random walkway

Today's Bread

2012-02-12T16:13:00.000-05:00

Basically the same recipe as before but instead of 100% APF, I use equal parts APF, whole wheat, and bread flour. The add-ins this go round were fresh rosemary (courtesy of the garden), manchego and some other cheeses, and delicious Spanish chorizo that I muled over from London.

A Picture is Worth...

2012-02-11T07:53:00.000-05:00

The photographer's description from Twisted Sifter...

“I remember clearly that it was about 5 p.m. on November 25 [2011]. I was just finishing an assignment photographing retired soldiers bidding farewell to their comrades at the train station. On my way out, I heard someone yelling from a corner and soon after lots of people gathered around. I ran towards the sound and made my way to the front of the crowd, only to find an old man dead on the bench. As I raised my camera, a Buddhist monk walked out of the crowd and went directly towards the dead man. The monk bent down to hold the old man’s hand and started to chant scriptures. I began to take pictures immediately. One minute later, police came over and cordoned off the area. After the monk finished the ceremony, he bowed to the old man and quickly disappeared among the other busy passengers.” [Shanxi Taiyuan Train Station]

Guns and Kids

2012-02-11T06:34:00.000-05:00

For all of the gun lovers, second Amendment defenders, and guns-don't-kill-people-people-kill-people advocates, tell me this: if a handgun hadn't been easily available to this child is it more likely or less likely that his injuries would be less severe or that the other children wouldn't have been as traumatized?

From WPTZ..

A New Hampshire elementary school was placed under lockdown Friday after a 14-year-old student shot himself in the face in the cafeteria with about 70 students present. As of Friday afternoon, the student was in serious condition in the intensive care unit.

Ethan Symonds, a seventh-grader who was sitting at a table near the boy in the cafeteria, said he heard something "a little bit louder than a chip bag popping." He said he did a double-take, saw blood and ran.

Eighth-grader Nick Phillips, who shares homeroom with the student, told WPTZ the boy had been passing notes during the week saying he was depressed.

From a 2010 Children's Defense Fund report...

The latest data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that 3,042 children and teens died from gunfire in the United States in 2007—one child or teen every three hours, eight every day, 58 every week.

2,161 were homicide victims
683 committed suicide
198 died in accidental or undetermined circumstances
2,665 were boys
377 were girls
397 were under age 15
154 were under age 10
85 were under age 5

Almost six times as many children and teens — 17,523 — suffered
non-fatal gun injuries.

There are a few things I have zero tolerance for and one of them is handguns.

Boxcar Grocery

2012-02-09T21:39:00.000-05:00

Having been an urbanite my entire life, I'm very familiar with the corner store teeming with junk food, canned food, and just about every other "food" that in one way or another is just plain and simple bad.

Now, along comes Boxcar Grocer which hopefully signals the beginning of the end of the typical corner store.

From Good.Is...

As entrepreneurs and food activists attempt to bring fresh produce to more and more urbanfood deserts, they're setting their crosshairs on one target in particular: the corner store. Packed to the gills with cigarettes, lotto tickets, liquor, and processed foods, the shops do little to nourish the communities where they operate, and in many urban areas—particularly black, Latino, or low-income neighborhoods—these stores are the only places to buy any food at all.

According to [the brother-sister duo of] Alphonzo and Alison Cross, founders of The Boxcar Grocer in Atlanta, this needs to change. Their just-opened corner store alternative, where local and organic food options get prime shelf space, is an attempt to respect "the fact that every community desires fresh food, and locally made food is just about as fresh as you can get," says Alison.

The brother-sister duo's mission is to broaden the appeal of the food movement to embrace more black eaters...The store has enjoyed the support of "the entire Atlanta community" since its launch in November, with residents of other neighborhoods already asking the Crosses to open outposts. "The only real challenge," Alison says, "is how to keep enough food on the shelves on a daily basis."

Good luck Boxcar!

Something I'm Lichen

2012-02-09T07:22:00.001-05:00

Green moss graffiti...

Alvin Ailey

2012-02-09T07:06:00.000-05:00

We went to the Kennedy Center the other night for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater opening gala.

I had seen Alvin Ailey many many years ago but watching them this time with older and hopefully wiser eyes I can unequivocally say the performance, particularly Revelations, is one of the most graceful, beautiful, and timeless things I've ever laid my eyes on.

Ant Metropolis

2012-02-07T07:41:00.000-05:00

One never knows what lies beneath.

From The Dish...

This is simply breathtaking. In the video, researchers pump 10 tons of concrete down an ant hole and then slowly, carefully excavate the site to see what an ant colony looks like. The result is an intricate structure, equivalent in labor to humans building the Great Wall of China.

Dirt Cheap Drug

2012-02-07T07:03:00.000-05:00

Yet another benefit of gardening.

From Yahoo...

Even if you don't love gardening, digging in the dirt may be good for your health -- and it has nothing to do with a love of nature or the wonder of watching things grow. The secret may be in the dirt itself: A bacteria called Mycobacterium vaccae that acts like an antidepressant once it gets into your system.

That's right. A living organism that acts like a mood-booster on the human brain, increasing serotonin and norepinephrine levels and making people feel happier. It was accidentally discovered about 10 years ago when an oncologist in London tried an experimental treatment for lung cancer. She inoculated patients with killed M. vaccae, expecting the bacteria -- which is related to ones that cause tuberculosis and leprosy -- to boost their immune system. It did that, but it also improved her patients' "emotional health, vitality, and general cognitive function." Later experiments with mice confirmed the bacteria's effects; the study was published in a 2007 edition of the journal "Neuroscience."

"What Breast Cancer Is, and Is Not"

2012-02-06T19:59:00.003-05:00

She lays it on the line about breast cancer and the Komen Foundation.

A must see...

"To My Old Master"

2012-02-05T17:40:00.000-05:00

A classic to be read to the end. (Thx CP)

From Letters of Note...

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdon Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdon — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below...

...As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to.

From Kottke, an update on how things turned our for Mr. Anderson.

Just in Case...

2012-01-30T07:33:00.000-05:00

...there was any question about the correlations discussed in this post, one of the stellar GOP presidential candidates spells it out clearly.

From Good.Is...

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum has really gone after higher education lately. Earlier this month, he called President Obama's suggestion that everyone should go to college "elitist snobbery." Now, he's speaking out in response to Obama's State of the Union education plans:

"It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid go to go college... The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the left holding and maintaining power in America. And it is indoctrination. If it was the other way around, the ACLU would be out there making sure there wasn’t one penny of government dollars going to colleges and universities, right?"

Looks like some in the GOP know a thing or two about their base.

View From Our Window: Gotham

2012-01-29T21:53:00.000-05:00

A quick overnighter for a wonderful surprise party. It was a busy 28 hours packed with lots of old friends, good food, plenty of cocktails, my new favorite park (High Line), and a beautiful panoramic view of the city.

Dumb, Prejudice, ???

2012-01-27T20:44:00.000-05:00

Where, oh where, to begin?

From LiveScience...

There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.

The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario.

Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.

Then there's this which I just happened to come across a few hours after the above.

Perfect confirmation from HuffPo...

A little more than a year after the conservative-led state board of education in Texas approved massive changes to its school textbooks to put slavery in a more positive light, a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country's founders being slave owners.

According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been "an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another."

The group demanded that Tennessee lawmakers change state laws governing school curricula. The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: "No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership."

Definitely not the brightest bulbs in the pack.

Minimalist Transit

2012-01-26T07:56:00.001-05:00

These wouldn't help mush if you're lost but on a wall they're pretty nice.

The four I've ridden the most over the years...

DC's is so anemic.

Available here.

Sun Storm

2012-01-25T07:22:00.002-05:00

Right now, the biggest solar storm since 2005 is hitting Earth. The impact? A few planes have been rerouted and phenomenal aurora borealis.

Gorgeous.

The (Not So) Grand Old Party

2012-01-22T06:20:00.001-05:00

Watching the Republicans candidates cannibalize each other over the past few months has warmed my heart.

Newt's victory yesterday in SC...awesome! To paraphrase another pillar of the GOP, keep it up guys you're doing a heckuva job.

