Critters

This freaked me out more than a little bit. Apparently, the cane toads that are pushing deeper into the back-of-beyond tend to be bigger than that ones that lag behind (and evolve longer legs, too, as I understand it). But the thought of a two-plus-pound toad is just disturbing. Our middle cat weighs in at about six.

This, on the other hand, would be really cool. I mean, you read the stories of dewy-eyed morons who try to swim (illegally and completely irresponsibly) with dolphins. If you're lucky, you read about them on the Darwin Awards website because the gits in question were too biologically illiterate to know the difference between dolphins and sharks when they jumped into the water and started waving bait-fish around. Donning a wetsuit and jumping into frigid waters to hang with the belugas, on the other fin, takes some up-front cajones.

The head of the fish stinks first

Just a short post this time, to hand off this slice of spot-on goodness: http://www.thestar.com/Life/article/195969

'Nuff said.

Well, maybe not. Just to hammer the point home, may I simply point out the following: For Gonzales, Miers, Rove, and assorted hired goons to cower behind the Constitution that they gleefully rewrote in Krylon is one of the more staggering examples of hypocrisy I've seen from the Bush regime. But, then, they've had plenty of practice. Frankly, I'm not even certain that Nixon and Kissenger between them could pull that off.

Sort of gives a whole 'nuther meaning to the term "Bush league," doesn't it?

Another quirky quest

On Steely Dan's 1977 album--I'm old enough that they'll always be "albums" and not "CDs"--Aja are two songs that you probably never heard on the radio. One is the Homeric hat-tip "Home at Last," which includes the line "She serves the smooth retsina."

"Retsina"? Mind you, this was not the first time that the Dyspeptic Duo has sent me to the dictionary. Which, coming from the sequipedialian who sent at least two college profs. to the dictionary, is saying something.

So after about thirty seconds and two tasteless banner ads on Dictionary.com, I had my answer. Retsina, it seems, is a Greek wine flavored with pine resin. (The story is that wine was transported in amphorae sealed with pine pitch which helped to preserve the wine as well as flavor it.) The Mediterranean restaurant downtown (which has gone sadly and ironically downhill since relocating from its hole in the wall to grander surroundings) serves it. And I find that I like the astringency because it's not part of the wine itself.

So the question for this inveterate take-it-apart-to-see-how-it-works maven is: How can I approximate that with the wine kits that are currently on the market? I'm not an accomplished enough oenophile to be able to take a sip of retsina and think, "Oh, this tastes rather like a Gewurtztraminner." (And, in a way, I hope that I never become that much of a wine snob. ) In the quick search that I did, I came up with a list of Greek wine grape varieties (http://www.greekwinemakers.com/czone/varieties/redvar.shtml). So the next step in the process is more research to find a grape that will approximate one of those. (And if I can find Aleppan pine pitch, which allegedly was the original barrel-sealant, so much the better.)

John Backus, RIP

The founder of the FORTRAN programming language has passed away at a mere 82 years of age. I will confess that I have next to no exposure to the language, other than a textbook my mother brought home for me when I was nerding around in BASIC on the TRS-80s and Apple IIs at school. (Yes, I am THAT old...)

But you don't have to be a programmer, much less a FORTRAN alumnus to appreciate how different today's world would be without human-readable (i.e. English-like) source code. Suffice it to say that I would not be blogging now.

I regret that I missed noting the passing of Dr. Hopper back in the 90s, and more so that I didn't think to verify that she is buried at Arlington before I spent a day there last September. So I do want to make my hat tip to Backus for his contributions to my field of work, which (happily) is still one of my passions.

Tick and Tock

Sheesh--you'd think I'm still 18 or something. Spring Break ends on Sunday, and am I done with my homework? Do you think I'd feel as if I've accomplished much of anything this past week? Do I even consider myself that much the better for seven days' respite? No to all of the above. Sigh.

But I'm overstating the case. There are several ways in which I'm further ahead than I was last Friday. Among other things, I spent a few hours on the phone with my best friend (which I haven't done in a shamefully long time), made my last will and testament "official", went to my first LUG meeting in months, and made some traction on two long-range goals. But it certainly doesn't seem like a week's worth.

My most accomplished globe-trotting friend would be appalled at me for 'fessing this, but I'd dearly love to take a vacation that didn't involve leaving home. (Nobody rat me out, please: The poor guy just might swoon.) But, instead, I'm banking hours for the trip that my Dearest and I have been talking about for years and years. I'm also using it as a rationale for tightening my own purse strings. I find that it's bad for me when I can buy something without thinking about it, and without using it as a carrot for some accomplishment. Even small fritterings--a book here, a Murano glass pen there--add up. So it's good to remind myself of the prodigious thud that double air fair and two weeks of lodging will make when they hit the bottom line of the American Express statement several months hence. [wry expression]

Enough worry-warting. I started out this post complaining about being 18 again, and here I am fussing like a little old pensioner after mere paragraphs. Time to return to my regularly scheduled middle age. Happy weekend, all.

