things like "regulators," and "lawyers & politicians," and outrageous lawsuits and a general feeling that taxes and fees are wasted and inflated, giving the citizen too little for his tax dollar, and unnecessary things that are being done with funds the individual must fork over to either lawyers, accountants, regulators, or tax revenue collectors. It's probably even true.

I came up with a solution to end the complications of all arbitration. According to your own preference, choose one of the following:

1. Everything will be made legal. There will be zero law enforcement whatsoever; no laws; and anyone can do anything at all that they can get away with, including all theft, personal violations, savage murderous retributions at any time, economic frauds, consumer frauds (let the buyer beware), pollution, immigration, even slavery if you can handle it on your own, etc.

2. Everything will be made illegal. No more need for politicians and lawyers. Every possible human act will be considered illegal; even sitting and doing nothing. Prosecutions will be selective. Every complaint gets sent to court directly, and the judge and jury will hear each and every complaint of anyone anywhere, decide each case; not by law, but by opinion, and tax the population directly. The courts' massive growth will be offset by the shrinkage in all other mediative government and private bodies and professions.

Now this simplified example of a bi-polar populist political continuum models reality, although only very basically. Thus we can develop a simplified profile of the third decision often actually seen:

3. Purport to believe in Theory #1 to some people, and purport to believe in Theory #2 to other people, using discretionary case-by-case judgment. Cover your ass, in other words. On first glance, those who choose the third option appear to be cowardly, indecisive finaglers. until you realize, as I have, that options #1 and #2 are, in the end, exactly the same choice.

(from the archives - August 2001. Written by me, Jumper, under the byline Paavo Dekker and appearing in QZ magazine)

Today's Art Project

2010-11-09T13:39:00.007-05:00

Trying to illustrate the last post, I just got lost. So instead, I decided to play with Rachel Maddow's interesting and pretty face. I imagine she looked somewhat like this in her twenties or so. Extra points go to anyone who identifies the background.
Sqirlz morph

Telemarketers

2010-11-09T10:18:00.006-05:00

I got a call this morning from the Telemarketer Who Can't Speak.

I find this deliciously ironic. I said, "Hello," and she said:

"HizthzmistDekkr?" which I sort of got, so I said, "Yes," and she gives me the spiel:

"Wdlikdnofybstrdnulofancbiprodustfobins?"

At this point I just hold the phone out in front of me like it's a mutant frog, and stare at it in amazement. I still can't believe it, even after several similar episodes in the last few years. Her job is, after all, to do one thing: talk on the telephone. I'm pretty sure it's even dialed automatically for her. Apparently there's no oversight at all, because her masters have not noticed that they have hired someone to talk who can't even speak. I gently replace the phone in its cradle, shake my head, and go on about my business, knowing that no one on the other end of the phone even knows why I really hung up.

A few minutes later, another one calls. Still cheerful from this morning's coffee, I listen to another woman, who although not speaking clearly, says she's from a "Business Advisory Group."

"What are you selling?" I ask politely.

"I'm not selling anything," she begins, and then proceeds to try to sell me some health insurance.

"Not interested," I say loudly (and clearly), hang up, and again I wonder if anyone on the other end of the line understands that the immediate reason I'm not interested is that I don't want to deal with anyone has told me a direct lie in reply to the very first question I have asked.

(from the archives - August 2001. Written by me, Jumper, under the byline Paavo Dekker and appearing in QZ magazine)

Crazy Eyes

2010-10-28T10:21:00.007-04:00

Scott Adams of Dilbert writes a funny and interesting post on "crazy eyes."

("I have a hypothesis that you can detect in a person's eyes when they have a preference for imagination over direct observation. Let's call that look Crazy Eyes...") - Adams

I was reminded of an experience I once had:

I have been harassed for having "remembering eyes" before, however. I was once on my first forensic parts failure assignment, in a meeting, and I had to figure out why a big transformer cable had crumbled into crap. I inspected it closely and tried to think. Couldn't come up with anything. I began staring at the ceiling, musing over what to do or think. A guy in the meeting began mocking me or getting angry, demanding to know "what I was doing."

What I was doing was trying to remember what a book I had read said to do. I looked back and said "When in doubt, examine the part closely again." (I had recalled it just then.) So I took off my glasses and scrutinized it VERY closely. And the guy started mocking me again!

He forced me to explain that being nearsighted, my close-up vision without glasses was almost microscopic in its excellence. Which this dummy, although nearsighted himself, didn't get. Anyway, I found nearly invisible bits of paint on it. Someone had spilled paint on the power cable and then, furtively, cleaned it with powerful paint thinner, almost completely. A few months later the insulted insulation cracked and fell apart. No one else saw the tiny remnants of paint and wipe-marks. After I found it, they could see it, though.

This makes me wonder too about the not-all-there stare of people too vain to wear glasses or contacts. I expect in the past, before optics were invented, they were considered stupid or crazy in a different way. I suppose they could have been good tailors.

My boss, a PhD. organic chemist, agreed completely with my diagnosis and that the problem was solved. As we left the meeting, I groused about the fellow who had doubted my skills. "When he asked me what I was doing, I should have told that guy, 'Thinking. You should try it sometime.'" My boss just smiled and suggested it's probably good I didn't.

Hand 'o' Fate

2010-10-07T13:22:00.003-04:00

Inspiration from Tom Tomorrow. This even scares me, and I made it.

Wordplay

2010-10-04T17:13:00.003-04:00

Anagrams for "Tea Party Republicans"
A ripe blatancy erupts.
Yep, a cabal interrupts.
A tiny caberet supplier.
A piety barnicle spurt.
Perspire, nutty cabala.
Blustery panacea trip.
Inescapable rutty rap.
Tabernacle purist yap.
Rusty incapable prate.
Yup. Scatterbrain plea.
Treatable panic syrup.
Arbitrates pep lunacy.
Nuttier spacy parable.
Rapine crypt tableaus.
Apply reactant bruise.
Inscrutable teary pap.

Volunteers of America

2010-09-19T21:23:00.003-04:00

Butternut squash from volunteer plant. Got about eight this size from one plant. Most still on the vines.

Pumpkin Pie for Grown-ups

2010-09-09T14:35:00.013-04:00

First off, I use butternut squash instead of "pumpkin" because I like it, and I have a large crop of huge butternuts in the garden this year. (There is also a smaller crop of Orange Hubbards which sprang up, like the butternut squash plant, as volunteer from the compost.)

This recipe includes two caramelized onions, and has half the sugar of many recipes. I made a whole wheat crust. I would rather use stone ground graham whole wheat flour, more like a typical graham cracker crust, but I had none and substituted whole wheat bread flour. Not perfect, but not bad either. I tried to not overwork it; I didn't want gluten to develop.

I chopped two onions and caramelized them overnight on "low" in my crock pot, which has "high" and "low" settings only. I added a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar before beginning. They were the color of peanut butter by morning; just right.

3 cups butternut squash, peeled, cut up, and microwaved to softness
½ cup sugar, and enough molasses to make it into "brown sugar," about 2 tablespoonfuls.
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg plus 2 egg yolks, slightly beaten
1 cup milk with 1 cup of dry milk added to it
1/4 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) melted butter
1/4 teaspoon of garam masala powder

(I modified a recipe which called for 1 cup of half-and-half plus 8 oz. cream cheese; that's why I modified the milk and added the cheese.)

I blended everything very well in the food processor except for the onions, which I then folded in by hand.

I don't like it when cinnamon, nutmeg, etc. overpower the delicate taste of the squash or pumpkin. I tried twice before I got the amount of garam masala low enough. Mine has ginger, clove, cinnamon, cardamom.

I made a crust from whole wheat flour, cold grated butter, cold water. Rested in refrigerator, rolled out, put it in buttered pie pan, and pre-cooked it for 7 minutes in a 375º F. oven. In a few minutes I then filled the crust with the filling. It was very full; a high dome of filling in the center stood an inch above the height of the edges of the crust. Afraid it would slowly flow, I put it in the oven immediately and baked it at 375º for 10 minutes, then 330º for 40 minutes. Perhaps 350º would have been better. It wasn't done in the center so I gave it another hour at 280º. Perfect top and crust.

This is a good pie for me and others who don't need overwhelming sweetness in a pie, yet want some little bit. The caramelized onion added some complex sugars too.

By the way, I roasted the reasonably large seeds in salt and butter after I cleaned the squash. A fine snack. I just chew the shells along with the seeds inside; they are tender enough. But that's just me.

Look Away

2010-09-01T21:21:00.006-04:00

Mr. Bebbin of America visited our village and he told us. He sold us many things but they always stop working right. And his things always bound up in papers and wraps and boxes we can't use. Mr. Bebbin said no thing lives forever. We need to learn how to throw things aaway Mr. Bebbin say. Mr. Bebbin say we live in our own shit.

We act like we know what Mr. Bebbin say. "Aaway." We repeat this word "aaway" in our prayers. We think of throw "aaway" like a magic place. Mr. Bebbin said "aaway" is in the bushes a few steps from his tent. He never went there. Soon it made a big hill but then the wind and rain put it back in the village.

So Mr. Bebbin made us dig a big hole. We put the "aaway" in the new hole and covered it up. The water in the old drinking hole started to taste like "aaway." We asked who would help us because we didn't know the "aaway" would ruin our land. Mr. Bebbin said we had a "contract" and he said he didn't know we had made a mistake. Or I think he said that.

He say he would take the "aaway" away and make it gone, but we couldn't afford his price.