From CTV News (Canada)...

America's long-held distrust of intellectuals is legendary, but the already perplexing national trait has moved into overdrive in the Republican presidential race, with Mitt Romney facing heat for knowing French and Jon Huntsman viewed with suspicion because he speaks Mandarin.

In South Carolina, a pair of Newt Gingrich attack ads against Romney focus on his ability to -- mon Dieu! -- speak French. Romney "will say anything to win, anything, and just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too," the narrator intones menacingly as a jaunty French accordion tune plays in the background. Romney is seen speaking French in the web spot.

Huntsman, for his part, has tried to use his acuity in Mandarin to portray himself as a serious presidential contender who could sit down and make progress with America's biggest trade irritant. Instead, his penchant for breaking into the language in debates -- and even during campaign stops in South Carolina -- has raised the hackles of some Republicans.

"You don't speak Mandarin during a Republican debate," griped Joe Scarborough, former congressman for the party and now host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Chimed in Michael Steele, former head of the Republican National Committee: "I thought he was ordering takeout."

China's Spark

2012-01-22T05:54:00.000-05:00

No matter how big the economic, cultural, or technological change they all start with one person who dared to think differently.

From NPR...

"Back then, even one straw belonged to the group," says Yen Jingchang, who was a farmer in Xiaogang in 1978. "No one owned anything." At one meeting with communist party officials, a farmer asked: "What about the teeth in my head? Do I own those?" Answer: No. Your teeth belong to the collective.

"Work hard, don't work hard — everyone gets the same," he says. "So people don't want to work."

So, in the winter of 1978, after another terrible harvest, they came up with an idea: Rather than farm as a collective, each family would get to farm its own plot of land. If a family grew a lot of food, that family could keep some of the harvest.

This is an old idea, of course. But in communist China of 1978, it was so dangerous that the farmers had to gather in secret to discuss it. Despite the risks, they decided they had to try this experiment — and to write it down as a formal contract, so everyone would be bound to it. By the light of an oil lamp, Yen Hongchang wrote out the contract.

The contract also recognized the risks the farmers were taking. If any of the farmers were sent to prison or executed, it said, the others in the group would care for their children until age 18.

The audio...

Shoot First, Focus Later

2012-01-22T05:38:00.000-05:00

To get the effect, click on parts of the images in the foreground and background.

Very intriguing. (thx KS)

From Lytro...

[The light field] is the amount of light traveling in every direction through every point in space. Conventional cameras cannot record the light field.

The light field sensor captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light.

[Light field cameras] allow both the picture taker and the viewer to focus pictures after they're snapped, shift their perspective of the scene, and even switch seamlessly between 2D and 3D views.

This Week's Bread

2012-01-21T18:35:00.003-05:00

It had been awhile since I made bread so on Monday, since it was a holiday, I decided to crank out a couple of loaves.

The plan was to make one a plain loaf as well as a raisin/walnut loaf but the walnuts had gone AWOL so it was audible time. Out came a dried cherry/pepita bread and a plain loaf (no problem with that one).

We kept one and the other went to a neighbor.

Tomorrow the walnut/raisin bread will at last make an appearance.

The recipe minus the audible

Occupy Lynching

2012-01-18T07:11:00.000-05:00

I thought I knew what a lynching is but apparently not, at least as applied under California law.

From MSNBC...

Sergio Ballesteros, 30, has been involved in Occupy LA since the movement had its California launch in October. But this week, his activism took an abrupt turn when he was arrested on a felony charge — lynching.

Under the California penal code, lynching is “taking by means of a riot of any person from the lawful custody of any peace officer," where "riot" is defined as two or more people threatening violence or disturbing the peace. The original purpose of the legal code section 405(a) was to protect defendants in police custody from vigilante mobs — especially black defendants from racist groups.

A wholly inappropriate use of the statute.

Dr. King on Capitalism

2012-01-16T21:51:00.002-05:00

Well said.

From Good.Is...

The profit motive, when it is the sole basis of an economic system, encourages a cutthroat competition and selfish ambition that inspires men to be more concerned about making a living than making a life. It can make men so I-centered that they no longer are Thou-centered. Are we not too prone to judge success by the index of our salaries and the size of the wheel base on our automobiles, and not by the quality of our service and relationship to humanity? Capitalism may lead to a practical materialism that is as pernicious as the theoretical materialism taught by Communism.

The Redneck Shop

2012-01-16T18:15:00.002-05:00

Poetic justice at its best.

From the NYT...

LAURENS, S.C. — The Redneck Shop has been selling Confederate bikinis and white satin robes on the historic courthouse square in this former mill town for so long that most people have learned to ignore it...

...Now, in a quirk of fate laced with lawsuits, religious conversions and a small-town Southern narrative Harper Lee might deliver, a black pastor will eventually control what just might be the most famous white supremacist shop in America.

Last month, a state circuit judge in Greenwood, S.C., decided that Pastor Kennedy’s tiny New Beginning Missionary Baptist Church held the valid title to the old Echo Theater, whose lobby the Redneck Shop occupies. It was handed over fair and square years earlier by an acolyte of John Howard, the Klan leader who founded the shop.

The Long Game

2012-01-16T11:44:00.003-05:00

An excellent fact based review of President Obama's first term which, if read objectively, would silence detractors from both the right and the left.

From Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast...

You hear it everywhere. Democrats are disappointed in the president. Independents have soured even more. Republicans have worked themselves up into an apocalyptic fervor. And, yes, this is not exactly unusual.

A president in the last year of his first term will always get attacked mercilessly by his partisan opponents, and also, often, by the feistier members of his base. And when unemployment is at remarkably high levels, and with the national debt setting records, the criticism will—and should be—even fiercer. But this time, with this president, something different has happened. It’s not that I don’t understand the critiques of Barack Obama from the enraged right and the demoralized left. It’s that I don’t even recognize their description of Obama’s first term in any way. The attacks from both the right and the left on the man and his policies aren’t out of bounds. They’re simply—empirically—wrong.

Dismantled

2012-01-14T17:37:00.003-05:00

A "more sustainable" kindai tuna gets the slice and dice treatment.

From Bon Appetit...

Reminds me of the pig from a little while ago.

Children of the Disappeared

2012-01-14T17:22:00.000-05:00

Absolutely tragic.

From Marie Claire...

On a cold, gray August day in 2003, Victoria Donda, a 26-year-old law student, got a call from her friend Isaac. "We need to meet. It's urgent," he said. The petite Argentine was having a hellish week. Her father had tried to kill himself and now lay comatose with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. She had barely left his side since, even to shower or eat. Now, her head spinning from lack of sleep, her dark eyes swollen and red from crying, Victoria raced from the hospital to a nearby café to meet Isaac.

Earlier that week, the Argentine government had publicized allegations that her father, along with other ex-military officers, had taken part in Argentina's military dictatorship in the 1970s. He was accused of interrogating and torturing prisoners; he'd tried to commit suicide the night the news broke. Entering the café and sliding into a seat by the window, Victoria desperately hoped that Isaac, a friend from her volunteer work, would tell her the charges had been a huge mistake. Instead, he just looked at her, his eyes welling up behind his thick glasses.

"Negrita," he said, using a term of endearment for the black-haired Victoria, "you are the daughter of a couple murdered during the dictatorship. The people who raised you aren't your parents," he continued. She'd been kidnapped, and her identity had been changed at birth.

Blind Tennis

2012-01-14T08:38:00.000-05:00

First blind soccer now blind tennis. Fantastic.

From Oddity Central...

The creation of the sport is largely credited to Miyoshi Takei, who in spite of his blindness, started to play tennis as a kid with the encouragement of his high school teacher. His only aim at the time was to hit a ball that was flying through the air as hard as he could, even though he couldn’t see it. After several trials, he finally invented a special kind of tennis ball that is spongy and light in weight. The ball rattles, so that blind players can track its movement with their ears. Miyoshi’s endeavors met with success and the first national blind tennis championships were held in Japan in the year 1990. Today, hundreds of Japanese players take part every year and a few from other countries too, such as China, Korea, Taiwan, Britain and the United States.

