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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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Complex Numbers A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number. The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi. Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary. Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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Today's somewhat more serious link is courtesy of Turkey DrumStik  . She's running a blog contest next month (this isn't a part of that) which you should totally enter if you blog, or if you're thinking about starting. It's found at "Journalistic Intentions"  [18+].Let's put aside for the moment now the completely unnecessary and annoying abbreviations at the end of that headline. Yes, I noticed. Yes, I care. But I think it communicates the information adequately, and if it doesn't, the article itself makes it clear. What do science communication and agricultural communication have in common? In the lede, at that. A lot actually, as science and agriculture overlap in so many ways. Agriculture is a field where science and innovation meet tradition and passion. Okay, look, I'm not completely ignorant of agriculture. But it's not the only occupation that mixes science with "tradition and passion." Those of us in ag can learn and build from the challenges of science communication, which mirror our own struggles. But I'm more familiar with "sci comm" as she calls it. First thing that came to my mind when I read this far was: "you know, this is the perfect opportunity to blast the anti-GMO crowd. Let's see if she does that." One of the biggest hurdles in any type of science communications — whether that be in the medical, climate, or agricultural fields — is denialism. Science denialism is the rejection of facts and scientific consensus in favor of controversial or radical ideas. She's giving denial too much credit there, I think. It isn't "controversial or radical" to, for instance, insist that the Earth is flat, vaccines make your dick explode, or that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening. It's just ignorant. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it would be about the prevalence and damage misinformation can cause. No, it would be about how there is no way we'll ever do the right thing as a society. The general lack of knowledge and familiarity with modern agriculture along with pseudoscience is the root of many anti-agriculture ideologies: from anti-GMO to animal rights activist groups. Ah, good. Good. There it is. It’s definitely not a matter of intelligence. It can be very difficult to separate the facts from the fiction without much background knowledge or familiarity on the topics at hand. On this, we can agree. As I've harped on several times here, intelligence is not the same thing as knowledge. A person can know a lot of trivia and spout it at a bar to win the prize, but all that means is they have a great memory. Which is part of, but by no means all of, "intelligence." And there is a lot of information out there, even if we stick to good information. No one person can be an expert -- or even an apprentice -- at everything. Science is more than just fun facts about how the world works. It’s a continuous structured process of discovery. It relies on observation, experimentation, and the testing of hypotheses against the evidence gathered. That's as good a working definition of science as I've ever seen. There is also a lot of money to be made off of fear and misinformation. “Organic” and “natural” branding is a $350 billion business, and by convincing people there is something wrong with modern agriculture or conventional food — livestock care and more — it quickly leads to greater profits for certain food corporations or more donations to vegan animal-rights groups. I'm not going to come down against "organic," though I've long objected to the term as being confusing, as anything based on hydrocarbon chains is "organic." Some people want lab-created-pesticide-free foods; I get that. I have, however, railed on the use of "natural" in here before, and probably will again. As a label, "organic" actually has a specific meaning when applied to food. "Natural" does not. However, I find it extraordinarily unlikely that eight billion of us can all be fed using "organic" techniques. Conventional agriculture just yields more food, and there's a finite supply of farmland. Not all studies are created equal. Sometimes bad science occurs — and is even published. Whether an outdated method was used or too small of sample a size. In some cases, the conclusions drawn by the research team may not fit the data or may overstate the data. Confounding variables or using cell or animal models to draw definitive conclusions about humans can contribute to this as well. I've alluded to this sort of thing before, too, especially the part about sample size. I'd also add that statistics can be massaged to a desired outcome, like the much-hyped studies that show that chocolate is good for you (funded by candy makers) and those that insist that alcohol is bad for you (okay, okay, those might actually have some merit, but I don't care). That’s why it’s important to fully read the study and see if it makes sense. Record scratch. I've read scientific studies. Inevitably, I have to show them to my housemate, who's a scientist, to understand the lingo. Even there, if it's not her field (biology), she's often at a loss. Point being that even I don't have the necessary background to completely understand a scientific paper; how can someone who doesn't have a technical education hope to grok it? Also, "sense" doesn't always apply. There's nothing about quantum physics, for example, that makes any kind of everyday logical sense, and yet I'm told it's one of the most successful scientific theories ever developed, in terms of predicting the results of quantum experiments. This is one reason I innately distrust "common sense." I'll grant that agricultural science isn't nearly as complicated as quantum chromodynamics, but then, what is? Poor reporting, misleading headlines, celebrities, and people trying to sell you something all contribute to the spread of misinformation. They may exaggerate the claims of a study or misinterpret it all together (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not). Media can spread bad science, even after it has been retracted and refuted. As I've been saying. Sometimes I catch these and post them in here. If you've been following along, you've probably seen a few. Unfortunately, this runs the risk of spreading bad science. People might remember the articles but not my snark. But ignoring them could be worse. Many of the misconceptions we deal with in the agriculture space are connected to a societal disconnect from science. This disconnect can make science and scientists feel inaccessible to the general public. This reflects the same disconnect of farmers and other agriculturalists may feel. This disconnect breeds distrust in authority and expertship, not just in science, but in agriculture. However, too much skepticism can be as damaging as too much trust. There was a lot of hype a while back about a pair of identical male twins. After an absolutely horrifying and cringe-inducing circumcision accident, the people whose job it is to make such a decision decided that they'd just turn the one twin into a girl. I'm doing this from memory, but you can check it out if you need to. Some scientist reported on it. It was widely reported that the "girl" twin was successfully socialized into liking frilly shit and Barbie dolls and whatnot. A whole lot of people jumped on this, pointing to it as "proof" that gender is entirely a social construct. There was just one problem. Well, lots of problems, really. The first was the vanishingly small sample size of one. But the major problem was that the scientist in question made shit up, exaggerating the altered twin's predisposition to "girly" things. In reality, both kids wanted to play with toy trucks and water pistols and other "boy" things. Of course, by the time this came out, the damage had already been done and people were already screeching about how gender is all nurture, not nature. Lots of people remember the original study; few remember, or even found out, that it was more biased than a Russian election. Okay, fine, you made me look it up. Here's a better-researched summary. Goddammit, they both offed themselves. That's fucked up.None of the above is intended as any kind of commentary on trans people. Just on biased researchers who do unethical shit to promote their pet hypotheses even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It happens, especially when someone has a particular wish that something were true and is willing to distort the evidence to "prove" their point. Science tends to weed these out eventually, but again, the general public often doesn't catch on soon enough. See also: anti-vaxxers, who owe most of their existence to a disgraced former scientist who claimed -- falsely -- that vaccines cause more problems than they fix. His study was debunked long ago, but the stench remains, like when you smoke a cigarette in an enclosed space. Anyway. The "ag comm" article is much more detailed than the excerpts I've pasted here, of course, and it's absolutely worth reading -- though my inner cynic insists on reminding me that it won't have any real effect. |