The Word

2010-09-01T10:42:00.008-04:00

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him." (John 1:1-3))

That's a very provocative statement. (The Greek word "logos" is usually translated as "word," but also as: account, cause, communication, doctrine, intent, preaching, reason, saying, or tidings.) I don't believe any of them. Except "word."

"In the beginning was the word, and the word was a number and the number was One" - anon

"Before the beginning was 'The' or 'That' (no nouns or verbs, only indefinite articles) and this became a word, so the system began and the system was God." - anon

I think now we're getting somewhere. I'll cut to the chase: In the "beginning" the word for "word" finally got invented. And having a symbol meaning "symbol" changed human thought incredibly, irreversibly, and multiplied the power of speech and thought almost inconceivably. In other words, the human concept of self, and self-awareness itself, and awareness of self-awareness, perhaps all derived from having a word for "word."

This implies a historical phase once existed somewhere in between modern consciousness and nonverbal consciousness. To say that beasts had no words at all, (although certainly they have no word for "word") may not be so true. After all, animals have calls of alarm, and make noises of pain, and yips and grunts of pleasure, such as puppies and pigs; and birds singing lustily atop
a pile of hemp seeds. Perhaps the primate protohuman speech progressed somewhat above that, but not much.

What goes on in a dog's mind when he heads for the comfortable spot near the rock? I suggest there are symbols representing this spot in the dog's mind. The memory of the feel of the earth in that dug-out burrow, a memory too of the smell of the nearby plant varieties.

What goes on in a near-modern human mind using words? Here is the mystery, for pre-written languages left no clue to their structures. It's all guesswork on our part. Except for observing chimpanzees in the wild; and as far as determinable, they have gestures, but no known words for anything and no grammar at all. (Chimp communication)

Newt Olbermann

2010-08-17T11:59:00.011-04:00

It's the glasses.
I prefer Olbermann, although there is a little bit of the ranter in each. No particular point; just goofing around.
Sqirlz morph

"We Supply it in Board-Feet"

2010-08-16T10:43:00.013-04:00

"Not square feet."

Hardwood flooring, that is. When I had my flooring company, I ran into a few suppliers who gave me this line. Now, a board-foot is defined in the dictionary as lumber measuring one square foot one inch thick. But what it doesn't say is that's un-dried. After it is dried it shrinks, and after it shrinks it loses more volume in the milling process. Pine shrinks more than hardwood.

An actual board-foot of dried hardwood flooring which is ¾" thick, the standard, yields by the dictionary definition 1.33333 square feet of flooring. But, as I said, it is what the product is milled from initially that the supplier is defining. In this case, it is fresh moist wood blanks measuring 1" thick x 3" wide. (To become standard 2¼" strip flooring.) Which means you should measure the square feet of the room(s), figure how much you will have to scrap, (about 5% works), and then, instead of multiplying by .75, divide by it. Or to put it another way, instead of dividing by 1⅓, multiply by it.

Confused? Who wouldn't be?

Now I'm good with a calculator, better than most, but this is about one of the most confusing things I've come across. And I even understand it. But I often had to call in my orders at the end of a very long exhausting day. One of the joys of management.

I told my regular supplier I wanted his computer-printed invoices to print square feet on them and that I would be ordering by square feet. I told him fatigue was often a factor and I was a customer so customer service demanded we would be playing my game, not his. So he did it. (Easily, by the way.)

Several other suppliers tried this with me. I told my second-most steady supplier the same, and he complied: he used to install flooring himself before he went into sales and knew exactly where I was coming from.

I tried this on a third vendor I was trying to work with, and they refused! "We supply it in board-feet."

I pulled my tape measure from my belt and said "See this? It's marked in feet and inches, and when I measure a floor, I come up with square feet. There are no board-feet on this tape." They refused to convert any orders routinely for me, so I said goodbye and left.

. . .

My theory is that many vendors benefit from this confusion, especially when selling to homeowners and innumerate carpenters and builders. Plus, guys want to be in the select fraternity of lumber guys who know what board-feet are. If they don't, they will fake it. The chances are high that they will order incorrectly, and either buy too much (plus an extra factor for scrap which the salesman, sensing blood in the water, will always remind the customer about! Usually recommending 10 -20% extra on top of that!) or, the customer will err the other way and run out of wood before the job is done, and order more, giving the salesman another chance to run his routine, and maybe do it again!

In the process, the customer, if a tradesman, runs the risk of angering the homeowner or contractor because of the delay, about which the salesmen who practice this lucrative humbuggery don't care.

Not only that, leftover hardwood usually gets stored somewhere humid, swelling it up and making it unsuitable for installation in climate-controlled homes and buildings, because it will shrink back to more stable dimensions eventually, leaving gaps between the boards. Eventually that finds its circuitous way back to the unwary contractor or homeowner, who again will suffer.

I see all this madness as an arena. An arena in which two great forces battle for the soul of American Capitalism: one side sees their way as the American way: screwing the customer, they say, is as American as apple pie. The other side, the one I'm on, says you succeed by offering the best product and service you can provide.

How's my side doing?

Cooking Perfect Tortillas

2010-08-01T12:33:00.009-04:00

When I lived in south Texas I had flour tortillas lightly toasted on occasion, but most of the time they were taken and used cold from the package, and breakfast tacos, burritos, or fajitas assembled from them. I think the local distributors baked them just a tiny bit longer than some companies do, so they wouldn't really be "raw" tasting.

Incidentally, in Texas I saw few Mexican-Americans eat corn tortillas unless it was at Taco Bell. At regular restaurants, almost everyone had flour tortillas for bread. There, as you see in many Mexican restaurants, they are served in a covered bowl, lightly steamed. Kind of pasty to my taste.

It wasn't until North Carolina acquired a larger Mexican population that I experienced corn tortillas cooked on a griddle. The first time, I stopped at a restaurant that had tongue tacos - "lengua" - and ordered a plate. Each taco was served in two corn tortillas browned on their griddle. I was hooked.

At home, I soon tried to duplicate this but didn't have much luck. The corn tortillas, almost raw in their big bagged stacks (nice and inexpensive) from the regular groceries, which had began to stock them, got hard and leathery on my frying pan. Not good. So for a while I eschewed them and either fried my corn tortillas or ate flour tortillas.

Eventually I learned the trick. Here's how:

To make four tacos, since I was impressed with the double-wrap technique using corn tortillas, place a stack of eight on the griddle. I use a big cast iron frying pan. I also brush both sides of each tortilla with a little mix of a spoonful of water and some olive oil before I start. I don't want much oil, just a tiny bit.Place the entire stack of eight in the hot pan. On medium heat, the bottom-most corn tortilla, #1, browns on one side, just right. I flip the whole stack over with my spatula, keeping the stack lined up nicely, and begin browning tortilla #8. Then with my thumb and forefinger, I flip the done side of #1 which is now on top, over, exposing the uncooked side. When side a of #8 is browned, I flip the stack, begin browning side b of #1, and when it's done, flip the stack again, and brown side b of #8. At this point, like you, my mind begins to wander and - pay attention now!

At that point, I grab tortilla #1 and #2, and flip them both over. I then flip the whole stack again. #8 on top gets flipped along with #7. Now, both #1 and #8 are headed for the center of the stack.

So on, finishing #2 and #7, and then turning the top three. Bringing in turn #3 and #6 to the top and bottom of the stack. If you are counting, that's 16 flips to get them all. Note that if you cooked them one at a time, you would still have that same amount of flipping to do. The process of dealing them into the pan will be reduced to once.

The advantage to all this, is that as the stack begins heating up, you are steaming the tortillas. The browned portions of your stack, as they are moved towards the center, lose their leathery dry texture and become quite tender.

Eventually the last, tortillas #4 and #5, are browned on both sides. You are ready to remove the whole stack and stash it in a covered bowl and assemble your tacos, or fajitas, or what-have-you. (Slices of Texas-style slow cooked brisket come to mind.)

Once you master that, you can do your flour tortillas the same way. By the way, I never use a double-tortilla if it's a flour tortilla.

Or did I imagine it?

2010-07-31T13:25:00.007-04:00

I distinctly remember this symbol was around when I was a kid. (The æ with the ring around it. Or, I should say, the ea with the ring around it.) I would call it the "each symbol" or the "at each sign."
Or is my mind playing tricks on me? In any case, I don't think it's on the internet.

Return of More Shocking Dip

2010-07-27T17:14:00.007-04:00

Homemade chili barbecue sauce is what I had in a glass jar with a metal lid, in the fridge.

A labor of love. I made it last week by cooking, after cleaning, a few different varieties of dried Southwestern-style chilies from cherry-sized to big, and onion, a trace of tomato in the form of ketchup; garlic and oregano and vinegar and mustard, with molasses. (The vinegar included some homemade vinegar I made from homemade Chilean red grape wine, which I made specifically from leftover grapes to make vinegar from.) I strained the sauce through a strainer after I pulverized it in the blender after cooking.

So that's what I dipped the tilapia in before breading it in half self-rising flour, half cornbread mix. With black pepper and some salt. And fried them golden brown in canola oil in the iron skillet.

On the side to fill the tacos with is a mix of fine slivered iceberg lettuce with an equal amount of fine slivered cabbage. With red vinegar and lime juice squirted on it, lightly salted right before adding it to the fresh Mr. Stripey tomato picked a few hours ago, washed, chopped lightly, and lightly salted. And a pile of similar sized avocado chunks, with salt and lime juice. And the chopped jalapeño.