Blind tennis is played on a badminton court with string taped to the lines so players can feel the boundaries. Junior-sized rackets are used to hit the ball. Players who are deemed legally blind wear eye masks to level the field. They are expected to hit the ball after it bounces two to three times, depending on the level of their visual impairment.

Shredding Crow

2012-01-14T08:09:00.000-05:00

To quote a friend of mine, "this bird can board better than I can." (thx AG)

From The Atlantic...

I wanted to know if there was a greater significance to this video and this amazing bird. So, I called up Alan Kamil, who has been studying corvids for decades and is co-director of the Center for Avian Intelligence at the University of Nebraska. I've got to send you this YouTube clip of this crow sledding down a roof in Russia, I told him.

Across the phone line, I heard Kamil gamely open his email and begin to watch the video. Like most people who watch the video, he chuckled and said, "Wow, this is cool," a proposition to which I assented.

Then I started my questioning. What can we learn from this YouTube video? How can we explain this bird's behavior? Is there some natural analog to this in the wild? Was there some kind of greater lesson here about the evolutionary process or how crows use play?

Smoke It

2012-01-12T08:02:00.002-05:00

Thanks to my brother-in-law's wonderful family and his mom who lugged it over from Sweden, we now have a new culinary gizmo with which to experiment...a smoker.

First up was the dish that led to our initial smoker infatuation during our Sweden visit, aspen smoked trout.

Next came a first time experiment in making beef jerky. And experiment we did. Spicy Bourbon Honey beef jerky, half with smoke and half without.

Fantastically delicious and a great snack for a cross-country flight.

Thanks to my Swedish family, I'm now solidly on the smokey path but I promise, I won't smoke the TV.

Here's the jerky recipe, sans smoke.

Double Take

2012-01-07T14:04:00.002-05:00

Nice photos huh?

Not quite. They're paintings.

From Flavorwire...

Artist Dennis Wojtkiewicz’s photorealistic paintings of succulent fruit could easily be a series of macro photos, but they are indeed hand painted. Strawberries, apples, and [other fruits] are rendered with incredible detail right down to every fiber, hair, and seed.

Offside Explained

2012-01-06T19:42:00.003-05:00

Those Brits are very clever.

From SlamXHype...

To coincide with the London Olympics later this year, The Royal Mint has issued a new 50p coin which attempts to explains football’s offside rule. The coin is part of a set released to celebrate the Olympics, and designed with function in mind; to explain a rule which leaves so many people confused.

I can't wait to get my hands on a few of these.

Stick Together

2012-01-06T19:39:00.001-05:00

Simply brilliant.

From MyModernMet...

Equipped only with some rolls of brown packing tape and a scalpel, artist Max Zorn constructs unbelievably realistic portraits. This new medium that Zorn works with is so fascinating because it is such a common item most of us take for granted.

These artworks from his Stick Together series rely on backlighting to distinguish the different shades of the brown tone. He also has an exceptional grasp of layering and carving when working with the sticky materials.

Gold, Frankincense, & Myrrh

2012-01-06T19:18:00.003-05:00

Today being the Epiphany/12th day of Christmas (hint, hint...time to take down the Christmas decorations) there's no better day to take a look at the gifts of the Three Magi.

From The Independent (UK)...

They journeyed from the East to pay homage to the boy king bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. But they would struggle to complete the feat today. Gold prices are soaring on commodity markets, myrrh crops have been hit by drought – and now frankincense could soon be no more.

Solid frankincense resin can be sold at up to £37.33 per kilo (about $75). Myrrh is roughly twice as expensive, but prices are volatile. And four days before Christmas, an ounce of gold costs £1,029.20 on the international market – up by nearly 20 per cent this year.

But the worst news comes from Dutch ecologists studying populations of Boswellia in Ethiopia, who warn that the number of the frankincense-producing trees could halve in the next 15 years and eventually cease altogether if factors such as fire, grazing and insect attack go unchecked. An extinction of Boswellia would put an end to a millennia-old trade in the aromatic resin, which peaked under the Roman Empire and still provides materials for the perfume and aromatherapy industries today.

Off the Couch

2012-01-06T12:16:00.000-05:00

The extrapolation of the data is a bit much but the main point doesn't change. This would make for a good New Year's resolution for the couch potatoes of the world.

From MSNBC...

Watching an hour of TV after the age of 25 can shorten the viewer's life by just under 22 minutes, according to researchers in Australia.

Smoking two cigarettes has approximately the same effect.

The problem is not actually TV itself but the lack of activity by the viewer for long periods, the researches said. Cardiovascular disease, diabetes, excess weight and other health problems are associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

Meanwhile, a large study in Taiwan found that doing just 15 minutes of moderate exercise a day might add three years to your life.

Off to climb close to 500 steps.

Some "Gentle People"

2012-01-05T17:32:00.001-05:00

Of course, the entire Amish community shouldn't be tainted by the horrific deeds of a few but this article certainly paints a disturbing picture of broader problems within certain Amish communities.

From Legal Affairs...

To the hordes of tourists who travel to Pennsylvania Dutch country each year to go to quilting bees and shop for crafts, the Gentle People, as the Amish are known, represent innocence. They are a people apart, removed in place and arrested in time. They reject the corruptions of modernity—the cars that have splintered American communities and the televisions that have riveted the country's youth. The Amish way of life is grounded in agriculture, hard work, and community. Its deliberate simplicity takes the form of horse-drawn buggies, clothes that could have come from a Vermeer painting, and a native German dialect infused with English words...

...In some church districts, which encompass only two or three dozen families scattered along back roads, there appear to be many crimes like Johnny and Eli's to forgive. No statistics are available, but according to one Amish counselor who works with troubled church members across the Midwest, sexual abuse of children is "almost a plague in some communities." Some police forces and district attorneys do their best to step in, though they are rarely welcomed. Others are slow to investigate or quick to let off Amish offenders with light punishments. When that happens, girls like Mary are failed three times: by their families, their church, and their state.

Waiting for 77 Years

2012-01-03T17:54:00.001-05:00

A remarkable story about loss, life, and finding family almost eight decades later.

From MSNBC...

For most of her 100 years, Minka Disbrow tried to find out what became of the precious baby girl she gave up for adoption after being raped as a teen.

She hoped, but never imagined, she'd see her Betty Jane again.

The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket.

It was the last she saw of the girl — until the phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an Alabama man and a story she could have only dreamed.

Close Call

2012-01-03T14:11:00.001-05:00

Taken off the coast of Santa Cruz, CA in late October 2011.

Return of the Porch

2012-01-03T13:57:00.002-05:00

This article reminds me of a post from a couple of years ago related to the societal implications of porches vs. patios.

From The Atlantic...

Most of us can recognize a product of the 1990s McMansion boom when we pull into a subdivision and see one. But these trends suggest that 10 years from now, a keen eye will be able to identify the homes that were built - or renovated - during the recession. Their hallmarks? Infill location, simpler detailing and more durable, low-maintenance exteriors. And porches. People are pretty into porches right now.

"I always interpret it as of one of the obvious manifestations of the New Urbanism movement, where there was more outward emphasis on homes integrated into a larger community, homes where people would interact more with their neighbors, going back to small-town living," Baker says. "Rather than isolation and security and safety, where everyone had their own privacy, their own big yard with big fences around it, where they were trying not to interact with others."

The rise of the porch, in other words, may suggest a decline of interest in the heavily fortified privacy that was promised by the McMansion.

After living in a house with a porch for over 15 years (not much longer though), there's no question that a porch has an impact on the dynamics of a neighborhood. It's nice to see they're making a comeback.

"The Art of Listening"

2012-01-03T11:54:00.002-05:00

Late one night several years ago, while attending the Oregon Country Fair, I came across a girl telling a wonderful story about a bush and the magical huayruro seeds that it produces. I don't remember any of the details of the story but vividly remember how captivated I was as I listened to her story.

From the NYT...