| You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. But you can make hard-boiled eggs. It's pretty rare that I'll boil eggs, but when I do, I think my method came from Joy of Cooking (because you really, really do not want to know how my mother attempted to do it; suffice it to say, green stuff happened): Boil water. Lower cackleberries in. Turn off heat. Cover. Let sit for 11 minutes. Prepare a bowl of ice water during the interminable wait. Remove eggs (not with your fingers, idiot) and give them an ice bath for like 3 minutes. Peel under cold running water. Swallow whole. So I guess technically, they're not boiled for more than a couple of seconds, because you turn the heat off. Whatever. It works. The ice bath makes them easy to shell. Even that simple process, though, is more work than I usually want to do for eating, especially something that is, for me, about a 6 on the 1-10 scale from "nasty" to "delicious." Now, let's see the science: Hard-boiled eggs are one of those kitchen staples I always have in the fridge. They’re great for out-of-hand snacking, they instantly add a protein boost to salads, they form the basis of a super-speedy breakfast, and — with just a little extra effort — they become deviled eggs, the perfect cocktail snack. "A little extra effort?" Spoken like a non-lazy person. If you go online to find the best way to hard-boil eggs, you’ll find umpteen different methods, all purporting to be the best (many of which don’t even involve boiling). No, if you go online for that, you'll find this article that I'm quoting. Also, I'm not claiming my way is the best. Just that it works. The article includes a helpful photo of the resulting eggs, halved, so you can compare what each yolk looked like. I was delighted to find that most methods worked quite well. A couple gave less-than-stellar results, and some received higher ratings from me because they produced great eggs with less effort. Now, see, that's useful to me. Method: Bake in a Muffin Tin I'm no cooking expert, but my first reaction was "no way would this work out." This method took the longest from start to finish than any other, and the results were undesirable—the whites were overcooked, and the eggs didn’t peel cleanly. Good to know my suspicions were close to correct. Method: Bring to a Boil, Then Remove from Heat Aha! For testing purposes, I used the straightforward instructions from Martha Stewart. HAH! No. Although this technique was pretty quick and yielded nicely cooked eggs, I would not use it again because the eggs were so difficult to peel. Huh. Like I said, it works for me. Maybe it's because she's using fresh eggs. I never have fresh eggs. In fact, one of the few reasons I have to hard-boil eggs is when they're approaching expiration and I want to extend their pseudolife just a little longer. Method: Simmer Maintaining that brisk simmer was very tricky. I kept having to adjust the heat up or down, so this method involved a lot of babysitting. That alone is enough to make me go "next!" Method: Pressure Cook I have nothing against pressure cooking. I like the science behind it. I'm told, and this article verifies, that you can do it with an Instant Pot, but it just seems like another gadget in a crowded kitchen to me. When I was a kid, we had the giant cast-iron kind with the railroad whistle steam valve. My mother was afraid of it, and only my father got any use out of it. We didn't have a microwave, so this was the next best thing to get things to cook in a hurry. Method: Boil Following Bon Appetit’s method, you lower eggs into a large saucepan of boiling water, then adjust the heat to maintain a gentle boil for 10 minutes for an “ever-so-soft center to the yolk” (aka the jammy egg). I don't understand the difference between "simmer" and "gentle boil." As I noted above, I'm no cooking expert. I just like to eat, so I learned some basics. Method: Steam Too much equipment again, but the author claims this works. Method: Boil Then Simmer Oh, wait, I guess this is closer to my method than the one above, although I don't simmer. I just turn off the heat entirely. It's not like a covered pot of water loses that much heat in 11 minutes. The claim is that starting the eggs in hot water helps prevent the whites from sticking to the shell, thus making peeling easier. Which is, as I noted, important, but is there actual science to that? I was a little dubious about using 3 quarts of water for just 6 eggs, but López-Alt explains that this volume ensures that the timing and temperature are spot-on. Yeah, I use way more water than you'd expect for my method. My reasoning is that a larger volume of water loses heat less rapidly. Basic thermodynamics and volume to surface area ratios. The tradeoff is it takes longer to boil. But if you're going to simmer them, why would this matter? Whatever. So that's it, then. None of these are precisely my method, which, again, I'm pretty sure I stole from Joy. But I do like reading about the trade-offs between ease of cooking and quality of the result, because I'm always looking for the easiest, fastest way to achieve a good outcome. It's a matter of optimization, you know. |
| Once again, Cracked exposes some of the scurrilous lies we've been subjected to our whole lives. As usual, I'm not copying all of them here; just a few I feel the need to comment on. Gone are the days when you were stuck eating whatever your grandma learned how to make from her grandma. Yeah, Grandpa gets a shot now too. Today, you can host an international culinary gang bang if you want, but in the process of globalizing food, some people became fusion pioneers, tried to pull one over on us, or just plain got confused. One thing that's always bugged me is "authentic" cuisine. I don't give a ratatouille's patoutille if a food is "authentic." I only care that it tastes good. One of the few perks to living in the declining days of civilization is being able to get food from all over the world, and to mix it all together if you want. 15. Philly Cream Cheese is From New York When the inventors of cream cheese were trying to come up with a name for their product in 1880, they settled on “Philadelphia cream cheese” because the city was known to be off the chain, dairy-wise, even though everything about the product was distinctly New Yorkian. I have no idea if this (or many of the things on this list) are verifiably true or not, but come on, now, New York and Philadelphia? It's not like they called it London Cream Cheese. 14.Hawaiian Pizza is Canadian Everyone’s least favorite flatbread could more accurately be called “Hawaiian-inspired pizza,” as it was created in Ontario by a Greek immigrant inspired by the sweet-and-savory flavors of Americanized Chinese food to capitalize on the growing Tiki trend. On the flip side, Canada needs to stay in its lane, food-wise. As an aside, if you want to start an internet argument, the only surer way than to call Chicago "pizza" "not pizza" (as I always do) is to come down hard on liking or disliking ham and pineapple pizza. The fact that it's ham and not Spam should, incidentally, be your first clue that it's not actually Hawaiian pizza. 12. French Fries Are Belgian (And Kind of Spanish) Potatoes are a distinctly New World food, first brought to Europe by Spanish explorers and sliced and fried in Galicia in the 16th century, but the crispy little salt delivery vehicles didn’t really take off until Spanish colonists brought them to Belgium, which was called the Spanish Netherlands at the time, just to confuse us in the future. This is debatable. The name "French fries" is almost certainly American, but as the article points out, potatoes themselves are definitely American (at least continentally speaking). At least one notable source claims that fries (chips, whatever) were a French thing. That link claims (in French) that they were originally called "pommes de terre frites", which is either "fried potatoes" or "scorched earth apples," depending on how well I've been learning French. Today, the French, and French-speaking Belgians, just call them frites (you probably already knew this; it was one of the French words I learned before I seriously started learning French). Still no word on what the English call English muffins. Actually, I'm kidding; from what I understand, they just call them "muffins." And yet, an Uber driver from Paris whom I've had occasion to ride with (and practice pronunciation on) says that frites are Belgian, so who do you trust? A food historian or an expat Uber driver? On the other hand, Parisians are like New Yorkers in that they think everything of note was invented in their home city. In some cases, it's even true. So. Like I said. Debatable. 10. Croissants Are Austrian Case in point. 8. Vindaloo is Portuguese and 7. Tempura is Also Portuguese Look, I've got nothing against the Portuguese, but I'm not taking culinary lessons from a culture that's primarily known for salted cod. 5. Egg Rolls Are American Those Chinese-American restaurateurs also created the egg roll as a version of the lighter and crispier spring roll that would appeal more to their American customers, who we all know hate the lighter versions of things. Which of course explains why they're no longer making Bud Light. Just kidding. They piss out way too much of that. And finally (seriously, go to the article for more of this)... 1. No One Wants to Claim Danishes Legend has it that Danishes were invented by accident by a thoughtless French chef in the 17th century, who opened a bakery in Paris to sell the “thousand leaves” pastries that became so popular that he franchised to Italy, where Austrian tourists apparently noticed them. Fast forward to 1850, when striking Danish bakers were scabbed over by bakers from Vienna, who didn’t know how to make Danish pastries, so they made … Danish pastries. It became a hit in Denmark, where it’s called a “Viennese,” while Germans call it a “Copenhagener” and Americans, of course, a “Danish,” because despite its universal popularity, no one apparently wants to take the credit. With a history like that, one wonders how Europe ever devolved into World Wars. Anyway, food is like language: constantly changing and borrowing shit from other countries. While it's of academic interest to me to figure out the origins of certain foods, ultimately, it was all because some primitive proto-human once decided to eat a morsel that accidentally fell into this newfangled "fire" thing. It caught on, and deliberately burning their food enabled humans to more easily digest protein, which in turn enabled us to power our enormous brains, which eventually led to people continuing to be stupid anyway. Or something like that. |
