If we have a base 10 number system, then where did the dozen come from? Also, somebody must have been thinking in terms of 12 when they invented the foot, which is divided into 12 inches. I read somewhere that the foot measurement was standardized by lining up 12 guys toe to heel, and dividing the combined length of their feet by 12. The division of the foot into 12 inches, may have come from the fact that the last joint on people's fingers average out to about an inch, and it may be that 12 of them averages out to the length of people's feet. Then there's the fathom, which is equal to six feet. That may have come from the fact that span of a man's outstretched arms, from finger tip to finger tip, is around six feet. When early sailors threw out a sounding line to measure the depth of the water under their ship, they might have measured it that way as they pulled it back in. Then there's the cubit, which originally was the distance between your elbow and the tip of your middle finger, and was eventually standardized at 18 inches. Noah's Ark was measured in cubits, and I seem to remember that the Egyptian pyramids were also.
I know a funny true story about fathoms. I know it's true because I witnessed it. I was out on the Straits of Mackinac with some scuba divers, back in the 70s. We were watching this ocean going freighter a few miles away, and somebody commented that it didn't seem to be moving. Somebody else commented that it was pretty close to the Poe Reef lighthouse, where the water was quite shallow, and that it just might have run aground. Somebody turned our radio to the Coast Guard emergency channel and we listened in on the unfolding drama. Sure enough, she was hard aground. I read in the paper later that the ship was from Yugoslavia, but whoever was operating the radio spoke in English with no discernible accent. "I can't understand how this happened", he said, "According to my chart, the water here is 20 fathoms deep, and our ship only draws five fathoms fully loaded." The Coast Guard guy informed him that Great Lakes charts measure water depth in feet, not fathoms like the ocean charts do, which explained why the ship was hard aground. There was no significant damage to the hull, but they had to bring in another ship to offload their cargo, which took about a week, before they could refloat and get back underway.
Friday, December 30, 2016
Getting wired
Internet connection was down again, a little more than 24 hours after the new wifi modem was installed. WTF? Numerous attempts at re-initializing failed, which made me a bit grumpy. Another (toll free) call to AT&T was in order this morning.
Apparently, the fault was with the connection and not the modem and a service call was required. I was told that the service guy would come by in a time frame of two to three hours, which was fine by me. Five minutes after that call I received a call from the service guy who said he would be arriving in 20-30 minutes. Cool beans, I'm thinking. Eight minutes later he's ringing my doorbell, even cooler beans. He hooks up his magic box and proceeds to get to work, no visit to the basement wiring required. By tweaking the signal strength to the modem all problems were resolved. Total time from the start of the phone call until the time the service guy left was about an hour; I don't think it can get any better than that. Say what you will about faceless corporations, I have to say that AT&T, in this case, was really on the ball.
-----
Wiring, especially for computer peripherals, has always given me a pain in the keister. In most cases the wires are too damn long; I don't need a four foot mouse cable to a laptop sitting on a table, two feet is more than enough. It seems like there is standard of six feet for a lot of cables, a number surely pulled out of somebody's ass. Usually I can shorten the cable by looping it and securing it with zip-ties, but in the past I've had to roll my own.
My first computer had one serial port and one parallel port, but I had a lot of stuff to connect so I used those old A/B, A/B/C, and A/B/C/D switch boxes. The standard six foot cables were very difficult to loop, I think the parallel cables had 36 wires and did not bend easily but the 50 wire SCSI cables were worse. I ended up getting the stuff I needed from Radio Shack, back when you could buy the necessary connectors and cable by the foot. A lot of fiddly soldering was required, but if I needed a two foot cable I made a two foot cable, dammit. The shortest parallel cable I made was about eight inches long. Good times, but now they're all obsolete and sitting in a box in the closet.
Now, with the construction or modification of my 3D printers the wires are too short and I have to splice in an extra two feet or so of wire. The five stepper motors each have four wires, everything else has two wires, and they're all color coded. But I use gray wire for all the extensions, and as Mr. Beagles pointed out, one wire at a time. Very tedious, but it works out okay and I haven't fried anything (yet).
-----
Problem solving is a skill I've seen in some people, but in others, not so much. As an educator, perhaps Uncle Ken can elaborate on his observations. Are kids that like puzzles and math naturally better problem solvers; is it an inherent quality or can it be learned? I was thinking of those old grammar school exercises with fractions and long division, not something we usually encounter in our daily lives. But arithmetic and math may be a child's first encounter with logical thinking, or so it seems to me.
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Base 12 is unlikely to replace our decimal notation, but it may still have it's uses. We already use Base 2, Base 3, Base 8, and Base 16 in computer sciences, so there's probably a practical application for Base 12 even if we haven't found it yet.
-----
John Horner? No need to be so formal, Uncle Ken. You can call him Jack.
Apparently, the fault was with the connection and not the modem and a service call was required. I was told that the service guy would come by in a time frame of two to three hours, which was fine by me. Five minutes after that call I received a call from the service guy who said he would be arriving in 20-30 minutes. Cool beans, I'm thinking. Eight minutes later he's ringing my doorbell, even cooler beans. He hooks up his magic box and proceeds to get to work, no visit to the basement wiring required. By tweaking the signal strength to the modem all problems were resolved. Total time from the start of the phone call until the time the service guy left was about an hour; I don't think it can get any better than that. Say what you will about faceless corporations, I have to say that AT&T, in this case, was really on the ball.
-----
Wiring, especially for computer peripherals, has always given me a pain in the keister. In most cases the wires are too damn long; I don't need a four foot mouse cable to a laptop sitting on a table, two feet is more than enough. It seems like there is standard of six feet for a lot of cables, a number surely pulled out of somebody's ass. Usually I can shorten the cable by looping it and securing it with zip-ties, but in the past I've had to roll my own.
My first computer had one serial port and one parallel port, but I had a lot of stuff to connect so I used those old A/B, A/B/C, and A/B/C/D switch boxes. The standard six foot cables were very difficult to loop, I think the parallel cables had 36 wires and did not bend easily but the 50 wire SCSI cables were worse. I ended up getting the stuff I needed from Radio Shack, back when you could buy the necessary connectors and cable by the foot. A lot of fiddly soldering was required, but if I needed a two foot cable I made a two foot cable, dammit. The shortest parallel cable I made was about eight inches long. Good times, but now they're all obsolete and sitting in a box in the closet.
Now, with the construction or modification of my 3D printers the wires are too short and I have to splice in an extra two feet or so of wire. The five stepper motors each have four wires, everything else has two wires, and they're all color coded. But I use gray wire for all the extensions, and as Mr. Beagles pointed out, one wire at a time. Very tedious, but it works out okay and I haven't fried anything (yet).
-----
Problem solving is a skill I've seen in some people, but in others, not so much. As an educator, perhaps Uncle Ken can elaborate on his observations. Are kids that like puzzles and math naturally better problem solvers; is it an inherent quality or can it be learned? I was thinking of those old grammar school exercises with fractions and long division, not something we usually encounter in our daily lives. But arithmetic and math may be a child's first encounter with logical thinking, or so it seems to me.
-----
Base 12 is unlikely to replace our decimal notation, but it may still have it's uses. We already use Base 2, Base 3, Base 8, and Base 16 in computer sciences, so there's probably a practical application for Base 12 even if we haven't found it yet.
-----
John Horner? No need to be so formal, Uncle Ken. You can call him Jack.
fussbudgets
Well I don't know nothing about no GFI, don't care to know nothing neither. When the towers were built in the early sixties they were pretty innovative. The main innovation being that they are all electric, and then there were other innovations some of which never caught on so we have some peculiarities.
Wires, you know, one wire is a simple thing, and two not much worse, but if you get any more wires things become exponentially complicated. Oh you can go back and trace every wire and get them all straightened out, and sit back like little John Horner and think what a good boy your are, but by the time you have pulled out that plum the recently tamed wires will resume their tangled nature. Nothing to be done about it.
But I am a firm believer in breaking down a big problem into its constituent little problems and solving them one by one and then putting them all together. That was one of the first things they taught us in computer school, when you are writing a program break it up into those little boxes, like in a flow chart. Seems like flow charts had a big vogue twenty, thirty years ago, but you don't see them much anymore, My theory of what happened is that the fussbudgets got a hold of them. If everybody is using flowcharts they reasoned, well we ought to do them right, so then they made up a whole bunch of rules to make sure it was done right, and once you get to making up rules why it's hard to stop yourself, and eventually it got to be such a pain in the ass that people stopped using them, or at any rate, showing them to anybody.
That is certainly the way it is with grammar. People have been using language for, at least 60,000 years says the google machine. I reckon at the beginning it was pretty loose, all we were interested in was figuring out what the guy on the next rock said, but once we invented agriculture and got culture why then certain ways of speaking became preferable to other ways of speaking. Mainly the ways of the rich and the powerful became the proper way, while the ways of the guys sweeping out the barns became uncouth.
Like for instance ain't (for instance itself is a bit uncouth, but see sometimes you can use an uncouth term to imply a certain intimacy, a certain tell it like it is attitude, but I do go on). For some reason back in our grade school days this innocuous contraction (am not) was singled out as the exemplar of uncouth talk. I don't know why, and I'm not (ain't) gonna bother to look it up at this point.
I'm guessing I used it when I was quite young, You know there is that lore of young kids, figures of speech, schoolyard games, that they pick up from other kids and by the time they outgrow them they have already passed them on to other kids, so that the lore remains unchanged for generations. Like for instance when we were playing It, the tree or the fencepost you could cling to and be immune to tags was called gule. I expect this was some kind of corruption of goal, but it was not something I concerned myself with at that age.
Anyway somewhere along the line I stopped using ain't, except for effect, and I don't know anybody who uses it regularly. Except there is this one woman in my improv group who says it all the time. She's maybe ten years older than me, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I don't know. I would love to ask her about it, but I'm afraid she might think I was insulting her, calling her uncouth as it were.
Just a couple more days now Gentleman and the yearly recaps will be over and we shall be standing alone and unafraid, but maybe a little chilly staring out across the vast snowfield that is January and February and much of March. See you then.
Wires, you know, one wire is a simple thing, and two not much worse, but if you get any more wires things become exponentially complicated. Oh you can go back and trace every wire and get them all straightened out, and sit back like little John Horner and think what a good boy your are, but by the time you have pulled out that plum the recently tamed wires will resume their tangled nature. Nothing to be done about it.
But I am a firm believer in breaking down a big problem into its constituent little problems and solving them one by one and then putting them all together. That was one of the first things they taught us in computer school, when you are writing a program break it up into those little boxes, like in a flow chart. Seems like flow charts had a big vogue twenty, thirty years ago, but you don't see them much anymore, My theory of what happened is that the fussbudgets got a hold of them. If everybody is using flowcharts they reasoned, well we ought to do them right, so then they made up a whole bunch of rules to make sure it was done right, and once you get to making up rules why it's hard to stop yourself, and eventually it got to be such a pain in the ass that people stopped using them, or at any rate, showing them to anybody.
That is certainly the way it is with grammar. People have been using language for, at least 60,000 years says the google machine. I reckon at the beginning it was pretty loose, all we were interested in was figuring out what the guy on the next rock said, but once we invented agriculture and got culture why then certain ways of speaking became preferable to other ways of speaking. Mainly the ways of the rich and the powerful became the proper way, while the ways of the guys sweeping out the barns became uncouth.
Like for instance ain't (for instance itself is a bit uncouth, but see sometimes you can use an uncouth term to imply a certain intimacy, a certain tell it like it is attitude, but I do go on). For some reason back in our grade school days this innocuous contraction (am not) was singled out as the exemplar of uncouth talk. I don't know why, and I'm not (ain't) gonna bother to look it up at this point.
I'm guessing I used it when I was quite young, You know there is that lore of young kids, figures of speech, schoolyard games, that they pick up from other kids and by the time they outgrow them they have already passed them on to other kids, so that the lore remains unchanged for generations. Like for instance when we were playing It, the tree or the fencepost you could cling to and be immune to tags was called gule. I expect this was some kind of corruption of goal, but it was not something I concerned myself with at that age.
Anyway somewhere along the line I stopped using ain't, except for effect, and I don't know anybody who uses it regularly. Except there is this one woman in my improv group who says it all the time. She's maybe ten years older than me, so maybe that has something to do with it, but I don't know. I would love to ask her about it, but I'm afraid she might think I was insulting her, calling her uncouth as it were.
Just a couple more days now Gentleman and the yearly recaps will be over and we shall be standing alone and unafraid, but maybe a little chilly staring out across the vast snowfield that is January and February and much of March. See you then.
Thursday, December 29, 2016
One Wire at a Time
I had to go somewhere last night and I got back pretty late, so I didn't get online.
A nest of wires can be intimidating if you think of all of them together, but there is an easier way. All the newer homes have things in them called "ground fault interrupters". They are basically circuit breakers, but not like the ones in your breaker box, which is the thing that replaced fuse boxes. These guys are part of a plug outlet, and they are supposed to cut the power more quickly if you do something like drop a running hair dryer into a bathtub full of water. The GRI doesn't just cut the power to that one outlet, it cuts the power to the whole circuit of which that one outlet is a part. We have one in the kitchen and another one in one of the bathrooms. Apparently both of our bathrooms are on the same circuit because, if that one GFI kicks out, both bathrooms go dead. For years we had a problem with that one. It would often kick out if the exhaust fan in either bathroom had been running and someone shut it off.
I knew a guy who was a licensed electrician and asked him about it. He said that our GFI was probably too sensitive and that it needed to be replaced. I asked him if he wanted the job, and he said that I should be able to do it myself, that it was no more difficult than changing a light switch except that there were more wires involved, I seem to remember that it was eight. I asked him if they were color coded, and he said that they probably were, but that the color coding system was not the same in every building. He tried to explain the various systems that were in common usage, but I wasn't getting it, and I didn't want to waste any more of his valuable time.
I don't know how many years it was that we put up with that breaker kicking out. It's funny how you can get used to something like that and it just seems normal after awhile. Then one day the GFI in the kitchen kicked out and it wouldn't reset. My electrician friend had retired by then, so I called another one that was recommended by our plumbing and heating people. It was pretty late in the day so I didn't expect them to send anyone out till tomorrow but, as luck would have it, they had a guy who was already in the neighborhood on another job. When he finished that job, he came to our house because it was right on his way home.
He also replaced the GFI in the bathroom while he was here, and I watched him both times. All the wires were the same color, so I was curious to see how he would figure them out. It was so simple that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself. First he took one wire off of one terminal on the old GFI, and then he connected that wire to the corresponding terminal on the new GFI. Then he took off one more wire and connected it the same way. The trick is to not have any more than one wire disconnected at one time. Easy peasy!
It occurred to me that a method like that might work in real life as well. If something seems intimidating to you, just break it down into simple steps and address one step at a time. It might not work in a case of imminent danger, like a truck bearing down on you as you stand in the middle of the road but, at times like that, you instincts will usually kick in before you could have figured out what to do anyway.