I heard the two men talking about a third old man who had recently died. One of them said, “I was visiting him at his home. He started to tell me an amazing story about something that had happened to him when he was young. But it was a long story. Night came, and we decided that I should come back the next day to hear the rest. But when I arrived, he was dead.”

The man fell silent. I decided not to leave that bench until I heard how the other man would respond to what he’d heard. I had an instinctive feeling that it would prove to be important.

Finally he, too, spoke.

“That’s not a good way to die — before you’ve told the end of your story.”

It struck me as I listened to those two men that a truer nomination for our species than Homo sapiens might be Homo narrans, the storytelling person. What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people’s dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats — and they in turn can listen to ours.

Videorative Portrait

2012-01-03T11:03:00.000-05:00

I had to watch this video twice before I could figure out what was going on. It's kind of interesting though.From Fastcodesign...

Spanish artist Sergio Albiac wants to dig deeper. So he recently created a “videorative portrait”--a dynamic painting in which the face of filmmaker Randall Okita is made up of tagged videos about the subject’s life and work. In doing so, Albiac hoped to “create a new type of portrait,” he says. “One that goes beyond physical appearances and is more realistic, as it renders the founding blocks of the intimate world: your memories, your relationships, and your emotions.”

11:58:43

2012-01-02T16:09:00.003-05:00

Not very long at all.

From Culture of Science...

The Writing's on the Wall

2012-01-01T15:59:00.001-05:00

(Thx BD)

Gratitude

2012-01-01T15:45:00.002-05:00

I'm starting the new year filled with gratitude.

(Thx BD)

See Ya 2011

2011-12-31T22:40:00.003-05:00

One last look at a year filled with disaster, revolution, loss, joy, and peace.

Courtesy of Google...

Today's Flavor: Miso Brown Sugar

2011-12-31T14:11:00.001-05:00

Going in I had my doubts that miso flavored ice cream would taste good.

I got that one wrong.

The star of the dessert is the umami taste from the deliciously delicate miso my wife and mother-in-law made earlier this year. The taste is difficult to describe, somewhat like a sweet and creamy miso soup but that doesn't come close to doing it justice.

Miso is probably not an ice cream flavor that would be high up on the list of most folks but it is on mine.

The recipe from Tokyo Terrace is here (the photo is their's too).

Four Ingredients

2011-12-30T18:40:00.000-05:00

flour

salt

yeast

water

On one hand, it's simple.

On the other, it's not.

From Kinfolk...

The Mind of an Octopus

2011-12-30T16:00:00.000-05:00

A fascinating article about octopuses*.

From Orion Magazine...

“It is as if each arm has a mind of its own,” says Peter Godfrey-Smith, of the City University of New York. For example, researchers who cut off an octopus’s arm (which the octopus can regrow) discovered that not only does the arm crawl away on its own, but if the arm meets a food item, it seizes it—and tries to pass it to where the mouth would be if the arm were still connected to its body.

And then there's this...

[R]esearchers found that the skin of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods—octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid—may be able to see with their skin.

*More from Orion:Octopuses, not octopi, is now considered the correct plural among the octopus intelligentsia. Octopi has been discarded as the plural because of its Latin ending on a Greek word.

Who knew.

"Where Are the 6 Million?"

2011-12-30T15:00:00.000-05:00

A few interesting insights into the unemployment rate which oddly will increase as the economy improves.

From the Atlantic...

One of the unanswered mysteries about the economy today isn't just where the jobs are, but where the drop-outs are. Those "drop-outs" are the 6 million would-be workers who are not counted in the labor force because they've stopped actively seeking more work, even if they're very much hoping for more work.

If they counted toward unemployment, the official rate would be 11 percent rather than 8.6 percent. As the economy picks up, and these people re-join the job hunt, the unemployment rate will go up before it goes down.

Who are the 6 million?

A Little Bubbly

2011-12-30T14:30:00.001-05:00

What better way to ring in the New Year than with a little ~~Champagne~~ Cava.

From Eat Me Daily...

In 1872, a Catlonian winemaker named Josep Raventós was traveling throughout Europe peddling his wares. Raventós' family had been producing wine since the 1550s, and up til this fateful trip, had only made still wines. While in France, Raventós found himself in Champagne and was captivated by the local sparkling wine; he returned with visions of bubbles dancing in his head. Not satisfied with importing grapes from France, Raventós decided to create his own sparkling wine with native Spanish white grapes rather than the traditional Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, or Pinot Meunier...

...An easy way to check to see if your Cava is the real thing is to look at the cork: if it’s genuine, there will be a four-pointed star.

Had, Hoodwinked...

2011-12-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

Which racial/ethnic group of the adolescent population has one of the two lowest substance abuse rates?

One guess only please.

From Good.Is...

A study published today in the Archives of General Psychiatry says that black and Asian teens are less likely to use drugs and alcohol than white people their age. In a survey of more than 72,000 young people conducted by Dan Blazer, a psychiatry professor at Duke Medical Center, 39 percent of white teens and 37 percent of Latinos reported having abused substances in the past year, compared to 32 percent of blacks and 24 percent of Asians. When it came to drugs alone, 20 percent of whites, 19 percent of blacks, and 12 percent of Asians reported using.

Blazer called the relatively low rate of substance abuse among black juveniles "surprising": "The public perception is that that’s not the case," he said. Also surprised should be American police, who continue to arrest black kids for drug use at far greater rates than whites. Consider this chart from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice:

The full study is here but it's behind a pay wall.

The Disenfranchisement of America

2011-12-29T14:57:00.002-05:00

I had a heated "debate" with a friend of mind about this exact topic awhile ago. If my memory serves me correctly, his point was the standard voter fraud argument complete with a reference to ACORN combined with "what's so hard about getting an ID."

At the end of the day, requiring an ID to vote is an attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise segments of the population who generally vote for Democrats.

This NYT editorial lays it out far better than I can...

Seven states have already passed strict laws requiring a government-issued ID (like a driver’s license or a passport) to vote 27 others are considering such measures. Many of those laws have been interpreted as prohibiting out-of-state driver’s licenses from being used for voting.

It’s all part of a widespread Republican effort to restrict the voting rights of demographic groups that tend to vote Democratic. Blacks, Hispanics, the poor and the young, who are more likely to support President Obama, are disproportionately represented in the 21 million people without government IDs.

Republicans usually don’t want to acknowledge that their purpose is to turn away voters, especially when race is involved, so they invented an explanation, claiming that stricter ID laws are necessary to prevent voter fraud. In fact, there is almost no voter fraud in America to prevent.

William O’Brien, the speaker of the New Hampshire State House, told a Tea Party group earlier this year that students are “foolish” and tend to “vote their feelings” because they lack life experience. “Voting as a liberal,” he said, “that’s what kids do.” And that’s why, he said, he supported measures to prohibit students from voting from their college addresses and to end same-day registration.

Occasionally there's talk about moving Election Day to a Saturday (voting on a Tuesday is an anachronism from our agrarian past) or allowing greater use of mail-in ballots. Don't count on either of these proposals ever seeing the light of day because Republicans are fully aware that the more people who vote the worse it is for them.

Such a shame.

Last Week's Flavors: Rum Raisin and Vanilla Bean

2011-12-29T12:57:00.001-05:00

The saga of the Christmas pie begins...

The Christmas dessert plan:

- Vanilla Bean ice cream to go with a Pecan Pie my nephew was making.
- Rum Raisin ice cream to go with a Spiced Apple and Pear Pie I was making.

On Christmas Day, the ice creams were made, my nephew's pie looked great, and mine was ready to go into the oven just as we started dinner.

All was going according to plan.

Until...

I had the bright idea that while we opened cards and gifts, the piping hot Apple and Pear pie could cool down on the second story deck of my sister's house.

Mistake!

Some critter (or a tardy Santa) couldn't resist the scent of a freshly baked pie and helped themselves to mine.

C'est la vie. 'Tis the season for sharing anyway and fortunately we had my nephew's delicious Pecan Pie to eat.

Links to the recipes are below:

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Rum Raisin Ice Cream

Spiced Apple-Pear Pie (base)

Pie Crust

P.S. As usual, that's not my photo (other's are always much better) but it looked the same.

