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On Wednesday evening, having stopped on my way home for my かわいい colleague Laura's post-defense victory dinner, I arrived home in the (relatively) cool calm that settles in shortly after sunset. As I rolled into the driveway on my bicycle, I reflexively scanned the dimming western sky for the elusive 29-hour sliver moon I knew was out there somewhere. I didn't expect to find it, of course: the evening was clear, but not crystal clear. By pure providence I found the unbelievably slivery moon grazing the horizon, nestled in a notch between the silhouettes of two distant trees. So slender was this moon slice that only the middle third or so was visible against the twilight, like an elbow macaroni made of angel hair, bisected by a thread of brownish-grey stratus cloud. It was only the second time I've spied a true one-day sliver moon, and in fact may have been the sliveriest moon I've ever seen. Wish I could have taken a picture of it; but considering that it had at most two more minutes of visibility before it slid beneath the skyline, I knew I didn't have time to run in, find the camera, and adjust it for sliver-moon photography. Sigh. Alas, there isn't much of interest in the sky over the next several weeks. Technically, most of North America will get a lunar eclipse early the morning of July 7, the Moon will barely graze the Earth's penumbra, so we won't even notice it even if we're looking for it. On the other hand, China will experience a doozy of a solar eclipse on July 22 (July 21 in the Americas). As the Moon will be just past perigee, the area of totality will be unusually large, and duration unusually long. Several major cities, including Shanghai, will enjoy an astonishing five minutes of totality. A spot in the West Pacific will experience almost seven minutes of totality, as the Moon's shadow approaches the Marshall Islands. I suppose it's a bit late to book a flight to Shanghai. Tags: astronomy, sliver_moon
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Here's an example from our childhood that shows how awesome it could be to know that Dad had our backs. In actuality, it's the brother's story, but it's too good not to tell. In his early childhood it wasn't clear whether the brother was right- or left-handed. He did most of the fine-motor things, like drawing and writing, with his right, but ate with his left. When he started kindergarten, his teacher noticed this and called Dad in for a meeting. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but your son will never learn to read," she told Dad. He responded by taking a book from the nearest shelf, opening it at random, and asking the brother to start reading out loud—because of course the bro already knew how to read, and in fact had been reading for a couple of years. The teacher was struck speechless. As they left, Dad couldn't resist a soft poke: "You'll pardon me if I don't seem too concerned."
I've got another one. Fast forward to high school. Our school, like all Utah high schools, required the seniors to take a class called "Responsible Parenting." (Given the number of my classmates who already had the opportunity to apply the lessons in a practical setting, we would have been far better served taking a class called "Responsible Intercourse" our junior year, but naturally the Utah school system would have none of that.) The brother, correctly identifying the class as a steaming crock of nonsense, signed up for something worthwhile instead—AP Music, I believe. Again, Dad was summoned to school, and this time was informed that if he didn't take Responsible Parenting, the brother would not receive his diploma the following May. Dad exploded. "You graduate students who can't read, and you won't let my son graduate because he didn't take egg-carrying?!" After much reflection, our principal decided to allow the brother to graduate sans egg-carrying. Tags: dad
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A good friend of mine from second grade found me on Facebook. We were best friends for only a short while; by fourth grade we'd drifted apart. Not from any bad feelings—we just made other connections, and eventually had new best friends. We stayed on good, if not close terms, all the way through high school, and had a nice conversation at our five-year reunion. Remembering his clever sense of humor, I was happy to get back in touch. Through him I linked up with about half a dozen other high school acquaintances. They were all Facebook friends with each other, too: a happy network of aging classmates nearing their 25-year reunion. Looking at their profiles, it all came back to me at once how radically different I've grown since I left Utah. To my treasured collection of lefties I'd appended a staunch Republican contingent. My friend from second grade listed his political leanings as "Millenial [ sic] Theocrat." I figured he was joking. He wasn't. Still, these were people I used to get along with just fine, and I found we could still get along just fine—until I added a particular former band classmate whom I had a massive crush on in seventh grade. Suddenly my updates page was full of right-wing bullshit even more brainless and paranoid than I thought possible. Obama, the crypto-Marxist. Sarah Palin, victim of a left-wing media crusade. And loads and loads of "tea-party" nonsense (seriously, how many of those doofi protesting "socialist tax raises" had family incomes over $250K?). Now I don't mind seeing different opinions on current issues—in fact, I welcome it, as it broadens the mind and challenges me to find convincing counterarguments. But there's a difference between contrary opinions that make you question your own, and unmitigated lunacy. I dropped her promptly, and my Facebook page quickly shed its burden of insanity.* But I knew that if I kept adding childhood acquaintances willy-nilly, I'd run into the same problem again sooner or later. So I developed a Wingnut Litmus Test: a simple criterion that I could use, when an ex-classmate sent me a friend request, to determine whether or not I should avoid, avoid, avoid with just a quick glance at the person's profile. Version 1.0 of the WLT has worked perfectly (albeit with n only equal to 4) with only a single standard: is the potential friend a fan of Sarah Palin? Yes ⇒ wingnut; No ⇒ not a wingnut. Easy as pie.
My students presented their term projects on the last week of class. On Tuesday, I brought doughnuts (from a place called "Amy Joy"—the best I've found in town), and on Thursday I brought bagels. I wanted the greatest possible variety, but I had to forsake the roasted-garlic bagel because I couldn't find the special lead-lined cask to store it in. And I sure wasn't going to contaminate all the other bagels with essence of garlic. It then occurred to me that the act of choosing and packaging an assortment of bagels is an excellent test of the ability to look ahead and consider the results of one's actions. (Perhaps it's also an exercise in consideration for others.) The brother has a saying along these lines: "Any bagel in the same bag as an garlic bagel, is a garlic bagel." You could consider it a corollary of one of my favorite proverbs ever: "Add a tablespoon of wine to a barrel full of sewage and you get sewage. Add a tablespoon of sewage to a barrel full of wine and you get—sewage." As a matter of fact, I love onion and garlic bagels. But when it comes to mixing these kinds with the sweet varieties, like raisin or blueberry, I'm a strict segregationist. Now, if I sleep in too late, I sometimes skip breakfast at home and score a bagel instead from the cafeteria when I get done with whatever meeting I almost sleep through. Problem is, after the main breakfast hour, whoever maintains the "bake-it-yourself" station jams all the leftover bagels together in one of the glass jars that normally holds a single flavor. For sheer dismay, nothing beats tearing ravenously into the luscious cinnamon-raisin bagel I'd been dreaming about for the last hour, sitting half-starved through an interminable meeting, and biting through an intact garlic clove sloughed off an onion-and-garlic bagel rammed into it by some unthinking slob.