A nest of wires can be intimidating if you think of all of them together, but there is an easier way. All the newer homes have things in them called "ground fault interrupters". They are basically circuit breakers, but not like the ones in your breaker box, which is the thing that replaced fuse boxes. These guys are part of a plug outlet, and they are supposed to cut the power more quickly if you do something like drop a running hair dryer into a bathtub full of water. The GRI doesn't just cut the power to that one outlet, it cuts the power to the whole circuit of which that one outlet is a part. We have one in the kitchen and another one in one of the bathrooms. Apparently both of our bathrooms are on the same circuit because, if that one GFI kicks out, both bathrooms go dead. For years we had a problem with that one. It would often kick out if the exhaust fan in either bathroom had been running and someone shut it off.
I knew a guy who was a licensed electrician and asked him about it. He said that our GFI was probably too sensitive and that it needed to be replaced. I asked him if he wanted the job, and he said that I should be able to do it myself, that it was no more difficult than changing a light switch except that there were more wires involved, I seem to remember that it was eight. I asked him if they were color coded, and he said that they probably were, but that the color coding system was not the same in every building. He tried to explain the various systems that were in common usage, but I wasn't getting it, and I didn't want to waste any more of his valuable time.
I don't know how many years it was that we put up with that breaker kicking out. It's funny how you can get used to something like that and it just seems normal after awhile. Then one day the GFI in the kitchen kicked out and it wouldn't reset. My electrician friend had retired by then, so I called another one that was recommended by our plumbing and heating people. It was pretty late in the day so I didn't expect them to send anyone out till tomorrow but, as luck would have it, they had a guy who was already in the neighborhood on another job. When he finished that job, he came to our house because it was right on his way home.
He also replaced the GFI in the bathroom while he was here, and I watched him both times. All the wires were the same color, so I was curious to see how he would figure them out. It was so simple that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it myself. First he took one wire off of one terminal on the old GFI, and then he connected that wire to the corresponding terminal on the new GFI. Then he took off one more wire and connected it the same way. The trick is to not have any more than one wire disconnected at one time. Easy peasy!
It occurred to me that a method like that might work in real life as well. If something seems intimidating to you, just break it down into simple steps and address one step at a time. It might not work in a case of imminent danger, like a truck bearing down on you as you stand in the middle of the road but, at times like that, you instincts will usually kick in before you could have figured out what to do anyway.
numbers
Maybe it just looks like an octopus to Uncle Ken because he is so afraid of something going wrong and having to dig in and well, who knows what, good things seldom happen when Uncle Ken digs into shit. He is a big ideas guy, not a detail guy.
Time is indeed a river, unless it is like the sands in an hourglass. Actually a river is like the sands of an hourglass inasmuch as it is made up of discrete molecules. The last I heard there was still a controversy as to whether the universe is digital or analogue. And of course Objective Reality is beyond the feeble reach of time. Time is just another dimension and if properly stated I should speak of the tree in my backyard at 6:00 AM 12/29/16. I think though, if I just speak of a tree in my backyard and you don't know what kind of tree it is, and we are pretty much speaking in the present time I can just say I have a tree in my backyard.
The Vienna Circle of the 20s, including Wittgenstein and that maverick Godel were big proponents of logical positivism which I think is the same thing as, or close to anyway, Objective Reality. They had a rule at one time that they could only speak to each other in logical sentences concerning objective objects but they had to give that up when they couldn't talk to each other.
It always seemed to me, and to some others I believe, that we should use a base 12 for our numbers, that way we wouldn't run into any fractions until we got to seven which is two later than with a base of 10. Fractions are a big problem. From my substitute days it seems like this was the point where a lot of the students dropped their math enthusiasm. Up to this point everything had been pretty logical, but that thing where when you divide fractions you reverse the one on the right side and multiply just seems so arbitrary. But why Mr Schadt, Because I said so, that's why.
And back in the day they didn't have that simple notation like 3/4, which even then is not that different from 3-4 (imagine little dots above and beneath the dash, a little shocking that my keyboard doesn't have that key.). It's kind of an arrested development. Notation is big in math. If the Arabs hadn't stolen the zero form the Indians we would be up to our asses in X's, V's, L's C's and whatever. How high did the Roman numerals go? Google says M, though it appears that you can stack bars on top of it to increase it ten times, but come on.
I got lost looking back to the line about Mr Bond having his mind fragmented/ I'm sure I had a good reason. It was all tilted towards getting to title it a bagatelle of the brain. I guess Old Dog reads a ,more high toned year in review than I do. I never see that much interesting in it and it seems skewed towards sports and celebrity crapola, mere, dare I say it, bagatelles.
Time is indeed a river, unless it is like the sands in an hourglass. Actually a river is like the sands of an hourglass inasmuch as it is made up of discrete molecules. The last I heard there was still a controversy as to whether the universe is digital or analogue. And of course Objective Reality is beyond the feeble reach of time. Time is just another dimension and if properly stated I should speak of the tree in my backyard at 6:00 AM 12/29/16. I think though, if I just speak of a tree in my backyard and you don't know what kind of tree it is, and we are pretty much speaking in the present time I can just say I have a tree in my backyard.
The Vienna Circle of the 20s, including Wittgenstein and that maverick Godel were big proponents of logical positivism which I think is the same thing as, or close to anyway, Objective Reality. They had a rule at one time that they could only speak to each other in logical sentences concerning objective objects but they had to give that up when they couldn't talk to each other.
It always seemed to me, and to some others I believe, that we should use a base 12 for our numbers, that way we wouldn't run into any fractions until we got to seven which is two later than with a base of 10. Fractions are a big problem. From my substitute days it seems like this was the point where a lot of the students dropped their math enthusiasm. Up to this point everything had been pretty logical, but that thing where when you divide fractions you reverse the one on the right side and multiply just seems so arbitrary. But why Mr Schadt, Because I said so, that's why.
And back in the day they didn't have that simple notation like 3/4, which even then is not that different from 3-4 (imagine little dots above and beneath the dash, a little shocking that my keyboard doesn't have that key.). It's kind of an arrested development. Notation is big in math. If the Arabs hadn't stolen the zero form the Indians we would be up to our asses in X's, V's, L's C's and whatever. How high did the Roman numerals go? Google says M, though it appears that you can stack bars on top of it to increase it ten times, but come on.
I got lost looking back to the line about Mr Bond having his mind fragmented/ I'm sure I had a good reason. It was all tilted towards getting to title it a bagatelle of the brain. I guess Old Dog reads a ,more high toned year in review than I do. I never see that much interesting in it and it seems skewed towards sports and celebrity crapola, mere, dare I say it, bagatelles.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
...and it's back up
As promised, the new wifi modem arrived today. Dead modems must be a common occurrence as the installation info was specifically written for a replacement modem and not a new installation. The process wasn't as smooth as the original setup and took a lot longer. The initialization was supposed to take about 10-15 minutes but after twenty minutes there was still a dreaded red light and I was starting to think the problem was due to the rat's nest of wiring in the buildings basement and an AT&T guy would have to come out and solve the problem. But patience paid off and at the thirty minute mark all indicators were green and the system was back up.
There are only two wired connections to the modem: the power supply and the line that plugs into the wall connection for the naked DSL. Nothing else, but I could plug in a few ethernet cables if I needed them and two phone lines if I wanted to pony up for some land lines. I don't know why Uncle Ken has an octopus of wires.
The security issue at Starbucks is that your device is on a shared network and I think there are programs that can snoop and see what else is connected on the network. I don't follow current security protocols and maybe I'd be okay with the built-in security on my laptop but I'd rather not take the chance. I have no passwords, banking information, or other sensitive material on the laptop, but some bad actor might be able to plant some little program (spyware/malware/ransomware) to screw things up and make my life needlessly messy.
-----
Time is a constantly flowing river, is it not? The objective reality of the tree we observed last summer has changed. It's the same tree, but it also not the same tree; where there were once leafy shades of green are now barren branches. The impact of time on objective reality raises some more questions which I won't follow at this, uh, time.
Before my connection died, I stumbled on a short YouTube video that talked about the origins of the 24 hour day. We can credit the ancient Egyptians for this one, which they based on twelve stars for the period of night and extrapolated another twelve stars for an equal period of day; perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyhow, the business of sixty minutes to the hour and sixty seconds to the minute came from a Greek guy, using the base 60 numerical notation used by the Sumerians and later the Babylonians.
Base 60 is screwy, but makes a certain kind of sense. You can count up to twelve using one hand if you count the finger bones but not the fingers themselves; the thumb does the counting and sixty is evenly divisible by twelve. Sixty was chosen because it is divisible by so many smaller numbers, which must have been a big deal to those ancient folk. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 are all factors of 60. That's why we have 360 degrees in a circle, or so I've read. I still haven't figured out how to divide a circle into 360 degrees using only a compass and straight edge; I should try again.
-----
"No Mr Bond, I expect you to have your mind fragmented."
Huh? Another example of Uncle Ken testing the limits of his literary license, I suppose. No matter.
I don't understand his beef with the "year in review" bits that are popular this time of year. The crapola he refers to is from websites, newspapers, etc, that he's already familiar with and if he would break his routine and check out the yearly review from other sources he may be surprised. There will be much overlap but also some nuggets of info that he may not be aware of that happened this past year. There's a lot that happened that received little press but if you hate following links you'll never know what you didn't know.
There are only two wired connections to the modem: the power supply and the line that plugs into the wall connection for the naked DSL. Nothing else, but I could plug in a few ethernet cables if I needed them and two phone lines if I wanted to pony up for some land lines. I don't know why Uncle Ken has an octopus of wires.
The security issue at Starbucks is that your device is on a shared network and I think there are programs that can snoop and see what else is connected on the network. I don't follow current security protocols and maybe I'd be okay with the built-in security on my laptop but I'd rather not take the chance. I have no passwords, banking information, or other sensitive material on the laptop, but some bad actor might be able to plant some little program (spyware/malware/ransomware) to screw things up and make my life needlessly messy.
-----
Time is a constantly flowing river, is it not? The objective reality of the tree we observed last summer has changed. It's the same tree, but it also not the same tree; where there were once leafy shades of green are now barren branches. The impact of time on objective reality raises some more questions which I won't follow at this, uh, time.
Before my connection died, I stumbled on a short YouTube video that talked about the origins of the 24 hour day. We can credit the ancient Egyptians for this one, which they based on twelve stars for the period of night and extrapolated another twelve stars for an equal period of day; perhaps I'm misremembering. Anyhow, the business of sixty minutes to the hour and sixty seconds to the minute came from a Greek guy, using the base 60 numerical notation used by the Sumerians and later the Babylonians.
Base 60 is screwy, but makes a certain kind of sense. You can count up to twelve using one hand if you count the finger bones but not the fingers themselves; the thumb does the counting and sixty is evenly divisible by twelve. Sixty was chosen because it is divisible by so many smaller numbers, which must have been a big deal to those ancient folk. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30 are all factors of 60. That's why we have 360 degrees in a circle, or so I've read. I still haven't figured out how to divide a circle into 360 degrees using only a compass and straight edge; I should try again.
-----
"No Mr Bond, I expect you to have your mind fragmented."
Huh? Another example of Uncle Ken testing the limits of his literary license, I suppose. No matter.
I don't understand his beef with the "year in review" bits that are popular this time of year. The crapola he refers to is from websites, newspapers, etc, that he's already familiar with and if he would break his routine and check out the yearly review from other sources he may be surprised. There will be much overlap but also some nuggets of info that he may not be aware of that happened this past year. There's a lot that happened that received little press but if you hate following links you'll never know what you didn't know.
not much to say
I'm sure we also know how Illinois got that huge slice of southern Wisconsin.otherwise Illinois would have been Indiana, But after that I don't have much else.
And the Old Dog is down, sounds like a power surge fried his modem. His wifi modem. And here I am in the familiar situation of not knowing what I am talking about. Used to be you had a modem and it plugged into your phone line and into your computer and that was that. It was a little slow but it played that data music of bumps and beeps which was somewhat charming. Then I think they started putting the modems into the computers, and you plugged the computer into the phone line, but it was no longer a phone line it was a DSL or maybe cable, though it still all came out of the same hole in the wall, and then there were routers which connected to the hole in the wall and then just sent out waves that your computer and printer and other stuff I guess could pick up on, Anymore I have a cardboard box behind the computer and there is the RCN machine which has way more lights than I can tell what is going on, and the router, which sometimes I can fix things by turning it on and off and then there is an octopus of wires and cables which I hope I never have to touch, and there are several passwords somehow involved that I have written down on some scrap of paper tucked into the closet which I hope I never have to look up.
I'm a little confused about the security issues of using the computer in the library. How are they different from security issues at home? Actually wouldn't they be worse at home? And who is the other side taking names? Oh wait a minute it's not the library, it's Starbucks. Well I guess they (is this Beagles's THEY) could track you from there. Sounds like a lot of work though, to track all those clickety clackers in all the Starbucks in all the country
Well I just don't have much to say this morning. Scanning the newspaper I see that the princess has died, too bad, seemed like a nice enough girl. Then there are those mall events. For all the fighting that went on, nobody got seriously hurt which makes me think it was all some sort of prank. I will be waiting on breaking developments.
And the Old Dog is down, sounds like a power surge fried his modem. His wifi modem. And here I am in the familiar situation of not knowing what I am talking about. Used to be you had a modem and it plugged into your phone line and into your computer and that was that. It was a little slow but it played that data music of bumps and beeps which was somewhat charming. Then I think they started putting the modems into the computers, and you plugged the computer into the phone line, but it was no longer a phone line it was a DSL or maybe cable, though it still all came out of the same hole in the wall, and then there were routers which connected to the hole in the wall and then just sent out waves that your computer and printer and other stuff I guess could pick up on, Anymore I have a cardboard box behind the computer and there is the RCN machine which has way more lights than I can tell what is going on, and the router, which sometimes I can fix things by turning it on and off and then there is an octopus of wires and cables which I hope I never have to touch, and there are several passwords somehow involved that I have written down on some scrap of paper tucked into the closet which I hope I never have to look up.
I'm a little confused about the security issues of using the computer in the library. How are they different from security issues at home? Actually wouldn't they be worse at home? And who is the other side taking names? Oh wait a minute it's not the library, it's Starbucks. Well I guess they (is this Beagles's THEY) could track you from there. Sounds like a lot of work though, to track all those clickety clackers in all the Starbucks in all the country
Well I just don't have much to say this morning. Scanning the newspaper I see that the princess has died, too bad, seemed like a nice enough girl. Then there are those mall events. For all the fighting that went on, nobody got seriously hurt which makes me think it was all some sort of prank. I will be waiting on breaking developments.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
On to Idaho
The eastern border of Idaho starts out straight in the southern part, then it gets all squiggly, then it straightens out again in the northern part. If it had maintained its straightness all the way north, then Wyoming and Montana would have been approximately the same size, and Idaho would have been almost as big as both of them put together. The Idaho legislature proposed that the eastern border follow the Continental Divide instead because it was a natural barrier that would inhibit travel and trade, especially in the winter. It might have ended up that way too, if it wasn't for that one guy.