Take a Walk

2011-12-26T10:31:00.001-05:00

This sounds like a good (and easy) New Year's resolution.

From The Atlantic...

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T10:02:00.003-05:00

File Under Scary Tech

2011-12-24T19:08:00.000-05:00

Sounds great in theory but in practice this can not end well.

From the National Science Foundation....

New research published today in the journal Science suggests it may be possible to use brain technology to learn to play a piano, reduce mental stress or hit a curve ball with little or no conscious effort. It's the kind of thing seen in Hollywood's "Matrix" franchise.

Experiments conducted at Boston University (BU) and ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, recently demonstrated that through a person's visual cortex, researchers could use decoded functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to induce brain activity patterns to match a previously known target state and thereby improve performance on visual tasks.

Think of a person watching a computer screen and having his or her brain patterns modified to match those of a high-performing athlete or modified to recuperate from an accident or disease. Though preliminary, researchers say such possibilities may exist in the future.

Street Art War

2011-12-24T18:58:00.000-05:00

In the overall scheme of things this is at the neutrino level (must be a particle physics day) but it's kinda interesting nonetheless, especially if you're into street art or saw Exit Through the Gift Shop.

From HuffPo...

Is this a new Banksy painting in Liverpool city centre?

The image of a biplane leaving a trail of smoke across the wall of a car park in Rumford has appeared on the elusive stencil artist’s website since its discovery over the weekend – usually a sure sign of authentication.

One ‘fan’ with a can of red spray paint certainly thought so, daubing the words “BANKSY 4 ROBBO” across it in a swift act of sabotage. The term refers to Banksy’s rival graffiti artist King Robbo and the pair’s notorious feud that played out along the banks of Camden, London.

Art of the Drink

2011-12-24T18:41:00.000-05:00

Holiday Cheers!

From the Telegraph (UK)...

Pictures of alcoholic drinks under a microscope reveal the molecules that make up our favourite ~~tipples~~ [drinks].

A few of my favorites...libations that is:

Tequila

Vodka
(not really a favorite but I like the photo)

Sake

Red Wine

Winter

2011-12-24T18:11:00.000-05:00

80-some days and counting.

From Frank Kunert...

LHC in Lego

2011-12-24T17:46:00.000-05:00

Brilliantly brilliant

Geek toy alert from University Post (DK)...

As we write, scientists are trying to find out whether the elusive Higgs boson particle was glimpsed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva. If the particle, also known as the God particle, was actually there, it will make physics history.

The LHC scientists do not yet have enough data to claim a discovery. But in the meantime, at home in Copenhagen, one physicist Sascha Mehlhase from the Niels Bohr Institute has made a part of the collider, the Atlas detector, out of LEGO toy bricks.

Honey

2011-12-24T07:38:00.002-05:00

Sweet and beautiful.

From Kinfolk at Vimeo...

Someday, hopefully I'll have my own hive or two.

Apollo 8 Christmas Message

2011-12-24T07:25:00.000-05:00

An out of this world broadcast.

From Neatorama...

The men of Apollo 8 were slated to become the first humans ever to leave the Earth’s orbit, enter lunar orbit, and see the far side of the Moon. But as their launch date approached in December 1968, NASA added an even more terrifying task to the crew’s to-do list: public speaking. The agency wanted the astronauts to host a live broadcast from the spacecraft on Christmas Eve. Worse still, the men were given only one cryptic instruction: “Say something appropriate.”

The astronauts were in a tough spot. When millions of people of different faiths and backgrounds are listening, what exactly constitutes appropriate? To make matters trickier, 1968 had been a grim year for Americans -the Vietnam War was raging, and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had both been assassinated. How could the astronauts simultaneously orbit the Moon, introduce millions to outer space on TV, and buoy the American spirit?...

...She made an elegant, simple suggestion: Why not just read from the book of Genesis?
The astronauts jumped at the idea. They reasoned that genesis had a broad enough appeal across religions to add a hint of spirituality without ostracizing non-Christians.

The broadcast began with the crew showing some of the first images of Earth ever seen from space...

A First Kiss

2011-12-24T07:04:00.000-05:00

Breaking News: The U.S. military hasn't collapsed.

From NPR...

When Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta kissed Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell ~~today~~ [Wednesday] in Virginia Beach, a little bit of history was made.

As The Virginian-Pilot explains:
"It's a time-honored tradition at Navy homecomings — one lucky sailor is chosen to be first off the ship for the long-awaited kiss with a loved one. Today, for the first time [according to the Navy], the happily reunited couple was gay."

Gaeta, who had just arrived home on the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship, won the first kiss honor in a raffle. The Virginian-Pilot says that Snell, Gaeta's "girlfriend of two years ... was waiting when she crossed the brow. They kissed. The crowd cheered."

A 21st Century Jean Valjean

2011-12-22T08:03:00.004-05:00

Only in France.

When literature comes to life from the Telegraph (UK)...

Since December 9, the man has robbed five bakeries in the western suburbs of Paris, police said, each time using the same modus operandi.

After placing an order, the man holds up what appears to be a fake revolver, points it at the person behind the cash register and takes his pastries without paying.

No one has been injured in the robberies and in each case the value of the goods stolen has been low, at between eight and 20 euros.

Kim Jong Dead

2011-12-20T09:00:00.000-05:00

For a "Dear Leader" who was single handedly responsible for the starvation and deaths of hundreds of thousands of his people while he was kicking back sipping cognac, eating sushi, and ordering dancers to unrobe, I have a hard time believing that these aren't crocodile tears. Either that or there's some serious brainwashing going on in NoKo.

After further thought, it's probably the latter.

Previous posts about the Team America star over the years, here, here, and here. And from The Dish a look at how an economy can flatline and then go into reverse over 30 years...

No "Rest in Peace" for you Kim.

R.I.P. Cesaria Evora

2011-12-17T21:36:00.001-05:00

In memory of the passing of another great artist...

At the age of 70, she is gone too soon.

Rest in peace Cesaria Evora.

Chateau Lafake

2011-12-13T07:59:00.001-05:00

From Apple stores to wine. Is there anything the Chinese won't counterfeit?

Oh yeah, chopsticks.

From The Daily (UK)...

[A]s China’s appetite for wine increases, so do the prices — and the chances for wine fraud. Wine merchants believe more than 70 percent of all Lafite bottles sold in China are fake, according to the magazine China International Business.

“The Far East has for the last five years been the major source for buyers of valuable wines,” said William Edgerton, a wine appraiser based in Conn. “Even poor vintages go for $500 to $600 a bottle, and sooner or later those bottles are going to be emptied and they are going to be perfect targets for counterfeiters.” Those empty bottles can be sold to counterfeiters, who then fill up the bottles with a different wine and sell it to gullible consumers at Lafite prices, Edgerton added.

In September, the Trading Standards Institute in Britain recovered 40 bottles of fake Jacob’s Creek wine from a liquor store in Nottinghamshire, England. The wine is believed to have been made in China and sold at a low rate to independent liquor stores.

Jacob's Creek, seriously?

Cubicle to PM and Back

2011-12-11T18:23:00.001-05:00

A fascinating story and a testament to the untapped potential in each of us.

From the NYT...

At his cubicle at the State Transportation Department building here, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed recounted what he did during a recent leave of absence. He trimmed the size of the federal government. He instituted regular paychecks for the military. He campaigned against corruption. And he avoided being shot.

Mr. Mohamed, 49, smiled genially over the neutral-toned cubicle dividers and file cabinets of the state office building. For eight months, starting last November, he was the prime minister of his native country, Somalia, one of the most chaotic nations on earth. And then, as suddenly as he had left, he was back in his cubicle at the Transportation Department, where he makes sure the department’s contracts and contractors comply with nondiscrimination and affirmative action requirements.

“This is my life,” he said.

Good Grades = Longer Life

2011-12-11T11:39:00.001-05:00

Speaking of knowledge, here's another interesting study. This one links health to GPA.

From the NYT...

Do straight-A students live longer?