( One more... )Tags: general_science, random_shit
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Sighting sliver moons early in the morning is becoming a habit—secondary to the habit of being stomped on by bored cats at five in the morning. A week ago Friday, on my way back to bed after the usual morning feline banishment, I spied a brilliant planet to the southeast, set in a crystal-clear predawn glow. I looked around, knowing that a two-day waning sliver moon was lurking somewhere near, but could only see a pinpoint of white light peering through the crown of the gigantic maple that takes a large scoop out of our eastern skyline. I was still pondering whether I could count that as an official sighting when, fifteen minutes later, the real sliver moon popped over the horizon, well to the north of east. My brilliant pinpoint was actually Venus, and the planet I thought was Venus was actually Jupiter. Apart from an occasional raging thunderstorm, the weather here has been postcard perfect over the last couple of weeks. I had high hopes of viewing both the one- and two-day waxing sliver moons on Monday and Tuesday evenings, and if I did, I could claim my first ever Sliver Moon Trifecta—sightings of the Moon on three different days within the six days centered on the new Moon. (To qualify as a sliver moon, the Moon must be within 72 hours of new.) Monday was indeed lovely all day, and around 9:00 PM I observed a sharp-edged 36-hour sliver moon. Very slivery indeed—perhaps the sliveriest I've seen since we moved here three and a half years ago. Tuesday's 2 1/2-day sliver moon should have been easy as pie—Moon pie, that is—to catch sight of, since it didn't officially set until about 11:30 PM, nearly three hours after sunset. However, I failed to reckon with the perverse nature of Midwest thunderstorms. Mother Nature decided to cash in about two months' worth of storm cells Tuesday afternoon and evening. (Luckily there was a respite of about an hour around 5:00 PM during which I rode home from work in record time, assuming I was about to get drenched at any minute.) I periodically peeked outside every half hour or so after sunset, but only a sky full of roiling clouds (and a face full of rain) greeted my view. Finally, around 10:30 PM, I noticed a pearly glow outlining a rift of low cumulus. Alas, I can't claim a sliver-moon sighting unless I can actually make out the shape of the crescent Moon. So close, and yet so far. Why must you taunt me like this, sliver moon?
In other astronomy news: the date to remember next month is June 19. Specifically, about an hour before dawn on the 19th. Anyone who is up at that ghastly hour, and who has a clear sky low in the east, will enjoy a near triple conjunction of Mars, Venus and a three-day crescent Moon. Mars, by far the dimmest of the trio at magnitude 1.1, will lie just above and to the left of Venus. The actual conjunction between the two planets won't occur until 9:10 AM EST on the 20th, at which time they'll be separated by 2° of arc (four times the width of the full Moon). Observers on the Pacific coast, down south, may be able to view Mars and Venus at the moment of conjunction. Sorry, Seattlites, the Sun will be well up by conjunction time (6:10 AM PST). I vividly remember the Seattle sky getting noticeably bright by 4:00 AM in June. Tags: astronomy, sliver_moon
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Finally. A whole evening without two or three projects that have to get done immediately.The last month has been no fun at all. Since mid-April—make that six weeks—I've been interested in little outside work but to stockpile sleep. I get home in the evening, scarf some dinner, and either fall asleep immediately, or work six more hours. I'm still recovering from the night of April 30, when I had to compile and make intelligible a large set of ragtag presentations for an all-day meeting justifying ourselves to the NIH; to conduct an analysis on data I'd received scant hours previously for a talk by a collaborator set for the following noon; and to revise a full set of figures for a publication going in the following afternoon. And the moment I was done with the meeting on Friday, it was time to grade my final exam and all the student term projects. Only after that could I start working down the list of the twenty or so research projects I had backed up, that my colleagues have been hounding me about for ages. The worst has been over for a couple of weeks now, but only now have I felt any motivation to write just for enjoyment. Hope I remember how....
For some disgusting, educational fun, try the game of SNEEZE! Infect an entire building full of people with a single, well-timed sneeze. Just the thing to commemorate the swine-flu scare of 2009. You only get one sneeze in each round, so timing is essential. Your hapless victims include children, adults and the elderly, and the optimal strategy for dispersal takes advantage of all three. Children can carry the virus halfway across the playfield before sneezing, but on account of their underdeveloped lungs, they rarely infect more than two new people. Old geezers hardly move at all, and sneeze the moment they're infected. Because of their cavernous nostrils, however, old geezers cover a truly astounding area with their snot bombs, dispersing the viruses over nearly a 180° angle. Intermediate in both range of motion and sneeze volume are the adults. Naturally, infecting the elderly nets you more points than children. (After all, the flu hits them much harder than anyone else.) Nonetheless, your overall goal is to infect as many people as possible, and only by passing a certain percentage can you advance to the next level. Just as in nuclear energy, the key to successful sneezing is to start a chain reaction, so that with each generation of infection, each sneezer recruits, on average, more than one new person. As satisfying as it sounds, sneezing point-blank into someone's face is poor strategy, as the unfortunate victim completely blocks the spray, thus moderating the chain reaction. The early rounds seem trivial, until some stupid kid darts in front of you just as you let fly, and immediately trots over to the nearest corner to emit a dunce sneeze. The last two rounds, with their high infection requirements and sprawling playfields, require you to think at least two generations ahead—not an easy task given several dozen aimlessly milling victims. I've only made it to Round 10 twice, and neither time did I get anywhere near the required 80% infection rate. Intriguingly, the Wellcome Trust helped to fund SNEEZE. I'm impressed with both the game play—not exactly realistic, but still fun and challenging—and the graphics. Whoever did the artwork really knows their mucus.