Sidney Edgerton was a former congressman from Ohio who had some influential friends in Washington, D.C. These friends helped him get a judicial appointment in Idaho when it was still a territory. The territorial governor was apparently not impressed with Edgerton's Washington connections and assigned him to a judgeship east of the Rockies, which was kind of like the boondocks of Idaho Territory. Edgerton saw a chance to get even when both Idaho and Montana applied for statehood, and Montana hired him to represent their interests. Edgerton set out for Washington with a suitcase full of money and, when he returned, the border between Idaho and Montana had mysteriously moved from the crest of the Rockies to the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains, a considerable distance to the west. This is why the map makes it look like Montana bit off a big chunk of Idaho which, in a manner of speaking, it did. The fact that the border straightens out at the northern end gives Idaho some valuable agricultural land in the Kootenai River watershed as a consolation prize. The book doesn't say who was responsible for that, but it probably wasn't Sidney Edgerton.
Kansas and Nebraska came out the way they did largely because of the slavery issue. Nebraska wanted to come in as a free state, and it was assumed that Kansas would come in as a slave state, preserving the precarious balance that might forestall the looming Civil War. The people of Kansas weren't so sure about that and they fought their own little civil war to settle the issue. The survivors eventually did bring Kansas in as a free state.
Nebraska also had issues with some Indians and some gold miners, both of which were deemed to be unsuitable neighbors for the righteous farmers and ranchers of Nebraska. They got rid of the Indians the usual way, and they got rid of the miners by giving their corner of the state to Colorado.
Sidney Edgerton was a former congressman from Ohio who had some influential friends in Washington, D.C. These friends helped him get a judicial appointment in Idaho when it was still a territory. The territorial governor was apparently not impressed with Edgerton's Washington connections and assigned him to a judgeship east of the Rockies, which was kind of like the boondocks of Idaho Territory. Edgerton saw a chance to get even when both Idaho and Montana applied for statehood, and Montana hired him to represent their interests. Edgerton set out for Washington with a suitcase full of money and, when he returned, the border between Idaho and Montana had mysteriously moved from the crest of the Rockies to the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains, a considerable distance to the west. This is why the map makes it look like Montana bit off a big chunk of Idaho which, in a manner of speaking, it did. The fact that the border straightens out at the northern end gives Idaho some valuable agricultural land in the Kootenai River watershed as a consolation prize. The book doesn't say who was responsible for that, but it probably wasn't Sidney Edgerton.
Kansas and Nebraska came out the way they did largely because of the slavery issue. Nebraska wanted to come in as a free state, and it was assumed that Kansas would come in as a slave state, preserving the precarious balance that might forestall the looming Civil War. The people of Kansas weren't so sure about that and they fought their own little civil war to settle the issue. The survivors eventually did bring Kansas in as a free state.
Nebraska also had issues with some Indians and some gold miners, both of which were deemed to be unsuitable neighbors for the righteous farmers and ranchers of Nebraska. They got rid of the Indians the usual way, and they got rid of the miners by giving their corner of the state to Colorado.
System down...
Yesterday morning I had a quick little power blip where a light went off and then back on. After that the wifi modem had a dreaded red connection light and is now dead. AT&T assures me a replacement will arrive tomorrow (no charge, Yay!); until then I have to rely on Starbucks for internet goodness.
Which I don't like because of security issues. The plan is to to grab as much info as I can ("save page as") for offline reading and bail out of the connection as soon as possible. No lollygagging with rabbit holes, sadly to say.
I'll post what I can, when I can, if it's worth another trip to $tarbuck$.
Carry on, gentlemen.
Which I don't like because of security issues. The plan is to to grab as much info as I can ("save page as") for offline reading and bail out of the connection as soon as possible. No lollygagging with rabbit holes, sadly to say.
I'll post what I can, when I can, if it's worth another trip to $tarbuck$.
Carry on, gentlemen.
time, time, time
Time, time, time, see what's become of me. That's what Simon and Garfunkel sang back in the day. For guys who weren't very old, they had a strange obsession with the passage of time. In one of their other songs of the time they sang, "I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song/I'm twenty-two now, but I won't be for long/And the leaves that are green turn to brown." Brown? I guess I'll show them brown.
But I never thought much about getting old, it didn't seem like something that would ever happen to me. My thirtieth birthday came upon me as a surprise, the way Christmas does every year. When I started computer school at thirty four I wondered if I wasn't too old to embark on a new career (as opposed to bartending), At forty my parents sent me a birthday card that said on the outside Forty isn't old, and on the inside If you are a tree. I don't recall any big deal, like sitting tear-stained with my memory book in my lap, when I turned fifty, sixty, seventy. Thirty years just like that. Who knows where the time goes?
I got up around five like I do most days now that I am one of those very senior seniors, and I do the shower and all that stuff and sit down at the table with my coffee and turn on the computer. Old Dog, if he has anything to say, usually says it around five PM. I usually check out the Beaglestonian in the evening, but not always. I am almost never up late enough to read Beagles' post. Seems to me that it never appears before ten, which is eleven in his goofy Michigan time, so I don't know what it is with that guy.
Time. time, time, and here it is still more than an hour and a half till sunrise. The days are becoming longer, but that's the sunset getting later while the sunrise has actually become a couple minutes later since the solstice. And the year is almost over, kind of a boring time of year, everything is the year in review, and like I say we were here then, we know what happened.
I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled. That was the great poet. I think having trousers rolled back in that day meant having cuffs, but I don't know what having cuffs has to do with becoming old. This whole line of conversation is getting a little old don't you think?
Why then is there a Kansas and a Nebraska? Why isn't there just a Kansbraska? What is it that you can do in one state that you can't do in the other? Apparently rhere are things that you can't do in Montana or Wyoming that you can do in Idaho. I guess I'll wait for Beagles to tell about it.
But I never thought much about getting old, it didn't seem like something that would ever happen to me. My thirtieth birthday came upon me as a surprise, the way Christmas does every year. When I started computer school at thirty four I wondered if I wasn't too old to embark on a new career (as opposed to bartending), At forty my parents sent me a birthday card that said on the outside Forty isn't old, and on the inside If you are a tree. I don't recall any big deal, like sitting tear-stained with my memory book in my lap, when I turned fifty, sixty, seventy. Thirty years just like that. Who knows where the time goes?
I got up around five like I do most days now that I am one of those very senior seniors, and I do the shower and all that stuff and sit down at the table with my coffee and turn on the computer. Old Dog, if he has anything to say, usually says it around five PM. I usually check out the Beaglestonian in the evening, but not always. I am almost never up late enough to read Beagles' post. Seems to me that it never appears before ten, which is eleven in his goofy Michigan time, so I don't know what it is with that guy.
Time. time, time, and here it is still more than an hour and a half till sunrise. The days are becoming longer, but that's the sunset getting later while the sunrise has actually become a couple minutes later since the solstice. And the year is almost over, kind of a boring time of year, everything is the year in review, and like I say we were here then, we know what happened.
I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled. That was the great poet. I think having trousers rolled back in that day meant having cuffs, but I don't know what having cuffs has to do with becoming old. This whole line of conversation is getting a little old don't you think?
Why then is there a Kansas and a Nebraska? Why isn't there just a Kansbraska? What is it that you can do in one state that you can't do in the other? Apparently rhere are things that you can't do in Montana or Wyoming that you can do in Idaho. I guess I'll wait for Beagles to tell about it.
Monday, December 26, 2016
According to the Book
The book is called "How the States Got Their Shapes" by Mark Stein, published in 2008.
A recurring theme in the book is that Congress usually tried to make all new states approximately the same size, but geographical and political considerations frequently interfered with that effort.
Before Minnesota became a state, its territorial western border was the Continental Divide. That would have made it way too big to be state so, when it did become a state in 1858, the western part was chopped off and organized as Dakota Territory. In 1863, Congress created Idaho Territory in response to gold being discovered in the region's mountains. This infringed on Dakota Territory, leaving it the size of present day North and South Dakota combined. The two Dakotas were divided in 1887 because Congress wanted to make two states that were each the approximate size of Kansas and Nebraska.
I was going to write about Idaho tonight, but it's kind of a long story, and it has gotten late on me. I don't know how that happened, probably some kind of temporal anomaly slipped into the time/space continuum. I'll do Idaho tomorrow.
A recurring theme in the book is that Congress usually tried to make all new states approximately the same size, but geographical and political considerations frequently interfered with that effort.
Before Minnesota became a state, its territorial western border was the Continental Divide. That would have made it way too big to be state so, when it did become a state in 1858, the western part was chopped off and organized as Dakota Territory. In 1863, Congress created Idaho Territory in response to gold being discovered in the region's mountains. This infringed on Dakota Territory, leaving it the size of present day North and South Dakota combined. The two Dakotas were divided in 1887 because Congress wanted to make two states that were each the approximate size of Kansas and Nebraska.
I was going to write about Idaho tonight, but it's kind of a long story, and it has gotten late on me. I don't know how that happened, probably some kind of temporal anomaly slipped into the time/space continuum. I'll do Idaho tomorrow.
a bagatelle of the brain
I have no idea what time is a mere fragmentation of the mind could mean. The use of the word mere implies nothing but to my reading, as in no big deal, as in time is no big deal, just a fragmentation of your mind, But a fragmentation of the mind, that sounds like a big deal, as in Dr No, wasn't it? No it wasn't, it was Goldfinger, how nice to have google a mere keystroke away, who had that machine that was going to fry James's private parts, and James asks if Goldfinger expects him to change his mind, and he replies, "No Mr Bond, I expect you to have your mind fragmented." Sounds bad, seems like we need all the fragments of our mind working together to play a game of chess or drive down to the grocery store for Wonder Bread, or to write a post in the Beaglestonian, although that object seems to be getting away from me at this point,
One wonders if the subject of the sentence should have been figment. We still have the downgrading of time, but in a more airy fashion. "I think that Wonder Bread actually helps build strong bodies thirteen ways." "Oh Darling," she says, and here I see a blond woman in the sports car with you, some kind of sophisticated scarf wrapped over her head, a Benson and Hedges cigarette waving merrily as she gestures. the softest touch of a British accent, "that is a mere figment of your mind." She might add, stubbing out her thin cig as you pull into your parking lot, and maybe her accent subtly turning to French, "A mere bagatelle of your brain."
A strange thing that time is, in the past frozen, unchangeable, solid as a rock, Objective Reality in its finest form, in the future a formless void, who knows what tomorrow may bring? In the present just this little sliver, like the position of the needle in the grooves of the spinning vinyl.
Well I have spun myself out of knowing what I am talking about here. But here we are at that odd little notch of the last week of the year. The newspapers, tv news, websites will drag out their year in review crapola. I hate that. I wasn't born yesterday, I know what happened in the year
Hmm, looking at Old Dog's time zone map, I am struck by what I always am, why a North and a South Dakota? Why not just a Dakota? Why that odd little north/south panhandle for Idaho? Why is there even a Wyoming? In fact why not just put Idaho and Montana and Wyoming together? That would give them a population about equal to Iowa which is only the 31st most populous state in the union. Was there some kind of rule back when they were making these states, that a state could only be so big. Well I happen to know Beagles has that book about how the states got their shapes, maybe the information is there,
Friday, December 23, 2016
"Time is a Mere Fragmentation of the Mind"
Somebody famous must have said that once, but I don't know who. I'm not sure what it means exactly, but it sounds kind of philosophical. Truth be known, there is nothing arbitrary about time, it's our human measurement of time that is arbitrary. A day doesn't necessarily have to be 24 hours, and an hour doesn't necessarily have to be 60 minutes, but it would be inconvenient to have more than one way of measuring time, so somebody decided to measure it that way and everybody else bought into it. The time zones are also arbitrary, you've got to draw the line somewhere, and that's where somebody decided to draw it. Theoretically, the time zone boundaries should be straight, but they were made to jog around population centers for everybody's convenience. Some time ago, there was a news article about these two Pacific islands that were on either side of the International Date Line. I don't remember if they were joined politically, but they were close enough together that there was traffic between them. Apparently the residents wanted the date to be the same on both islands, so whoever approves such things agreed to bend the line so that both islands would be on the same side.
I bake my bread at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. That's more than was called for in the recipe I started with, but I found by trial and error that is what works in my oven. I don't know if the 400 degrees on the oven heat control is accurate but, if I set it any lower, it takes longer for the bread to bake, and most recipes say that it should take 30-45 minutes. I know that the professionals measure their ingredients by weight, but I measure them by volume because that's easier and it works just fine. to measure by weight, I would need to buy an accurate scale, and then I'd have one more piece of equipment to clean and store. My crust is okay, but it's not chewy like it is on most artisanal breads. I think I'm going to try that tray of ice cubes next time. It likely will only affect the top crust, since the sides and bottom are enclosed in the bread pan, but that's okay for now, just to see if it works.
I have eaten smoked chicken and smoked turkey. There also is a product called "turkey jerky", but I have never tried it. I don't know about pickling poultry. I don't like the taste of anything that is pickled, including pickles. Raw chicken is what's dangerous, which is why it's important to rinse off any utensils that come in contact with raw chicken before they are allowed to touch any other food, including cooked chicken. I don't know if it's salmonella or what, but the juice of raw chicken has something in it that can make you really sick, or so I have been told. Additionally, any time you finish working with any kind of meat, you should clean your utensils before using them for another kind of meat. You can cut beef all day with the same knife and cutting board but, when you switch to pork, or vice versa, you need to clean your tools. If you don't, you risk what they call "cross contamination". I'm not sure exactly how that works, but I have been told that its no fun at all.
I bake my bread at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. That's more than was called for in the recipe I started with, but I found by trial and error that is what works in my oven. I don't know if the 400 degrees on the oven heat control is accurate but, if I set it any lower, it takes longer for the bread to bake, and most recipes say that it should take 30-45 minutes. I know that the professionals measure their ingredients by weight, but I measure them by volume because that's easier and it works just fine. to measure by weight, I would need to buy an accurate scale, and then I'd have one more piece of equipment to clean and store. My crust is okay, but it's not chewy like it is on most artisanal breads. I think I'm going to try that tray of ice cubes next time. It likely will only affect the top crust, since the sides and bottom are enclosed in the bread pan, but that's okay for now, just to see if it works.
I have eaten smoked chicken and smoked turkey. There also is a product called "turkey jerky", but I have never tried it. I don't know about pickling poultry. I don't like the taste of anything that is pickled, including pickles. Raw chicken is what's dangerous, which is why it's important to rinse off any utensils that come in contact with raw chicken before they are allowed to touch any other food, including cooked chicken. I don't know if it's salmonella or what, but the juice of raw chicken has something in it that can make you really sick, or so I have been told. Additionally, any time you finish working with any kind of meat, you should clean your utensils before using them for another kind of meat. You can cut beef all day with the same knife and cutting board but, when you switch to pork, or vice versa, you need to clean your tools. If you don't, you risk what they call "cross contamination". I'm not sure exactly how that works, but I have been told that its no fun at all.
Zoning out
Those are fine looking loaves, Mr. Beagles. Based upon my very limited experience I would say that, crust-wise, it's a temperature issue. Home ovens lack the thermal mass of commercial units and will lose a lot heat once you start filling up the racks. I use a thermometer in the oven rather than trust the dial; just because the dial is set to 350 degrees does not mean it's actually 350 degrees. Hell, the thermometer could be wrong, too.