Researchers have long known that education and good health are inextricably linked. Numerous studies have found that people with more years of schooling and higher education enjoy better health, over all, than those with less. But in a fascinating new report, investigators found that it is not just the number of degrees or years of education that make a difference, but another factor — class rank.

“Even among those who each had 12 years of education, the person who performed better had better health,” she said. “That’s new.”

She’s convinced there’s something about the actual mastering of academic material that’s vital — not the algebra and United States history per se, but the process of developing critical thinking skills and improving cognitive function. “The people who do better in high school — they learn more, they’re more engaged, they’re active learners, and that probably plays out across people’s lives,” Dr. Herd said. “They may have actually potentially learned how to learn more effectively, and that could affect things like how much you keep up with the latest innovations on how to improve your health, both medically and through your behavior.”

Whew! I'm glad the link is based on high school grades and not college.

"The Knowledge"

2011-12-11T11:24:00.001-05:00

This definitely should be adopted in DC, as well as several other U.S. cities.

From Wired...

Every black-cab driver in central London has to have “The Knowledge” — a memorized map of the capital, including some 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks, right down to the order of theaters on Shaftesbury Avenue.

It’s a brutal learning process that can take three to four years to complete, with a final test — the Knowledge of London Examination System — that often takes 12 attempts to pass. Even then, ultimately only half of the trainee cabbies ace the exam.

According to a report published in the journal Current Biology, successfully learning this mental atlas of London’s spaghetti streets causes structural changes in the brain, affects memory and creates a greater volume of nerve cells in the brain’s hippocampus.

Room to Read

2011-12-11T09:54:00.001-05:00

Several years after ago meeting John Wood at a fundraiser and learning about his remarkable story, we exchanged a few emails and I briefly explored the possibility of working for his organization. Ultimately, the job went to a far more qualified candidate than me.

I'm glad to see Room to Read is stronger than ever.

From the NYT...

One of the legendary triumphs of philanthropy was Andrew Carnegie’s construction of more than 2,500 libraries around the world. It’s renowned as a stimulus to learning that can never be matched — except that, numerically, it has already been surpassed several times over by an American man you’ve probably never heard of.

I came here to Vietnam to see John Wood hand out his 10 millionth book at a library that his team founded in this village in the Mekong Delta — as hundreds of local children cheered and embraced the books he brought as if they were the rarest of treasures. Wood’s charity, Room to Read, has opened 12,000 of these libraries around the world, along with 1,500 schools.

Yes, you read that right. He has opened nearly five times as many libraries as Carnegie...

It's Never Too Late

2011-12-10T07:44:00.001-05:00

An inspiring story. Now I'm thinking about learning to play the piano.

From the NYT...

Then came a new resident, a musician in his 80s with a touch of forgetfulness named Boyd Lee Dunlop, and he could play a little. Actually, he could play a lot, his bony fingers dancing the mad dance of improvised jazz in a way that evoked a long life’s all.

The lean times and the flush. The Saturday night hop and the Sunday morning hymn. Those long drives in a Packard to the next gig. That fine woman Adelaide, oh Adelaide, down in North Carolina. The deaths of a beloved aunt and a difficult marriage. Some things you don’t forget, so Mr. Dunlop keeps a white towel handy to wipe his eyes dry.

And so Mr. Dunlop would have remained, summoning transcendence from a damaged piano in the Delaware Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, his audience a couple of administrators, a few nurses and many patients beset with dementia, loneliness and age — were it not for a chance encounter and some cheesecake.

A little more from Mr. Dunlop...

If you're looking for a nice Christmas present his CD can be purchased here and also via iTunes.

Hand-Hacking

2011-12-09T07:32:00.001-05:00

Completely brilliant for those of us who are musically challenged but totally creepy as well.

From New Scientist...

Want to learn a musical instrument, but can't find the time to practise? A device now under development can take control of your hand and teach you how to play a tune.

PossessedHand, being developed jointly by the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Sony Computer Science Laboratories electrically stimulates the muscles in the forearm that move your fingers. A belt worn around that part of the subject's arm contains 28 electrode pads, which flex the joints between the three bones of each finger and the two bones of the thumb, and provide two wrist movements. Users were able to sense the movement of their hands that this produced, even with their eyes closed. "The user's fingers are controlled without the user's mind," explains Emi Tamaki of the University of Tokyo, who led the research.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the players found it unsettling to have the device move their hand by itself. "I felt like my body was hacked," said one. Tamaki is confident that people will get used to the idea once they see how useful it can be: "We believe convenient technology will overcome a feeling of fear."

No Roads, No Sidewalks

2011-12-09T07:15:00.001-05:00

An interesting experiment in sharing and road design.

From the Guardian (UK)...

Roads and pavements are rules, keeping hard cars and soft pedestrians apart. Lane markings, pedestrian crossings and steel railings are another layer of rules. What if we relaxed the rules a little?This is exactly what's happening at London's Exhibition Road.

In the last 18 months, it has been ripped up and remade to a new design that all but abolishes the distinction between road and pavement. Instead, there's one continuous surface, cross-hatched dramatically in black-and-white granite. Pedestrians can wander where they like: they'll just have to negotiate the cars and bicycles.

The idea is that when driving zones are heavily delineated, drivers tend to be on autopilot, focusing on other cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists. But 10 years ago, Kensington and Chelsea experimented with removing the railings from Kensington High Street and found that the number of pedestrian accidents dropped by 60%. It seems that when drivers are forced to be more aware and pedestrians are forced to take more responsibility for themselves, everyone is safer. Rules, it seems, were counterproductive.

Ai's Latest

2011-12-09T06:39:00.001-05:00

Following his Sunflower Seeds exhibition at the Tate Modern and imprisonment in China, Ai's latest exhibit focuses on his absence and bicycles.

From Reuters and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum...

Aptly titled "Absent" due to China's ban on Ai traveling, the three-month exhibit at Taipei's Fine Arts Museum will have 21 works on show, including a photograph of a person's arm making an obscene gesture in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and a surveillance camera carved by Ai out of marble.

[The centerpiece of the show] is Ai’s most recent work, created specifically for TFAM, “Forever Bicycles.” This installation piece is made up of more than 1,000 bicycles and will be shown in a display area that is 33 feet high. Its layered labyrinthine space creates what appears to be a moving abstract shape that symbolizes the way in which the social environment in China is changing.

For more on the exhibit go here.

A Flight Through a Stradivarius

2011-12-09T06:23:00.001-05:00

It's only a matter of time before these start showing up in Chinese markets for $20.

From New Scientist...

When radiologist Steve Sirr ended up with a violin in the emergency room, he couldn't help putting it through a CT scan. [T]he idea led him to team up with two violin makers to create the most accurate replicas to date of a Stradivarius violin.Using the 3D scanning technology, Sirr and his team were able to determine the precise shape, rib structure, wood density and volume of air inside a Betts Stradivarius violin.

To create a replica, the virtual model is fed to a bespoke machine designed by violinmaker Steve Rossow. Based on the images, the device directs a lathe and carves each piece of the violin out of various types of wood. Then the segments are assembled and varnished by hand.

Thanks to the new technique, copies are so realistic that the team has branded each piece to prevent counterfeiting. It doesn't just look the part. This Betts copy sounds like a Stradivarius, too. "It looks beautiful, and it sounds beautiful," says John Waddle, one of the violin makers who worked on the project.

Airplane Mode

2011-12-08T07:10:00.001-05:00

In the wake of Alec Baldwin's boot from a AA flight for playing Words with Friends, here's a recent article to keep in mind the next time you're told to turn off all electronic devices.

From the NYT...

According to the FAA, 712 million passengers flew within the United States in 2010. Let’s assume that just 1 percent of those passengers — about two people per Boeing 737, a conservative number — left a cellphone, e-reader or laptop turned on during takeoff or landing. That would mean seven million people on 11 million flights endangered the lives of their fellow passengers. Yet, in 2010, no crashes were attributed to people using technology on a plane. None were in 2009. Or 2008, 2007 and so on. You get the point.