| There weren't a whole lot of interesting things that happened on this day in history, and I picked this one at random. Here's the thing, though. Well, two things. 1. What little I know about Irish issues can be stuffed into a thimble; and 2. The linked article is largely unsourced and suspect. So I won't talk directly about the Sunningdale Agreement. You can go to that page and read it yourself if you want. I'm not saying it's not interesting, but anything I say I'd be talking out my ass. Not that I've never done that, but I'm trying to go into recovery. What I am aware of is that a big part of the problem has to do with religion. Catholics, Protestants, whatever. Blame Henry VIII, I guess. The whole thing is way above my pay grade. A friend of mine, a Wiccan, took a trip to Ireland once. Someone asked her something like "So, are you Catholic or Protestant?" (This is apparently less volatile a question than which football club you support). "Actually, I'm Pagan," she said. "We're all Pagan, dear. Are you a Catholic Pagan or a Protestant Pagan?" I have no real reason to believe that actually happened, but it's how she told it. I've seen it elsewhere, so it might have been a joke. Either way, it adheres to Waltz's First Rule of Comedy: Never let the facts get in the way of a good joke. Or a bad one. Especially a bad one. Speaking of bad jokes, I'm also reminded of this old one: An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman are all drinking in a pub, getting loud. Problem is, they're all stuttering terribly. The other patrons are starting to get annoyed. This gorgeous woman comes up to them and says, "Tell you what, boys. If any of you can tell me where you were born, without stuttering, I'll show you a night you will never forget." The Englishman is the first to speak up. He braces himself, prepares, and says, "Liverp-p-p-p-pool. Shite." The Scotsman is next. He goes, "Edinb-b-b-b-burgh. Ach, dammit." The Irishman looks calmly at the woman and says, "London." Surprised, she takes him by the hand and leads him upstairs. Half hour later they come back down. Irish guy's got a big grin on his face, he sits down, quaffs the rest of his ale, and goes, "...d-d-d-d-derry." I suppose that the most unbelievable part of the joke is where those three were drinking together amicably, but I suppose it can happen. Point is, I guess, that wherever you are, someone's not going to like the government, and that's why shit like this is relevant. Because, as always, if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Well, not necessarily "you." Like I said, I'm not well-versed in this aspect of history, but then again, I'm not in charge of anything but a couple of cats and a bit of property. And this is really why I'm doing these entries: to learn. There's no perfect government, and some people will never be pleased with whatever government they end up with. Ideally, that's what democracy is for, but things rarely turn out ideally, so you get demonstrations, riots, insurrections, civil wars, not-so-civil wars. These only get worse when other nations get involved, too. Again, I can't speak to the Irish situation, but there's another country right now that recently annexed part of a different country, and still wants more. Not exactly parallel, I suppose, but another echo. |
I don't really have a lot to say in response to today's article. I just found it to be interesting, and the best-written piece I've ever read on what it's like to be a whatever; in this case, a Navy submarine sailor (so if you want to weigh in here, Sum1's In Seattle  , feel free).Nukes, Nubs And Coners: The Unique Social Hierarchy Aboard A Nuclear Submarine Getting assigned to your first sub doesn’t make you a submariner and once you become one you’ll find yourself in a social structure unlike any other. I would imagine that if you're working with a bunch of other people in exceedingly tight quarters, for months at a time, you'd need some traditions and customs in addition to the usual military codes of conduct. Hell, I can't be stuck with most people for more than a few hours at a stretch without having to retreat. Months? And to think I almost joined the Navy, albeit through the Academy. A new crewmember is a Non-Useful Body, or NUB. He or she uses our limited supply of space, water, food, and oxygen. They are not welcome, but BUPERS (Bureau of Personnel) keeps sending them. I get that any new people in the military get hazed and mocked. I even get why (there are a few reasons, not least of which is that if you can't take shit from your superiors, you certainly won't be able to take shit from the enemy). But it's one reason I never signed up. It'd be like: Chief: "Waltz, I'd call you a tool, but that would be an insult to tools." Me: "Yes, Chief. You're correct. I am utterly incompetent and always will be. I shouldn't even be here." Or: Chief: "Waltz, you're completely useless." Me: *shrug* "Then why do you even want me to try?" I think the psychology is meant to make the enlistee really very badly want to prove their NCO wrong. But I figure that would just be disrespectful; why not prove them right instead? Anyway. Not much else to add to the article. Like I said, I just found it enlightening, as my primary source of information on what it would be like to be stuck with a bunch of people in an airtight vessel was Star Trek, and as much as I like Star Trek, I was never under any illusion that any of it was realistic, especially the wide corridors, spacious bridge, and ample recreational areas. Incidentally, I once got curious to find out why the command center of a vessel is usually called a "bridge." Apparently it's a holdover from the riverboat days when the controls were on a deck that literally bridged the boat , between the paddlewheels.Or so I was told. It's entirely possible I was misinformed. After all, I'm useless. Incidentally, if you want to mess with a sailor, call a ship a "boat," and call a boat a "ship." Want to know which is which? Don't ask me. But I very nearly picked up a Navy officer lady at a bar one time with that discussion. Until I remembered that I have a sworn rule against picking anyone up at a bar. |
| More for "Invalid Item" today. What would happen if Andre opened a bar in your town/area? (I did say maybe!) Well, Andre, first thing you need to know, as I noted way back in "A Tour of the Town" , no bars are allowed in Virginia, so you'd be arrested, fined, and sent to toil away on the vast banana plantainations of the Piedmont.I suppose if we're being technical about it, you could open a juice bar, or a vegan smoothie bar. Those are legal. But you'd fail. No one cares. Oh, there'd be a glut of people checking it out for the first week or so, taking selfies to show how virtuous they are, but then... crickets. Now, if you opened a restaurant that also happened to have a place that serves various delicious fermented and distilled beverages, behind a long table with stools lined up in front of it, well, that would be okay. As I noted in the above entry, there are plenty of those around. Which is, after all, the problem: there are plenty of those around. Market's saturated. You'd need an angle, and as far as angles go, bananas just ain't gonna cut it. Oh, sure, you could import (or grow in greenhouses, because I was just kidding about the banana "plantain"ations above) different varieties than the standard Cavendish, and introduce people to the wide range of genetically engineered berries that constitutes the musa family of plants. But that would only have limited a-peel. The advantage of bananas is that they're easy to eat -- probably the easiest fruit, because, unlike, say, apples or blueberries, you don't have to wash them first -- and they're easy to peel and shove into one's gaping maw. They're almost as easy as granola bars. This is important, because I'm lazy. But it's that very ease that would make a banana bar, in reality, not a viable enterprise. We can eat them at home. Even the making of banana bread (which I think is actually bald cake; see also "carrot cake") is relatively simple. Not that I've ever done it. Every time bananas sit on the counter at my house too long, my housemate slaps them into the fridge to make banana bread with. She then proceeds to never make banana bread. Still, there are two banana markets left untapped here in Charlottesville: wine and beer. As I've noted before, there's plenty of wine and beer here. But not banana wine, which is actually a thing, or banana beer, if you can deal with the inevitable accusations of cultural appropriation.Those articles I just linked are a bit light on details, I know, but you're a smart monkey. You'll figure it out. I will, however, take this opportunity to do my wine vs. beer rant. At their most basic level, beer is a fermented beverage made from grain, while wine is a fermented beverage made from fruit. As with many things, though, the definition from there gets as fuzzy as a monkey's back. As I've noted repeatedly, I'm a fan (and a snob) of both, though given a choice, I'll usually lean in the direction of beer. But I tend to lean in all kinds of directions after I've had a few, so really, I'm not picky about wine vs. beer, only about the particular wine or beer. And I'm also technically-oriented, having achieved a degree in engineering, so this fuzziness bothers me. Allow me to explain. Cider is also a fermented beverage made from fruit (usually apple or pear), though it's not marketed as wine, but usually alongside beer. For instance, it's found amongst the tap selections at the drafthouse cinema, and in the beer section at grocery stores around here. And yet it's not called wine or beer; it's called cider. Additionally, you'll sometimes find a delicious and dangerous product called "barleywine." Barleywine is beer; it just has a higher ABV than is commonly found in beer, because, I suppose, wine generally has a higher alcohol content than beer. And yet many beers, usually Belgians or those called "Imperial," also have a higher ABV than ordinary beers, usually in the 8-12% range. You could make the distinction that beer is fizzy, while wine isn't... but there exist exceptions to that as well, such as champagne. One could also make an argument involving sugar quantity, but there exist sweet beers and dry wines; the fermentation process works only on sugar, so the starches in grain (or potato or plantains) must first be converted to sugar, which is chemistry so basic that even your saliva does it (not that this is a recommended method of commercial production of beer). And sometimes you get residual sugars. Sometimes a lot, as with port wine, or sour beer. As if the matter weren't complicated enough, there's also sake, which is made from rice. Rice is a grain, not a fruit. But when describing sake to an English-speaking person, it's generally called "rice wine." Sake is usually marketed like wine, not like beer. And it's not like rice beers don't exist. Most of them suck monkey ass, but they exist. The big, brightly-colored cases of macrobrewery product you find at convenience stores, for example, are often rice-based. In the case (other definition) of rice product, as with barleywine, it's largely a matter of ethanol content and the process they use. All of which is to say that a monkey could, in theory, sell both banana wine and banana beer in a banana bar. And be functionally alliterate. |