Have you ever gotten the crust you seek? Do you measure ingredients by volume or by weight? I've read that measuring by weight is best for most consistent results, but you know what you are doing and I don't. Uncle Ken isn't the only one who can talk out of his ass.
-----
The concept of time zones may have been my earliest exposure to an abstract concept except for religion and Santa Claus. It was a wacky notion that if you cross a certain imaginary line you can gain or lose an hour.
A few countries today have time zones that are offset by thirty or forty-five minutes, but I don't know how well that works out for them. Maintaining schedules must be a bitch. Then there's China, which has only one time zone, which is odd for such a large country; everything is on Beijing Standard Time.
When we think of Chinese people, we usually think of the Han ethnic group, but there are other groups in China, especially in the western provinces. Those folks are often Muslim, and don't think much of Beijing Standard Time and use their own local time for scheduling. Maybe everybody wears a couple of wrist watches lest they run afoul of the authorities back east.
-----
So, what's the deal with chicken? You can preserve other types of meat using methods such as smoking, drying, salting, and pickling. Dry aged beef, I'm told, yields the best steaks but I've never heard of dry aged chicken (or turkey). We have beef jerky but not chicken; what makes poultry different, is it all due to salmonella? Raw beef and fish are often safe for human consumption, but never chicken or other poultry, to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps humans lack a certain gene which allows other predators to chow down on birds with so much gusto.
-----
Green must have been a popular color in the early fifties. I remember when my father picked me up with his brand spanking new '53 Chevy with a two-tone green paint job, the height of swank. Not just green, but two-tone green. The car was so new it had brown paper on the seats to protect the upholstery during shipping, but I thought it was a really cheap car to have paper covered seats. Nice car, very reliable, but it rusted out before I learned how to drive. It lasted seven years, which was considered a long time back in the day.
Have you ever gotten the crust you seek? Do you measure ingredients by volume or by weight? I've read that measuring by weight is best for most consistent results, but you know what you are doing and I don't. Uncle Ken isn't the only one who can talk out of his ass.
-----
The concept of time zones may have been my earliest exposure to an abstract concept except for religion and Santa Claus. It was a wacky notion that if you cross a certain imaginary line you can gain or lose an hour.
A few countries today have time zones that are offset by thirty or forty-five minutes, but I don't know how well that works out for them. Maintaining schedules must be a bitch. Then there's China, which has only one time zone, which is odd for such a large country; everything is on Beijing Standard Time.
When we think of Chinese people, we usually think of the Han ethnic group, but there are other groups in China, especially in the western provinces. Those folks are often Muslim, and don't think much of Beijing Standard Time and use their own local time for scheduling. Maybe everybody wears a couple of wrist watches lest they run afoul of the authorities back east.
-----
So, what's the deal with chicken? You can preserve other types of meat using methods such as smoking, drying, salting, and pickling. Dry aged beef, I'm told, yields the best steaks but I've never heard of dry aged chicken (or turkey). We have beef jerky but not chicken; what makes poultry different, is it all due to salmonella? Raw beef and fish are often safe for human consumption, but never chicken or other poultry, to the best of my knowledge. Perhaps humans lack a certain gene which allows other predators to chow down on birds with so much gusto.
-----
Green must have been a popular color in the early fifties. I remember when my father picked me up with his brand spanking new '53 Chevy with a two-tone green paint job, the height of swank. Not just green, but two-tone green. The car was so new it had brown paper on the seats to protect the upholstery during shipping, but I thought it was a really cheap car to have paper covered seats. Nice car, very reliable, but it rusted out before I learned how to drive. It lasted seven years, which was considered a long time back in the day.
back home in Indiana
Yar, we had an aunt in Grand Rapids and an uncle in Eau Claire and a Grandfather in Goshen so we crossed that line once or twice a year. I don't remember a time difference going to Michigan but that was always in the summertime so that daylight savings time thing kept us on the same time. Indiana was a little stranger because northwestern Indiana goes by Chicago time, but by the time you get to Goshen it is eastern time. And I think they changed their mind about that from time to time, and also about daylight savings time. Hoosiers,
But you have to go through Hoosier land if you want to go anywhere on the other side of the lake. It was kind of an exciting drive with us three kids in back of the pea green 1953 Ford Customline. There was some kind of old mansion (which is still there) which looked like a castle with all its turrets where you made the turn east, and there were those little lakes right by the highway, and at night the refineries would be burning off natural gas or something which had kind of a scary beauty.
Sometime in the course of our journeys east the interstate was built. What a new and exotic development. I was a big science fiction fan and all the cities of the future had these highways in the sky and suddenly here they were right in the present. They had rest stops with restaurants on some bridge right over the interstate so that you could watch cars go by while you ate. How cool.
When I got my edukashun degree ten years ago I had to take a philosophy course. It was a pretty good experience. We had a book with a chapter on Plato, Aristotle, the stoics, some other guys, These guys had written whatever the equivalent of books was back in the day. but a chapter was plenty, I couldn't imagine reading a whole book. I think the stoics are interesting because, even if I don't quite approve of it, their plan is coherent and logically sound. And it has historical importance with its ties to the Christians.
Speaking of which His birthday is only two days away. And we have two days of lengthening days , though if you look at the sunrise and sunset times in the paper you can't tell, some kind of stutter step around the solstices which I once understood, but I have forgotten, like the turnip and ping pong ball and desk lamp.
But you have to go through Hoosier land if you want to go anywhere on the other side of the lake. It was kind of an exciting drive with us three kids in back of the pea green 1953 Ford Customline. There was some kind of old mansion (which is still there) which looked like a castle with all its turrets where you made the turn east, and there were those little lakes right by the highway, and at night the refineries would be burning off natural gas or something which had kind of a scary beauty.
Sometime in the course of our journeys east the interstate was built. What a new and exotic development. I was a big science fiction fan and all the cities of the future had these highways in the sky and suddenly here they were right in the present. They had rest stops with restaurants on some bridge right over the interstate so that you could watch cars go by while you ate. How cool.
When I got my edukashun degree ten years ago I had to take a philosophy course. It was a pretty good experience. We had a book with a chapter on Plato, Aristotle, the stoics, some other guys, These guys had written whatever the equivalent of books was back in the day. but a chapter was plenty, I couldn't imagine reading a whole book. I think the stoics are interesting because, even if I don't quite approve of it, their plan is coherent and logically sound. And it has historical importance with its ties to the Christians.
Speaking of which His birthday is only two days away. And we have two days of lengthening days , though if you look at the sunrise and sunset times in the paper you can't tell, some kind of stutter step around the solstices which I once understood, but I have forgotten, like the turnip and ping pong ball and desk lamp.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Somewhere in Time
When I was a kid, our family frequently crossed the line between Chicago time and Michigan time because my father's parents lived in Stevensville, Michigan and my Uncle Ed and Aunt Mil had a summer home in New Buffalo. That was what my family called it, "Chicago time and Michigan time". As I grew older and went to school, I learned about the various time zones but, until then, I thought that there were only two times in the world, Chicago time and Michigan time. My parents seemed to believe that Chicago time was the correct time, and that Michigan time was an hour off. My grandmother, on the other hand, believed that Michigan time was the correct time and that Chicago time was an hour off. The issue was also confused by Daylight Saving Time because Michigan did not go on DST in the summer like Chicago did, so there was no time difference in the summer. I don't think that Indiana ever went on DST and, last I heard, they still didn't. That didn't matter to us because we only passed through Indiana on our way to and from Michigan, so nobody cared what time it was in Indiana.
Truth be known, Michigan could have ended up in the Central Time Zone instead of the Eastern time Zone because the line that divided the two went right down the middle of Michigan. At some point it was decided that the line should jog around Michigan so that the whole state would be in the same time zone. In those days, there was more traffic between Detroit and New York than there was between Detroit and Chicago, so the Detroit people wanted to be on the same time as New York. Detroit was a bigger deal then than it is now, and the rest of the state was not so much, so it was decided to put Michigan in the Eastern Time Zone, except for the western part of the Upper Peninsula, which had more in common with Wisconsin than it had with the rest of Michigan. So it came to pass that the people on the Lake Huron shore are pretty comfortable with their time, while the people on the Lake Michigan shore feel like they are an hour off. Cheboygan, being close to the middle, is only a half hour off. The other half hour difference in the rising and setting of the sun comes from the difference in latitude, as Ken has surmised.
I looked up those Stoics on Wiki. I didn't read he whole article but, as near as I can tell, they made everything way more complicated than it needs to be. All those dead Greeks are like that. Maybe that's why, even unto this day, when somebody doesn't understand something, they say "It's all Greek to me."
Truth be known, Michigan could have ended up in the Central Time Zone instead of the Eastern time Zone because the line that divided the two went right down the middle of Michigan. At some point it was decided that the line should jog around Michigan so that the whole state would be in the same time zone. In those days, there was more traffic between Detroit and New York than there was between Detroit and Chicago, so the Detroit people wanted to be on the same time as New York. Detroit was a bigger deal then than it is now, and the rest of the state was not so much, so it was decided to put Michigan in the Eastern Time Zone, except for the western part of the Upper Peninsula, which had more in common with Wisconsin than it had with the rest of Michigan. So it came to pass that the people on the Lake Huron shore are pretty comfortable with their time, while the people on the Lake Michigan shore feel like they are an hour off. Cheboygan, being close to the middle, is only a half hour off. The other half hour difference in the rising and setting of the sun comes from the difference in latitude, as Ken has surmised.
I looked up those Stoics on Wiki. I didn't read he whole article but, as near as I can tell, they made everything way more complicated than it needs to be. All those dead Greeks are like that. Maybe that's why, even unto this day, when somebody doesn't understand something, they say "It's all Greek to me."
keeping my toga clean in the current bad days
One day into winter so far. Not so bad eh? The days will be getting longer. Sun is rising here at 7:15 which is pretty late. Surely it's rising even later in Cheboygan two or three hundred miles north of here, and when I looked it up on the Yahoo machine (5 degrees warmer than Chicago, what is this shit?), sure enough the sun wasn't rising until 8:16. That seemed later than I though it would and then I remembered that Michigan is in another time zone. But wait a minute, correcting for that would give Cheboygan the same time as Chicago. But wait a minute, Cheyboygan is not only north of Chicago, but east as well so that probably equalizes the time of the sunrises.
When I lived in Texa, I was a little disappointed that here I was in the sunny south and yet in the summer sunsets were earlier than in Chicago. I guess it makes sense, the closer you are to the equator the less variance between summer and winter. Still doesn't seem quite right with the tilt of the axis, and here I am tempted to get a turnip out of the fridge (should turnips be kept in the fridge?) and draw a circle around its equator and lead it in a circle around my desk lamp. Oh and then I can take that ping pong ball and have it circle around the turnip and then I can do lunar and solar eclipses. I can make a whole day of it.
But I won't. I will take time out to remind my colleagues that there will be a total eclipse of the sun on August 16th. Lucky for me my friend Ruby Doo lives in St Joseph Mo, right on the line of the eclipse, so I'll see the first such event in my life.
I assume Old Dog is referring to the current New Yorker where there is a section where people talk about their idols or something like that, and one of them mentions a stoic philosopher, back in the days when it was a pretty cool thing to be. I'm sure it's more complicated than that but my take on the stoics is that they realize they can't control all the bad shit going on in the world, so what they do is control themselves. They set up their standards and they rigidly hold to them come hell or high water. They face with equanimity the fleeting fortunes and misfortunes of life, not seduced by fleshy pleasures nor dismayed by pain and privation, keeping their eyes ever on their own unsullied adherence to their principles.
They sound a lot like Christians, if you substitute the Laws of God for personal standards, and indeed many of them became Christians and many Christians became stoics. That's Ken's Klassic Komics version of it. More dedicated scholars may want to consult the wiki.
Myself I have never been to crazy about the stoics. It seems like here they are walking through the bloody mess of the world and all they are interested in is keeping the hems of their damn togas clean. I think they should be more involved. I should've been more involved. I should've manned phones for the big girl on election day, a least slipped her a Jackson or two. Ah you know, I knew the dems had their faults, but I saw them overall as a force for good, and now we are totally defeated while the forces of evil soar across the bloody sky. Maybe I should reread that New Yorker article.
When I lived in Texa, I was a little disappointed that here I was in the sunny south and yet in the summer sunsets were earlier than in Chicago. I guess it makes sense, the closer you are to the equator the less variance between summer and winter. Still doesn't seem quite right with the tilt of the axis, and here I am tempted to get a turnip out of the fridge (should turnips be kept in the fridge?) and draw a circle around its equator and lead it in a circle around my desk lamp. Oh and then I can take that ping pong ball and have it circle around the turnip and then I can do lunar and solar eclipses. I can make a whole day of it.
But I won't. I will take time out to remind my colleagues that there will be a total eclipse of the sun on August 16th. Lucky for me my friend Ruby Doo lives in St Joseph Mo, right on the line of the eclipse, so I'll see the first such event in my life.
I assume Old Dog is referring to the current New Yorker where there is a section where people talk about their idols or something like that, and one of them mentions a stoic philosopher, back in the days when it was a pretty cool thing to be. I'm sure it's more complicated than that but my take on the stoics is that they realize they can't control all the bad shit going on in the world, so what they do is control themselves. They set up their standards and they rigidly hold to them come hell or high water. They face with equanimity the fleeting fortunes and misfortunes of life, not seduced by fleshy pleasures nor dismayed by pain and privation, keeping their eyes ever on their own unsullied adherence to their principles.
They sound a lot like Christians, if you substitute the Laws of God for personal standards, and indeed many of them became Christians and many Christians became stoics. That's Ken's Klassic Komics version of it. More dedicated scholars may want to consult the wiki.
Myself I have never been to crazy about the stoics. It seems like here they are walking through the bloody mess of the world and all they are interested in is keeping the hems of their damn togas clean. I think they should be more involved. I should've been more involved. I should've manned phones for the big girl on election day, a least slipped her a Jackson or two. Ah you know, I knew the dems had their faults, but I saw them overall as a force for good, and now we are totally defeated while the forces of evil soar across the bloody sky. Maybe I should reread that New Yorker article.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
Land of Plenty
Back in the Cold War days, whenever a defector, or even a visitor, from a Communist country was asked what impressed him most about America, he usually said it was the full shelves in the stores. We've all seen pictures or video of the stores in the Communist countries in those days, and their shelves looked like Mother Hubbard's cupboard. One of the first things my father taught me when I worked in his store was to keep the shelves looking full. If we didn't have enough product on hand to fill the shelves, I was told to move everything forward to give the impression of full shelves. My dad said it was a psychological thing. For some reason, people would rather buy from full shelves than from half empty ones. If you're discontinuing a product, the last few items are the hardest ones to sell, nobody wants to buy the last one of anything. If you really want to move something, put it in a bin or basket on the end of the aisle, people like to buy stuff like that as well. It gives the impression that you have so much of the stuff that you can't fit it all on your shelves. Walmart is famous for that. They have so much stuff in the aisles that it's often difficult to get your cart past another customer who has stopped to search for something. That's another thing. With so many different varieties of the same product, it can be hard to find the one you're looking for, especially if they have moved it since the last time you were in the store.