It has taken me upwards of four decades to fully appreciate just how amazingly good mocha almond fudge ice cream is. It has everything: heterogeneity (so every bite is different), fudge in quantities that make it a constituent rather than a seasoning, and a scrumptious background flavor that constitutes an excellent ice-cream flavor all by itself. Few things in life are as satisfying as taking out a scoop of mocha almond fudge and exposing a gigantic vein of pure fudge. You know what you have to do next, don't you? Right: you have to mine that baby out. Quarry out that fudge vein right to the bottom of the carton. You'll piss off your spouse in the meantime. Not your problem—she's just jealous because she didn't find it first. There's one problem with mocha almond fudge, though. For some reason the flavor disappears after just a few bites. My sense of taste doesn't habituate so quickly with any other kind of ice cream, except maybe a few of the louder colors of sherbet. I believe I've found the culprit, though. It's the burnt almonds. I love their low-key, nutty flavor; but they tend to get stuck in my teeth, and then overload my taste buds with wide-angle flavor rays. Consequently, I now eat only an ounce or so of mocha almond fudge at a sitting, and I save the almonds until the very end for maximum enjoyment. Tags: random_shit
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For the second month in a row, sleeping light paid off for viewing sliver moons. I woke up, quite involuntarily, at first light Thursday morning. Before I drifted back to sleep, I peered out the window above my bedside table, thinking I might get lucky, and I did: a 36-hour sliver moon was floating atop the tattered remnants of our nightly rainstorm, deep in the predawn glow. A little ways above and to the south, a thin crescent Venus blazed away, amazingly bright given how little of its visible disc was illuminated. Higher still, Jupiter—hopelessly outclassed in brilliance but trying all the harder because of it—glowed like a milky pearl, completing a near perfect line of three celestial bodies. Too bad the Sun had long since risen by 9:00 AM EDT on Tuesday. Early birds on the Pacific coast were rewarded for getting up first thing in the morning with a beautiful occultation of Venus by the Moon. Look here for a time-lapse movie (sped up slightly) of Venus’s minuscule but dazzling crescent disappearing behind the Moon’s leading edge. From the same collection, a lovely shot displaying the relative sizes of the sliver moon and sliver Venus, and a short movie showing Venus popping back out from behind the Moon. (From the points of ingress and egress, I estimate that the occultation lasted a bit more than half an hour.) As I mentioned last month, we're in for a treat Sunday evening (weather gods permitting), as a two-day sliver moon will be poised just above Mercury, with the Pleiades intervening. It's quite possible, however, that Mercury will set before the sky darkens enough to allow the Pleiades to shine visibly. Still, we can hope. [ Edit, April 26:] Streaked with thin but very opaque stratus clouds, the western horizon did not allow for viewing of Mercury Sunday evening, let alone the Pleiades—too bad. A bright sliver moon was nonetheless visible. Tags: astronomy, sliver_moon
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This week I learned the answer to a question I hadn't thought to ask, viz.: how rapidly a truly inspiring story can grow tiresome through unrelenting ubiquity. You know of whom I speak. I watched the YouTube video, and crowed, "Suck on that, beautiful people!"—and six days later, I already cringe every time another Facebook friend posts the link under the title "Don't judge a book by its cover...." Seriously, under the standard rules of fairness, at least a month should pass from the initiation of a popular phenomenon before I start to feel like an acquaintance has just forwarded me the Darwin Award urban legend about the idiot who straps a JATO unit to his Impala*, later found embedded in a desert cliff, every time somebody brings up the phenomenon.
I hereby nominate "It is what it is" as the stupidest, most annoying and least necessary statement in the English language. I detest glib fatalism. And tautologies. My mother, before it became obvious that I refused to part with my free will, specialized in both. Her mainstay: "You have to do what you have to do." While "X what X" may not qualify as a snowclone, it definitely shares some characteristics of one—in this case, extreme overuse.
The Fifty Most Brilliant Atheists of All Time. I'd heard of nearly every one of these folks, and was pleasantly surprised that Carlin had made the cut. Where's Isaac Asimov?!?_______________________
*Obviously, the luckless car, whether it actually was or not, should have been named "Vlad."Tags: random_shit, words_i_detest
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Words That Educated People Get Wrong Dept.: It's surprising how often sciencey folks refer to the "intestinal track" or the "reproductive track." Someday, if I can secure funding, I'll try to determine whether mistaking track for tract is at all correlated with the considerably more annoying asterick.Only once have I ever seen tract/track used incorrectly in the other direction, and I was to blame. Oh, I noticed it and corrected it just in time, but I almost sent out a letter containing the phrase "tenure- tract Assistant Professor position." That would have been a bit of a gaffe—especially in the context of a job application. But then I got to thinking, and I realized that I wasn't too far off the first time: acquiring tenure sounds about as pleasant as passing through a tyrannosaur's digestive system. Partly for that reason, I am applying for a non-tenure-track faculty position.
I'm not very good at teasing people. My naturally stern appearance causes everybody to assume I'm serious, even when I am obviously not. I've been known to call myself Sam the Eagle. With me, however, it's an illusion; the original Sam the Eagle really is that taciturn and humorless. Ironically, that's what makes him funny. Anyway, this explains why I never particularly cared for April Fool's Day.