| Today's article is five years old. Given the subject matter, it seems appropriate. Why some people are always running late It’s not always rudeness or scatter-brained behaviour – it can be something much deeper, writes Laura Clarke. I thought I might have linked this one before, but I couldn't find it in a search. I've been at this for a long time and I have a shit memory. We all know that person: there’s the child minder who is always late, the colleague who misses every deadline, even if just by a few hours, the friend you must tell to arrive 30 minutes earlier than she needs to for your lunch reservation. 30 minutes? Amateur. I dated a woman who had to be asked to show up two hours early. Even then, she was often late for the actual time. Hell, one time we left for a trip 28 hours after we were supposed to. She called to change plane reservations (this was effectively pre-internet) three times. We didn't date very long. Bad enough my first wife was two hours late to our wedding. She had an excuse, at least (illness). A look into the psychology of lateness offers a glimpse into a mind that that may be malfunctioning. Seems to be a lot of that going around these days. Perceptions of unpunctual people are almost always negative — even if misguided. They should be negative. However, I'll tentatively accept the article's assertion that it's not always the reasons we think. Some excuses, particularly for acute lateness, are fairly universally accepted —an accident or illness, for example. But others aren’t so easy to swallow. Some late people will pass it off as a symptom of being big-thinking and concerned with loftier matters than time-keeping, as an endearing quirk, a mark of doing one’s best work under pressure, or having the body clock of a night owl rather than a lark. Okay, go right to hell with all those, especially that last bit. Maybe it's why you're late for work -- I almost always was, and for that reason -- but it's definitely not an excuse to miss your 8pm dinner reservation. Being consistently late might not be your fault. It could be your type. The punctually-challenged often share personality characteristics such as optimism, low levels of self-control, anxiety, or a penchant for thrill-seeking, experts say. Personality differences could also dictate how we experience the passing of time. Well, we can get all philosophical about whether those things are your fault or not, delving into questions of free will, but either way, it's still your responsibility. It's like... maybe you have the kind of personality that makes you love driving fast. I can understand that. But it's still your responsibility to pay the inevitable speeding ticket. In 2001, Jeff Conte, a psychology professor at San Diego State University ran a study in which he separated participants into Type A people (ambitious, competitive) and Type B (creative, reflective, explorative). He asked them to judge, without clocks, how long it took for one minute to elapse. Type A people felt a minute had gone by when roughly 58 seconds had passed. Type B participants felt a minute had gone by after 77 seconds. Leaving aside for the moment my skepticism about Type A and Type B, how many people did he study? Were they all undergrads? Did they control for people on the autism spectrum? What was the spread (I highly doubt every single participant had exactly 58 or 77 seconds; there had to have been some overlap)? Was the study replicated? The link from the article isn't much help. Late people often have a “bizarre compulsion to defeat themselves,” wrote self-proclaimed late person and TED speaker Tim Urban in 2015. Hey, I have one of those, but I'm not a late person. Sure, I'll procrastinate stuff, but when it comes to meeting up with other people, I'm on time. Usually. He gave these poor souls a name: CLIPs, Chronically Late Insane People. You go to hell with that acronym, too. It's demeaning to people with actual mental illness. And depression often comes with low energy, making mustering the motivation to get a move on all the harder. I can relate to that, as well, but when I'm depressed, I'm more inclined to just blow something off rather than be late for it. For those left waiting, there is hope. You, too, can dictate what you’re willing to put up with. “Instead of getting angry or upset, you can take a stand and set boundaries,” she says. “Talk about what you will do if the other person isn’t on time.” For instance, tell your late friend you’ll go into the movie without them if they’re more than ten minutes late. That's way too generous. I'm not going to miss one second of the previews. You get there on time or early, or I watch the movie without you. In summary, the article might have some good points. I don't know. But perhaps it will help someone. I especially liked the part about the rest of us not putting up with other peoples' lateness. |
| Just having a bit of fun today. The Mysterious Jewish Roots of Yosemite Sam Yo, Semites: Was the gunslinging, rabbit-hating Yosemite Sam Jewish all along? We spoke with the creator’s family to learn the truth The article riffs on a certain former president's mispronunciation of Yosemite, but I'd be more interested in knowing if Porky Pig was Jewish. Yes, I know pigs ain't kosher. But as far as I know, Porky never ate pork, so... hm. In one corner of Jew Twitter, Trump’s fuck-up also prompted an unexpected revelation about a 75-year-old cartoon character: Yosemite Sam. Yes, the belligerent, rabbit-hating, Bugs Bunny-antagonizing cowboy from Looney Tunes. Was he in fact… Jewish? Twitter is nevertheless still a craphole. "It being a strange world, Yosemite Sam is actually Jewish. He bore more than a passing resemblance to his creator, Isadore Freleng, and his full name is given in one episode as Samuel Rosenbaum." Shouldn't be that strange. Jews are everywhere. There's probably one sneaking up behind you right now. Later, by phone, Beck elaborated. “He’s a Western-bad-guy type. And we don’t associate Jews with that, I don’t think,” Beck says. “Bugs himself might have some Jewish tendencies, with Mel Blanc as his voice and a certain New York speech pattern.” Oh? We doing stereotypes now? According to Shaw, her father created Yosemite Sam in 1945 because he felt Bugs Bunny needed a stronger adversary than the dim-witted Elmer Fudd. Dim-witted or not, he was brilliant in What's Opera Doc. Freleng was also known to hide the occasional Jewish pun in his work, such as a 1954 cartoon titled Muzzle Tough (say it out loud). The Warner Bros. cartoons had the best puns, period. Speaking of, there’s the distinct possibility that Goofy is Jewish, having been developed by pro-labor Jewish cartoonist Art Babbitt, who helped lead a strike of lower-paid Disney workers. Look, no. Warners: Jewish. Disney: Waspish. The Mouse and the Rabbit have battled since the dawn of time, and will be rivals until its end. Anyway, in case it's not clear (sometimes I wonder these days), none of this is meant to be insulting to anyone or any group. These are cartoon characters we're talking about. Like I said, just a bit of fun. |
| For "Invalid Item" : The most annoying thing about your town/area Of course there are no annoying things about where I live. Everyone is happy, nothing is inconvenient, and the sun is always shining. I can hear your "Yeah, right" from here. As I've noted before, when it's not freezing (defined by me as 55F or below) outside, I like to sit on my deck. I paid a lot of money for that thing and by Marduk's manhood, I'm going to use it. This is normally quite pleasant. Songbirds are tweeting (and not complaining about Elon Musk), bees are buzzing, owls are hooting (yes, yes, I did my Duolingo lessons; shut up) and crickets are cricketing. Right now, the leaves are lush and green, and blocking the view of the backyard neighbors' houses. Yes, very pleasant, except during the day and at night. During the day, everyone gets their yard work done. This wouldn't be so bad if everyone did it at the same time. But no; that would be too kind. The neighbor mows his lawn. Then, when that's finally done, the other neighbors mow their lawn. After that one's finished, one of the people behind me mows their lawn. And then another. And then another. There's no respite in the non-grass-growing seasons, either. If it's not lawnmowers, it's jet-engine-powered snowblowers or leaf blowers. And sometimes chainsaws. One time, the people two doors down had their ancient elm tree cut down, one of only two in the neighborhood. That took all day so it wouldn't fall on someone's house. And it was loud. On the plus side, I now own the only remaining elm around. One of these days I'm going to have to get it removed, too, and as loudly as possible, because even elms die at some point. I'm hoping to hire an artist to turn the stump into a throne where I can sit, with a beer and a cigar, and survey what's most definitely not my domain. And then, at night? You can hear further at night for some reason. Probably because hardly anyone mows their lawn after dark. I can hear a passing train right now, and that's nearly a mile away. Well, honestly, that doesn't bother me much; I spent my childhood near railroad tracks, and the rumble and horn are kind of soothing. So that's not really an annoyance, but it does tell me that pretty much anything within a mile is going to reach my eardrums. Like sirens and semis on the interstate. Parties to which I'm not invited. Domestic disputes. Gunshots. Okay, the gunshots are pretty rare, but this is still America. And also the nightly muscle car race. For some reason, that's still a thing. When electric cars started becoming mainstream, I rejoiced because I thought it signaled the end of the muffler-less disturbance of the peace. But no. People started complaining that you couldn't hear them coming, so they made them purposely louder, thus negating 3/4 of the purpose of having an electric car. Instead of, you know, learning to not walk in the middle of the goddamned street. Not to mention the sirens. There's almost always a siren somewhere. Especially after the gunshots. But all those aural annoyances are actually minor compared to the biggest annoying thing about living in Charlottesville: This town is infested with douchebags. It's not just the fashion, either; it's the attitude. Entitled, demanding, uncool. This is primarily evident while driving, but I also derive vast amusement from lurking on the local Nextdoor app. Like, for instance, people complaining about neighbors doing loud yard work. Or the latest, some guy complaining about always backing out of his blind driveway into traffic. I mean... have you tried backing into the driveway? Or putting up one of those convex mirrors? Or both? Come on. Or maybe taking out your muffler so they can hear you coming. My town has not yet instituted a plastic bag ban. I hope they don't; I use those things for trash, and without plastic grocery bags, I'll have to actually purchase small plastic trash bags, thus imposing the same environmental impact but at greater cost to myself. Bans are well-meaning, I'll grant that, but like most of the bullshit people do in response to pollution or climate change or whatever, they don't do a damn thing. Remember when everyone was trying to ban plastic straws? It's like that. Rearranging deck chairs on the Hindenburg. Anyway, the point is, if they do start to discuss one, I have this fantasy about showing up at City Hall with a prepared speech about banning douchebags instead. Won't happen. Too lazy. But I can make jokes about it. |