I've often wondered what they do with all the stuff that doesn't sell by its expiration date. They can't possibly sell all the stuff they have out there. I worked briefly in the meat department of one of our local supermarkets. What we did was pull a package just before its sell by date, open it up, and smell it. If it looked and smelled all right, we would repackage it and mark it down to be sure that it would sell before its new sell by date. If it looked a little off, but smelled all right, we would put it in "the grinds", which meant hamburger for beef and sausage for pork. You couldn't do anything with chicken except throw it away, but chicken tends to go bad all at once with no question about it. I don't know what they do with all the other stuff like bread, produce, and canned goods. My father used to call meat that wasn't good enough to sell but too good to throw away "hoga-roga", which is a Czech term that translates literally as "almost gone". He would often bring that hoga-roga stuff home and we would eat it ourselves. There was nothing wrong with it and, in the case of beef, it was frequently better than the fresh stuff.
Another thing like that is the plants that they sell in the spring and early summer. We have several greenhouses in Cheboygan, plus all the supermarkets have a gardening department. I don't think there is enough farm and garden space in the tri-county area to plant all the plants that are offered for sale. I suppose the ones that don't sell get composted, which isn't a total waste, but they must make up the lost revenue by charging more for the plants that they do sell.
We don't have an Aldi's in Cheboygan, but we've got a Save-a-Lot, which sounds like pretty much the same thing. Their meat is of fine quality and sells for the lowest prices in town. Their groceries are of limited variety but, if you can find what you want, you will save money on it.
I read somewhere about misting your bread while it's baking, but I never have tried it. My bread project is pretty much an all day job as it is, and I'm not anxious to add another step to the process. I hadn't heard about the tray of ice cubes, though. That doesn't sound very time consuming and might be worth a try. I would still need to know how to keep the bread from spreading out into a formless mass if I baked it on a flat surface instead of in bread pans. I tried slicing my loaves upside down today, and I wasn't fond of it. For some reason the slices were all skinny at one end and fat on the other, although I don't know how slicing upside down could cause that. Here's a photo of my loaves before I sliced them.
I've often wondered what they do with all the stuff that doesn't sell by its expiration date. They can't possibly sell all the stuff they have out there. I worked briefly in the meat department of one of our local supermarkets. What we did was pull a package just before its sell by date, open it up, and smell it. If it looked and smelled all right, we would repackage it and mark it down to be sure that it would sell before its new sell by date. If it looked a little off, but smelled all right, we would put it in "the grinds", which meant hamburger for beef and sausage for pork. You couldn't do anything with chicken except throw it away, but chicken tends to go bad all at once with no question about it. I don't know what they do with all the other stuff like bread, produce, and canned goods. My father used to call meat that wasn't good enough to sell but too good to throw away "hoga-roga", which is a Czech term that translates literally as "almost gone". He would often bring that hoga-roga stuff home and we would eat it ourselves. There was nothing wrong with it and, in the case of beef, it was frequently better than the fresh stuff.
Another thing like that is the plants that they sell in the spring and early summer. We have several greenhouses in Cheboygan, plus all the supermarkets have a gardening department. I don't think there is enough farm and garden space in the tri-county area to plant all the plants that are offered for sale. I suppose the ones that don't sell get composted, which isn't a total waste, but they must make up the lost revenue by charging more for the plants that they do sell.
We don't have an Aldi's in Cheboygan, but we've got a Save-a-Lot, which sounds like pretty much the same thing. Their meat is of fine quality and sells for the lowest prices in town. Their groceries are of limited variety but, if you can find what you want, you will save money on it.
I read somewhere about misting your bread while it's baking, but I never have tried it. My bread project is pretty much an all day job as it is, and I'm not anxious to add another step to the process. I hadn't heard about the tray of ice cubes, though. That doesn't sound very time consuming and might be worth a try. I would still need to know how to keep the bread from spreading out into a formless mass if I baked it on a flat surface instead of in bread pans. I tried slicing my loaves upside down today, and I wasn't fond of it. For some reason the slices were all skinny at one end and fat on the other, although I don't know how slicing upside down could cause that. Here's a photo of my loaves before I sliced them.
There must be dough in bread
Google is a poor substitute for practical experience, but this is what I've found regarding a good crust on bread. It's all about steam and how it affects the exterior surface while baking. The three methods I read about used a dutch oven, or misting the interior of the stove with water, or putting a tray of ice cubes on the bottom rack. Any of those methods will work, depending how much fiddling you like to do, and may be of interest to Mr. Beagles.
Commercial bread making must be a cutthroat business. While in the Jewel yesterday I decided to give the bread section a closer look rather than my usual quick grab of a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Raisin. Between the various companies there must be more than a hundred kinds of loaves available, mostly variations of the classics: white, rye, and wheat. There is also sourdough, multi-grain, Italian sandwich style, and others too numerous to mention. And this is only in the sliced bread section, not counting the breads available in the deli and bakery sections of the store or the flatbreads in the ethnic food sections.
Bread is a perishable item, not like a can of beans that can sit on a shelf indefinitely, and I wonder how all those very similar products can be sustained. What really differentiates the different brands of white bread besides price? Is it all marketing and perception to the customer? I know there is always loyalty to certain things, and if a buyer has always liked Butternut they are unlikely to switch to Wonder Bread, which originally built strong bodies in only eight ways.
It just occurred to me that you don't see bread advertised on TV anymore. The Cisco Kid used to be sponsored by Roman Meal, Howdy Doody had Wonder Bread, and I think SilverCup sponsored something, too. Was it the Lone Ranger? Bread companies used to be big sponsors and I wondered what happened.
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Faced with all those bread choices I'm starting to think about the Aldi stores. which have a good variety but very limited choices. If you want corn flakes, they only have one brand, likewise with their other products. Their quality and prices are supposed to be good, but they are no-frills stores and you bag your groceries with your own bag. Any experience with Aldi? I haven't shopped there myself and I see there is one in Petoskey, less than an hour's drive from the Beaglesonian Freehold.
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On the philosophical front, I see there has been an uptick in chatter about the Stoics. There was an article in one of the magazines that Uncle Ken subscribes to, and I am interested if it meshes well with his understanding of objective reality and other matters.
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Those armies of little kids with snow shovels are doubtful to reappear; they represent an era when children roamed free, unencumbered by adult supervision. It's sad, not seeing kids running around being kids, free from the stern gaze of their parental units. Maybe they still do that and are living in their own parallel world, but I haven't seen it in my neighborhood nor heard their joyous shrieks. The alley used to be a playground, but not anymore.
Commercial bread making must be a cutthroat business. While in the Jewel yesterday I decided to give the bread section a closer look rather than my usual quick grab of a loaf of Pepperidge Farm Cinnamon Raisin. Between the various companies there must be more than a hundred kinds of loaves available, mostly variations of the classics: white, rye, and wheat. There is also sourdough, multi-grain, Italian sandwich style, and others too numerous to mention. And this is only in the sliced bread section, not counting the breads available in the deli and bakery sections of the store or the flatbreads in the ethnic food sections.
Bread is a perishable item, not like a can of beans that can sit on a shelf indefinitely, and I wonder how all those very similar products can be sustained. What really differentiates the different brands of white bread besides price? Is it all marketing and perception to the customer? I know there is always loyalty to certain things, and if a buyer has always liked Butternut they are unlikely to switch to Wonder Bread, which originally built strong bodies in only eight ways.
It just occurred to me that you don't see bread advertised on TV anymore. The Cisco Kid used to be sponsored by Roman Meal, Howdy Doody had Wonder Bread, and I think SilverCup sponsored something, too. Was it the Lone Ranger? Bread companies used to be big sponsors and I wondered what happened.
-----
Faced with all those bread choices I'm starting to think about the Aldi stores. which have a good variety but very limited choices. If you want corn flakes, they only have one brand, likewise with their other products. Their quality and prices are supposed to be good, but they are no-frills stores and you bag your groceries with your own bag. Any experience with Aldi? I haven't shopped there myself and I see there is one in Petoskey, less than an hour's drive from the Beaglesonian Freehold.
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On the philosophical front, I see there has been an uptick in chatter about the Stoics. There was an article in one of the magazines that Uncle Ken subscribes to, and I am interested if it meshes well with his understanding of objective reality and other matters.
-----
Those armies of little kids with snow shovels are doubtful to reappear; they represent an era when children roamed free, unencumbered by adult supervision. It's sad, not seeing kids running around being kids, free from the stern gaze of their parental units. Maybe they still do that and are living in their own parallel world, but I haven't seen it in my neighborhood nor heard their joyous shrieks. The alley used to be a playground, but not anymore.
talking about food
I used to eat in the hospital cafeteria in Herrin Illinois when I was doing my CO work. One day I told the person behind the counter that I would have some of those funny looking beans. "Them ain't no beans Sir," she said, maybe less colorfully than I am putting it, "Them 'ere is black eyed peas." Well I swan, do tell I had heard of black eyed peas but I had never meant one before eye to black eye. They were okay, but nothing to write home about. Fifteen years later I was in Austin Texas at the Horse Shoe Bar on New Years Day, and there was a big old tub of black eyed peas, "He'p yerself Yankee," the cowpokes told me. "A bowl of black eyed peas on New Years Day will give you good luck the rest of the year." I don't recall that I had especially good luck, and like I said, they were nothing to write home about, but I thought they tasted a lot better than that cold chunk of pickled herring sliding down my gullet.
I went a little wild last summer at the farmer's market and bought some rutabagas and some celery root. They were pretty good. Not a fan of celery itself, but when it came in a chunk rather than a leafy stalk it was pretty good, Liked the rutabaga too, kind of like a super turnip I reckoned it. I'm a big fan of the turnip. They both come with a tough skin however, which is a chore to peel. How about parsnips, they look pretty good, but I fear that they might be a little sweet, and taste a bit like carrots, the rare root vegetable which I do not favor. Crunchy is good. I don't know why anybody buys the smooth peanut butter when the crunchy is sitting on the shelf right beside it.
It seems to me that back in the days of my youth everybody shoveled their walk. And for those who didn't, I made a little kid's fortune prowling the hood with my trusty snow shovel. I don't think I charged that much because my memory of the take was a handful of coins. But what a handful, buffalo nickels, Roosevelt dimes, Liberty quarters, and how about those big old Franklin half dollars with the Liberty Bell on the backside? Money was money back in the day, not some flimsy little card where you have to punch keys on that damn little machine that none of them work alike, and the grocery line just crawls while even the guy who is only buying a can of pop has to go blippety blippety blip. Bah!
I remember once in Mrs Arvin's history course at Gage Park High taking part in a debate about FDR at Yalta. I was against him. Well my family newspaper was the Trib, and I knew that Mrs Arvin loved FDR so that's how I ended up on the anti FDR side, My argument at the time was that FDR surely knew that he was dying so he should've been harder on the Russkies, though I expect, in retrospect that nothing was going to stop the Russkies from hanging that iron curtain. I googled FDR and communism and got a lot of hits calling him a commie from right wing sites, but when I went to the wiki it didn't have much to say on the issue.
I went a little wild last summer at the farmer's market and bought some rutabagas and some celery root. They were pretty good. Not a fan of celery itself, but when it came in a chunk rather than a leafy stalk it was pretty good, Liked the rutabaga too, kind of like a super turnip I reckoned it. I'm a big fan of the turnip. They both come with a tough skin however, which is a chore to peel. How about parsnips, they look pretty good, but I fear that they might be a little sweet, and taste a bit like carrots, the rare root vegetable which I do not favor. Crunchy is good. I don't know why anybody buys the smooth peanut butter when the crunchy is sitting on the shelf right beside it.
It seems to me that back in the days of my youth everybody shoveled their walk. And for those who didn't, I made a little kid's fortune prowling the hood with my trusty snow shovel. I don't think I charged that much because my memory of the take was a handful of coins. But what a handful, buffalo nickels, Roosevelt dimes, Liberty quarters, and how about those big old Franklin half dollars with the Liberty Bell on the backside? Money was money back in the day, not some flimsy little card where you have to punch keys on that damn little machine that none of them work alike, and the grocery line just crawls while even the guy who is only buying a can of pop has to go blippety blippety blip. Bah!
I don't see those armies of little kids with their shovels anymore. They certainly don't approach that stretch of Irving Park between the Brown Line and the Ten Cat on the southern side of the street.
I remember once in Mrs Arvin's history course at Gage Park High taking part in a debate about FDR at Yalta. I was against him. Well my family newspaper was the Trib, and I knew that Mrs Arvin loved FDR so that's how I ended up on the anti FDR side, My argument at the time was that FDR surely knew that he was dying so he should've been harder on the Russkies, though I expect, in retrospect that nothing was going to stop the Russkies from hanging that iron curtain. I googled FDR and communism and got a lot of hits calling him a commie from right wing sites, but when I went to the wiki it didn't have much to say on the issue.
Tuesday, December 20, 2016
Peace, Land, and Bread
That was the Commies' campaign slogan when they were trying to take over Russia. I have to admit that it has a nice ring to it and that I might have bought it myself if I had lived in those times. I read somewhere that FDR was a fan of Stalin even before World War II, and also that he was quoted as saying, "Some of my best friends are Communists." In those days it was cool to be a Communist in some American social circles, it didn't become un-cool until after the war.
I seem to remember Sixta's Bakery in the old neighborhood, but I don't remember if we ever shopped there. I do remember being sent by my mother to Donna's Delicatessen on 52nd and Whipple for bread and milk and things like that. They had all kinds of bread there, including Bohemian and Russian rye. That must have been after my dad closed his store, because we got everything there when it was in operation. I don't remember exactly when Dad closed his store and went in business with Grandpa Liska and three uncles, one of which wasn't really my uncle, but it must have been sometime in the 1950s.
All baguettes are French bread, but not all French bread are baguettes. I thought so, but I looked it up to be sure. A baguette is the iconic long skinny loaf of French bread, but the French also make other kinds of loaves, although I think it's basically the same bread no matter what kind of loaves it's made into.
I agree with Old Dog that texture is a big part of what makes food appealing, especially bread. My bread has more texture than the store bought varieties, although I have not been able to duplicate the chewy crust commonly found on artisanal breads. I think it's because I bake my bread in bread pans, which is easier than baking it on a cookie sheet or other flat surface. The professional baker that I told you about said that there is a trick to kneading bread in such a way that it maintains its shape while baking on a flat surface. He tried to explain the technique to me, but I didn't get it. I think I would have to be shown, and then do it myself with supervision the first time.
Rutabagas are better after they have been frozen and thawed. I am told that the old timers used to leave them in the garden all winter, going out to get some as needed. Nowadays the deer and other critters would likely get to them before you did but, in the olden days, any critter that came near the house would be served up with the rutabagas for dinner.
I seem to remember Sixta's Bakery in the old neighborhood, but I don't remember if we ever shopped there. I do remember being sent by my mother to Donna's Delicatessen on 52nd and Whipple for bread and milk and things like that. They had all kinds of bread there, including Bohemian and Russian rye. That must have been after my dad closed his store, because we got everything there when it was in operation. I don't remember exactly when Dad closed his store and went in business with Grandpa Liska and three uncles, one of which wasn't really my uncle, but it must have been sometime in the 1950s.