I received an Arizona state quarter in change yesterday at lunch, bringing to a close my "Obtaining All Fifty State Quarters in Circulation" project. Was hoping to get Hawai‘i last, but Arizona proved recalcitrant. I really like the design on the reverse of the Hawai‘i quarter, too: the islands are depicted in relief, and both of the huge shield volcanoes on the Big Island are clearly visible. (Alas, the great caldera of Haleakalā on Maui slips just beneath the resolution of the engraving.) Did you every try to imagine what various states should have put on their quarters? Ohio's design—"Birthplace of Aviation Pioneers"—though accurate (e.g., the Wright brothers, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong), was pretty lame. A grand portrait of Cleveland, featuring the Cuyahoga River ablaze, would have been more dramatic and characteristic. Kathy was pulling for "Ohio: Birthplace of Mediocre Presidents." Kansas—definitely a portrait of Charles Darwin's head perched atop a chimpanzee's body. I had an intense interest in the designs for two states: Utah and Washington. I figured that the iconic Delicate Arch would be a natural for Utah; but I wouldn't have been surprised if the submission initially endorsed by the Utah State Legislature featured an imposing view of the Salt Lake Mormon Temple encircled by the motto "Dedicated to the Unification of Church and State." I found the compromise disappointing, if not surprising: a commemoration of the completion of the transcontinental railroad, known locally as the Golden Spike (after the final, commemorative railroad spike driven to connect the east and west halves of the railroad). The theme of Man's domination over Nature would naturally sit well with Utah's government, which leaps at any opportunity to promote mining and drilling (and, incidentally, lining the pockets of their business friends) at the expense of wilderness. The Onion has posted at least three articles about the state quarters, including one of the saddest they've ever run. I actually thought of this one before The Onion did, and of course we were right. Here's an idea to follow up on the successful state-quarter series that I would love to see implemented, although I think a dollar coin would be a wiser choice as a substrate.
Thanks are given to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) n3m3sis42 for turning me on to this unusual interpretation of Little Red Riding Hood. Imagine if a computer were to tell the story, with all the facts in exquisite detail, but virtually lacking emotion or anything resembling a moral. The prominence of the Helvetica font gives the animation an avant-garde 1960s flavor, of which I heartily approve. I also dig the music, which is otherwise expendable. ( Video behind the cut... )Tags: random_shit, wurds
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Last Tuesday I discovered that being rousted out of bed at 6:45 AM by energetic, hungry cats with no appreciation for subtlety actually has its merits— if there happens to be a sliver moon lurking just outside the window. The slim, white-on-grey crescent was entangled in the bare branches of the neighbor's tree. The sliver moon hovered there like a letter C grazing the skyline, as if someone had copyrighted the dawn. Five minutes later, I'd have missed it. And this wasn't just any early-morning sliver moon: it was the most difficult one to observe of the entire year, on account of the angle of the Ecliptic at sunrise. (That's why the moon looked like a C instead of a smile.) Near the spring equinox, the Ecliptic is almost parallel to the horizon, and consequently the Sun rises promptly after any waning crescent Moon. Indeed, the eastern sky shone brightly with the light of the approaching dawn, and yet the sliver was still easily visible. I would never have seen an evening sliver moon under similar circumstances, near the autumnal equinox: the day's accumulated dust and crap would have obscured the western horizon. On the other hand, even the one-day sliver moon after sunset on the 27th should have been a cinch to pick out, with the Ecliptic aligned for maximum visibility—except that a torrential rainstorm imposed itself directly in the line of sight late in the afternoon, and remained there until well past bedtime. Same thing, more or less, on Saturday. Sigh.
April promises some spectacular sliver moons for both early and late birds. On the 22nd, look for a two-day sliver just about to occult Venus, which has been newly reborn as the morning star after passing between us and the Sun on March 27. (According to April's Natural History, viewers on the US Pacific coast will be able to watch the Moon pass in front of Venus. Mars will appear slightly below the duo, but will probably be too dim to see in the gathering light of dawn.) The evening of the 26th promises a magnificent triple treat: a two-day sliver moon hovering some three degrees above Mercury, with the Pleiades star cluster sandwiched between them. Because of the steep Ecliptic and Mercury being at maximum elongation (when it appears most distant from the Sun in our sky), the innermost planet will be as visible as it ever gets—a prime opportunity for viewing for us city folk who have to deal with a lot of light pollution. Also look for two prominent stars nearby to the south: Aldebaran, in the constellation Taurus, and Betelgeuse, in Orion. Tags: sliver_moon
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An unexpected bonus of subscribing to The Economist is receiving the yearly Pocket World in Figures almanac. Okay, it was only unexpected the first year; we've come to look forward to it. I derive a surprising amount of enjoyment from thumbing through the guide and testing my predictions about how the USA and other countries compare. Sometimes I'm spectacularly wrong—and that's the most fascinating part of the game. CommoditiesIt won't surprise you that China and India were the top two producers of tea in 2006, with 1,028,000 tonnes and 956,000 tonnes, respectively, but you know who tied with Sri Lanka for third, at 311,000 tonnes? Kenya. Huh? Can you name the top three oil-producing nations in 2006? I got two. In order, they were Saudi Arabia (10,859,000 barrels/day), Russia (9,769,000) and the USA (6,871,000). Hot on the heels of Iran at #4 (4,343,000 barrels/day) were two more I would not have guessed, China (3,684,000) and Mexico (3,683,000). In fact, of the top ten, only four were OPEC members, and one of those was Venezuela. As expected, of any nation, France derived the greatest portion of its electricity from nuclear power in 2005—a whopping 79.1%. Any idea which country derived the most from hydroelectric? Paraguay, with fully 100.0%! The other four of the top five—Mozambique, Nepal and the two Congos—all relied on hydroelectric for 99.7% or more of their electricity. None of these nations has an extensive electric grid, to be sure, but still, that's impressive. The USA is not among the top 48 countries for the number of cell-phone subscriptions per capita, probably because our regular telephone service is good enough that we haven't totally abandoned it yet. But 33 countries, as of 2006, had more than one phone subscription per capita. The cell-phone-craziest nation was Lithuania, with 138.1 subscriptions per 100 citizens. Either a lot of folks there must be walking around with an entire bandolier of cell phones strapped to their chest, or else every newborn baby is issued a couple along with the birth certificate. ( Keep going... )Tags: politics