| Sigh. Here we go again. There Used to Be Aliens in Our Galaxy, but They Killed Themselves Off ETs have a thing for self-annihilation. No. Just... no. That shit makes it sound like an established fact, which it very definitely is not. It does, however, appeal to the cognitive biases of many people, so of course people (other than me) nod sagely and go "Yep, exactly as I thought. And we will, too." To be clear: There is not one shred of credible evidence that there is, or was, or will be, other technologically proficient civilizations in the galaxy. Speculating that there could have been is fine. Boldly declaring in a clickbait headline that there were is egregious pandering. In a new study, researchers suggest the answer to the Fermi paradox could be pretty bleak: Maybe all the intelligent civilizations have annihilated themselves. Jeez, 2020, that’s a little on the nose. Oh yeah, the article is from 2020, which I suppose partially explains the pessimism. And sure, "maybe" all the intelligent civilizations (please do me the courtesy of sparing us any snark about how we're not intelligent either, hurr durr) have annihilated themselves. Maybe they never existed in the first place. Maybe they ascended to a higher plane of being. Maybe they visited Earth in the past and are now thought of as gods. Maybe they take joy rides in our atmosphere just to fuck with Navy pilots. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I'm pretty sure I've said this before, but the Fermi paradox isn't a paradox. This is the Fermi paradox stated at its most succinct: The universe is unfathomably gigantic, but so far, we’ve never seen any sign that there’s intelligent life anywhere else. Let's change "intelligent" to "technological," okay? It avoids a joke that was funny once, when Monty Python made it, and it better describes what we're actually looking for Out There. For instance, there are several other species on Earth -- macaques, corvids, cetaceans, felines -- who demonstrate what we call intelligence without displaying the slightest tendency to go and build spaceships or Dyson spheres. We'd never see signs of alien crows or dolphins on planets thousands of light-years away, because they'd be happily hanging out in their evolutionary niches, just like ours do, without sending radio signals or forcing their sun to become a message generator. Or whatever. In short, there is not a single element in the process of evolution that requires a species to build rockets. For all we know, the chance of it could have been one in a trillion. One in a trillion trillion. One in a googolplex. We don't know because we have no baseline for it, only one data point -- us -- and the persistent gut feeling that we built rockets and we can't be all that special. Once you've won the lottery, the chance of having won the lottery is unity. The chances of winning the lottery are irrelevant at that point, except as a way to contemplate just how lucky you got. Why aren’t they sending telescope satellites through our part of space? And how can it be that out of all the planets and systems we’ve peeked into so far, we’ve seen nothing? There are as many individual theories as there are theorists, and these run a huge gamut. These aren't theories. These aren't even hypotheses. These are speculations. Which, again, is fine, but let's not pretend that we know anything about extraterrestrial life other than we don't know anything about it. They could even be extinct. In fact, the research includes parameters for extinction and the idea of “self annihilation,” a probability that could be extraordinarily high. Or it could be extraordinarily low. Come ON. Here's another thing to consider: we only came about because of unique characteristics of Earth's history. No life-ending catastrophes. Some pretty big ones, sure, but, for instance, the dinosaur-killer paved the way for the rise of mammals and birds (which are descended from some dinosaurs), but, for example, we weren't fried by a nearby supernova, pushed into interstellar space, or swallowed up by a rogue Jupiter-class planet. Any of these things could have happened, and certainly did happen to other planets in the galaxy. That, we know for as close to a fact as we'll ever get. And any of them could stop right in its tracks any nascent technology-using beings. No need to invoke self-annihilation when we live in a dangerous universe that's actively trying to kill us. Invoking self-annihilation is just playing to the fears and fever dreams of the readers. Again, could it happen? Sure. I'd postulate -- speculate, that is -- that if there is another tech civilization in the galaxy (I'm leaving out the rest of the universe here because it's big, far away, and long ago), that only they would have the ability to self-annihilate. Dolphins don't look to be on the verge of causing the Aporpoiselypse (okay, that's a stretch, I admit it), and ravens seem to be content with messing with our heads rather than murdering us or themselves. In other words, I suggest that technology is a prerequisite for deliberate self-annihilation, but we have no data on how likely it is. “Since we cannot preclude the high possibility of annihilation, [this result] suggests that most of the potential complex life within the Galaxy may still be very young,” the scientists explain. That means there could be a proliferation, but it’s of other civilizations that can’t push out into the galaxy yet—just like us. Translation: we don't know shit, but we're gonna speculate anyway. And just to reiterate, nothing about evolution requires the emergence of a species with technological capabilities. I have no doubt we'll find "life" elsewhere. Just not, you know, Klingons or Vulcans. So. Anyway. I know I've ranted about this sort of shit before, but it's one of my prime annoyances, so you get to hear about it again. And probably will also in the future. |
| Hey, this time it's not a war. Well... kind of not a war. When most people think of the 1980s, they think of the movies, music and hairstyles of the era. And generally, they mock these things, forgetting that, 40 years from now, our movies, music and hairstyles will be mocked. To be fair, today's music sucks almost as bad as it did in the 80s. Oh, there are (and were) exceptions, but for the most part, the 80s were a musical wasteland for me, broken up only by the presence of three great Springsteen albums, Pat Benatar, the continued existence of Rush, and the debut of Melissa Etheridge. But I digress. That's what most people think about when they encounter something about the 80s. Me? I mostly remember the Axis of Evil, which was centered around Reagan and Thatcher, the ascendance of whom proved to me that this world was too wicked for me to ever be responsible for bringing a child into. Periodically, someone will bring up the idea that women should run the world, that they'd do a better job of it. I reply with "Margaret Thatcher." At which point they shout, "SHE DOESN'T COUNT." Now, I generally try to avoid the Big Taboos in here: politics, religion, and sex; and today's anniversary contains all of these things. Well, okay, maybe not sex. Unless you're into that sort of thing, which, hey, you do you. As with religion and politics. In the address, Thatcher offered a theological justification for her ideas on capitalism and the market economy. You know what's interesting about theology? You can use it to justify anything. During the time when slavery was a thing here in the US, the pro-slavery people used religion to justify their ownership of people , and abolitionists used religion to fight against it. Who was right? Obviously the latter, but it wasn't a religious victory.What people think happens is: they follow their religion and their ideals spring from that. Given, however, that the same religion (and I'm talking about pretty much any of them here) can provoke such vastly opposing ideals, it seems to me that, instead, people come to some conclusion and then reverse-engineer their religion to support it. So you get, for example, what we have here in the US: different Christian denominations preaching opposing things, like "poverty is a virtue" and "prosperity is a virtue." That particular dichotomy echoes some of the stuff Thatcher said in her address. As the link above doesn't contain the actual text of her speech, here it is. The UK is, of course, a completely different country from (they would say "to") the US. We made sure of that back in the 18th century. They're explicitly a theocracy; we are not (though there's a strong effort to make us into one). And yet, I often note parallels. When they lean right, we lean right. When they lean left, we lean left. When we have high unemployment, they tend to have high unemployment, and the reverse. We may be two countries separated by an ocean and a common language, but for whatever reason, our fates are linked. I'm not implying any directional causation here, only correlation. Which is one reason I find it interesting that some of the stuff Thatcher said in her speech on this day in 1988 is still echoing down the corridors of time. We are told we must work and use our talents to create wealth. "If a man will not work he shall not eat" wrote St. Paul to the Thessalonians. This particular quote stood out to me as, perhaps, a reason why the speech was mocked as the Sermon on the Mound. In the actual Sermon on the Mount, as recounted in the NT, Jesus is reported to have said: “Why take ye thought for clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” As an outsider to both religion and UK politics, these statements strike me as incompatible. Oh, sure, you can do mental gymnastics to attempt to reconcile them -- see my above comment about theology -- but the Paul quote seems to be a straightforward call for toxic productivity, while the Jesus quote encourages slacking off. Again, as an outsider, the tension between Jesus and Paul seems to me to be the fundamental cognitive dissonance of Christianity. Personally, I'm on Jesus' side on this issue. To assert absolute moral values is not to claim perfection for ourselves. No true Christian could do that. I don't know if this is irony or not: there is a logical fallacy called the No True Scotsman Fallacy. It goes something like this: Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Person B: "But my uncle Angus is a Scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge." Person A: "But no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." So there was Thatcher, addressing a church in Scotland, explicitly invoking the No True Scotsman fallacy. I'm gonna go ahead and call that irony. When Abraham Lincoln spoke in his famous Gettysburg speech of 1863 of "government of the people, by the people, and for the people", he gave the world a neat definition of democracy which has since been widely and enthusiastically adopted. But what he enunciated as a form of government was not in itself especially Christian, for nowhere in the Bible is the word democracy mentioned. 