All baguettes are French bread, but not all French bread are baguettes. I thought so, but I looked it up to be sure. A baguette is the iconic long skinny loaf of French bread, but the French also make other kinds of loaves, although I think it's basically the same bread no matter what kind of loaves it's made into.
I agree with Old Dog that texture is a big part of what makes food appealing, especially bread. My bread has more texture than the store bought varieties, although I have not been able to duplicate the chewy crust commonly found on artisanal breads. I think it's because I bake my bread in bread pans, which is easier than baking it on a cookie sheet or other flat surface. The professional baker that I told you about said that there is a trick to kneading bread in such a way that it maintains its shape while baking on a flat surface. He tried to explain the technique to me, but I didn't get it. I think I would have to be shown, and then do it myself with supervision the first time.
Rutabagas are better after they have been frozen and thawed. I am told that the old timers used to leave them in the garden all winter, going out to get some as needed. Nowadays the deer and other critters would likely get to them before you did but, in the olden days, any critter that came near the house would be served up with the rutabagas for dinner.
Smooth or crunchy?
What a difference a day makes. Today it's about 25 degrees warmer than yesterday and the higher temperatures are to continue with a possibility of rain in the next few days. I'm not sure, and maybe Uncle Ken can verify this, but it seems the last few years have given us cold, often very cold, winter weather early in the season with milder weather after New Year's but a lot of snow through February and early March.
The cold weather doesn't bother me as long as I'm properly attired and keep moving. The snow is another matter, since the shoveling of sidewalks seems to be a forgotten courtesy in my neck of the woods. Trudging along lumpy, often icy, paths is a literal pain in the ass; it seems like different muscles are used when negotiating the slippery sidewalks. I don't want to be one of those guys who have fallen and can't get up.
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Food has become one of those things that I'm never really sure of anymore. You hear that eggs are bad for you, then they're good for you, and then they're bad for you again. Or sugar is bad for you but not as bad as some artificial sweeteners, which cause some people to actually gain weight. Or fat; some kinds are good for you, others are bad.
After Mr. Beagles mentioned switching from lard to Crisco I got a little curious. Lard. What a word! It sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But then I read that it's the best thing for flaky pie crusts, fried chicken, and may actually be healthier than Crisco due to the chemicals created when vegetable shortening is brought to high temperatures. Go figure; I'm sure that it will be a different story next year.
One thing not mentioned thus far is food texture, or what food scientists call "mouth feel" I don't like mushy foods, even if they taste good. A few lumps in the mashed potatoes is always a good thing. My biggest objection to store bought bread (beside it being somewhat tasteless) is that it seems to dissolve in the mouth and not require any chewing. I'll bet that Beaglesonian Light Rye requires a little effort and is all the better for it. If a food is crunchy or chewy I'll probably like it even if the taste is a little strange. Except for rutabaga; never did like it although many would disagree with my opinion.
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Speaking of next year, I haven't celebrated New Year's Eve in quite a while. It used to be a big deal but now it's more of a time of reflection. Dull, I know, but I really like New Year's Day. The new year brings me a feeling of optimism and the opportunity for a fresh start, even if it never works out the way I planned. I'll take my good feelings where I can, and a year ago could anyone have anticipated the weirdness that was 2016? It's not quite over yet and I'm not confident in stating that it can't get any worse before the year is out.
But I still like hearing other folks whooping it up, yelling and making noise. Sometimes there's a little gunfire or maybe it's just firecrackers. It's never been worth my while to go outside and check.
And I never knew that pickled herring brought good luck on New Year's Eve. Maybe that's my problem; I eat it frequently but never on New Year's Eve. If it's on sale I should stock up.
The cold weather doesn't bother me as long as I'm properly attired and keep moving. The snow is another matter, since the shoveling of sidewalks seems to be a forgotten courtesy in my neck of the woods. Trudging along lumpy, often icy, paths is a literal pain in the ass; it seems like different muscles are used when negotiating the slippery sidewalks. I don't want to be one of those guys who have fallen and can't get up.
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Food has become one of those things that I'm never really sure of anymore. You hear that eggs are bad for you, then they're good for you, and then they're bad for you again. Or sugar is bad for you but not as bad as some artificial sweeteners, which cause some people to actually gain weight. Or fat; some kinds are good for you, others are bad.
After Mr. Beagles mentioned switching from lard to Crisco I got a little curious. Lard. What a word! It sounds disgusting, doesn't it? But then I read that it's the best thing for flaky pie crusts, fried chicken, and may actually be healthier than Crisco due to the chemicals created when vegetable shortening is brought to high temperatures. Go figure; I'm sure that it will be a different story next year.
One thing not mentioned thus far is food texture, or what food scientists call "mouth feel" I don't like mushy foods, even if they taste good. A few lumps in the mashed potatoes is always a good thing. My biggest objection to store bought bread (beside it being somewhat tasteless) is that it seems to dissolve in the mouth and not require any chewing. I'll bet that Beaglesonian Light Rye requires a little effort and is all the better for it. If a food is crunchy or chewy I'll probably like it even if the taste is a little strange. Except for rutabaga; never did like it although many would disagree with my opinion.
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Speaking of next year, I haven't celebrated New Year's Eve in quite a while. It used to be a big deal but now it's more of a time of reflection. Dull, I know, but I really like New Year's Day. The new year brings me a feeling of optimism and the opportunity for a fresh start, even if it never works out the way I planned. I'll take my good feelings where I can, and a year ago could anyone have anticipated the weirdness that was 2016? It's not quite over yet and I'm not confident in stating that it can't get any worse before the year is out.
But I still like hearing other folks whooping it up, yelling and making noise. Sometimes there's a little gunfire or maybe it's just firecrackers. It's never been worth my while to go outside and check.
And I never knew that pickled herring brought good luck on New Year's Eve. Maybe that's my problem; I eat it frequently but never on New Year's Eve. If it's on sale I should stock up.
Gonnella, baguettes, and pancakes
We have the same weather names that you have. I think all those weather guys and gals go to the same school. Half of their schooling is in meteorology and the other half in joking with the sports jerk. But of course there is not just one, they have a crew. Our crew has a car, well /I thought it was a car, but it turns out that it is a mobile weather unit, with maybe a thermometer in the glove box. They drive around to different spots in the city and burbs and ask the locals if it is hot or cold enough for them.
I don't know what the fuck is with those recounts and that electoral college nonsense. I mean neither one of them had a snowball's chance so why pursue them? I don't know why Dumbo's people were against them, they couldn't lose and it gave them sort of a second victory. I didn't realize that FDR was cozy with the Russkies, unless you mean WW II, in which we probably couldn't have beaten the Krauts without them.
Was Sixta's bakery in your purview growing up? It was around 54th and Kedzie. Sometimes we got bread there as a break from Wonder. I think Gonnella bread was sold there too, still popular here. Comes in those uncut loafs with the hard crust, from the name I guess it is Italian, more like a Roman Meal if you ask me than that beige bread wrapped in cellophane.
The Frenchies call their loaves baguettes. I remember watching a French prison move not to long ago and all the hardened criminals were protesting because they didn't get their baguettes. I guess they just meant bread but it sounded like some dainty French pastry or something.
In my youngest days we used to stay up till midnight and then there would be an assemblage of noisemakers, little horns, some kind of clapper, some really obnoxious contraption that had a thing that swung around the handle and made this grinding noise, which we would take onto the front porch and raise holy hell. It was cool because up and down the block were our neighbors doeing the same damn thing. One year my grandpa Janovsky had me eat a chunk of pickled herring for good luck, and I don't believe I have eaten any fish since. When I came of age the goal was to get as drunk as possible, which was pretty easy to do. Anymore I take myself out to a restaurant and then sip beer at home or maybe a bar or two, but not too much so that I can see the fireworks on my balcony and then it's off to bed and another year down the drain.
Groundhog Day is interesting to me because it is like the only stop on the highway to spring on a dark and snowy day. Oh there is Valentines, which is big for lovers and Walgreens, but not so much for me. Ground Hog day is right smack dab between the solstice and the equinox. It is some kind of Catholic holiday with the charming name of Candlemas, and has roots in pagan religions of course.
Just looked it up at wiki and it turns our that it is a day to eat pancakes, which takes us pretty close to bread and I think that's where we started, so I'm done for today and tomorrow will be the shortest day of the year and the first day of winter, and the sooner you start winter, the sooner you are done with it.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Siberian Express
That's what our TV weather people called this blast of arctic air we have been experiencing. Do your TV weather people have cute names like that for the various winter weather patterns? Our guys are saying we are about done with the Siberian Express now. The next thing they are predicting is an Alberta Clipper for Wednesday. Alberta Clippers aren't so bad, it's the Saskatchewan Screamers and the Manitoba Maulers that you've got to watch out for. Then there's the Weather Channel, out of Atlanta Georgia. They give Greek names to winter storms, this last one was called Decia, or something like that. I wish they wouldn't name those storms, it just encourages them. They only have been doing that for the last few years, and it seems the storms have gotten worse in that time. Of course most of it is Obama's fault. He promised to do something about global warming if he was elected, and he did. Maybe we will get better weather after Trump takes over.
Speaking of Trump, it seems like the recount efforts have all fizzled out, and the Electoral College mostly voted the way they were supposed to, in spite of the thousands of email requests to do otherwise they received. For better or for worse, it looks like Trump will be our president, at least for awhile. I doubt that his connection with the Russians will do him any harm, it never hurt FDR.
I used to bake those frozen loaves before I started making my own bread. I liked them, but I like mine better. We used to buy Bohemian rye when I was a kid, but Grandma's was better. I ran out of my own bread a few days ago and didn't have time to make more, so I bought a loaf of French bread at our local supermarket. I had forgotten how much I liked French bread. I seem to remember looking for a recipe on the internet, but I don't remember why I never made any. I'll have to look it up again as soon as things settle down around here.
I never pay attention to the food fads that are always going around. One study says that something causes cancer, and another study says that it prevents cancer. I just eat and drink what I like, and I ain't dead yet. I started substituting margarine for butter when I met my hypothetical wife because that's what she liked. It's not about cost or health concerns, we just prefer the taste of margarine to butter.
We don't do anything for New Year's Eve, but we celebrate Groundhog Day because it's our anniversary. We didn't specifically plan it that way, it was just a coincidence. I also like Groundhog Day because it means winter is about half over, although it's not six weeks for us, more like eight or ten. I remember visiting my parents once in April after a winter in which they got as much snow as we did. After I helped my father take the snowplow off and put the mower deck on his lawn tractor, we compared snow pictures. The only difference was that his were taken a month ago and ours were taken a day ago.
Speaking of Trump, it seems like the recount efforts have all fizzled out, and the Electoral College mostly voted the way they were supposed to, in spite of the thousands of email requests to do otherwise they received. For better or for worse, it looks like Trump will be our president, at least for awhile. I doubt that his connection with the Russians will do him any harm, it never hurt FDR.
I used to bake those frozen loaves before I started making my own bread. I liked them, but I like mine better. We used to buy Bohemian rye when I was a kid, but Grandma's was better. I ran out of my own bread a few days ago and didn't have time to make more, so I bought a loaf of French bread at our local supermarket. I had forgotten how much I liked French bread. I seem to remember looking for a recipe on the internet, but I don't remember why I never made any. I'll have to look it up again as soon as things settle down around here.
I never pay attention to the food fads that are always going around. One study says that something causes cancer, and another study says that it prevents cancer. I just eat and drink what I like, and I ain't dead yet. I started substituting margarine for butter when I met my hypothetical wife because that's what she liked. It's not about cost or health concerns, we just prefer the taste of margarine to butter.
We don't do anything for New Year's Eve, but we celebrate Groundhog Day because it's our anniversary. We didn't specifically plan it that way, it was just a coincidence. I also like Groundhog Day because it means winter is about half over, although it's not six weeks for us, more like eight or ten. I remember visiting my parents once in April after a winter in which they got as much snow as we did. After I helped my father take the snowplow off and put the mower deck on his lawn tractor, we compared snow pictures. The only difference was that his were taken a month ago and ours were taken a day ago.
roman meal
Looking at the Tribune weather map this morning Chicago is the coldest city in the USA, colder even than International Falls and Green Bay. Back in the days of the polar vortex I seem to remember a map where we were smart dab in the middle of the vortex target. Six below right now feels like -24, but I won't be stepping out any time soon to see if frostbite occurs on my uncovered body in half an hour I believe they said.
My mother had a nephew who lived in Berwyn where my mother grew up and he brought her a loaf of genuine Bohemian rye from the old hood whenever he visited her. I've always liked rye bread better than white, and I really don't see what the fascination with whole wheat bread is. Remember Roman Meal?
Of course the only bread we knew growing up was the one that built strong bodies twelve ways, which the only thing cool about it was that you could squinch it up into the size of a large gumball, and pop it into your mouth like a big pill. I remember some young friend of mine who read something about the Romans eating bread and drinking wine, and he was thinking Wonder bread, and it just didn't seem like a meal.
The grocery store used to sell frozen loaves of dough that you could bake into bread, and I did that for a little while. Probably the only time that I (unlike Master Baker Old Dog) have ever used an oven in my life. I liked to see what I was cooking and something deep down where it was very hot and I think those things explode from time to time, I just didn't mess with them. Still don't.
I used to always use margarine because it was cheaper. I think back in the day it used to be healthy, but lately I think it became bad, and now it is not so bad, Anymore I use butter because it doesn't cost that much more and I like to think I can taste a difference, but I am probably fooling myself, There's no fool like an old fool fooling himself.
For years I was a ramen noodle guy. A package of ramens, some frozen vegetables, maybe some canned corn, I guess that was my staff of life for the last quarter century. Then I read somewhere that ramen was deadly so now it't just vegetables, but fresh, which is better than frozen, but it takes considerable time and not a few sliced digits to get them chopped up.
Well income equality has long ago fizzled out. I thought free will and certainly Objective Reality would have a longer run, living machines is fading. Driverless cars appear to be still on the roads of Beaglestonia, but i can't find much to say about them. Do them, don't do them, it all seems the same to me.
This week will culminate in Christmas, and in the middle of it will be the shortest day of the year and then the days will start getting longer. And a week after that the year will be over, do either of my colleagues make a big deal of New Years Eve? After that the only dim light on the horizon is groundhog day which is, well heart breaking because we know we are going to get six more weeks of winter either way, Well let's deck us all with bread of barley.
My mother had a nephew who lived in Berwyn where my mother grew up and he brought her a loaf of genuine Bohemian rye from the old hood whenever he visited her. I've always liked rye bread better than white, and I really don't see what the fascination with whole wheat bread is. Remember Roman Meal?
Of course the only bread we knew growing up was the one that built strong bodies twelve ways, which the only thing cool about it was that you could squinch it up into the size of a large gumball, and pop it into your mouth like a big pill. I remember some young friend of mine who read something about the Romans eating bread and drinking wine, and he was thinking Wonder bread, and it just didn't seem like a meal.