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It's amazing how a trivial, chance event can amplify itself, over the course of years, in the collective conscience of a group of loved ones until it becomes an integral part of the language. Sometime in the early 1990s, the Salt Lake Tribune ran a collection of children's drawings of favorite recipes. The idea, apparently, was to sketch a well-liked meal and describe how to prepare it. One particular entry caught both my eye and the brother's. Penned by a first-grader it might have been almost cute, but for a third-grader, it was kind of disturbing. It began with the instructions frist put dow and chess and slomey thats all and, below a sketch of a squashed wagon wheel, the dish was duly identified as pezza. Well, after that we could hardly be expected to whip up a homemade pizza without at least a gazillion references to dow and chess and slomey (we took the last to mean pepperoni). But we didn't stop there; such a rich vein of unintentional humor just begged to be generalized. For a while, any reference to "first" was mutated to "frist." That fell out of favor, but experienced a revival much later when Sen. Bill Frist—or, more properly, Bill Fristputdowandchessandslomey—started getting prominent coverage on the news. In the fullness of time, "dow and chess and slomey" spread to our respective spouses—and I mean in the manner of a disease. It is uncertain whether they picked it up because of its intrinsic humor value, or simply through chronic exposure to us saying it all the time; but to this day we use chess and slomey to denote mozzarella cheese and sliced pepperoni as pizza fixin's*. We have accrued enough of a nest egg in our retirement plans that we've recently been eyeing the stock market with considerable alarm. A frequent topic of homeward-bound conversation has been the ups and downs of the Dow—and you can see where this is leading. I now speak of the three most prominent indices as the Dow (Industrials), the Chess (S&P 500) and the Slomey (Russell 2000), as in, "The Dow was up half a percent, but the Chess and Slomey were both way down."
I've got another one. In junior high school (seventh to ninth grades for you middle-school grads) the brother and I visited our old elementary school for a brief whiff of nostalgia, plus whatever noxious vapors happened to be wafting from the cafeteria dumpster. Displayed on the wall outside our former first-grade classroom was a mosaic of mini-essays themed "I Wish." Amongst the carefully-lettered but uninteresting entreaties for toys and games we discovered this literary gem: I wish I had a hores. If I do not get a hores, I will run away. From our point of view, the author was clearly not making a threat. It was a simple statement of logic: if not a, then b. We couldn't decided which tickled us more: this matter-of-factness, or the teacher's willingness to put it on display in the first place. The distinctive misspelling of horse, which to us implied two syllables, was the icing on the hilarious cake. Even now, decades later, whenever we pass a horse pasture I invariably mutter to myself, "Boy, I sure wish I had one of those." We—again, including the spouses—have found many opportunities to express the desire for a hores, but the grand prize has to go to the sister-in-law, who remarked at an exhibit of ancient Egyptian statuary: "I wish I had a Horus." BWAAAHAHAHA!
xkcd: It's funny because it's true. I still have dreams like this once every couple of weeks.
Something Awful recently posted collection of political cartoons by a sadly neglected amateur artist, who could easily be a professional if only he gave up most of his wit and originality. We really need someone who isn't afraid to express what everyone is already thinking. Here's another obvious point that the major political cartoonists seem to be shying away from. This statement on civil unions encapsulates the inequality succinctly and poignantly. I've seen this joke before (the political equivalent of "Life is like a shit sandwich..."), but never rendered artistically enough to feature prominently in the editorial section of a major newspaper. Pity, that. Even liberals have been hesitant to put the blame for the current economic mess where it truly lies. And nobody, but nobody, would print anything hinting at the population crisis in a mainstream newspaper. Other cartoonists have critiqued the idiotic Republican energy policy, but this appropriately intensifies the criticism to a blinding beam of sheer mockery without losing the essential point. Finally, it's so refreshing to read someone whose movie references I actually understand. And the target demographic of most mainstream editorials wouldn't have a snowball's chance of getting this reference. At least until "geek chic" becomes a force powerful enough to transform American society. __________________ *Note: The apostrophe in fixin's is for contraction and not for pluralizing. In this instance it's impossible to tell the difference, however. Perhaps in the future I will color such apostrophes red, to show I know the difference.Tags: politics, random_shit
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One thing I like about old movies and TV shows is that the actors apparently didn't care if their teeth weren't absolutely pearly white. Consider Cesar Romero in Batman (1966—the real Batman movie), for example: he didn't seem too self-conscious despite the unflattering makeup. I've also seen episodes of the venerable I, Spy filmed in Japan, featuring geishas sporting four-pack-a-day smiles behind their white face paint. Look on American TV today: nothing but beautiful people, except perhaps on a few "reality" shows themed on exploiting people's perceived shortcomings. Why is everyone so afraid these days to admit to imperfection?
While I was poking around the Net for pictures of the Aria Hotel, I stumbled across this album by a singer with the unlikely (and, as it turns out, pseudo-) name of Aria Johnson. I challenge anyone to find a higher-profile mangling of the oft-confused your/you're pair. MySpace English has made it big-time. Even worse, a Google search for "aria 'if your down' you're" failed to disclose anybody making fun of the title. Pardon me for a second whilst I lose all hope. No, wait—perhaps instead I'll retain a monomolecular thread of faith in humanity, contingent on the minuscule probability that the full title is something like If Your Down (Is Clumping Up, You'll Have To Fluff Your Pillow).