1) I'm using this quote as justification for ragging on the Sermon on the Mound. If Thatcher can quote an American, then by Bast's breasts, an American can quote Thatcher. 2) Nowhere in the Bible is pedophilia (UK: paedophilia) mentioned, and yet we have laws against that. For example. 3) Of course Lincoln wasn't espousing Christianity. We, unlike the UK, are not a Christian country -- despite efforts from the modern-day Axis of Evil. Lincoln's relationship with religion was, from what I've seen, complicated. A friend sent me a photo the other day. Without context, at first it was a little hard to figure out, but it finally clicked for me. The photo showed a statue of Thatcher, which for whatever reason was surrounded by a security fence. As I'm painfully aware of here in Charlottesville, statues are an endangered species these days; statues of terrible people, even moreso. I wasn't aware that their impending extinction carried over across the pond, but see above about how we tend to move in parallel. But you could still see the image of the Iron Bitch (probably bronze in this case) looming above the fence. Outside the fence, some bloke was sitting at a table selling chicken eggs. To paraphrase Chris Rock, I'm not saying that egging a statue of Thatcher, or selling the means to do so in front of the statue, is right... but I understand. Maggie, you wanted an unregulated, free market economy? Well, there it sits. |
| Just a grab bag of vocabulary today. I did, in fact, know what a quincunx is, but since most people don't and it sounds like the quest objective in a sorcerous pornography holodeck game program, I never use the word. It's kind of like why no one ever uses the word "weenus" to describe the loose skin on your elbow. Which is what it is. Here at stylist.co.uk, we like to consider ourselves wordsmiths. Just because you're sitting in a garage doesn't mean you can call yourself a car. But even so, we were stumped when it came to a list of some of the most unusual words in the English dictionary. Really? Because some of these are fairly common, at least in the US. As usual, you'll have to go to the link to see all the words. I'll just highlight a few. Flabbergast Verb: Surprise someone greatly. I've only ever seen this used in the passive sense: "I was flabbergasted." Another word that sounds vaguely criminal, but isn't. Floccinaucinihilipilification Noun: The action or habit of estimating something as worthless. This one, along with antidisestablishmentarianism, I learned early on and memorized the spelling and pronunciation. Just because I'm a nerd. Omnishambles Noun: A situation that has been comprehensively mismanaged, characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations. I don't think I've ever seen this one, but it strikes me as being very pleasantly British. Though it could be applied to either of our governments. Penumbra Noun: The partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object. Oh, for shit's sake. How is this one in any way obscure or unusual? Sure, it's not an everyday word like "drink" or "intricate," but I think I first encountered it in a children's astronomy book in relation to lunar eclipses. Anyway, no, I don't expect highbrow literature from Stylist. It's not, after all, Cracked. But I'm a sucker for an interesting word list, or at least a list of interesting words, so here you go. |
| "Invalid Item" prompt today. The biggest plus for living in your town/area It's not Cleveland. Seriously, though, I've already covered this: the proliferation of breweries both in and around town. I've mentioned several of the more urban ones, but there are just as many outside town. But it's not just beer. No, lest anyone start to wonder if I can only think about One Thing, nothing could be further from the truth. For example, we also have, right here in town, one of the few sake breweries in the US. While it's not the best sake, it's ours. There are also several cideries in the area, making delicious beverage from apples and pears. In addition, there's the wineries. Those aren't technically in town, either, but the surrounding area is home to a large number of vineyards. As I mentioned before, it was Jefferson's idea to plant some French vines in the area, as he figured the climate was somewhat similar to parts of France. The attempt wasn't very successful. But science advanced over 200 years, and in the 1970s, on a nearby farm dominated by the ruins of a house also designed by Jefferson, an oenologist figured out the trick to producing relatively large quantities of delicious spoiled grape juice. That vineyard is still around. I got married there once. I don't know why, but they shared their secret with other vineyards. If you've ever wondered about the explosion of wineries over the past 40 years when you're driving through unlikely places (like Indiana or New Jersey), well, you have Barboursville to thank for that. One time, I was in California, a place much better known for its wines. Whilst sampling some good ones, I was talking to the owner (it was a small place) and told him I was from Virginia. He scoffed at the idea of Virginia wine. I of course took it poorly. The next time I was there, I brought with me a bottle of Viogner, one of the grapes that do really well around here, to give to him. Look, I'm not saying we're as good as France or California, or even a good Argentinian Merlot or an Australian Shiraz, but our vineyards don't suck and, you know... shop local. We're also home to Trump Vineyards, about which the less said the better. Naturally, it's the one wine I won't drink. I can't end this without also discussing distilleries. Our neighbors in Kentucky and Tennessee get all the publicity when it comes to distilled spirits (primarily bourbon and rye). And for the most part, it's well-deserved. But recently, we've become home to several small distilleries, including Vitae in town, and Silverback out in the country. Decent product from both of them. Now, plenty of locations have a good selection of fine fermented and distilled beverages, but the particular combination here makes the town a great place to live. So you see, I don't just think about One Thing. |
First of all, I want to thank everyone involved in this year's Quill awards: nominators, judges, and espeically JayNaNoOhNo  for selecting this blog once again. Also congrats to all the other Quill nominees and winners. I'm grateful. But I'm also pissed off, because that means I have to keep up the quality and avoid slacking off, which violates my ethical principles.That said, today's link doesn't require a lot of brainpower. In fact, the less, the better. Why Is Minneapolis-based Tattersall Distilling making vodka for Arby’s? The fast food chain is releasing an “extremely limited” line of fry-flavored vodkas, and it tapped two Minneapolis companies to help. I'm sure you'd expect me, a soi-disant connoisseur (goddammit, French lessons) of quality adult beverage, to have Opinions on this. After all, I've come down strongly against Chicago "pizza," Cincinnatti "chili," and several other abominations of the Midwest. And, well, I do have opinions, but it's more complicated than that. Arby’s really is releasing two variations of fry-flavored vodka, and two Minneapolis liquor companies are helping with the rollout. Hurk. Arby’s picked Minneapolis-based Tattersall Distilling to develop the liquor and Surdyk’s to distribute it. I've only been to Minneapolis once, and I focused on beer; I'd never heard of Tattersall. Some of their stuff looks quite good. They even have an Aquavit, which is rare in the US, and is an example of yet another name for a distilled spirit that roughly translates to "water of life." Appropriately.Slated to be available exclusively online starting Nov. 18, the vodka will come in two flavors: curly fry and crinkle fry. And yes, there’s a difference between the two, said Kreidler. Both are potato vodkas, but the crinkle fries are flavored with Kosher salt and sugar, while the curly fries are flavored with cayenne, paprika, onion, and black pepper, he said. I have a pepper vodka in my stash. Ghost pepper. I keep meaning to make Bloody Marys with it. Incidentally, there's a persistent misconception that all vodka (which is not "life water" but just "little water") is potato vodka. It's not. You can make vodka from just about anything you can distill: yeast eats sugar, and it's basic chemistry to convert starches into sugars. The whole point of vodka is to distill it so that the taste of the original grain is barely noticeable, if at all. But then they keep adding flavors to the stuff, like vanilla or chocolate or, as I noted above, ghost pepper. A lot of people like it, as is evidenced by the fact that they keep selling it. For me, the jury's still out. And yet potato is really the only choice for something like this. Since the announcement on Tuesday, the response from consumers has been varied. On Instagram, one user decried the vodkas as “heinous swill.” Others accused Tattersall of being a “sell-out.” But there were plenty of social media users who seemed excited at the prospect of fry-flavored liquor. Well, they got people talking about it and forming opinions before even trying the vodka. Mission accomplished. “You really can’t claim to be ‘craft’ and then attach yourself to a massive fast food chain,” Keller says. “That doesn’t exactly present well to an existing audience. … Consumer culture sees right through that stuff.” Yeah, that's Gatekeeping 101. Now, this article was from last November. I haven't looked into it since then. As it was intended as a limited release, it's probably a -- pun intended, of course -- flash in the pan. That's okay; I have no burning desire to sample it. And yeah, I do think it sounds like an abomination, but I don't give a shit about the corporate connection. Also, if it sounds good to you, and you can find some? Try it. If it doesn't? Don't drink it. Just... if someone tries to make Big Mac flavored vodka, don't tell me; I don't want to know. |