Uh-oh

It seems that the TB vaccines don't carry the same punch anymore, according to this article from The Toronto Star. This hit my radar because my partner and I (foolishly) bought a batch of finches from a friend-of-a-friend several years ago, and two birds died from TB. The only mercy was that the they did it pretty quickly, before infecting the rest of the flock. But my Dearest, being their primary handler, took the precaution of being tested, and came up clean.

I wonder if that means that we'll all have to be re-inoculated in a few years. I remember having my arm popped with the "gun" in kindergarten, which wasn't too bad. (I dread shots, although I do manage not to make quite the fuss of olden days when I have to grit my teeth through one.) All the same, it beats TB any day. I've been blessed with a decent arsenal of immunity so far in life, but I'd rather not double-dog-dare something that scary.

Short cross-post today

A big heartfelt hat-tip to fellow Blogspotter "jurassicpork" for his persistence in documentation--not to mention the fortitude to hold his nose long enough to pan the cesspool that is Fox Noise:

http://welcome-to-pottersville.blogspot.com/2007/03/fox-news-at-its-finest.html

It's times like these that I regret being an agnostic. Because otherwise I could comfort myself with the thought that there's a special place in Hell earmarked for Citizen Murdoch and his hired goons. Jon Stewart holds a special place in my heart, but Stephen Colbert is a sheer genius for his ability to mock these people so well and still keep a straight face.

One for the HTMLers out there

My cursory Googling for the source of this photo was not fruitful. It did, however, find several hits for a "full body" HTML tattoo, which should probably disturb me.

Those who dwell on the past are doomed to repeat it

I ran across this piece a couple days back, but did not have enough (contiguous) free time to read, much less pass on until now. The first third was promising, but the harping on the Civil War theme grew tiresome, and not simply because I find the mythos of the Old South itself tiresome.

Understand that I find the carnage obscene in any context, be it book market or opium den. Nevertheless, that the bomber and his handlers targeted what remains of cultural literacy in Iraq salts the already-open wound. But Dickey's musings on history miss the larger, more enduring parallels between occupied Iraq and the Reconstruction-era South.

Parallel #1 is the fact that when the vanquished cannot lash out at the victor, s/he makes someone else pay for the humiliation of defeat. Lynchings and car bombs both stem from treating the vendettas of our forebears as heirlooms, rather than the soul-twisting curses that they are.

Parallel #2 is that too often, and for too many people, every effort to reconstruct the past is an attack on the future. There is no happenstance in that the sellers and buyers of books were targeted. Neither is there any coincidence to the fact that the assaults on education (in the guise of creationism, abstinence-training, and--soon, no doubt--the introduction of "critical thinking" on the "theory" of global warming) often come from the South (Kansas, Dover, PA, and the recently slapped-down shenanigans in Ohio notwithstanding).

Of course, I'm treating Dickey harshly, simply because anyone who can remember the Civil War first-hand is long dead, and it's well past time to bury that grievance alongside them. I really should rejoice that a Southerner would put that weary legacy to rare good use--a Yankee couldn't pull that off. If he succeeds in the small miracle of kindling a kindred spirit among a population not quite famous for empathizing with brown-skinned folks, then I applaud him as a bridge-builder for humanity.

Yet I can't help but cringe whenever anyone raises the faded tatters of the Confederate banner. We can't encourage the Iraqis to put centuries of infighting behind them when we suckle yet another generation on such poison here in America.

A small puff of belly-button fuzz

Until this afternoon I hadn't appreciated how much it improves my work morale to be writing new (computer) code tabla rasa. Even tedious stuff like all the error-checking/handling. Because the error-checking was mine. Not grafting new functionality onto an old branch of code. Not refactoring. Just me and the almost-blank page. I hadn't realized that about myself. Now I do. So do you. That and a buck'll getcha a cuppa coffee, but there you have it.

Success vs. failure

As I age, I'm not certain that the line is so distinct as many think it is. Or, at least not as distinct as I once thought it was. It is not, after all, in the best interests of The Establishment to raise successes, not in the fullest sense of the word. Keeping the proletariat in mortal terror of lagging behind The Joneses is, in the end, the aim of many of our so-called institutions. Organized religion sometimes serves to reinforce compliance with the established order, but other times seems to go widdershins. I suppose much depends on the collusion between the brahmins and the fatuousness of the masses at that juncture of history.

So--to make my longwinded point even longer--few, if any, are formally trained for "success" when it is defined as wielding our aptitudes and passions for our own direct and greatest benefit. It wasn't until just now that I realized that entrepreneurship is, in a sense, an act of guerilla warfare against the status quo. Far more so than any rock band that ever railed against The Man in burma-shave refrains.

For awhile now, I have also been mulling over the question of whether we, at the most subconcious level, don't actually fear success more than we fear failure. And I mean real success, not the gumball machine knockoffs that society tries to pawn off on us.

But I am short on time, so those ruminations will have to wait until later.

Two out of three ain't bad...

... if you're Meatloaf, but two out of four just does not cut it for sourdough bread.