Value of Retrograde Motion

2010-07-12T14:26:00.003-04:00

As a chess player, I learned it is good to be able to return to earlier lines of thought. One studies the board, comes up with some lines of play, but continues study: I will get back to that other good move and use it, if there is nothing fruitful in my further ruminations. So before the clock runs out it's best to keep organized.

I noticed also, long ago, how conversations seem to take side-detours. Whether a conversation is a delightful one has little to do with its final map, of course; it usually depends on the quality of the company. As an experiment, I cultivated an ability to backtrack in conversation. To be the guy with the most skill in bringing back what was set aside or even lost; to return the thread to its place. All the while, surely, being tongue-in-cheek about the often unimportance of actually doing so. But often this satisfies both me and my partners in conversation. In the cases of more utilitarian conversations, it's even more useful to return to the main track until it concludes, I think. Even there excursions are useful and do happen, of course.

When I first got a good internet connection, after a hiatus in the '90s, nearly some 12 years ago, about the time Google came along, I was like an untrained chess strategist or conversationalist.

Oh, I wheeled and soared and swung and chased the shouting wind along, through footless halls of data.

I would explore and take twists and turns, and test the equipment, and revel in it all. I just never seemed to get anything done during these fanciful explorations. Sure, my productivity expanded with email and word-processing and amassing actual useful files, and organizing my life. And organizing my ephemera.

But the actual surfing was wild and distracting. Used this way, nothing holds the attention for long. But I finally learned how to track back and then keep going from there. When I needed to, which was often enough.

This is what I think is affecting those current writers of the thesis - you've read it - that computers and the internet are making us unfocused. I don't think so. No, I think we are witnessing newbies, newcomers to the internet, getting lost. Who are they? Why are they late? We have all dealt with them, I think. Especially in general business management, and the newspaper business, in particular, who scoffed at the internet for years. Technophobes, or some who got burned from a lack of skill at separating wheat from chaff. The usual suspects.

I expect they will get over it.

Giant Squash

2010-07-09T10:28:00.005-04:00

Here are some huge volunteer squash plants, likely offspring of butternut squash, which arose from the composted kitchen scraps. The leaves, however, I have only seen associated with pumpkin varieties, on the internet. I have not had much luck in the past with winter squashes, as they tend to sprout early and reach maturity far earlier than the recommended October harvest time. I don't see how varmints won't find these monsters before then.

What I have read says when the stem dies, then it's time to pick. Also they reportedly need a few weeks of aging after picking to reach maximum flavor. I can do that this time.

See some earlier posts on squash and pumpkins.

UPDATE: August 27 2010 They have all turned the delicate cream color they are supposed to be. I have eaten one, mostly, but still have pie remaining from it. The big one in the picture I harvested a few days ago, and it's hardening up in the kitchen.

Catalogue

2010-07-06T11:27:00.003-04:00

Sqirlz morph

More Shocking Dip

2010-06-27T14:00:00.004-04:00

For some frozen boneless tilapia fillets I made a standard sort of breading: half cornbread mix and half self-rising flour, augmented with salt, pepper, and some onion powder, and a healthy teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Where I broke ranks with tradition is the dip I concocted to wet each fillet prior to applying the breading. I put 3 TBS. of yellow mustard, 2 TBS. of brown mustard, and a splash of beer - Sierra Nevada brand - into a bowl and whisked it up. It was a tad runny so I adjusted it with some sprinkles of the breading mix, whisking, until it was thick enough but not a "batter" by any means. Dipped, then breaded the fillets.

I heated an inch of canola oil in my cast iron dutch oven I use for a fryer, and fried the fillets to light brown perfection. Served with a squirt of lime juice on each. (On the side I had some sweet potato I skinned, baked in the microwave, and then thick sliced and browned each side in a skillet with butter. Also some baked beans from a can. What the heck.)

The fish is one of the best things I have had in a long, long time. Highly recommended.

The Unintended Spill

2010-06-24T15:22:00.008-04:00

A high ranking State Department official today revealed in a private press conference that a simultaneous hacking attack at Google, Facebook and several other internet companies' central databanks has been carried out by unknown foreign operators. "The entire databases of several corporations were downloaded over a period of weeks without detection," the source said. This includes large and diverse databases such as every book scanned by Google and all saved data on repeat users, as well as all Facebook's social network information including names, email addresses, saved history, contacts networks, interests, etc., and includes dates of birth, and various other indicators such as hometowns where listed, product loyalties, social preferences, racial makeup, etc.

Now, not only do large corporations and U.S. surveillance agencies have an entire list of almost everyone in the Western world's most revealing data, Al Qaeda or another unfriendly or criminal organization inevitably does also. This includes easily identifiable data on political views and identifications.

Officials of Google and Facebook we reached expressed outrage over the spill, and both claimed in nearly identical language that it was "unavoidable" and "unfortunate." The Facebook representative also stated it was "unforeseen." "We expect the hackers to be denied access shortly, and to curtail more file downloading soon."

Cherry Barbecue Sauce

2010-06-08T16:26:00.010-04:00

Wash the 1/2 lb. of cherries. Pull the stems out, cut the cherries in half, and remove the stones. Add cherries and a bottle of Malta Goya (coke or pepsi if you have none of this, which you probably don't) and a teaspoon of sugar to a sauce pan and begin simmering. Add a bit of salt. Black pepper. Cut up a dry red New Mexico pepper, discard the seeds, and add pepper pieces to the sauce. Once it's all cooked down, simmering about 25 minutes at low heat, remove and drape the pieces of pepper over the pork loin. Pour the sauce and cooked cherries over pork loin and cook it all wrapped in foil as close to sous vide temperatures (140° F.) as your oven will go. Mine runs as low as 170° F. which I thought was too high for this but I cooked the loins for 8 hours.

Then early next morning I poured off the liquid, brought it back to a simmer, added some red wine vinegar - maybe a quarter cup - and the pieces of pepper, the cherry pieces, some onion powder, dash of cayenne powder, some minced garlic, a bit more salt, and finally a tablespoon of blackberry jam. And a tablespoon of some brown mustard. After simmering and some reduction again, I let it cool, pulverized the sauce in a blender, and ran it through a sieve, discarding what little remained after mashing it through with a a spatula, vigorously, back into the pan.

Before serving, brush some sauce on, brown the outsides of the already cooked pork loin, either on a very hot grill or on a hot skillet, then remove, slice, and pour a dollop of the remaining sauce over it.

Fragments from the Past

2010-05-13T10:36:00.003-04:00

I remember the one that almost got away from us one night. Down near the Mexican border. At around midnight. It started kicking and I told the hands to "get ready to shut her in." On orders from the engineer, they didn't try to kill it until the "mud kicked up to the crown" (top of the rig) - that was his order before he turned over and went back to sleep - and when it did, I told the hands to shut her in AND THEY HAD NOT GOTTEN READY. They had to charge up a big compressed-air tank to power the rams. I never spent a longer 15 minutes as it kicked several more times. Meanwhile they were adding weight to the mud, and I was afraid some higher zones would succumb to the added weight, so I made them add lost-circulation material too. It was the right thing to do. And they shut it in (finally!) and began circulating under pressure and all was well.

Nightmare

2010-05-13T07:59:00.005-04:00

The students, myself among them, were given a cheap edition of a book. The book was printed on poor quality paper, and had both instructions for the exam and the coded text, which was in normal English yet seemed like normal course material. It was not. In the text were placed occasional plastic three-dimensional pieces affixed to the pages, with inscrutable colored stripes and squares on each piece, which were of various sizes akin to the "houses" and "hotels" one sees in the board game Monopoly. I was reminded of the color codes of electronics components such as resistors, capacitors, etc., a code I have never learned.

Several blocks of text were repeated in a different font. This was part of the code, too. The book instructed that the final analysis should contain sufficient footnotes. It contained numerous footnotes itself, all inscrutable.

Included was a list of various flavors of ice cream the students were instructed to buy and taste. This too was part of the coded clues to decipher. The code seemed monstrously complicated and difficult.

There was a long line to get the ice cream, and I fretted that I had wasted time waiting. While in line, I reviewed some general University policies, and saw in a footnote: "¹ Students should be aware that some courses are not required for graduation despite being listed as required courses." I thought some government policy had forced them to reveal this. After I acquired my ice cream samples, I saw I could have saved much time by simply walking around to the back of the purchasing area, a mere extra block by sidewalk.

I fretted about all the footnotes required on the final exam to a friend, who chided me that professionals are expected to use footnotes and that students are expected to become professionals. I ate the ice cream and identified the flavors without enjoyment. I had no idea how to decipher the code but had to hope that I could make some progress later.

More More Malt

2010-05-05T13:05:00.003-04:00

Recently made some chili, as I noted in a previous post. Having one of those bottles of Malta Goya on hand, and being familiar with the practice of using beer as the added liquid in some chili recipes, and also being familiar with a bit of sugar in some recipes to balance the bitterness of large amounts of hot chilies, which I do love, I decided to use the malty sweet barley drink as base of that particular batch. All I can say is, it was perfect.

More posts about malt in cooking.

Trip to Lemuria

2010-03-29T11:11:00.002-04:00

Sqirlz morph

Chimp Man

2010-03-19T13:59:00.011-04:00

(Here's part of a letter I wrote to Jeremy Jones, an associate of Xiberpix, the maker of the fine program Sqirlz Morph, which I use in making some of my art.)

Thanks for your comments. You are not the first to claim the images unsettling, including other artists, so I thought I would explain (it is past time to do so, I see!)