The grocery store used to sell frozen loaves of dough that you could bake into bread, and I did that for a little while. Probably the only time that I (unlike Master Baker Old Dog) have ever used an oven in my life. I liked to see what I was cooking and something deep down where it was very hot and I think those things explode from time to time, I just didn't mess with them. Still don't.
I used to always use margarine because it was cheaper. I think back in the day it used to be healthy, but lately I think it became bad, and now it is not so bad, Anymore I use butter because it doesn't cost that much more and I like to think I can taste a difference, but I am probably fooling myself, There's no fool like an old fool fooling himself.
For years I was a ramen noodle guy. A package of ramens, some frozen vegetables, maybe some canned corn, I guess that was my staff of life for the last quarter century. Then I read somewhere that ramen was deadly so now it't just vegetables, but fresh, which is better than frozen, but it takes considerable time and not a few sliced digits to get them chopped up.
Well income equality has long ago fizzled out. I thought free will and certainly Objective Reality would have a longer run, living machines is fading. Driverless cars appear to be still on the roads of Beaglestonia, but i can't find much to say about them. Do them, don't do them, it all seems the same to me.
This week will culminate in Christmas, and in the middle of it will be the shortest day of the year and then the days will start getting longer. And a week after that the year will be over, do either of my colleagues make a big deal of New Years Eve? After that the only dim light on the horizon is groundhog day which is, well heart breaking because we know we are going to get six more weeks of winter either way, Well let's deck us all with bread of barley.
Sunday, December 18, 2016
Our Daily Bread
My bread is a light rye, made with one part rye flour to two parts white flour. I started out trying to duplicate my grandmother's Bohemian rye, but eventually gave up and settled for my own version, which I call Beaglesonian rye. I talked to a professional baker once, and he said it's almost impossible to duplicate somebody else's bread. You can follow the recipe religiously, but yours will come out differently. He wasn't sure why. I use margarine instead of butter. My hypothetical wife taught me to use Crisco instead of the lard that her mother used to use. I read the labels of both Crisco and margarine, and they are almost the same, mostly partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. I will try slicing it upside down next time. My bread has enough body that I don't crush it but, when I get to the bottom crust, I have to bear down so hard that I scratch the cutting board. Cutting the bottom first might work better, I'll let you know.
I'm not sure what the computer equivalent of the unconscious mind is. You could say that a computer's mind is all unconscious because, as far as we know, computers haven't developed consciousness yet.
I read in the newspaper that Michigan has recently passed legislation allowing driverless cars on the public roads, even without human supervision. (They call them autonomous cars.) GM has been testing an electric model on their own property and now plans to test it on the road. They will have a human on board, at least for now. They are concerned with how variables like weather and traffic will affect the car's performance. Michigan law also allows autonomous taxis, and GM plans to build them someday. I guess you would just call them on your cell phone and they would come pick you up and take you where you want to go.
I have been seeing on the Weather Channel that you guys in Chicago have been colder than we have been in Cheboygan lately. While that is unusual, it's not unheard of. I remember a year or two ago when you had 30 below actual temperature. The coldest I can remember around here was 28 below, and that doesn't happen every winter. Cheboygan, being on the waterfront, doesn't get as cold as the interior areas, so they might get 30 below occasionally. We are on the fringes of the lake effect Snow Belt, while Traverse City, about a hundred miles south of us, is right in the middle of it. They get more snow that we do, but theirs melts sooner too.
I'm not sure what the computer equivalent of the unconscious mind is. You could say that a computer's mind is all unconscious because, as far as we know, computers haven't developed consciousness yet.
I read in the newspaper that Michigan has recently passed legislation allowing driverless cars on the public roads, even without human supervision. (They call them autonomous cars.) GM has been testing an electric model on their own property and now plans to test it on the road. They will have a human on board, at least for now. They are concerned with how variables like weather and traffic will affect the car's performance. Michigan law also allows autonomous taxis, and GM plans to build them someday. I guess you would just call them on your cell phone and they would come pick you up and take you where you want to go.
I have been seeing on the Weather Channel that you guys in Chicago have been colder than we have been in Cheboygan lately. While that is unusual, it's not unheard of. I remember a year or two ago when you had 30 below actual temperature. The coldest I can remember around here was 28 below, and that doesn't happen every winter. Cheboygan, being on the waterfront, doesn't get as cold as the interior areas, so they might get 30 below occasionally. We are on the fringes of the lake effect Snow Belt, while Traverse City, about a hundred miles south of us, is right in the middle of it. They get more snow that we do, but theirs melts sooner too.
Bread & Butter
If Mr. Beagles is making three loaves of bread at a time, I am guessing that he is not using one of the new-fangled bread making machines where you add all the ingredients, push a button, and wait for the baked result. That doesn't seem like the rewarding experience of rolling up your sleeves, dusting the kitchen table with some flour, and kneading a great wad of dough into submission, until it is just right, and then setting it aside to rise. Just thinking about freshly baked bread is making my mouth water.
I read a household hint about slicing home baked bread: turn it upside down and cut from the bottom. The hardened top crust can cause you to crush the bread while cutting; I haven't tried this method myself but it sounds reasonable (serrated knife preferred).
Online opinion is unanimous against the practice of storing bread in the refrigerator. It has less to do with it drying out than the retrogration of the starch molecules. I've never had a problem with bread stored at room temperature; it gets moldy before it dries out but I don't eat a lot of bread. And the bread I do eat is of the commercial variety and pre-sliced, loaded with all kinds of preservatives.
For such a simple food staple, bread can be very complex. I wasn't aware of all the different types of flour you can use; I've fallen into the trap of using "all purpose" flour for everything and I should give it more thought when I bake, which hasn't been often enough lately. Unfortunately, my kitchen is lacking in proper counter space and there is no room for a table so my big league cooking and baking days may be over. I still remember my killer chocolate chip cookie recipe, though.
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Any thoughts on butter? I like unsalted for cooking, salted for toast, and if I'm getting real fancy with pastry I'll use Plugra. I can't usually taste the difference between name-brand and store-brand butter, but that could be due to tired old taste buds. I imagine a lot depends on the diet of the dairy cattle, which in the US might mean they are all eating the same thing. But there might be a market for artisanal butter, like there is for cheese; anybody up for goat butter?
I read a household hint about slicing home baked bread: turn it upside down and cut from the bottom. The hardened top crust can cause you to crush the bread while cutting; I haven't tried this method myself but it sounds reasonable (serrated knife preferred).
Online opinion is unanimous against the practice of storing bread in the refrigerator. It has less to do with it drying out than the retrogration of the starch molecules. I've never had a problem with bread stored at room temperature; it gets moldy before it dries out but I don't eat a lot of bread. And the bread I do eat is of the commercial variety and pre-sliced, loaded with all kinds of preservatives.
For such a simple food staple, bread can be very complex. I wasn't aware of all the different types of flour you can use; I've fallen into the trap of using "all purpose" flour for everything and I should give it more thought when I bake, which hasn't been often enough lately. Unfortunately, my kitchen is lacking in proper counter space and there is no room for a table so my big league cooking and baking days may be over. I still remember my killer chocolate chip cookie recipe, though.
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Any thoughts on butter? I like unsalted for cooking, salted for toast, and if I'm getting real fancy with pastry I'll use Plugra. I can't usually taste the difference between name-brand and store-brand butter, but that could be due to tired old taste buds. I imagine a lot depends on the diet of the dairy cattle, which in the US might mean they are all eating the same thing. But there might be a market for artisanal butter, like there is for cheese; anybody up for goat butter?
Friday, December 16, 2016
fifty years and no household hints
Household hints. It was in my mind to add some of my own, but after five minutes of letting my brain go tika tika (love that expression) I have nada. Half a century of preparing my own food and I have nothing, Perhaps something will pop up in the writing of this or maybe over my wild weekend, or maybe not at all.
I googled Heist, it didn't seem like my kind of movie. Some (perhaps Old Dog.and certainly some reviewers) consider genre movies to be their own art form, and when one of them is done very well by the prevailing rules of the form they think it is a good movie, but I like my movies to be odd, and even if they don't work out right I can still like them for trying to do something.
As long as I am on the subject of movies, how about those cheapass reality shows that the guys in Finders Keepers were on? Holy shit, no wonder we wound up with Dumbo.
Motorsports, is that what you call them? Sounds like those guys that call gambling gaming, and hunting harvesting. I have run into that umbrage from other Nascar fans when I have used that phrase, part of the reason I use it all the time; If it weren't for the car wrecks you would spend the whole race looking at the ass end of the car in front of the car with the cam. It makes golf look exciting.
It would seem like the flow of electrons is what makes consciousness, but maybe the hormones washing through and whatever have something to do with it. I think, and I know I am just talking out of my ass here, that you can't have life without emotions. On the other hand even though emotions may be driven by hormones perhaps it is only when they are translated into emotions that we actually feel them. And what of the deep well of the unconscious mind? What would the computer version of that be?
As usual I am not following any links, If there is something there I want to hear it in the writer's own words. If there is some pertinent paragraph or two copying and pasting is just fine, I know I posted the link to that New Yorker article, but I don't do that very often, and I put a lot of what I was saying in my own words when introducing it.
So I'm still not sure what the Maillard Reaction is though it sounds like some chemical change, and Maillard, probably some proper name, sounds a little Frenchy to me.
I was about to sign off with some mention of Old Man Winter's icy grip when I got to thinking geez how bad is it going to be at the top of the top of the hat on top of the hat on top of Michigan and I did a quick check, and you know, not so bad, a good twenty degrees warmer on that killer Sunday/Monday, what's with that?
I googled Heist, it didn't seem like my kind of movie. Some (perhaps Old Dog.and certainly some reviewers) consider genre movies to be their own art form, and when one of them is done very well by the prevailing rules of the form they think it is a good movie, but I like my movies to be odd, and even if they don't work out right I can still like them for trying to do something.
As long as I am on the subject of movies, how about those cheapass reality shows that the guys in Finders Keepers were on? Holy shit, no wonder we wound up with Dumbo.
Motorsports, is that what you call them? Sounds like those guys that call gambling gaming, and hunting harvesting. I have run into that umbrage from other Nascar fans when I have used that phrase, part of the reason I use it all the time; If it weren't for the car wrecks you would spend the whole race looking at the ass end of the car in front of the car with the cam. It makes golf look exciting.
It would seem like the flow of electrons is what makes consciousness, but maybe the hormones washing through and whatever have something to do with it. I think, and I know I am just talking out of my ass here, that you can't have life without emotions. On the other hand even though emotions may be driven by hormones perhaps it is only when they are translated into emotions that we actually feel them. And what of the deep well of the unconscious mind? What would the computer version of that be?
As usual I am not following any links, If there is something there I want to hear it in the writer's own words. If there is some pertinent paragraph or two copying and pasting is just fine, I know I posted the link to that New Yorker article, but I don't do that very often, and I put a lot of what I was saying in my own words when introducing it.
So I'm still not sure what the Maillard Reaction is though it sounds like some chemical change, and Maillard, probably some proper name, sounds a little Frenchy to me.
I was about to sign off with some mention of Old Man Winter's icy grip when I got to thinking geez how bad is it going to be at the top of the top of the hat on top of the hat on top of Michigan and I did a quick check, and you know, not so bad, a good twenty degrees warmer on that killer Sunday/Monday, what's with that?
Thursday, December 15, 2016
Ticka-ticka Update
My hypothetical wife reports that her parents didn't have a ticka-ticka toaster when she was a kid. The first time she saw one of those was in the old rented trailer where we lived when we first got married. That trailer came equipped with all the cooking utensils we needed, and we never bought any of our own until we moved out of there into a proper house. I know that my parents had a ticka-
ticka toaster when I lived with them, but they switched to a silent toaster some time after I moved out. The more I think of it, I haven't seen a ticka-ticka toaster since we moved out of that old trailer, so they must have stopped making them a long time ago. It was likely part of the "planned obsolescence" movement. The idea was that you didn't repair anything anymore, you just threw it away and bought another one when it broke down, which was shortly after the warrantee expired. This provided job security for the manufacturers, but it put a lot of skilled repair people out of work.
We still have a couple of those aluminum coffee percolators. We have never made coffee in them, just tea. We had to buy them decades ago because we couldn't find a decent tea pot anymore. We threw the percolator parts away because you don't need them to make tea, and they would just be in the way. Both of them have a crack by the handle, and they will leak if you overfill them. One of these days, I'm going to pick one of them up by the handle and the pot will fall right off. My hypothetical wife resolved to buy a new one before that happens, but she was unable to find any kind of tea or coffee pot in this town. I guess I'll have to check on Amazon, if they don't have them nobody does. If they don't make them anymore, I don't know what I'm going to use to make my tea. I don't like those kettles that can only be used to boil the water, which you are supposed to then pour into another crockery pot with your tea bags in it. I like to put the bags right in with the cold water, bring it almost to the boiling point, but not quite, and then turn the heat off and let it steep for at least ten minutes. I prefer aluminum tea pots, but I suppose I could live with a glass one, except my hypothetical wife can't find one of those either.
While we're in the kitchen, if you keep your bread in the refrigerator, it won't dry out, and the last slice will taste as good as the first. I have heard that you're not supposed to do that, but my experience
is that it works just fine. Keep the unused portion in the plastic bag it came in, rolling up the open end to minimize exposure to the air. I make my own bread, and I store it in zip lock freezer bags. I make three loaves at a time, which fits into four one gallon freezer bags. Three of them go into the freezer, and one into the refrigerator. When I take a bag out of the freezer, I open it and dump out the ice crystals that have formed in storage. Then I let it sit open on the kitchen table for a half hour or so, and any remaining ice crystals evaporate. Then I close it up and put in the fridge. You can usually skip that step with store bought bread. I suppose they put some kind of chemical in there to prevent the ice crystal from forming in the first place.
They are learning new stuff about the human brain all the time, but I think they are still a long way from completely understanding it. It is generally believed that plants are not sentient because they don't have anything resembling a brain. I saw something on PBS once that said plants do appear to communicate with one another by exuding certain chemicals, but that doesn't mean they know what they're doing.
ticka toaster when I lived with them, but they switched to a silent toaster some time after I moved out. The more I think of it, I haven't seen a ticka-ticka toaster since we moved out of that old trailer, so they must have stopped making them a long time ago. It was likely part of the "planned obsolescence" movement. The idea was that you didn't repair anything anymore, you just threw it away and bought another one when it broke down, which was shortly after the warrantee expired. This provided job security for the manufacturers, but it put a lot of skilled repair people out of work.
We still have a couple of those aluminum coffee percolators. We have never made coffee in them, just tea. We had to buy them decades ago because we couldn't find a decent tea pot anymore. We threw the percolator parts away because you don't need them to make tea, and they would just be in the way. Both of them have a crack by the handle, and they will leak if you overfill them. One of these days, I'm going to pick one of them up by the handle and the pot will fall right off. My hypothetical wife resolved to buy a new one before that happens, but she was unable to find any kind of tea or coffee pot in this town. I guess I'll have to check on Amazon, if they don't have them nobody does. If they don't make them anymore, I don't know what I'm going to use to make my tea. I don't like those kettles that can only be used to boil the water, which you are supposed to then pour into another crockery pot with your tea bags in it. I like to put the bags right in with the cold water, bring it almost to the boiling point, but not quite, and then turn the heat off and let it steep for at least ten minutes. I prefer aluminum tea pots, but I suppose I could live with a glass one, except my hypothetical wife can't find one of those either.