Surely if electronic gadgets could bring down an airplane, you can be sure that TSA, which has a consuming fear of 3.5 ounces of hand lotion, wouldn’t allow passengers to board a plane with an iPad or Kindle, for fear that they would be used by terrorists.

New technologies are often greeted with fear and that is certainly true of a disruptive technology like cellphones. Yet rules that are decades old persist without evidence to support the idea that someone reading an e-book or playing a video game during takeoff or landing is jeopardizing safety.

This Week's Flavor: Turkish Coffee

2011-12-08T06:15:00.001-05:00

For dessert this past Sunday I was planning to make coffee ice cream but at the last minute decided to mix it up a bit and go with some kind of regionally flavored coffee.

Irish? Too much alcohol.

Vietnamese? Too sweet.

Turkish? Bingo!

Not my photo...but close.

The addition of cardamom and orange zest, which add a couple layers of complexity, is what makes this coffee ice cream Turkish. It's not my favorite mainly because the orange flavor is so strong -- a little zest goes a long way -- but others liked it and that's what counts.

We served the ice cream with financiers, a french almond cookie. These tasty cookies solved one of the problems of frequently making custard based ice cream: you wind up with a ton of leftover egg whites.

The ice cream recipe is here.
The financier recipe is here.

"'Obamacare' to the Rescue"

2011-12-08T05:57:00.001-05:00

One woman's recent, and probably life-saving, experience with the Affordable Care Act and her acknowledgement that she hadn't done her homework.

From the LA Times...

Which brings me to my apology. I was pretty mad at Obama before I learned about this new insurance plan. I had changed my registration from Democrat to Independent, and I had blacked out the top of the "h" on my Obama bumper sticker, so that it read, "Got nope" instead of "got hope." I felt like he had let down the struggling middle class. My son and I had campaigned for him, but since he took office, we felt he had let us down.

So this is my public apology. I'm sorry I didn't do enough of my own research to find out what promises the president has made good on. I'm sorry I didn't realize that he really has stood up for me and my family, and for so many others like us. I'm getting a new bumper sticker to cover the one that says "Got nope." It will say "ObamaCares."

Here's to The Crazy Ones...

2011-12-07T07:36:00.001-05:00

This letterpressed poster by Brightwurks replicates the full text of Steve Jobs’s 1997 “Crazy Ones” ad. All sales proceeds go to the Acumen Fund, a charity that helps relieve poverty.

1 Line and 3.2 Million Dots

2011-12-07T07:23:00.001-05:00

The creative types strike again in two impressive but polar opposite ways.

From Vimeo and YouTube...

Sounds About Right

2011-12-06T19:39:00.001-05:00

A columnist for Der Speigel, a German newspaper, unloads repeatedly on the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. It's a must read in its entirety.

From Der Speigel...

It's horrifying because these eight so-called, would-be candidates are eagerly ruining not only their own reputations and that of their party, the party of Lincoln lore. Worse: They're ruining the reputation of the United States.'Freakshow'They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another.

They've shown such stark lack of knowledge -- political, economic, geographic, historical -- that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

"When did the GOP lose touch with reality?" wonders Bush's former speechwriter David Frum in New York Magazine. In the New York Times, Kenneth Duberstein, Ronald Reagan's former chief-of-staff, called this campaign season a "reality show," while Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan confidante Peggy Noonan even spoke of a "freakshow."

Ouch.

View From My Window: Atlanta

2011-11-30T17:32:00.001-05:00

It doesn't get much more convenient than this...

$6,400 Grapes

2011-11-28T23:03:00.001-05:00

I've posted previously about the ridiculously priced melons in Japan but I didn't know the same applies to grapes too.

A fascinating article the WSJ...

Swallow this: A single bunch of Ruby Romans, the titan of Japanese grapes, on Friday sold for ¥500,000 or about $6,400 – or in more remarkable terms, that means each grape is worth about ¥20,000. A steep jump from the record fetching amount of ¥250,000 per bunch in 2009 it is by far the most expensive grapes sold in Japan and likely in the world...

...Along with Sanya Nagata, head chef at Le Musee de H, the two men will use the grapes to craft a dessert for a group of middle school students from tsunami-ravaged Miyagi prefecture performing at a local jazz concert.

This Week's Flavor: Dulce de Leche

2011-11-28T20:00:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving this year, as is the case every year, was a wonderful day. After a delicious dinner, we closed it out with a couple of sweets.

This year, I decided to try something different and prepared a Pumpkin Pecan Bread Pudding. It was supposed to be accompanied by Dulce de Leche ice cream but I had a memory fail the night before (or was it too much wine?) and forgot to pre-freeze the ice cream maker. All worked out fine thanks to Häagen-Dazs -- we had the homemade version last night with some friends.

Orange-cardamom chocolate truffles coated in cocoa, chopped pecans, and shredded coconut capped off dessert for the evenng.

The recipes are here:

Pumpkin Pecan Bread Pudding (I used the mods in the comments to the recipe by foodlover07)
Dulce de Leche Ice Cream (skipped the optional pecans)
Dulce de Leche (I substituted goat's milk so technically I think it's cajeta.)
Orange-Cardamom Chocolate Truffles (very easy to make but messy, if rolling by hand run your hands under cold water and dry every few minutes to chill them down)

P.S. Full disclosure: those aren't my photos but close.

Earth

2011-11-26T19:45:00.001-05:00

This video has been floating around [no pun intended] for a few weeks but I didn't want to lose track of it because it's so amazing and beautiful. It's best watched in full-screen mode.

From NASA via Vimeo...

DSK Mysteries

2011-11-26T16:25:00.001-05:00

Only two people really know what happened during those seven minutes in Dominique Strauss-Kahn's hotel room on the afternoon of May 14, 2011 but this article raises some very interesting questions.

A few curious passages from NY Books...

Before joining Accor Group [which owns the Sofitel] in 2003, René-Georges Querry, head of security had worked closely in the police with Ange Mancini, who is now coordinator for intelligence for President Sarkozy. Querry, at the time that Sheehan was making his call, was arriving at a soccer match in Paris where he would be seated in the box of President Sarkozy.

Less than two minutes [after the call was placed to 911], the footage from the surveillance cameras shows Yearwood and an unidentified man walking from the security office to an adjacent area. This is the same unidentified man who had accompanied Diallo to the security office at 12:52 PM. There, the two men high-five each other, clap their hands, and do what looks like an extraordinary dance of celebration that lasts for three minutes.

When [Diallo was] asked why she had not used her pass key to go into another room, she said they all had “Do Not Disturb” signs on the door. After her grand jury testimony, prosecutors discovered that this was false when the hotel belatedly provided them with the electronic key records showing that Diallo had entered room 2820 at 12:26 PM, after her encounter with DSK. The same record also showed that she had also entered room 2820 prior to her encounter with DSK at a time when the occupant had not checked out and may have been in the room. [Sofitel has refused to name the occupant of room 2820 citing privacy concerns]

DSK’s BlackBerry, with its messages, is still missing. While DSK believed he had left it in the Sofitel, the records obtained from BlackBerry show that the missing phone’s GPS circuitry was disabled at 12:51. This stopped the phone from sending out signals identifying its location. Apart from the possibility of an accident, for a phone to be disabled in this way, according to a forensic expert, required technical knowledge about how the BlackBerry worked. From electronic information that became available to investigators in November 2011, it appears the phone never left the Sofitel.

Happy (Belated) Thanksgiving

2011-11-26T16:11:00.001-05:00

For all the anti-immigrant folks in the U.S., a perfect New Yorker cover for Thanksgiving...

Amazing Bluejay

2011-11-26T16:02:00.001-05:00

Writing music by age two? Drawing and asking for a cello without even knowing what it is? How is this possible?

Meanwhile, us mere mortals do our best to carry a tune.

From TYWKIWDBI...

"We are talking about a prodigy of the level of the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition," says Sam Zyman, a composer. "I am talking about the likes of Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Saint-Sans." Zyman teaches music theory to Jay at the Juilliard School in New York City, where he's been teaching for 18 years.