My impression is that actual animal-human hybrids are impossible by the nature of DNA, and even if possible, unethical for many reasons, at least until some future transformation of ourselves into a far kinder and gentler and knowledgeable human race. If the pictures merely suggest some future human body-modification fad for aesthetic reasons, what will be will be, and I suppose some will be shocked, likely for similar reasons I'll outline:

If you will notice, many of the pictures involve threatened species. My goal is to suggest we extend our sympathy and protection to these creatures to a further extent which many withhold at present, seeing a boundary of compassion beyond which they will not extend their identifications.

I would love to show elephants, for example, as more co-equal to us. I can't figure out how to deal with the trunk, unless I get into 3-D which I have not done. See this article on elephant intelligence, for example.

If I'm successful, this disturbing feeling will prompt some to ponder their obligations towards other life here on our planet. That's what I hope. As an artist I don't want to simply shock, although plenty of people do like to be shocked and astounded simply for the sake of excitement, so I can't complain.

Also, some of the pictures seem so far fetched I regard them as merely possible beings from other planets. I am a science fiction reader.

A few are just for fun. The "cat wolf" pleased me because I think he's beautiful.

Thanks for prompting me to write this.

Why Love Wikipedia?

2010-03-16T12:30:00.004-04:00

My love affair with Wikipedia grows more with time. I suppose everyone is familiar with the problems of Wikipedia: the vandalism, the impossibility of seriously citing it as an authoritative source, the risk of well-intentioned - or otherwise - misinformation presented as truth.

In the 1970s my parents bought Encyclopedia Britannica. I was on my own then, but I did move back in with them a couple of times during the '70s and like my father had discovered, I could lose myself for hours at a time reading almost randomly in the volumes. I suspect my mother, no intellectual slouch (quite the contrary), was more focused, and would go to them with more specific goals in mind.

Such an investment was out of my reach. And it was out of the reach of about every one of my peers. I never met anyone my age who had a set that I knew of. We mostly went to college and had information coming out of our ears; too much to idly seek general knowledge very often. And of course I was a reader of fiction. Wonderful fiction.

For a long time also I've been aware of a sort of textbook mafia. In college one is of course appalled at the price of textbooks, and one reads of the big companies that seem to control the public school textbook market too. (No doubt private schools buy from the same sources as well.)
Lobbyists, state boards, salespeople: all jacking up the prices for books. And the university-oriented periodicals: $50 - $100 a year for a single subscription to any advanced journal in any field.

Until Wikipedia, there was only one alternative: a drive to the closest university library. Which I did on occasion when my profession indicated. Later came the interlibrary loan system, in which the community libraries promised to get me any book I desired. I confess I never took much advantage of this, for several reasons: a reference book is not much use when one has only a month or so to peruse it. And I tend to be hard on books. I read while eating, while at the beach, where dogs and children jump on me, even in the tub. It's not responsible citizenship to ruin a public book.

And the news archives. Looking up something that I saw in the newspaper years before required another drive to the public library and getting comfortable with the microfilm reader machine. I did that some, too. Even just for idle curiosity; if something nagged at my mind enough and I knew I could find out by viewing the archives, I'd go down there and look.

Wikipedia also appeals to my understanding of the circumstances of people in the wider world. Textbooks are even more expensive, relative to poverty, for hundreds of millions of people around the world. Wikipedia, for all its flaws, is revolutionary: nowadays, for the cost one tenth of a single set of encyclopedias, (a small reader) offers access to far more general knowledge than ever before.

The same philosophy also leads me to support the "$100 laptop," the Kindle, and all the various lower cost clones of these.

My own pleasure in simply finding stuff out is, of course, why I started my other website More Best of Wikipedia.

Tiger man

2010-03-09T17:59:00.003-05:00

Sqirlz morph

The Other Website

2010-01-29T19:09:00.005-05:00

My new website has temporarily taken some of my motivation away from this one. I apologize to my regular readers. Most will sympathize with the fascination I have found on at least some of these other topics, whether chosen by me or by the (former?) author of Best of Wikipedia which I linked on a sidebar of my own new site, More Best of Wikipedia. Hey, I think I'll link to them from here.

Let Them Eat Snakes

2010-01-21T22:18:00.007-05:00

The Food Network has decided to broadcast "competitive cooking" for much of its entire programming day. This is colossally stupid.

Competitive cooking was fun, new, and freakish the first few times because it was rare. But doing it all the time is wrong on several levels.

Cooking is peaceful, intelligent, sentimental, delicious, interesting, primal, and fun. Often honest. Not a competition. Competitive cooking is almost a parody of what the stereotypical "moronic male" would do to a cooking channel: ruin it.

And then there are the cakes. I can't stand the shows about these cakes. These horrible, horrible cakes, made out of sugar and industrial foodlike substances. Every cake is a monument to the systematic denial of food to a starving child somewhere overseas. True abomination.

So to Hell with the Food Network, and I mean that literally.

Posole - Corny Story Part II

2010-01-03T13:44:00.013-05:00

When I first made hominy and then masa dough for tamales out of the hominy (see Corny Story), I had fun and it was delicious. Not wanting to trek around in strangers' cornfields, this time I sought a source of dried field corn for sale close to home.

I made a few calls and couldn't find any wholesale yellow corn for sale. Finally I recalled that a local outfit sold corn stoves, and I called them and they said they had 50 lb. bags of corn for fuel. I meant to go by there and get some.

But the other day at the hardware store, the real old one that has outlasted the pressures imposed by the Home Depot and Lowes, I was getting my purchases together and noticed a man inquiring about the "deer corn" they sold. So I said I'd get a 50 lb. bag of it. The price was $10. Note that comes out to 20 cents per pound, which is a whole lot less than a pound of corn flakes, for instance, and a lot less than a pound of masa meal. And then I heard the other customer gripe that he didn't want a whole fifty pounds. "I'll split it with you," I offered and he quickly agreed. We asked for a bag and got a trash bag from the proprietor, and I had a stronger bag in my truck. Jay (we shook hands and introduced ourselves) and I split it up in front of the hardware store. He said he lived down in South Carolina and wanted it for luring deer so his family could bag some venison.

Back home, I called the company in Georgia that wholesaled it, and told a lady I was a writer doing an experiment making hominy and if it was safe to eat (I figured it was, but there are overturned trucks on the interstate, and salvage operations, or resales after freak contamination events and things like that, and I wanted to be sure.) She was interested and called me back after telling her bosses about my request, telling me they assured her it was safe to eat, it being just corn.

I took about a half gallon and rinsed it well, and began soaking it. I changed the water a couple of times and let it soak about 28 hours. Then I made hominy. And like last time, it took longer than the internet sources I read said it would. Simmered in lime water, then another soak overnight in it, and next morning it was still tough so I began simmering it again. I had to add water two more times; it kept swelling above the waterline in my big stainless steel pot. Finally I had to transfer it to the Big Pot, my new four-gallon stainless steel baby. After another two or three hours simmering it was done. Then I rinsed it and rinsed it, removing the limewater.

I have to note that my hominy still had the skins attached. There was one article that said you could cut the little cob end off each grain by hand and they'd come off easier. Yeah, right! But I didn't take them off last time and it was still good then.

Then, following this recipe at one of my favorite food sites, Homesick Texan, I made posole, a Mexican pork and hominy soup. I used bacon and pork loin cubes instead of pork shoulder and ham hock. Everything else was the same. Delicious! The soup was so flavorful I added more hominy than she did and it was just right. I served it with julienned scallions and cilantro.

Here's the leftover hominy, soon to be ground into masa dough for tamales in a few days. It should keep in the refrigerator for a week. It's hard to tell but each of these grains is about twice as wide as it originally was.

Update 5-5-10 The chewyness of the unseparated corn hulls finally got to me, as I froze several servings separately and reheated later. However, this has led me to re-introduce myself to several brands of store-bought hominy such as Bush's, and theirs is very good. I'll save the homemade for when the Apocalypse comes around, or find a correct corn variety (more likely, as the first time I made hominy it was better.) In any case, I liquefied the last batch of thawed-out posole in my blender and made a fine chili out of it, adding in the extra ingredients along with ground beef. Sure made a great chili.

Update 2: August 2010 I haven't made it clear, but the first time I did this using the field corn I picked myself, I had a better result. The deer corn was of lower quality overall. This taught me the difference between low- and high-quality dried corn, anyway. Next time, I'll go for some field corn from a local guy who has agreed to hook me up with some of his own he grows.

Thai Soup

2009-12-29T14:45:00.016-05:00

One TBS. miso paste
One TBS. chicken boullion
Quart of water
One TBS. garlic
One can coconut milk
One half a dried Thai pepper
One tsp. dried ginger powder
salt, MSG
Grated peel of one lime.
Simmer.
Juice of half a lemon, and half the lime, added right before serving.
Garnished with cilantro and julienned scallions.

Success! Delicious. Think I'll have another bowl.

This is a fine base for adding other things. I'm thinking shrimp. Or, for another taste, peanut butter. Which I have here now.

(With all the citrus, when I put a dab of peanut butter in the leftovers next day, it unbalanced the flavors. I would suggest saving the peanut butter for another recipe.)

Update: 2-21-10 I recreated the soup and this time added some shrimp which I first boiled, in a spicy bath comprising Old Bay seasoning, a little lime juice, and a few grams of Dave's Insanity Sauce in salted water, for two-and-a-half minutes. Then I put them in a salted ice water bath. Then I drained them and peeled them later. When the soup was ready I put them in just long enough to get hot. Served this time too with scallions and cilantro and lemon and lime juice added right before serving.