I really regret that my mother was born on Groundhog Day—the stupidest, most unnecessary, most asinine holiday that any otherwise intelligent people get all worked up about. Attention, news media: I don't give a single elk pellet about whether Punk-ass Tawny Phil, or whatever his name is, will see his shadow. Here's a bit of real news for you: either way, we're in for six more weeks of winter. And since even the most dire predictions of global warming won't make the Midwest a tropical paradise for at least a couple of centuries, there is absolutely no reason to waste time on this meaningless drivel in the foreseeable future, either. The only thing that would make this brainless annual spectacle even remotely bearable is to see ol' Phil tentatively emerge from his burrow into the harsh, blinding camera lights—and then, in a panic brought on by a fusillade of flash bulbs and excited banter, dash across the nearest road, to explode into a mist of blood beneath a speeding 18-wheeler. Or fasten onto the nearest pant leg and start humping away. Is it too much to ask for a little originality? I know, Groundhog Day was four weeks ago—it's taken me this long to wrap my brain around what an idiotic, pointless holiday it is, at least to the point where I'm no longer struck speechless.
Scope this delightfully subversive Funky Winkerbean from Sunday, 22 February: ( Proceed for large pix... )Tags: random_shit
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The city skyline of Las Vegas changes every time I visit, which is at least yearly, but riding past the Strip on I-15 last week was just ridiculous. The expanse of sand and bare rock between the Bellagio and Monte Carlo hotels has spawned a monstrosity. Looking comically out of place even on the busy Strip were several massive structures—at least 40 stories tall, I guessed—under various stages of construction. For several minutes, towering cliffs of glass bordered the right side of the freeway, blocking half the sky. I scrunched my cheek against the taxi's window, looked almost straight up, and read the name affixed about three-quarters up the largest: Vdara. Its sister on the right, a narrow monolith, had a swooshy, handwritten logo just beneath its girder-spiked roof. It was called... Ana? No— Aria. The sheer parallax made reading a bit difficult. That was my introduction to CityCenter Las Vegas; and as most of the buildup had occurred since my last visit, it came as quite a shock. I've complained before about the chronic detachment from reality that allows a city of nearly two million people to grow in a location that receives 4.1 inches (10.6 cm) of precipitation a year, and once again I'm reduced to tearing hair and screaming to nobody in particular, "What are these people thinking!?" Las Vegas Fun Fact #1: The average high temperature in late July is 106 °F (41 °C). That's in the shade, very little of which exists at midday in July. Falling onto sun-exposed blacktop may not be lethal at this temperature, but you might as well kiss all the skin on your palms goodbye. Average midday humidity in July: less than 5%. That's the level at which your corneas will feel—and look—like a dry lake bed. Billed as "the most expensive privately funded construction project in US history," CityCenter comprises no fewer than five high-rise residential/hotel buildings, though Vdara and Aria are the most imposing. As it happens, I underestimated CityCenter's audacity. Vdara, in fact, towers 57 stories above the desert floor, and yet it is not the loftiest structure, being slightly—but hopelessly—outclassed by Aria, the 61-layer decadence cake next door. (I have to admit, though, that I kind of like Aria's logo.) The development's total cost has ballooned to an incomprehensible US $11 billion and six workers' lives, and the timing of its completion couldn't have been better vis-à-vis the US economy. Las Vegas Fun Fact #2: The level of Lake Mead, just to the east of the city, has dropped more than 100 feet in the last decade. Demand for water and climate change may conspire to drain the lake below a useable level by 2021. If comprehending the scale of CityCenter engenders astonishment and dismay, reading about the prices its owners plan to charge for its property brings a refreshing sense of hilarity. Take Vdara, for instance, with its 1,543 deluxe condominiums. A 526-sq.-ft. studio can be yours for a mere $625,000. The more discerning Las Vegan may choose the Deluxe Studio Penthouse, fully 63 sq. ft. more spacious, for the somewhat more expensive—but still quite affordable—$949,000. But for true luxury, you should splurge for the palatial, 919-sq.-ft. 1-bedroom Penthouse: $1,424,000 nets you a sleeping nook that is spared doing double duty as a living room. Grand vista of parched, arid landscape no extra charge. Two other condo complexes, Veer and Mandarin Oriental, offer 337 and 227 units, respectively, ranging from a cool half million (for budget-conscious poseurs) all the way up to $4.5 million to have a piece of the roof. Penthouse owners receive the satisfaction of being looked down upon by more than a third of Vdara's denizens. Las Vegas Fun Fact #3: The population of Clark County, NV, in 1950 was 48,000 people. In 2005 it was 1.75 million. Of those, 800,000 moved in since 2000. Though CityCenter boasts of its "sustainable" design, I can't shake feeling that this project is still part of the problem. At this magnitude of extravagance, lopping off more than half the energy and water requirements still leaves a near-infinite requirement for scarce resources. On the other hand, we could just about wipe out the US trade deficit if we can entice about 2,250 Middle Eastern oil barons and their families to purchase a vacation home in CityCenter for their long weekends. Las Vegas Fun Fact #4: A proposed system of pipelines to supply water to the city would drain the Great Basin aquifer right down to the earth's mantle, depriving much of rural Nevada, plus a slice of rural Utah, of essential water. It gives me some, albeit not much, consolation to know that the soon-to-be-former King of Snoot in LV, the Bellagio Hotel, will be cut off from the Sun for several hours every day during the winter on account of this ultramodern leviathan. During the summer, however, when sunlight is far less welcome, the Sun will be plenty high in the sky to blaze away upon the Bellagio's $1200-a-night master suites. The life of a multi-millionaire can be trying at times. Tags: las_vegas
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I enjoy teaching, but damn, am I busy. Case in point: I just now scraped together enough time away from work to write about the inauguration. I watched it in our department secretary's office, jammed in with about 15 other people, on a TV trying to receive broadcast signals through seventeen floors of medical school. The reception was probably better on Jupiter, but it was good enough for us, since we were mostly listening, anyway; the video was a bonus (albeit an exceedingly grainy one). Naturally, the crowd was heavy in scientists, and so the newly-sworn-in President's words, We will restore science to its rightful place... were answered with a ragged but heartfelt cheer. ( Cut for pix... )Tags: general_science, politics