I've tinkered with sourdough quite a bit over the years--the starter in my refrigerator will be ten years old sometime this year, in fact. Mostly it's been an exercise in tweaking an existing recipe. But this time I tried something completely different from usual. Last night I dumped a cup and a quarter of starter into a bowl, then stirred in a random bit of sugar and about a cup of flour, and covered the bowl with two damp towels.. This morning it was a nice bubbly mass of goo, which is what I expected. So I reserved a cup of flour for the kneading-bowl, and added about half a cup or so to the goo.

The goo refused to absorb even the half-cup, so I dumped the lumpy lot into the kneading bowl and fought it until I had dough that had that familiar smooth, elastic quality. At the time I figured that the starter must've been more flour-laden than I'd thought.

I've been trying to avoid introducing any fat into the recipe because I want the tough outer crust. The dough was barely even tacky, so I just plopped the smaller-than-normal mass into a larger serving-bowl, covered it with the re-dampened dishtowel, and let it have about four hours of rising time (normal for the sourdoughs I've made).

When it was time to transfer it to the baking pan, what a mess! Somehow my barely-tacky dough had morphed into The Blob. As the size didn't justify dirtying a full cookie sheet, I just transferred it (as best I could) to a greased layer-cake pan and baked it.

The results are mixed. The crust is definitely tougher. The characteristic sourdough "tang" is excellent. But the crumb is somewhat spongy, most likely because the dough was so damp when it went into the oven. Moreover, it rose quite a bit while baking, resulting in cracking on the sides (a problem I've had with other versions of the recipe--a real hit-or-miss thing) and crazing on the bottom.

Next time I think that I will let the dough have its first rising in the kneading bowl and add more flour after the first rising. Then I will either a.) allow for a second rising before transferring to the baking sheet/pan, or b.) allow at least two hours for the final rising.

But it's supposed to be the journey, not the destination, y'know. And butter melting into still-warm bread covers a multitude of sins.

Friday frivolity

I could work myself into another lather over any number of things. No shortage of outrage in this world, after all. But despite the fact that I'll be at work a few hours later than normal tonight, my temper's the best it's been in a couple of weeks. So I'll indulge by adding some breathtakingly talented silliness to to my gentle reader's day:

http://jeffdeboer.com/Galleries/CatsMice/tabid/63/moduleid/396/viewkey/photo/photoid/1/Default.aspx

"No one told you when to run/ You missed the starting gun..."

If you want a piece of evidence that America's scientific leadership is in mortal peril, you only have to look at this: http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/187074

The most massive international environmental study in half a century, and where was this venture kicked off? MIT? Stanford? Berkley? Why, no. Try Paris. Located in the cantankerous blob on Dick Cheney's map labeled "Old Europe."

The fact that American scientists (and scientifically minded people) are spending so much as a nanosecond guarding the gates of the city from the creationist barbarians is nothing short of a crime, for which the "teach the [artificial] controversy" likes of Dubya should be prosecuted. If only to recompense the taxpayers whose money was wasted on that twaddle.

But when I think of the money being funneled into belief tanks like the AEI (http://money.cnn.com/2007/02/02/news/companies/exxon_science/index.htm) to deny the obvious, I want to see the management of the paymaster companies like Exxon jailed tried for crimes against humanity. Preferably at Nuremberg. Just to make the point. But these b@$+@rds will die in their beds. Just like the scum that denied that leaded gasoline was doing anything bad to people or to the environment.

In the name of fairness, I read (in their entirety) a couple editorials that attempted to deflect criticism of the AEI and Exxon. But what did I find? The usual "tu quoque" tactics, with some ad hominem on the side. When you have to refer the the AEI's tax status as "proof" that it doesn't engage in "lobbying", puh-LEEZE. They aren't publishing their soi-dissant "research" for the ivory tower crowd, jack.

But the most damning item came from the text of the AEI's own proposal:

"As with any large-scale 'consensus' process, the IPCC is susceptible to self-selection bias in its personnel, resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent, and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by the analytical work of the complete Working Group reports."

It's times like this that I envy the quick wit (and utter fearlessness in the face of monumental presumptuousness) of our modern satirists. In light of my own deficiencies, may I merely point out that a right-wing belief tank accusing anyone else of bias and self-selection is like being called "ugly" by a wildebeest? That alone should be pretty obvious to anyone who still has the gumption to think for her/himself. I'd like to think that the gits who penned that can still see a reflection in their respective mirrors, but I somehow doubt it.

Rant over. Back to the main point, which is that the Parisian launch of this project may well be the start of a trend. If so, we 'mericans should be very worried. I have no doubt that many, many American scientists will distinguish themselves in this venture. But the fact that the metaphorical champagne bottle wasn't smashed on the project here in the States is ominous. It's not just that it demonstrates how politicized American science has become (when it runs afoul of the current regime or the oil interests and Jesus-Jihadists that propped them up for so many years). More disturbingly, it likely betokens how deeply the credibility of American science has been wounded by the commissars of the Right.