Update: 4-27-10 Again I made this same basic recipe. I omitted some of the citrus juice but this time added some roast chicken meat I had pulled off the bone, and a couple of tablespoons of adobo sauce, which comes packaged with sesame oil. Delicioso! (not pictured here; the photo is of the shrimp version, my second selection.)

Mediterranean Wintertime Fish

2009-12-21T18:15:00.010-05:00

Hearing some descriptions of a dish from my sister, I promptly forgot the recipe except for a few themes, and created this.

(To warn you right away, this is the story of a failure.)

Sautéed two chopped small onions and stalk of celery, two pinches of whole mustard seeds, 1/4 jalapeño in a skillet I had just fried two pieces of bacon in, reserving some of the bacon fat for later endeavors.
Then, once that began to brown, I added a couple of spoonfuls of water, a tin of anchovies and broke that up in the center of the sauté pan, and 1 TBS. each of minced garlic and capers. This simmered about 8 minutes and the anchovies pretty much dissolved. I added a tin of sardines (3 in the tin) and a handful of chopped arugula, the cooked crumbled bacon, and a can of clams, drained. I decided to add some thyme and black pepper. I put the lid on and simmered this for maybe 3 minutes, wanting the clams piping hot but not cooked any longer. I added a cup of heavy cream, put the lid on, turned off the stove, and cooked my pasta, some farfalle, also known as "bow ties."Could have used some more cream. In fact, it would have benefited by leaving out the capers, replacing the sardines with some other fish. Parsley would have worked better than arugula. Come to think of it, tomatoes would have been better than cream. And the sardines were the wrong kind. Mustard sauce. I rinsed them but really, I should have left them out today.

This recipe needs work. A lot of work. Verdict: minor failure. It was good food, but the flavors were not balanced.

More Malt

2009-12-11T10:35:00.007-05:00

Today being a cold one, I loaded up the stove with wood and cooked myself a big pot of oatmeal, and when it was done I poured malt syrup all over it and dug in. Delicious!

I started out when young putting brown sugar on my oatmeal. That trick, which more people ought to know, lifts oatmeal into the realm of excellence. Later, when I learned that brown sugar is just a premixed blend of granulated sugar and molasses, I just began buying molasses. And putting that on my oatmeal. I also make my oatmeal with milk instead of water.

I have also tried maple syrup on the oatmeal, and that's pretty good. But today the malt syrup went on there. I pronounce it a success. It rivals my favorite, the molasses. Call it a tie.

This is part of a slowly evolving series I'm doing about cooking with malt. You can use the handy-dandy search box to find all my articles about "malt."

The Ride

2009-12-11T08:44:00.013-05:00

The usual way was to pile a bunch of boys in a car and get to the camping ground that way. But on this day, for whatever reason, the boy and his father rode unaccompanied by others in the family car.

It was a sunny day, and it wasn't winter. They headed north into Wisconsin. He realized he wasn't often alone with his father on these Boy Scout affairs. Usually they would split up; the boy would would spend these camp-outs erecting tents, going on the hikes, doing the rest in a cluster of friends; getting signed off on various Boy Scout instructional lessons which impart some actual useful skills and are designed to keep the boys on the right path. His father would meanwhile be doing father things with the other men - moving logs, fueling lamps, unpacking chests of food. Each of them enjoyed the company of those who were not seen every day.

He was always slightly afraid of his father. A gentle man who probably feared his own anger, mild as it was, more than he feared any other man, he had really only spanked the boy, or his brother, once or twice, years ago, and perhaps whacked his backside once long ago with a belt - enough so that in later years he only had to frown and touch his belt buckle, and he and his brother would quickly realize they were on the wrong side of a line.

A transplanted Southerner, one day over the supper table he had announced a new deal. He had detected some disrespect, he said. The children became serious. He went on. From that point on, the children were to say "Yes sir" and "No sir" and "Yes ma'am" and "No, ma'am." Over the next several months, he even trained the boys in the rudiments of military formation. And the boys, like dogs, loved it.

But mostly it was a vague feeling of not wanting to disappoint. The boy let the moment dissolve in the sun and the road. It was good, too, to have his father all to himself. The quiet between them became comfortable. After a while the boy spoke:

"Why don't you tell me a story about when you were in the Army?"

"Once in Alaska, I had night time guard duty, and I had to walk around the outside of the fence. Yes, it was very cold. We wore parkas over our uniforms. I turned the corner and came face to face with an Arctic timber wolf. I think it surprised both of us. They aren't like a dog; they're big, maybe 80 pounds."

"I was very scared, because he didn't run away; he just sat there looking at me. So I drew back the bolt on my rifle. I didn't even see him go. One second he was there and then he was gone. He just disappeared. They're smart. He knew that sound, what my gun was; they know about man."

"I'll tell you about a fellow I knew up there. He was an older man. I was a little older than most of the other men but he was a lot older. He didn't get along with the younger men very well. In his forties I guess. He was a writer. Books, detective stories. Yes, I read some of them after the war. They were all right, I guess."

The boy's interest faded a bit; he looked out the window for a few seconds. For some reason the man raised his voice a bit, and lightly slapped the steering wheel. "Listen! This is important!"

"I was his only friend. But he was always complaining about the Army's ways of doing things; about how there were better ways or how stupid they were. I finally told him, 'Hammett, it just doesn't do any good to complain; you may as well try to look on the bright side of things.'

"He looked at me like he had never thought of it that way. Yes, I think he was a little better after that.

"What happened to him? Well he got out of the Army when the war was over, just like all of us! A few years later he died and your mother and I were invited for me to speak at his funeral service. His wife sent a letter. No, we didn't go. He was a communist. At that time, if I had gone, they would have thought I was a communist too."

Just then, the man and the boy saw part of the convoy of Boy Scouts had stopped a couple of cars at the side of the road at the turn off, signaling to the car that this was the turn onto the dirt road that led to the camp ground. The story was over.

Flo, the Progressive Insurance Chick

2009-12-07T12:03:00.005-05:00

Flo, whose name I had missed until today, knowing her only as the Progressive Insurance chick, is in reality Stephanie Courtney. I, too, am fascinated by her allure.

However, it is this scene pictured here which I believe has inspired a whole trend of wacky body language. This stance of hers is very odd, to the point that it amuses me, no matter the context. It says, "hands off, come and get me!" Nicely paradoxical, and very feminine. (Here come the thrown shoes. Oh hell.)

However, my prediction - the reason for this post - is that exaggerated body language as a conscious element, inserted into the current zeitgeist, is already here. We will see much more of it soon, and the first imitators and bandwagon-jumpers are coming into focus on the scene right now.

Flo has lots of commercials they don't play in your area.

Name the Artist

2009-12-06T01:16:00.004-05:00

Here's an image by a well-known artist. The game is simply be the first to identify the artist.

My thinking was that since there is, as far as I can tell, no easy way to Google the answer, it's not susceptible to cheating. Same with Wikipedia.

UPDATE: The game is a good one but this one was just way too obscure! No one but a specialist would have ever guessed that this artist painted this work. I think the next one should be easier.

Unnatural!!!

2009-12-04T10:11:00.010-05:00

Every so often I hear some smug holier-than-thou type telling me it's unnatural to drink milk. I drink milk, and they don't: ergo, they are superior beings.

Without fail I notice these people eat cheese. Which, I must point out, is one step further removed from "natural." Not only are they harvesting hetero-species-ical milk, they are curdling and aging it and allowing bacteria and mold grow in it. So how natural is that, Mr. and Ms. Natural?

Granted, I'm not happy with the growth hormones and such in modern milk. And I even sympathize with vegans. Still, that's not what these kooks are talking about.

Plus, they act like they are somehow "grown up" which is why they eschew milk. You and I both know these people wouldn't drink milk even when they were kids, causing their mothers' to worry about their diets and give them Bosco and Ovaltine and stuff normal kids never had to learn about. Which worries were justified, because now that they are all grown up they live on diets mostly of coffee, booze, chocolate, cigarettes, soda pop and pizza. Grown up food. You know, the natural way of doing things.

I hope their hips don't shatter. Must be tough eating that required half-pound of collard greens per day to get the calcium. What with their preferred diet. Oh, wait, that's right: they eat the cheese. Lots and lots of cheese.

Here is a being acting naturally. I'm not so sure about this or this, but live and let live: that's my motto.

Paneer Breakfast

2009-12-04T08:53:00.013-05:00

Deciding on an attempt to eat a healthy breakfast, I knew veggies were paramount. I know this puts me at odds, in general, with most of the U.S., for whom breakfast vegetables are usually limited to potatoes, onions, and, rarely, to what is included in a Spanish omelet - tomatoes and peppers and such. And of course, a bean breakfast burrito. Or the mushrooms, or spinach in other kinds of omelet. All of which is starting to sound not too awful, actually. All right, I surrender: there are more healthy options to American breakfast than I realized.

Anyway, I had some paneer left over. I made it using this recipe from The Paupered Chef. Using the sour milk (yogurt, actually) to curdle the fresh milk was a clever trick which, although thousands of years old, had eluded me. When I made it, I used it in an eggplant and potato dish, but didn't document any of it.