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I'm teaching this semester. Once I've finished my lecture on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, the first order of business is to walk across the street to the medical school cafeteria, clutching my favorite refillable cup, and score a big-ass Mountain Dew poured over a jumble of ice boulders. Actually, I do this every morning, but it's so much more satisfying after I've reduced my voice to a croak over an hour and a half. Yesterday I made my Mountain Dew trek in bitter, eye-freezing cold. Five degrees Fahrenheit, said AccuWeather, and I believed them. Though I strongly advocate switching to the metric system, I nonetheless might make an exception for measuring outside temperature, as the Fahrenheit scale so conveniently captures between 0 and 100 the entire range of what human beings could reasonably be expected to endure—as it was intended to. Halfway to the med school I squeezed my cup slightly, and heard a crunch! like broken glass. Was it so cold that the plastic had turned brittle? No way, thought I: polypropylene stays flexible at least as far down as –20 °C (–4 °F). I peered in and found several curved sheets of ice, almost invisibly thin. The film of water remaining after I'd rinsed out my cup had frozen, and I'd shattered this diaphanous coating. Amazing how much faster things cool off with a bit of extra surface area. I pulled open the door to the cafeteria, and the moment the warm, desiccated breath of air from within struck the ice leaves, they slumped and evaporated. I love those little unexpected moments when nature reminds us that we're completely at its mercy. We complain about hundred-degree temperature swings, but we don't appreciate just how mild and nurturing our planet's biosphere actually is. We could be swimming in lakes of molten sulfur on Io or suspended within an ice-wrapped lake deep within Enceladus, protected from naked vacuum only by a leaky crust of groaning, shifting ice, continually stretched and broken under Saturn's powerful tides. This morning I made the hike over with a weak Sun beaming over my shoulder, offering light but absolutely no heat. The temperature: minus five degrees Fahrenheit (–21°C). I carried my cup very gently, as this time it was day and the plastic really did become rigid.
Y'ever notice that every time you walk through a JC Penney's, or a similar lowbrow department store, there's always a huge display of themed Monopoly games that nobody in her right mind would be interested in? In Seattle it was always the Bass Fishing Monopoly. They haven't sold one in seven years, but by God, they'll keep on trying to move the merchandise. The displays exude an air of desperation: every unit is placed with laser-guided precision to maximize attractiveness and eye-catching potential, in the glorious but futile quest for a sale. I always feel a kind of grim satisfaction, witnessing such a stupid idea fail so spectacularly. I'm not really a fan of Monopoly. Even if I were, I'd insist on the real deal: if I can't land on (the) Boardwalk or take a ride on the Reading, forget it. There is one exception, however. I would willingly purchase a version based on the works of Miyazaki Hayao—but only if it were titled Princess Mononopoly.
( Continue for video of a very silly kitten... )Tags: cats, random_shit
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The following is as close to a Twitter entry as I’ll ever get. [ ca. 6:40 PM, 9 January 2009] I’m currently 31,000 feet above sea level, on the way to Detroit, which is currently beneath the nexus of a continent-wide blizzard. My boss, a colleague and I just finished up a four-day workshop, in Augusta, GA, on the software package I help develop. I’ve never spoken to an audience for more than an hour and a half, until this week. I lectured for four hours each on Thursday and Friday. Somehow my voice limped through more or less intact; but my throat now feels like it’s full of fishhooks. I discovered, quite by accident, that having an expired driver’s license does not preclude flying within the US. It does, however, subject the owner to an obligatory strip search. Damn Ohio DMV. Not only do they neglect to inform me that when they say “Your driver’s license is good for four years,” their definition of “four” includes the number 3.1—they forget to remind me when my license is about to go belly-up a year ahead of schedule. So, for the last month I’ve been driving with an expired license, and it took a Northwest Airlines check-in agent to find out. The funny part is that on the way back, I changed my seat assignment at the last minute, using the computer check-in at the terminal, after I already had a boarding pass printed several hours previously. When the agent gave me the anticipated chastising lecture for stupidity for carrying a lapsed license, I slyly handed him my old boarding pass to mark “Designated for Cavity Search.” And when I presented my pristine, modified boarding pass and my driver’s license to the TSA agent at security, he didn’t notice the latter was expired, so I breezed right through. Now doesn’t that make you feel nice and safe? ( Continue... )
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(Thanks, cutiepi314, for the French for sliver moon.) I knew there would be a sliver moon yesterday evening, and for once the skies were bright and clear the entire day. All afternoon I was looking forward to Kathy's call, beckoning me to come out and scope out the sunset while I waited for her to pick me up. I began to get antsy as the tiny rectangle of the heavens visible from my office turned from blue to slate-grey, and then quickly darkened toward midnight blue. Finally, around half-past five, when the harsh orange glare from the street lights had washed out all natural light, I lost all patience and rang Kathy to ask when she was getting done with work, already. As it happened, she was preparing to leave, so I followed suit, and skedaddled. It looked as dark from the street as it did from my office, and the brightest stars twinkled as they would on the chilliest winter night; yet even in the brisk wind the air felt merely cool. The celestial view of the Ecliptic, once it emerged from behind the hospital, was even more magnificent than I could possibly have expected from a crystal-clear, twilit night. There, in the teal-blue band of sunset, hung a perfect, two-day sliver moon. As I strode onto the bridge, the sickle of a Moon began to ripple wildly—and then stopped, just as suddenly. I took a step back, and again the Moon jittered and shook, emitting thin tendrils of light, almost like smoke. Soon I realized that the rippling occurred whenever the Moon was directly above one of one of the twin silhouetted smokestacks of the physical plant. Just add one column of transparent steam to your thin crescent for a quivery, slivery Moon. In spite of this spectacle, my eyes kept straying up toward Venus, a brilliant pearl that appeared almost as bright as the entire Moon.* My eyes soon adjusted to the dark (or did the sunlight wane?) and Jupiter emerged from the greenish sky between the smokestacks. A minute later, yet another pinpoint, dimmer and lower yet, was visible: Mercury. Incredibobble! I've never seen Mercury so far from the spring equinox, and certainly not in the dead of a Midwest winter, when Moon, stars and other sights of the heavens become a dim but fond memory. Look to the southwest tomorrow evening, 31 December, for a four-day crescent Moon closely paired with Venus: not as good as a true sliver moon, but still an impressive sight. If you happen to have a nice, clear night, the two will haunt your peripheral vision, daring you to take a glance. _____________________ *In fact, Venus was only about one-seventh as luminous, overall, but it packed that smaller brightness into a mere pinpoint of dazzling light. Tags: sliver_moon