The industry is/was your town/area noted for? Brains. Also, tourism. Those two industries are incompatible. As I noted a couple of weeks ago in "Charlottesville" , this town probably started as a rest area. Not a destination, but a place to spend the night and drink while on the way from an actual place to another actual place. Tourists still come and go.As for "brains," I'm making a pun. A lame pun, but still a pun. These days, people only care about college for two things: 1) job preparation and 2) sportsball. But in the good old days, a college -- or, in this case, a university, the distinction between which is still a bit hazy to me -- was a place to expand one's mind. After UVA was founded in the early 1800s, Charlottesville became more of a destination. Now, instead of tourists coming and going, students came for four or more years (or in the case of Poe, one semester) before leaving. Me, I came and stayed. I just like it here. Now, I'm not saying university makes a person smarter. More knowledgeable isn't the same thing as smarter. It's the difference between being able to win a trivia contest, and developing a Grand Unified Field Theory or whatever. But one of the original purposes of a university was to expose a person to a wider range of culture, knowledge and experience than they'd have gotten in one farm or town. Times change, and thanks to faster transportation and the internet, you can get that bit anywhere. Not that either invention is without its downsides. Now, like I said, people seem to only do higher education for vocational training (I'm guilty of that myself) and sportsball. And maybe partying, which we were known for in the days before they foolishly raised the drinking age to 21. In any case, as I noted before, UVA is the largest employer in town, so it's the "industry" that drives our economy. But it's not only the college; there's a hospital affiliated with it. As with any hospital, opinions vary on it, but I consider them world-class. (They certainly do charge world-class fees. Or, rather, America-class, because we have to pay for that shit ourselves). In particular, there are only three places I'd want to go for neurological problems: Mayo, Johns Hopkins, and UVA. One of these is two miles from my house. It's where they flew Superman to when he broke his neck. Hence, "brains." As with most college towns, there are certainly other big businesses here as well, though we don't have much of the hot, sexy tech industry. Which suits me just fine; the last thing we need is a SpaceX launch facility or an Amazon whorehouse. There used to be a clothing factory here, and there are some defense-related employers as well, making us a target. And the usual assortment of retail outlets, including at least one that's unique to us. But it wouldn't be Charlottesville without UVA. And purveyors of fine fermented and distilled beverages. |
| It is a night of a lunar eclipse. The actual full moonination (I just made that up) occurs at 12:14 am (yes, I keep track of these things), which would be when the lunar orb is fully within the shadow of the Earth. That puts it way high up in the sky, to use a technical phrase from astronomy -- perfect for viewing. Usually, during a lunar eclipse, the moon takes on a deep red glow, the reflected light of every sunset and sunrise on our planet simultaneously. It's all really very cosmic. It's not all that rare; a lunar eclipse happens every few years. I'd say "once in a blue moon," but that would only make the confusion surrounding the definition of a blue moon that much worse. I've ranted about that before. I'll rant about it again. But not today. Common or not, I like to look at these things, especially now since it's the first one since I got new eyeballs. Naturally, the sky where I am is completely covered by a thick blanket of clouds. I should probably be more frustrated by this than I actually am, but -- though I hate it when someone goes "well, it could be worse" -- it could be worse. I got the news yesterday (Sunday) that my last remaining aunt, who had a stroke back in February, died over the weekend. She was in her 90s, so it's not like it was totally unexpected or anything, but still sad. My cousin told me the funeral would be on Wednesday. I went online and started looking for near-last-minute transportation, because I still don't have a car. "Oh, you have to travel in two days? You must be desperate. Here, let us give you the highest price we possibly can." Usually I take a train to NYC, because it's a lot less stressful even if it takes longer. But the trains were booked solid. Still, one cool thing about our little airport here in Charlottesville is that they have daily nonstop flights to La Guardia. That's flights, plural. No puddle-jumping to IAD and getting drunk in the airport bar while waiting for your connection, and lots of options to choose from -- all remarkably pricey on short notice. Right after I booked the ticket, he called to inform me that, well, no, the funeral would be held in two weeks instead. On Memorial Day weekend. To his credit, he offered to reimburse me for canceling my really very goddamned expensive booked flight. I mean, seriously, I've flown to Vegas for less. Shit, I've flown to bloody England for less, but that was over a decade ago so maybe it doesn't count. It's pretty close to what I paid for a trip to goddamned Maui. Problem is -- setting aside for the moment the absolute joy that traveling on Memorial Day weekend is -- I just can't go that weekend. My housemate has her own family plans, and has had them for some time. We have pets. Finding a holiday weekend cat-sitter on short notice is harder than watching an eclipse through the clouds, and I'm not leaving the cats alone. So it looks like I'll miss the funeral. Hopefully I can take the trip sometime in June or July, go visit my cousin, see the grave where she'll be buried with my mom, her other sister, her brother, and her parents. Still mostly cloudy here, though I just looked up and saw a single star. It looks like Mars but it's in the wrong place, almost directly overhead. I don't think it's Antares, either; that should be closer to the moon. I can't really tell what it is, because I don't see any other stars to get my bearings. The whole neighborhood is dark. I think everyone's trying to look at the sky. Ah. The clouds parted, briefly, and I got a glimpse of the blood-red moon. Mission accomplished. Oh, incidentally, the airline completely refunded my ticket price. If I were a total asshole, I'd tell him it was nonrefundable and collect the money, but I'm only a partial asshole. I'm not entirely in the shadow, you see. Or, well, technically, right now I am, but at least I'm looking at the stars. |
| I might have overindulged earlier, which is why I'm running a little late today. Just as well that this one doesn't require a lot of brain power, because I'm pretty short on that right now. I simply found this story interesting. It's related to civil engineering, my profession, but even without that I just think it's cool. “While studying these fountains early on, I realized that they were unique, but neglected and not really spoken of,” he says. “The city seemed to have forgotten them.” It pained him when he read about the demolition of pyaaus, or water fountains, and made it his mission to protect as many as possible. While the person quoted here, Rahul Chemburkar, is an architect and not a civil engineer, the professions are related. Architects get to be more artistic, though. Water supply (along with waste management) is one of the most important aspects of being able to live in cities. “It is our moral duty to protect this part of the city’s heritage,” he says. “And if we could revive this idea [of public drinking fountains], it would be in contrast to the plastic bottles we drink from.” Access to clean water is a basic human need. It's harder in cities. What I like about this article is that in Mumbai, it's more than just a public works project; it's part of the city's character. This is where you'll have to click on the link to actually see pictures and drawings of the fountains in question. They are marvels of civic art. The Keshavji Nayak pyaau, inaugurated in 1876, looks nothing like a public drinking fountain—it resembles a pavilion or shrine, with red sandstone pilasters, a cupola covered in carved peacocks, and statues of bulls at the entrance, a feature seen in many Hindu temples. For instance, there's a pretty cool before-and-after pic of that one. Beyond restoration, Chemburkar conducts frequent walks and lectures, via the Mumbai Pyaau Project, and sketches postcards of the fountains. I went on a walk last March, before the pandemic, and, along with architecture students, tourists, curious locals, learned about structures that I would have never noticed. The walk also nudged the group to contemplate today’s water-supply challenges. And of course, there's a lot more to water access than just having fountains available. Just ask the Southwest US right now. But I can't be arsed to get into the politics of it in my current condition, so I'll just leave this here as something cool to share. |