But for today I planned this breakfast dish last night and early this morning, and fine tuned it as I made it. Here's what we have:
One last poblano from the garden, a small green one the size of a big jalapeño; and a small onion, chopped and begun browning in butter. Meanwhile, I began heating a 6" iron skillet to toast some spices in. But first I measured out a half teaspoon each of mustard seed and cumin seed, and tossed that in with the cooking onions. Then I measured out the following:
1/2 a dried Thai red pepper, chopped
1 tsp commercial garam masala powder (this has some cinnamon in it.)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
6-7 black pepper corns
2 cloves
5-6 cardamoms
1/2 tsp coriander seeds
and toasted it in my little skillet. I kept it moving and tossing; the turmeric and garam masala powder needed the toasting most but was most likely to burn first, so I watched it. Then I emptied my little skillet full of toasted spices into a coffee cup, and as soon as it cooled I ground everything into a spice mix in my coffee mill / spice grinder.

Before it cooled, I had diced up the leftover paneer - a chunk about as big as a tennis ball- and begun browning it. And then added the generous handful of frozen green peas. Stirred in those spices. And finally, some diced leftover sweet potato which had been made the previous evening with a sprinkle of sugar and drizzle of molasses (which equals "brown sugar;" I usually make my own when I need it.)

I stirred for a few minutes, wanting everything to brown just lightly, and when it had I added a splash of water, a little salt, and it was done in another minute.

If you want some Indian recipes, check out Tigers & Strawberries, one of my favorite food sites.

There are some paneer options I've just begun to ponder, such as adding heavy cream for a richer paneer. I could have made my own yogurt, too. Sometimes I'll buy some and start a batch with one spoonful of the store-bought mixed in a quart of milk.

Milk used to be more heavily subsidized in this country. Dried milk used to be substantially cheaper than whole milk. Still, money can be saved if it's bought in the big sizes and I'll champion homemade yogurt made from dried milk as being good as any other.

Shocking Dip Part 2 - Szechuan Sauce for Breading Chicken

2009-11-18T15:56:00.008-05:00

Last night, continuing this train of thought, I dipped some chicken in Szechuan sauce before I applied my mix of pankoesque crumbs with flour, salt, pepper and a tad of cornbread mix. I used a different brand than Kame, because I can't find it around. A good Szechuan sauce is fermented all together, in my opinion. It has soy and hot red pepper flakes or powders, and also other flavorings such as plum, garlic, ginger, sesame. I'm no expert on how to make these sauces; all I know is the brand Kame sold a few years ago was really good. I think they changed the recipe; it was not available for a few years and then all of a sudden I saw it again. Just not lately. So I used Asian Gourmet brand Szechuan stir fry sauce.

This made very tasty fried chicken. It almost browned too fast but I turned down the heat, and kept flipping it in the pan, and let it finish on low. I may never dip chicken in egg dip again.

Malted Chocolate Ice Cream

2009-11-15T21:33:00.009-05:00

This is another example of using malted barley syrup for uses other than making beer. Here I poured some "amber" malt syrup over some chocolate ice cream. No hops in this syrup, of course.

Malt seems to be a big mystery to lots of people. It used to be sold as syrups more widely. All I can say is follow the malt link and learn. It's widely used in the mass-produced candy market, but no longer a common home ingredient. A malted milkshake is a milkshake with malt syrup or dry malt powder added.

It's a similar taste to caramel, but it is distinctly itself, a different flavor of sweet. It's often blended with caramel sugar, and can be caramelized itself.

"Malted milk" powder is a bit different. It's malt sugar mixed with dry milk powder. And wheat, apparently. I say, why pay for the part that's dry milk when I already have my own milk and ice cream to mix with the pure malt sugar and syrups?

Some use pure malt to sweeten waffle and pancake batter. I think it would make a great syrup on waffles and pancakes. Or both in the batter and on top. It's also used to provide a boost to yeast in breads and rolls.

Before sugar cane or sugar beets, it was known and available as a sweetener in Europe and surrounding parts. I don't know if it was widely used that way much historically. It would take extra fuel to extract pure sugar syrup or crystaline powdered malt sugar. Beer would be easier to make from malted grains.

Here's a link to beer making.
A short orientation about sweets in the Middle Ages.
Maltose.

Oh, the ice cream was delicious.

Strange Bicycles

2009-11-10T06:20:00.000-05:00

Strange bicycles.

Tamale Pie

2009-11-08T12:15:00.009-05:00

(The photo was taken right before I put it in the oven)
There are several variations of "hot tamale pie" to be found on the internet. Lots of them seem to have bell pepper and most don't use masa. Some criticize it for being "inauthentic."

It has a lot of similarities to a Cuban traditional dish, a pork and cornmeal stew.

In any case, here is mine:
I basically made a recipe of chili con carne, using 1¼ lbs. of hamburger and a little bit - 4 oz.? - of smoked salt pork I had.

No beans. Instead of beans, it uses whole corn. Read further.

I use dried Mexican savory peppers and add cumin, garlic, and oregano instead of buying commercial chili powder to season it. You can heat it up to your level of fire using different hot sauce or hot peppers in addition. I find this recipe benefits from a large dose of black pepper, also. To me it complements the corn flavor.

The recipe then departs further from traditional chili. In this 1½ gal. batch, I then added half a can of corn and 1½ cans of creamed corn and a cup of milk. I made the tomato-y part with tomato paste but I added a 16 oz. can of whole tomatoes. Then I added a whole cup of masa harina, which will thicken it up far more than a regular sort of chili. I prefer yellow masa, aka maize amarillo. It is not as common as white corn masa. (This bugs me. The white corn people are cramping my style. ¡Viva maíz amarillo!)

After it all comes to a boil and then simmers a while on a lower heat, and the masa is fully cooked (about 10 minutes), I cut up a pound of Monterey Jack cheese with peppers in it - "pepper jack." I stuck the slices down into the stew. Then I put that in the 265º F. oven until the top browned just slightly, about 25 minutes. Turned off the oven, cracked the door, let it rest for 15 minutes, and served.

Malty Glaze

2009-10-31T22:19:00.006-04:00

Malta Goy a is a beverage made from malt sugar and carbonated water and hops. It's an odd variety of soda pop not familiar to most in the U.S. but sold in several other countries. There's no alcohol in it but if you opened it and added yeast it would turn into beer. Before it's converted to alcohol, malt sugar has a flavor in addition to its sweetness. (It's the flavor of Grape Nuts cereal, as a matter of fact, which is toasted malted barley and has nothing to do with grapes or nuts.) It is that often hard to define (until now!) flavor that makes a malted milk shake taste different from a non-malted milk shake.

Since I wanted to taste this, I bought some recently. I don't drink many Cokes or Pepsi or drinks like that, and the Malta Goya tastes a bit like a cola but the malt flavor is too much for me even though I like that flavor, if that makes any sense. I also realized I could cook with it, and although I would just as well buy some malt sugar from the beer-making supply store, this was on the shelf of the grocery store where I was.

One of my back-burner projects is figure out if malt sugar is just the right kind of sugar for any particular dishes so today when it was time to glaze this ham I popped open a bottle and reduced it down to a thin syrup on the stove. I added a teaspoonful of prepared mustard and glazed the ham, which had cloves stuck in the centers of the scored fat squares. After the final half-hour in the oven the glaze was just right and the ham done.

It made a very tasty glaze; my instincts were good. It gets competition from maple syrup, honey, molasses, caramel - all respectable contenders for tasty ham glazes. This malt glaze should at least puzzle some sophisticates, provide some conversation and please the palates of some pretty persnickity people.

As I was finishing this article I thought of making an ice-cream soda or float with Malta Goya. The hops in it might foil that plan. Would any flavor ice cream soda work with the hops? Pineapple sherbet? Goya has a suggestion.

I really wish my local "health" food store carried malt sugar... without the hops.

I think I just have to drive out to the beer supply place and buy some malt sugar and maybe some malt syrup. That's where I got some a year or so ago for homemade malted milkshakes. Rather than search for Carnation Malted Milk I will purchase my own milk, thank you, and add malt sugar to my milk - or my chocolate ice cream - or my waffle batter - as needed. I think that will be best.

A product I never tried, Ovaltine, is supposed to be an amalgam of malt sugar and dry milk, plus vitamins and dried eggs or something along those lines. I will pass on that as well.

All this is making me think of adding malt sugar to certain smoothie recipes.

And one of these days I will make some more beer with it, which is what most people use it for in the first place!

Squash or Pumpkin - Squmpkin?

2009-10-24T16:50:00.009-04:00

An orange Hubbard. About 6" across, 7" from stem to stern.

Squmpkin: I wasn't the first to think of this word. It yielded up on Google several interesting things: A look inside a ripe Blue Hubbard squash, an obituary of a breeder, and a picture of the biggest pumpkin I have ever seen. Also some nice hybrids seen in another plant breeder's video. I like his attitude.

I plan on roasting this particular calabash like any winter squash, and have it with maybe a pat of butter. I want to taste it pretty much plain, to analyze the flavor.

UPDATE: On the left, just after I cut it. (I saved the seeds, incidentally, removed and washed the pulp off, and toasted / roasted them in the toaster oven with butter and salt. As always the husk is pure roughage but the seed inside is tasty and nutritious.) On the right, after I cooked it in foil for about 35 minutes in a 350º F. oven.

This tastes good. It rivals a very good butternut squash and was better, and oranger, than the average butternut squash that is usually available lately. More beta carotene never hurt. I had half of it with a pat of butter; no salt. (I'm usually a salt-user.) This squmpkin would make a very good pie. Thumbs up!

Those Pluggers...