How is it possible? Jay told Pelley he doesn't know where the music comes from, but it comes fully written -- playing like an orchestra in his head."It's as if the unconscious mind is giving orders at the speed of light," says Jay. "You know, I mean, so I just hear it as if it were a smooth performance of a work that is already written, when it isn't...

Jay writes things he can't even play, and he says he wants to perfect his piano playing, even though he doesn't need the piano, or any instrument, to compose... Talented composers might write five or six symphonies in a lifetime. But Jay has written five at the age of 12.

"It’s a Food Product, Essentially"

2011-11-25T20:29:00.001-05:00

The pepper spraying cop meme has been getting a lot of play lately but tiese two in particular are brilliant...

For more, go here or here.

Faux News

2011-11-22T12:38:00.000-05:00

Why am I not surprised? The ignorance exhibited by large swaths of the U.S. population is stunning, sad, and dangerous. (thx LH)

From HuffPo...

Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

The poll surveyed New Jersey residents about the uprisings in Egypt and the Middle East, and where they get their news sources. The study, which controlled for demographic factors like education and partisanship, found that "people who watch Fox News are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government" and "6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government" compared to those who watch no news.

Yelp: The Chain Slayer?

2011-11-22T07:17:00.000-05:00

I'm a big fan of Yelp -- more accurately I'm a big fan of my wife's use of Yelp. In any event, bring it on Yelp.

From The Washington Post...

Michael Luca of Harvard Business School has a new paper studying the effects of Yelp.com on the restaurant industry. [Of three main findings, one stands out:] chain restaurants as a whole seem to have declined in market share as Yelp has grown in prominence. “This suggests,” Luca writes, “that online consumer reviews substitute for more traditional forms of reputation.”

A bit more from the paper...

It seems uncontroversial to assert that providing this information to consumers mightimprove welfare in various ways. As evidence, I discuss two results.

First, Yelp causes demand to shift from chains to independent restaurants. By revealedpreference, consumers' expected utility from going to independent restaurants must then behigher. This can be viewed as a welfare gain resulting from either better restaurants or bettersorting between consumers and restaurants.

Second, revenue is a key determinant of a restaurant's decision to exit. Hence, Yelp mayhave a long-run effect on exit behavior of firms. Assuming Yelp measures are a reasonablemeasure of true quality, then Yelp may help to drive worse restaurants out of business, whichwould be a second source of welfare gain.

Buzkashi

2011-11-21T16:49:00.001-05:00

In the world of crazy sports, this one must rank near the top.

From ESPN...

There aren't a lot of bats, balls or rackets in northern Afghanistan. There are goats, horses, men and dusty plains, and they have been there ever since Genghis Khan and his Mongol horde swept into the neighborhood in the 13th century. Their game, then, is simple. Men on horseback grab a goat from a chalk circle, carry it around a pole and drop it into another circle. No downs, innings, line judges or refs. Sometimes there are teams, and sometimes there aren't. Sometimes the field is 200 meters by 200 meters, and sometimes it isn't. And the goat? The goat might be a calf, but it's always dead, just lying there with its head and hooves cut off.Grab the goat, bring it around the pole and put it in the circle.

That's buzkashi, [Afghanistan's national sport].

If you're so inclined, there are several YouTube videos of buzkashi.

When Patriots Peek

2011-11-21T16:27:00.001-05:00

Delayed-notice search warrants issued under the expanded powers of the Patriot Act, 2006–2009.

A classic case of bait and switch.

From New York Magazine...

When it was signed into law six weeks after the [9/11] attacks, the act made it easier to wiretap American citizens suspected of cooperating with terrorism, to snoop through business records without notification, and to execute search warrants without immediately informing their targets (a so-called sneak-and-peek). Privileges once reserved for overseas intelligence work were extended to domestic criminal investigations. There was less judicial oversight and very little transparency.

Stagecoach Mary

2011-11-21T14:56:00.001-05:00

I'm sure "Stagecoach" Mary would have none of the recent talk about doing away with the USPS. She was clealy an impressive person on several different levels.

From History Net...

"Stagecoach" Mary Fields was born into slavery in March 1832 in Tennessee and moved to Montana following the Civil War. Fields was the second woman and first African American to manage a mail route for the postal service. She also owned several businesses in Cascade County Montana. Fields was extremely popular in Virginia City, Montana, so much so, that by order of the mayor, she was the only woman of reputable character in Cascade allowed to drink in the local bar.

This Week's Flavor: Earl Grey Tea Ice Cream

2011-11-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

My mother-in-law's birthday (a significant one) was this past Friday and I wanted to make sure that the dessert for her birthday dinner was special one. After considering many options and calling a few last minute audibles, we decided on a lemon poppy seed cake with raspberry curd and lemon buttercream icing. I churned up a batch of Earl Grey Tea ice cream to go with it.

The ice cream had a nice and smooth flavor of Earl Grey tea and will definitely gain a spot in the rotation. The cake was good as well but a bit tricky to make -- whipping the egg yolks and sugar more than the recipe calls for is the key. It also helped that at the last second I decided to make a double decker (one would have been too thin) and added the strawberry curd and lemon buttercream icing to the mix.

For the cake, a few recipes were cobbled together which are in the links below:
Lemon poppy seed cake
Raspberry curd and lemon buttercream icing
Earl Grey ice cream (One mod: rather than steeping the tea in the cream for an hour I let it steep overnight which boosted the flavor)

P.S. That's not a photo of the cake, mine had a lot more poppy seeds, but the idea is the same.

Back in the Mix

2011-11-21T11:41:00.000-05:00

After about a two month blog break, I've accumulated a slew of items for blog posts (Read It Later is my new BFF). Since it'll be a slow week, the plan is to get a flurry of posts up over the coming days but who knows another hiatus may intervene.

A Virgin Birth

2011-10-31T07:54:00.002-04:00

As far as Virgins go, I've flown Virgin America several times (it's pretty nice), have never been on Virgin Atlantic (I hear it's nice), and hope to one day board Virgin Galactic (it better be nice for the price he's charging).

Here's an interesting story about how Richard Branson started Virgin America.

From Kottke...

In '79, when Joan, my fiancee and I were on a holiday in the British Virgin Islands, we were trying to catch a flight to Puerto Rico; but the local Puerto Rican scheduled flight was cancelled. The airport terminal was full of stranded passengers. I made a few calls to charter companies and agreed to charter a plane for $2000 to Puerto Rico. Cheekily leaving out Joan's and my name, I divided the price by the remaining number of passengers, borrowed a blackboard and wrote: VIRGIN AIRWAYS: $39 for a single flight to Puerto Rico.

I walked around the airport terminal and soon filled every seat on the charter plane. As we landed at Puerto Rico, a passenger turned to me and said: “Virgin Airways isn’t too bad – smarten up the services a little and you could be in business.”

Happy Halloween II

2011-10-31T07:22:00.001-04:00

One more but this one is a bit much...

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T07:13:00.001-04:00

This guy is taking pumpkin carving to a new level.

From MyModernMet...

October Surprise

2011-10-29T17:17:00.002-04:00

With Summer barely over (did we have more than 1 day of Fall?) the wintry weather made its way into DC for a rare, but not unheard of, October snow.

A few factoids about pre-Halloween snow in DC from the Washington Post...

Accumulating snow has fallen on five days (out of 4,340 in the record through 2010) during October.
The earliest accumulating snow of the month — and on record — fell on the 10th in 1979 when 0.3” was measured (hmmm, I don't remember that).
The most October snow in one day was 2” on the 30th in 1925 (with another 0.2” the day after).
Ten other days have witnessed a trace of snow in October.

This Week's Flavor: Pineapple Granita

2011-10-25T19:17:00.001-04:00

A few thousand miles away isn't a good enough reason to not make a tasty frozen treat, especially for family.

When in ~~Rome~~ Hawaii...

Pineapple (locally grown) Granita with Macadamia Nut Milk Chocolate Shortbread cookies. I dialed back the sugar in the granita (the pineapple was super sweet) and added the juice from 1/2 lime. For the cookies I cut back on the salt, used unsalted mac nuts, and cut the rolled out dough into squares prior to baking.

Both have entered the "must make again" file.

The recipes are here and here.