| And now for another fragment of history... As with most of my oeuvre, I select these things semi-randomly, and in this case, I find myself way out of my comfort zone. That's okay. That's one reason I'm doing this. Portugal is not a country I think about often. I mean, sure, I have a vague desire to visit there, but I have a vague desire to visit lots of places. I'm aware that it was once a major naval power -- for one thing, they achieved what Columbus failed to do, find a sea route to Asia -- and that it once controlled Brazil. Other than that, the true importance of Portugal to me has always been the existence of port wine, which is delicious and can get really expensive. So, apparently, Portugal was a monarchy up until 1910, at which point the peasants revolted. This was, of course, long after France, a few years before Russia, and don't ask me about Spain because that history is a real mess. This Wiki page is particularly questionable, and when that happens I usually look at their listed sources for clarification. But in this case, all the sources are books that I can't be arsed to buy, and web pages that are in -- believe it or not -- Portuguese. Half of them are 404 anyway. But of course that's not stopping me from riffing on it. Anyway, from what I can gather, the May 14 Revolt was a revolt of the revolt. That is, the supposedly representational government that got installed after the 1910 overthrow of the monarchy. According to this Wiki page , "The Republican Party presented itself as the only one that had a programme that was capable of returning to the country its lost status and place Portugal on the way of progress."Wow, history really does echo, doesn't it? Point is, as is often the case in these situations, the government they replaced the government with was dysfunctional, so another revolt was called for in order to restore the values that the first revolt was supposed to have installed but didn't. At least that's my take on it; like I said, there's not a lot of detail on that page. The insurrection was, from what I can gather, swift, bloody, and successful. At least, at first. A few years later, there would be yet another bloody revolution, this one getting the country back to a dictatorship. It wouldn't be until 1975 that the country returned to some semblance of democracy. From this, I have learned several things, including but not limited to:  Sometimes, revolution is necessary and ultimately beneficial, if bloody I would not have wanted to live in Portugal before 1975 I'd venture to guess that most people don't know this bit of history, from which it follows that they are doomed to repeat it. Democracy is fragileThose bullets are meant to be bottles of port. Preferably 40 year vintage port, which at this point could have been produced after Portugal achieved a semi-stable democracy. Port gets its name from the city of Porto, where, historically, the wine was shipped out to the great benefit of other countries (and the financial benefit of the vineyards and Portugal). Oh, and one other interesting bit. The name "Portugal" is of somewhat disputed origin, but is most recently derived from the Roman name for it, Portus Cale. You can guess what Portus means. Cale is the disputed part . It might have been a Celtic word for "port," which would make the name of the country translate to "Port port."I like that. As a final disclaimer, I might have gotten some of this shit wrong; like I said, it's not something I've looked into before. Don't take my words (or Wikipedia's) as the gospel truth. Just consider this another port in the storm. |
| I don't know anything about this source, except that I religiously ignored its print version like I do every other magazine at the checkout counter. Or did back before I was too lazy to even shop for my own groceries. And the menu headers don't give me a lot of confidence: "Breast Cancer Starter Kit." That's... ambiguous, at best, and maybe a little horrific. Anyway, the article. I'd view the "workout" bit with skepticism, but whatever. I'm more interested in the questions. Obviously, I'm not going to paste them here. Hell, I can't be arsed to read all 170. But of course I have comments on parts of it. Starting with the lede. The art of conversation is changing. Always does. Sometimes we are so connected to our screens that we forget to “connect” with those around us. Hey. Guess what. The people on the other end of that screen? They're people. Just like the ones around you, only better because you've selected them. Sure, you may be using the screen in solitude to play Wordle or check your stock portfolio with existential despair -- which is your prerogative -- but a lot of people use *shudder* social media, or text. They're talking to other people. They're connecting. There's nothing magical or preferred about in-person communication. In fact, people tend to sweat and fart, which you can't generally smell over the internet. Fuck right off with your technophobic bullshit. Once in a while, it’s nice to sit down, relax, and just talk. Even nicer with alcohol. But, chatting can quickly get boring when you stick to small talk. Which is why I usually jump right in to math or science. This has the bonus effect of making most people go away. After all, there is only so much to say about the weather. The weather is not a safe topic of conversation. Pretty soon, someone mentions climate change, and then there's inevitably an argument. Luckily, posing a couple of hypothetical questions can quickly turn a dull chat into an invigorating conversation. Isn't that what Cards Against Humanity is for? Try out these hypotheticals the next time you want to have a real conversation. It occurs to me that Lilli 🧿 ☕  could mine this for her QOTD forum. That way, we can discuss them online, as Nature intended, rather than face-to-face.The article, of course, goes on to list the actual questions. Some of them are silly, as expected. Others might actually have some value. A few aren't all that hypothetical. The irony here, if you can call it that, is that if I were to use the list as intended -- in person, in meatspace, talking with another moving sack of mostly water -- there's no way I'd remember any of these questions. Nope, I'd whip out my communicator, find the website, and scroll down to the questions, thus negating the dubious benefits of being in meatspace in the first place. But that's okay. It's not going to happen. I'm just leaving this list here for you to look at if you're interested. And if you want to address any of these questions in the comments here, go for it. I shot my wad complaining about the article's intro. |
"Invalid Item" All of this traveling has made Andre hungry, and we don't want a Hangry monkey on our hands! So today's prompt is about food, and the best place for our buddy to eat in your town! What food or foods are your town/area noted for? What's the prevalent cuisine? Where is your favorite place to eat out in your neck of the woods? I mentioned some of the more important food places (the ones that also offer fine fermented and/or distilled adult beverages) in last week's entry, here: "A Tour of the Town" . To reiterate, there are several purveyors of glorious nectar that also serve delicious meals.As Charlottesville is a university town, it attracts a wide range of cuisines. Just off the top of my head, in addition to what can only be described as American food, we have Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Belgian, French, Indian, Afghani, Mediterranean, Italian, and several others. There also used to be an excellent South African restaurant (with a bar), but, sadly, it fell victim to the pandemic. That's of course in addition to various familiar fast-food and casual chains. Oddly enough, one thing we lack is a Denny's. And when I was in college here, we didn't even have a Waffle House. We had to get our late-night bleary-eyed food fix from Hardee's and a local deli that's not around anymore. Now there's a Waffle House less than a mile from me, and I haven't ended up there in years. You don't "go" to Waffle House. You "end up" at Waffle House. It's right next to a Taco Hell, and I call the driveway between them "Desperation Alley." While there's no one prevalent cuisine -- though at one time, you couldn't throw a chopstick without hitting a Chinese restaurant -- we're serious about our restaurants here. Someone told me once that we have more restaurants per capita than New York City. That seems to not be the case -- sources vary depending on how one defines the local population and what sorts of restaurants we're talking about, not to mention the ever-changing landscape of food service -- but we certainly have a lot of choice here. Obviously on an absolute basis, NYC has more and more varied eateries, but it's also dealing with over 150 times the population (not counting tourists). As for favorite place? Well, I don't have one. I try not to get too attached to restaurants, as they flicker open and closed like lighthouse shutters doing Morse Code. I learned that lesson hard a few years ago: my favorite restaurant in the universe was The Raven, three hours away in Virginia Beach. I'm still experiencing grief from its closing. No, stop laughing; I'm serious here. But if you looked at my credit card statements, a) you'd be appalled and b) you'd see Timberwood Tap House standing out as my most frequent destination, right up there with Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Both of them are within walking distance of my house, and across a parking lot from each other; they both serve excellent food, and they both have a wide-ranging, varied list of beers on tap. Of course, I mostly go to the Alamo for movies, but I also find time while I'm there to order food and beer. With Timberwood, well, when restaurants reopened after the pandemic, it became my habit on Mondays to walk over there, sit on the patio, and enjoy lunch with beer and music. Even when it was cold outside. But I like variety, and those aren't my only destinations. There's a local Mexican chain called Guadalajara, for instance, one of which is in walking distance in the other direction, and of course they also have tequila. And of course Three Notch'd, the brewery, is only two miles away. I'd walk there even if I had a car, because, well... beer. I can't leave this without calling out one of my other local regular vendors of victuals: Bodo's Bagels. They have three locations, and some say their bagels are superior even to the ones in New York. To which I can only say: spend more time in New York. Regardless, they're very good, even if they don't serve booze, and even though it is the sort of place where you can hear people complaining at the next table about food as cultural appropriation whilst eating a bacon, egg, and cheese bagel. And hey, if you get bored with the local fare, Richmond is an hour's drive away, and DC, two. Now I'm hungry. I'll resist staggering over to Waffle House, though. |
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