2009-10-23T23:00:00.003-04:00

Or, be careful what you wish for.

Pumpkins - The REAL story

2009-10-23T12:28:00.014-04:00

The upper right photo is considered a "pumpkin." The lower left photo is a "butternut squash."

Pumpkins. Never thought enough about 'em. Never made a whole lot of pumpkin pies. I have made "pumpkin pie" from butternut squash, and it was very tasty. And I've had pumpkin pie made from big Jack o' lantern pumpkins that seemed flavorless and stringy, too. I knew pumpkin and butternut squash were probably related, because I saw some pumpkins once at a roadside stand the same color as butternut squash. And I've had 'aha" moments in the past, such as when I realized a cucumber was just a melon, not a "vegetable."

"Pumpkin" is a concept. In fact, in Australia any winter squash is deemed a "pumpkin" no matter its looks, according to Wikipedia. And many other cultures don't place spherical orange squashes in a special category at all. A calabash is a calabash, it seems.

Most of my experience with the squash family has been growing squash, which I have bad luck with (squash borers); and cooking and eating squash. I like crook necked yellow squash, preferably with a few warts on them, but not overly large. Cooked with onion. And acorn squash. And lately I eat butternut squash often. Roasted, with or without butter. Salt.

But I didn't really get it. All these things - squash, gourds, pumpkins, calabash - are basically the same vegetable. I knew this intellectually, but I didn't ever think it through.
A lot of people will tell you that the pumpkins used for Jack o' lanterns are "the wrong kind" or "the wrong variety" for cooking with. At first I thought that is imprecise. Because what I have always known is that there is an ideal size for each kind of squash. A huge yellow squash is too tough, too seedy, and not good. A yellow squash that is too small and young will have no flavor. And the big orange spherical pumpkins have exceeded that ideal size.

The solution may be simple, I thought: Cook with smaller pumpkins. I thought there probably is a loss of flavor when pumpkins are bred and cultivated for large size only. In general the small pumpkins should taste better. But this wasn't exactly right.

Winter squashes, including pumpkins, have been bred differently, and should be always fully matured by the time they are picked. Jack o' lantern pumpkins have been bred for size. Other winter squashes and pumpkins have been bred for taste. Some pumpkins have been bred for large seeds, and some varieties have been developed specifically for the seed harvest, with no hulls growing on the seeds!

Unlike my usual habits, I have shamelessly ripped off these photos from the internet. Maybe I should photograph my own illustrations like I usually do. I apologize for the appropriation of these images.

Ham Pie

2009-10-20T20:09:00.008-04:00

Ham pie is a concept. To me the crust is unique. I am unsure of the traditional names for this. It's a meat and vegetable gravy topped by cheese biscuits and roasted in the oven until the tops of the biscuits are done and the undersides are fully cooked like well-prepared dumplings.

This particular version has cubes of a homemade amateur sort of prosciutto cotto made of pork loin with maple and hickory flavors, which was then smoked and then cooked later four hours at low heat in pork fat and pork gelatin. I recommend ham, though, as a rule.
This has been around the family for a while. My brother and I conduct mock skirmishes on its proper preparation, and our mother weighs in too. It is from a recipe she found and developed. It became a repeat item. So I decided to see what the internet has to offer, and I find there are two popular versions. One has broccoli and the other green bell peppers. This, using bell peppers, is the version we make.

Every time one makes it there are certain deviations, major or minor. Todays deviations are, I used a red bell plus two fresh poblano peppers instead of green bell peppers, a little extra celery, Swiss cheese biscuits, the homemade prosciutto, and too much thyme. I had run out of marjoram, one of my favorite comfort-food spices. Marjoram often loves a cream gravy.

Light roux, sauted ham cubes, onion, celery, diced green bell peppers; add chicken stock or boullon, milk, butter, garlic. Make the stocky gravy with everything in it. (Barbarians or anyone in a hurry add a can of cream of chicken soup or cream of celery soup, even, to take the place of most of the gravy-making steps.)

Make a recipe of homemade biscuit dough, add grated cheese, usually aged cheddar. Or Swiss, etc. In a pan suitable for oven put everything and add the biscuits (I spoon them on) on top of the hot "everything and gravy."

As you see I made everything in a big iron skillet on the stove, then added the biscuit dough and placed the whole hot thing in the already hot oven.

I make my biscuits with butter. I grate the cold butter with my grater, then grate in whatever cheese I want in my cheese biscuits. Then I finish. (There are biscuit recipes somewhere on the internet but not in this article today!)

Mentally Impoverished, Wrecked, Ruined, Facebooked

2009-10-19T17:39:00.004-04:00

Achtung, time for a new post! This will be an ultimately empty, shallow, Twitter-like post devoid of any inspiration. It is because I joined Facebook recently despite this. Now I am damaged goods.

Not a total loss, but I fear for what it has done to my normal incisive self. I am even now more self-absorbed than previously. It has become, temporarily I hope, for the present, all about me.

In the spirit of things I have posted a picture of me.

Old Man of the Woods

2009-10-11T14:06:00.002-04:00

Sqirlz morph

Pankoesque Breading, Shocking Dip

2009-10-09T15:38:00.011-04:00

Imagine this spaghetti-sauce-covered slice of eggplant flipped over, coated on the other side, and then fried.

Making eggplant Parmesan again, I decided to alter my recipe in two ways. First, since everybody is raving about the superiority of panko bread crumbs, I decided to push some saltines through my kitchen screen which has a lot bigger holes than my regular sieves. Easy enough if you have the larger sieve, which I do.

I am becoming convinced a modern versatile kitchen needs several sizes of sieves. I have already used mine to sort nutmeats for various recipes. If the nut pieces don't go through, they need a bit more breakage.

My normal breading for eggplant is a mixture of flour, a bit of cornbread mix, and cracker crumbs, plus a lot of garlic powder and salt, pepper, and thyme or oregano. The panko-sized crumbs were a new thing and I liked the looks of it. I usually pushed my crackers through my fine standard sieve, which does make a tasty breading with good texture. Most people actually achieve roughly the same fine texture by rolling their crackers with a rolling pin. Still, the panko people had me wondering. So along with the other ingredients, I mixed the coarser sized cracker crumbs.

The other new thing was a technique I saw on Diners Drive-ins and Dives. Somebody breaded fried chicken by first dipping it in, instead of a milk and egg dip or similar, a dip of barbecue sauce! Then they dipped it in the breading. My jaw dropped open! I never thought to do that! So today's dip was into the same spaghetti sauce I am going to use to assemble my eggplant Parmesan.

I dipped every piece of eggplant slice into that spaghetti sauce and then into the breading mix. I fried them in hot Canola oil.

The results were excellent. I am having to fight the urge to eat them all before I assemble the final dish. The tomato sauce did not cause the eggplant to blacken or anything, and the spice of the sauce is built in to the final product.

Sure, there will be more sauce added later. But I saved a step, by not having to mess with eggs and milk. I had spaghetti sauce to handle anyway. And the taste is better than my former method. I think I will try this with squash, maybe okra, and who knows what.

My eggplant Parmesan is a layer of elbow macaroni (yeah, how cheap can I go?) then the layer of sliced fried eggplant, then some sauted yellow tomato slices, a bunch of grated Parm, then the store-bought spaghetti sauce. About 10 minutes before it's done I'll toss on some more grated Parm. I figured about 25 to 45 minutes at 325° F. total time in the oven. 48 minutes did it.

UPDATE: A friend has told me her grandmother used plain yellow mustard to make the crumbs stick to her fried fish, notably catfish! Boy howdy!

Toxic Instruments

2009-10-04T14:17:00.003-04:00

War is a toxic asset. More to the point, it is a complex derivative. That is, lots of horrible stuff spread out over a lot of contributors so no one person can take much blame.

Chicken Soup

2009-10-04T12:21:00.009-04:00

About 75 cents worth of chicken, and the carrots were a super deal. I don't think the whole thing cost over $4.14 and will feed two people for at least day, or one for two days. I made a lot, about two gallons. This is an informal attempt to think along the lines of the $15 per week per person food contest. I remember the carrots were definitely on sale, and I used a lot of them. The chicken was about $1.50 per lb. for a mess of legs & thighs and I used a lot of it already in another dish. The bell pepper was on sale also, I think $3 for three peppers (a red, a green, and a yellow!) and I used half a yellow pepper only. There is a homegrown poblano in there that was half red and half green. One drop / glop of Dave's Insanity Sauce for fire. Some old miso, and some lemon juice also. Lots of spices in small amounts: 3 whole allspice seeds I then ground up, a little garam masala, some nutmeg. Plus regular pepper and Accent (my new kick) and some chicken bouillon. And a cup of rice. How could I forget? Easy. I forgot to mention the celery I put in too.

The Churn

2009-09-28T14:20:00.006-04:00

We will analyze "News" as a simple problem of fluid engineering. News is introduced to the vessel at a certain average rate. While the news is in the vessel, all news is mixed thoroughly. The resultant mixture of old and new news exits at the same rate new news arrives. This means that some new news, an infinitesimal part, leaves the vessel immediately. Also, some particulates or "atoms" of news last for long amounts of time. Observed, but not well understood, are occasional "Great Red Spots," i.e., massive "weather-like" events in the noosphere such as the Jovian phenomenon referenced, or the O.J. Simpson trial.