While we're in the kitchen, if you keep your bread in the refrigerator, it won't dry out, and the last slice will taste as good as the first. I have heard that you're not supposed to do that, but my experience
is that it works just fine. Keep the unused portion in the plastic bag it came in, rolling up the open end to minimize exposure to the air. I make my own bread, and I store it in zip lock freezer bags. I make three loaves at a time, which fits into four one gallon freezer bags. Three of them go into the freezer, and one into the refrigerator. When I take a bag out of the freezer, I open it and dump out the ice crystals that have formed in storage. Then I let it sit open on the kitchen table for a half hour or so, and any remaining ice crystals evaporate. Then I close it up and put in the fridge. You can usually skip that step with store bought bread. I suppose they put some kind of chemical in there to prevent the ice crystal from forming in the first place.
They are learning new stuff about the human brain all the time, but I think they are still a long way from completely understanding it. It is generally believed that plants are not sentient because they don't have anything resembling a brain. I saw something on PBS once that said plants do appear to communicate with one another by exuding certain chemicals, but that doesn't mean they know what they're doing.
Racing in circles
There was more than a trillion dollars worth of high tech bigwigs in the meeting with Trump yesterday which caused me to entertain another silly notion. Suppose those guys got together and chipped in some dough, say about $50 billion total (cash!), and offered it to Trump if he would step down/aside. Think he'd take the deal? Such flights of fancy amuse me.
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It took a visit to IMDB to refresh my memory of The Score, which I recall as a good flick. 2001 was a good year for that type of movie; there was also Heist, with Gene Hackman, but I don't know if Uncle Ken would share my positive opinion of it. We are looking through different eyes and weigh aspects of a film differently.
Same thing with watching motorsports, which I assume Uncle Ken holds in low regard. I don't understand what he means when he said "And don't they have plenty of crashes with humans driving? Isn't that the point of the whole thing for Chrissake?" I take umbrage at any implication that the point of auto racing is crashing. Heresy, I say!
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The type of coffee maker with the little glass bulb on the top is the percolator, very popular until the advent of the Mr. Coffee machines. Coffee snobs dismiss the percolator as the worst method of brewing coffee; I don't agree, but Mr. Coffee machines are certainly easier to clean.
Coffee brewing is as much of an art as science, with many different methods available and subtle variables involved. At one time I roasted my own beans, just for the experience, and I will say the results were superb but not something I choose to do on a regular basis. Much too smokey and messy, with little bits of chaff floating through the apartment. Folger's freeze-dried crystals are more than adequate for my current caffeine needs.
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Before I undertake any further inquiries into the field of neuroscience, isn't the flow of electrons the only thing that is really going on in the brain? The interplay of axons, dendrites, neurons, synapses, all controlled by varying chemical reactions generated by glandular secretions, or some such stuff?
My understanding is that it's all about the connections in the brain, but this is another rabbit hole, isn't it? Luckily, I just found a web page that can put a lot of this discussion to rest, for the time being, and apologies for the link: https://www.quora.com/What-animals-are-computers-now-smarter-than
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The Maillard Reaction is what happens when cooked foods become more flavorful, as cited here: http://www.scienceofcooking.com/maillard_reaction.htm
"When it's smoking it's cooking and when it's burnt it's done," one of those things my father said.
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It took a visit to IMDB to refresh my memory of The Score, which I recall as a good flick. 2001 was a good year for that type of movie; there was also Heist, with Gene Hackman, but I don't know if Uncle Ken would share my positive opinion of it. We are looking through different eyes and weigh aspects of a film differently.
Same thing with watching motorsports, which I assume Uncle Ken holds in low regard. I don't understand what he means when he said "And don't they have plenty of crashes with humans driving? Isn't that the point of the whole thing for Chrissake?" I take umbrage at any implication that the point of auto racing is crashing. Heresy, I say!
-----
The type of coffee maker with the little glass bulb on the top is the percolator, very popular until the advent of the Mr. Coffee machines. Coffee snobs dismiss the percolator as the worst method of brewing coffee; I don't agree, but Mr. Coffee machines are certainly easier to clean.
Coffee brewing is as much of an art as science, with many different methods available and subtle variables involved. At one time I roasted my own beans, just for the experience, and I will say the results were superb but not something I choose to do on a regular basis. Much too smokey and messy, with little bits of chaff floating through the apartment. Folger's freeze-dried crystals are more than adequate for my current caffeine needs.
-----
Before I undertake any further inquiries into the field of neuroscience, isn't the flow of electrons the only thing that is really going on in the brain? The interplay of axons, dendrites, neurons, synapses, all controlled by varying chemical reactions generated by glandular secretions, or some such stuff?
My understanding is that it's all about the connections in the brain, but this is another rabbit hole, isn't it? Luckily, I just found a web page that can put a lot of this discussion to rest, for the time being, and apologies for the link: https://www.quora.com/What-animals-are-computers-now-smarter-than
\
-----
The Maillard Reaction is what happens when cooked foods become more flavorful, as cited here: http://www.scienceofcooking.com/maillard_reaction.htm
"When it's smoking it's cooking and when it's burnt it's done," one of those things my father said.
where have all the coffeepots gone?
Now I am not so sure that I heard that tika tika when I was a lad, maybe I have it confused with the other noises of breakfast, particularly that glass knob where the boiling coffee burbled. Why did we get rid of those pots? They were handsome objects and kind of fun. An arrangement of metallic strips, springs, and levers you say (with the elegant and proper Oxford comma), an arrangement which doesn't sound as easily tinkered with as Old Dog claims, and I don't remember toast always turning out that swell. Seems to me that there is a lot of variance in bread, and even in that bag of bread that built strong bodies twelve ways. As the week went on surely the moisture content varied quite a bit. Maybe the best thing to do is stick a stick through a slice and toast it over a roaring open fire, more fun anyway.
Maillard reaction? Does that have something to do with postal service, with ducks? I await Old Dog's explanation.
I don't get these driverless cars. If we invested all that money in public trans we could have trains and busses across the country carrying us in clean and unpolluting elegance wherever and whenever we wanted to go while we sang songs in praise of the worker's paradise. If we had to walk a couple of blocks from where we got off to our door, that would be good for us.
I thought people liked to drive cars. At least that's what they say. What about all those commercials where cars are roaring through mountain passes and slushing and splattering through mud? Seems to me that NASCAR is probably a lot easier to program for than highway or city street driving. It's all the same kind of road, and only left turns I believe, and all the same kind of cars all trying to do the same thing. And don't they have plenty of crashes with humans driving? Isn't that the point of the whole thing for Chrissake?
I guess noir films are okay, as long as they are truly noir with moral ambioguity, and not just a movie with a noir look, but all the characters are good or bad and it ends up with the good guy punching out the bad guy in the abandoned warehouse down by the river. I hate caper, it's the complete surrender of characters to a complicated plot. There was a movie in 2001, The Score, which elevated the characters which was pretty good. I wasn't too keen on Hell or Highwater, though the Tomato Meter was all the way to the right. I thought it was hackneyed. I liked the $200 tip and the waitress, and the brothers had some chemistry, but the sheriff and the deputy had none, and that whole shtick about the Midland bank got old in the first ten minutes.
I'm not buying that movies are being supplanted by these episodic shows. There are still plenty of good movies being made, and there have always been plenty of bad ones. Anymore teenage movies are popular among adults. I just think that there is something artificial in episodic shows, but I don't have like ten hours a week to research them. Charles Dickens was not that great.
A human brain is more than a flow of electrons, there is all this other shit going on too. And it's way way way more complicated than any computer. I daresay the brain of a gnat is way way way more complicated than the worldwide web. Still the flow of electrons seems to be the main thing going on. Apparently they can tell what we are thinking about by mapping the electrical activity in the brain. I believe that there is a declining wave of awareness as animals become simpler (not sure about plants), so maybe this Hal character has a consciousness way way way less than a gnat, but way way way more than a rock hitting flint.
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
The Future is Now
Driverless cars have been in the news lately, even I have seen them, and I don't watch a lot of news. It is my understanding that they are ready to roll, and efforts are being made to make them street legal. Some states already allow them on the road, but they require a human to be on board for safety reasons. Some state legislatures are considering removing the human requirement, but I don't know if any of them have passed a law to that effect yet. I'm pretty sure that driverless cars need to see the painted lines on the road that delineate traffic lanes, so I doubt that they would work on unpaved or snow covered roads. Some of the newer regular car models offer automatic braking systems and even automatic parallel parking. They also have an alarm that warns you if you start drifting out of your lane but, again, there have to be lane markings for that to work. I think they also warn you if you are following the car ahead of you too close, or if the guy behind you is following you too close. That must employ optics, and I don't know how well they work in a snowstorm or under dusty or muddy conditions. The driverless cars have similar technology but, instead of warning the driver, they make the necessary corrections automatically.
When I was school bus driver, there was some speculation among my colleagues about if we would ever be replaced by driverless busses. Most of us agreed that it was only a matter of time until the technology was developed. The hardest part would be finding a way to keep the kids under control, and I proposed a solution to that. We already had cameras on our busses to monitor the kids' behavior. All we would need to do is put in some kind of program that would deliver a mild electrical shock to unruly passengers. Well the first warning would be mild, but it would be incrementally increased for subsequent infractions.
As Ken mentioned, a computer is run by a flow of electrons. Doesn't the human brain work the same way? The only difference is that our brains are composed of living tissue, which can repair itself under certain circumstances by cellular mitosis. Computers and other machines can't do that, at least not yet.
When I was school bus driver, there was some speculation among my colleagues about if we would ever be replaced by driverless busses. Most of us agreed that it was only a matter of time until the technology was developed. The hardest part would be finding a way to keep the kids under control, and I proposed a solution to that. We already had cameras on our busses to monitor the kids' behavior. All we would need to do is put in some kind of program that would deliver a mild electrical shock to unruly passengers. Well the first warning would be mild, but it would be incrementally increased for subsequent infractions.
As Ken mentioned, a computer is run by a flow of electrons. Doesn't the human brain work the same way? The only difference is that our brains are composed of living tissue, which can repair itself under certain circumstances by cellular mitosis. Computers and other machines can't do that, at least not yet.
A toast to good driving
Take heart, Uncle Ken, not all toasters made that "ticka-ticka" sound. That sound was made by a clockwork type mechanism to control time and not used in all types of automatic toasters. The toasters of my memory were all silent; they used a clever arrangement of bi-metallic strips, springs, and levers to determine the level of "toastiness" of the bread. They were very reliable, and any variance of the toast is likely due to pitted contacts or changes in spring tension, both easily remedied if you choose to do so. Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google are your friends, and those old units can be hacked to ensure a long service life.
Another thing I learned while researching the "ticka-ticka" is that toast tastes good because of the Maillard Reaction, which I keep forgetting about but is very important when it comes to the flavor of food.
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Driverless cars are a stupendous technological achievement, but I wonder if they are another solution in search of a problem. I'd like to see more testing under conditions more rigorous than well paved suburban routes. Like NASCAR, for instance; run the Daytona 500 with driverless cars and see what happens. If they can run that race at the same speeds as human drivers and finish without any crashes, well, then they might work out okay on public streets and highways. I don't know what they'll do if a kid or dog runs out in the street, or hit a big pothole. Insurance companies will go crazy in determining liability and who or what is at fault. Is it the software? Or is it a mechanical failure due to a faulty sensor? Maybe it's a design flaw and a little moisture caused an optical sensor to fog up a little bit and the car didn't see that blind person crossing the street. We won't have enough fingers to point the blame.
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The trend towards driverless cars indicate a cultural shift, in my opinion. At one point, learning how to drive a car with skill and mastery was a matter of pride and not taken lightly nor easily achieved. I used to judge a driver's skill by the ability to parallel park; if they can't park without banging into the bumpers of the other cars they are probably bad drivers, too, especially given the benefits of power steering and automatic transmissions. And you don't need ten extra feet to squeeze into a parking spot, but I speak as a 20th century dinosaur.
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A few posts ago Uncle Ken mentioned the many types of movies he didn't like, but no mention was made of the noir genre or heist/caper movies. Do these past muster? We seldom discuss films at the seminars, but I know he likes "dark" movies, whatever that means, and the works of some Korean directors in particular.
Maybe the reason we don't discuss many movies is because so many recent works are crap, all spectacle and no content. It's like there are no new ideas and everything now is a different variation of the same old shit, and who cares? It's been a long time since a movie knocked my socks off. I'd be hard pressed to name one but Brad Bird's The Iron Giant comes to mind.
Another reason could be that movies are no longer viable as a story telling medium. There is a trend toward episodic, long form stories, like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones. Please note, I'm not equating popularity with quality in citing these examples. But I'm reminded of the works of Charles Dickens, whose novels were originally published in a weekly serialized form. Any thoughts, or is this topic not worth pursuing?
Another thing I learned while researching the "ticka-ticka" is that toast tastes good because of the Maillard Reaction, which I keep forgetting about but is very important when it comes to the flavor of food.
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Driverless cars are a stupendous technological achievement, but I wonder if they are another solution in search of a problem. I'd like to see more testing under conditions more rigorous than well paved suburban routes. Like NASCAR, for instance; run the Daytona 500 with driverless cars and see what happens. If they can run that race at the same speeds as human drivers and finish without any crashes, well, then they might work out okay on public streets and highways. I don't know what they'll do if a kid or dog runs out in the street, or hit a big pothole. Insurance companies will go crazy in determining liability and who or what is at fault. Is it the software? Or is it a mechanical failure due to a faulty sensor? Maybe it's a design flaw and a little moisture caused an optical sensor to fog up a little bit and the car didn't see that blind person crossing the street. We won't have enough fingers to point the blame.
-----
The trend towards driverless cars indicate a cultural shift, in my opinion. At one point, learning how to drive a car with skill and mastery was a matter of pride and not taken lightly nor easily achieved. I used to judge a driver's skill by the ability to parallel park; if they can't park without banging into the bumpers of the other cars they are probably bad drivers, too, especially given the benefits of power steering and automatic transmissions. And you don't need ten extra feet to squeeze into a parking spot, but I speak as a 20th century dinosaur.
-----
A few posts ago Uncle Ken mentioned the many types of movies he didn't like, but no mention was made of the noir genre or heist/caper movies. Do these past muster? We seldom discuss films at the seminars, but I know he likes "dark" movies, whatever that means, and the works of some Korean directors in particular.
Maybe the reason we don't discuss many movies is because so many recent works are crap, all spectacle and no content. It's like there are no new ideas and everything now is a different variation of the same old shit, and who cares? It's been a long time since a movie knocked my socks off. I'd be hard pressed to name one but Brad Bird's The Iron Giant comes to mind.
Another reason could be that movies are no longer viable as a story telling medium. There is a trend toward episodic, long form stories, like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones. Please note, I'm not equating popularity with quality in citing these examples. But I'm reminded of the works of Charles Dickens, whose novels were originally published in a weekly serialized form. Any thoughts, or is this topic not worth pursuing?
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