Here however we are ignoring this complication and will analyze news as an average flow. The question is:
To repeat: for the purposes of illustration, let us assume that I introduce newest news at a tiny rate, and mix it with the existing news very vigorously. What comes in is pure newest news, but what goes out is that instantaneous tiny amount of newest news diluted with older news, a small amount of even older news, and extremely small amounts of really old news. Because we are mixing very, very well. Perfectly.

So: If you introduce one volume of new news, how much remains at the end of that?

Confusopoly

2009-09-24T10:43:00.007-04:00

Scott Adams, who draws the cartoon Dilbert, said on his blog:
"A confusopoly - a term I concocted several years ago - is any industry that intentionally makes its products and services too complicated for comparison shopping. The best examples of confusopolies are cell phone carriers and insurance companies. And health insurance companies might be the most confusing confusopoly of all. I suspect that no individual has the knowledge, time, and information necessary to effectively compare two health insurance plans. And in that environment the free market doesn't operate efficiently."

This got me thinking. I posit that "having a job" is the biggest confusopoly of all! You rarely get a contract stating exact duties in detail. Simple rules or algorithms fail: "Do what you are told" won't really stand up for very long - there are illegal orders, sexual improprieties, etc. Likewise, what it takes to be fired is often not explained very well, either. Often, employers attempt to be mind-readers, and will fire an employee for what they think the employee is thinking! And even more astounding, fired for realizing the job is a confusopoly!

One of the things lost with declining Union membership is a certain attitude antithetical to confusopoly. I just now realized this. Old-time Union guys must know quite well how deliberate confusopoly has been employed to screw over the workers.

I had a job as private construction inspector very similar to this! First I noticed that, we had no clear mission statement, unlike some jobs I had had, and contrary to the recent faddishness of the very concept of "mission statements." We were told our job was two contradictory things: "Your job is to ensure that the men doing this work (not my employees) do it right" and "your job is to simply observe and report." So I would report the men had not done the work right. My bosses got upset: "your job is to make them do it right!" "How?" I responded. "I can't shoot them and I can't fire them because they don't work for me." (I won't even get into the fact that they could often not speak my language.)

My job was a deliberate confusopoly.

Often in a corporation, the rules of confusopoly prevent the bureaucrat from getting a solid idea of whose interests are covered by "company loyalty." Is it loyalty to the stockholders? This sounds good until you think of the day-trader who bought stock in your company this morning and, sure as day becomes night, is going to dump it either this afternoon, or at most wait until the end of this week. What is the employee's loyalty to this stockholder to be?

There is no real answer to this. This case then also shows the job itself is the confusopoly.

Incidentally, confusion over this confusopoly is why Enormously Overpaid Executives are allowed to totally game the system and enrich themselves with no consequence by deliberately crashing their companies and along with them, the economy. They know "loyalty to the stockholders" has no real bottom to it.

Secret Hobo Signs

2009-09-23T23:26:00.006-04:00

click the old print to read in larger window

We may need to know these, the way things are going.

Bear Faced

2009-09-19T12:35:00.010-04:00

click illustration

Once upon a time, I used to feather in the edges manually. Using Photoshop Elements. This is necessary almost without exception with hairy critters whose hair fades to invisibility at the ends. I invented a trick. I make a duplicate image layer, use the "average" effect (turns the cutout uniform) and then the "find border" effect. So I have an outline. I can increase the contrast and blur it (to make it extend further inside the original outline of the cutout) also and then select the blurry outline. Then I apply the selection to the original cutout and run my eraser around the edge at 30-50% and then blur the result of that. (Not to mention that it took me a fair amount of time to discover I could use one layer to select, then apply that selection to another layer.) (I began the project with Sqirlz Morph software.)

Fall Flowers

2009-09-15T15:17:00.004-04:00

The Orange Jewelweed is Impatienss. capensi. I didn't know what the purple flowers are. They sprung up where we used to mow but don't now. Then wise people led me to believe they are Ageratum houstonianum also known as Flossflowers or Blueminks.

Dog Day Afternoon

2009-09-13T23:10:00.002-04:00

Sqirlz morph

Calling a Spade a Club

2009-09-05T11:55:00.004-04:00

The entire body politic is misreported. It is as if the press, our lookouts, have psychotic hallucinations, and we must divine the truth by furious reading between the lines. The entire left-right divide, which they are so adamant about preserving, completely misses the idea of populism. Not looniness, but this kind of populism: Most people have an idea of what "insurance" is. Yet when "insurance" quits being "insurance" and becomes an undefinable racket, instead, the normal people know it is not "insurance" as they know it, but both the "left" and "right" and the press keep calling it "insurance."

It is akin to calling an occupation a war, long after occupation begins, and anyone with any sense whatever knows it's an occupation, but the Right, the Bushies, out of their own form of political correctness, refuse to call it that, and the "Left", and the Press, obey in lockstep.

A Good Man Knows His Limitations

2009-08-27T15:21:00.005-04:00

Clint Eastwood said that. In any case, half the reviews on this picture say it's "weird" and the other half said they "like it." I saw a picture of a kitten with its tongue out and then saw a picture of a baby with the exact same expression and angle. A morph was born. Sqirlz morph

Europeans Discover America

2009-08-02T21:30:00.008-04:00

Europeans discover America is the title because as it has been pointed out, other cultural traditions, especially of those who already lived there, perceived these events differently. And the joke goes, "Columbus is remembered because he was the last one to discover America."

But my own education was infused with long European traditions in which I was immersed, and in that narrative I still have not received a good explanation of the discovery of America.

I have the mechanics of it, the Colon voyages. What is lacking is the story of the impact of the new knowledge that vast unknown lands were now known. Was there a sense of shock; were philosophers dumbstruck, fabulists confounded, teachers enthused, storytellers bemused, churchmen aroused? About the awesome revelation that the entire world's past know-it-alls had neglected to find two huge major continents, even after 7,000 years of recorded history?

In thin defense of Western tradition, I can point out that after the discovery of America, the East, i.e., China, as far as I know, exhibited no dumbstruck philosophers, or aroused churchmen, etc. either. In short, all of Eurasia seemed to issue a bored yawn, a "so what?" stance. But this added piece of evidence is barely enough that we can establish a likely new thesis: in those days, wilderness was so common it was regarded as completely and utterly worthless.

Max Contrast Jupiter Gash

2009-07-25T21:07:00.023-04:00

This post has been updated a few times...
Several naively employed techniques I used in Photoshop increased the contrast of this collision remnant. NASA released the original taken July 23rd by the Hubble telescope today or thereabouts. At this point the estimated size of the object which caused it is unclear. The JPL infra-red telescope in Mauna Kea displays this photo of Jupiter.

It's frustrating in that I can only find two good photos on the entire internet.
Updates
7-29 New photo
7-30 Optical photo from 7-27
7-28 Several images
8-1 Volunteers

8-6 Here's part of a later photo of the Jupiter impact from Donald C. Parker of Coral Gables, Florida, posted to Japan's Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers. I have flipped it (and clipped it and sharpened it) to show similar orientation to above and the public Hubble shot:

Also, compare with a near-simultaneous white cloud seen on Venus. Still some possibility of comet impact although no cometary cloud - coma - was seen in space. Best bet is still a volcano. See best pix of the Venus White Spot.

Now there is another astounding planetary impact: an unknown object smashing through one of Saturn's rings
The inset is the same image, size unchanged, with added high contrast. At the time of this writing, clicking on it opens it larger in a new window.

Strange Visitor From Another Planet

2009-07-23T18:20:00.005-04:00

Sqirlz morph
He looks disgruntled but I think he's enjoying the desert air all the same.

Goldilocks Sudoku

2009-07-18T14:01:00.012-04:00

Uses numerals 1 through 8

The ironclad mathematical laws of the universe are what I was bemoaning to myself , something I don't normally do except in the case of sudoku. In which one is pretty much locked in to the fact that 3 x 3 equals 9, and 9 x 9 makes 81 squares to fill, minus the clues.

This is just a tad too much for my poor head. I am one who likes to not fill in candidate numerals, and so keep in my head the various possibilities. There are a few of us who like to solve sudoku without pencil marks. By this I mean we allow ourselves to only use a pen or pencil to fill in the correct numeral only when we know for certain that it is correct.

And recently I began using a little program that generates "jigsaw" sudoku. This is essentially the same as regular sudoku except the boxes, instead of being 3 x 3 are irregular. But they have 9 regions and 81 cells to fill, minus the clues.

I had an odd thought. Irregular subregions don't need to be symmetrical. A puzzle with 64 squares is certainly possible with jigsaw sudoku. You don't need boxes 2.828 x 2.828 cells, an impossibility. (The square root of 8)

So I cranked up my lovely little jigsaw sudoku generator and plugged in some odd initial inputs, and lo and behold: I got the above puzzle. I had it set on "extreme" difficulty but it's not so hard. Heh heh.

There are several popular sudoku variants. For me this is not too easy, not too hard. "Just right."

I got the original program from Simon Tatham's webpage for games. I was in such a rush to download the newer jigsaw version a while back, and because the earlier version was so intuitive and easy I didn't need a help file, that I didn't see or download the newer help file for the jigsaw variant explaining how to do unorthodox sizes of puzzles. I had to figure it out myself.

UPDATE: August 2010 My favorite Sudoku forum disappeared. I have changed the link that was at "solving without pencil marks." Apparently the original forum vanished. There is a new forum full of smart people. Many are the same old crowd.

Nice Temple

2009-07-17T15:13:00.007-04:00

"I especially like the vines."

This fellow has probably 100,000 hairs. There is very little Photoshop magic that makes it easy. Sqirlz morph