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Y'ever see a video on YouTube, and think it's the stupidest thing you've ever seen? But then you find yourself thinking about one moment that tickled your funny bone, and pretty soon you go back and watch the video again? And again and again and again, because now it's growing on you, until finally you've memorized the whole thing? It happened to me with the following British PSA for nurturing urban wildlife (via Cute Overload). The grasshopper at 0:40 was the seed of the obsession that eventually hijacked my brain. I love how the hopper stays absolutely still, except for the leg it summons to hit the cymbal. The trumpet-playing yellowjacket and the fox at the end are also worth a chuckle. Exploring the site advertised, I learned one thing that would have made me seriously consider a postdoc in England had I known about it ten years ago: the British have hedgehogs running around their yards! How can a temperate biome be any more amazingly cool than that? Though I usually detest construction projects, I'd happily break out the hammer and saw to craft a hedgehog hôtel. I watched "One Thing" enough times that I started to pick up the words—no small feat given the discrepancy between the range of the basso solo voice and of my speakers, and the porridgy thickness of his accent. It doesn’t help that the animals, with the exception of the seal at the very end, are terrible enunciators. Still, I managed to get down all the words except the two names in the first verse, of people I didn't know and couldn't puzzle out phonetically through that unfamiliar British dialect. A commenter on YouTube kindly supplied them: perhaps the first time in the history of the most popular video site on the Internet that a comment on a video contained useful information. So, for those of you who would like to know what the singer is on about, here are the (closely approximated) words to "One Thing." Although I didn't recognize it, the tune is not original: it originally belonged to a Jonah Lewie song, "Stop the Cavalry." At left I list, to the best of my ability, the animals who lip-synch each line. Please let me know if I got one wrong, or not specific enough. Same goes for the words, though I'm surer about them. (Deer) Hey, there, Internet, we
(Water snake) Don’t want you to fret,
(Owlet) But we’re not doing splendidly.
(Crow) It is very cold
(Hare) Out here in the snow, without
(Mouse) Our friend David Bellamy.
(Hedgehog) Bill Oddie’s doin’ stuff
(Salamander) But it’s not enough, so
(Deer) Can you do one thing for me?
(Brass interlude, avec red squirrels, muskrat and yellowjacket?!)
(Three otters) We have here to fight
(One otter) For every single bite
(Mouse) While you scarf your Christmas tea,
(Owl) That is why we say
(Grasshopper) Oh, yes, yet again
(Dragonfly) Can you do one thing for me?
(Five deer) Breathing places,
(Stickleback) Space to roam,
(Hedgehog) Somewhere that I can call my home,
(Bumblebee) Wish I could’ve been safe and sound
(Honeybee larva) In a pocket beneath the ground.
(Mole) Duh-buh-duh-buh dum, dum,
Duh-buh-duh-buh dum, duh-buh-
(Badger?) Dum, dum, duh-buh-dum,
(Beetle) duh-buh-duh-buh daaah,
(Mole) Duh-buh-duh-buh dum, dum,
Duh-buh-duh-buh dum, duh-buh-
(Bird) Dum, dum, duh-buh-dum, duh-buh-duh-buh dum.
(Seal) Wish I’d a home, for Christmasssss...
(Bumblebee, bird, otter, moth, seal, mouse) Merry Christmas!
(Fox) Find out about it on line, yeh?Tags: nature
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I dedicate this entry to ciannait, who kindly brought the article discussed here to my attention, and who could probably use a laugh.We all learned that it is important in scientific or scholarly writing to credit the authors of source material from which we have drawn information. There are other good reasons to cite references, however: Citations to appropriate sources show that you've done your homework and are aware of the background and context into which your work fits, and they help lend validity to your arguments. Reference citations also provide avenues for interested readers to follow up on aspects of your work—they help weave the web of science. You may wish to include citations for sources that add relevant information to your own work, or that present alternate views. (Timothy T. Allen, 2000) Pseudoscientists and charlatans of every stripe are intimately familiar with the first two reasons quoted above. Consequently, they cite important-sounding sources to bluff the reader—to gain the reader's trust by constructing a façade of authority, assuming that he is too trusting, or apathetic, to explore the source material in greater depth. On the other hand, lazy or ignorant researchers may cite (if anything at all) the first references even tangentially related to the topic at hand, never bothering to verify that the sources actually substantiate the claims attributed to them. Naturally, true experts see right through both of these practices. To an educated and inherently skeptical audience, ineffective and improper citation can sap the force from an argument just as thoroughly as semi-illiterate writing or a total disregard for organization. I present here an example of a Web publication from the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that uses both approaches to attribution: the ignorant and the fraudulent. Exposing the Myth of Medical Marijuana. Marijuana: the Facts, demonstrates that the DEA, even while busily engaged in its heroic efforts to imprison America's entire lower class, has also successfully honed the art of irony to a razor's edge. The scholarship displayed here is so comically inept that the article reads more like a creationist manifesto than a US government document. While this report is laughable for many reasons, but I'd like to focus primarily on its horrendous citation of original sources. Here is a brief summary of common sloppy, misleading or outright deceitful practices, each of which has at least one example in the article: - Citing secondary or tertiary sources. One should reference directly to original report of a study in the medical literature—the "primary source"—whenever possible.
- Distorting original findings; taking quotes out of context. This article twists material from medical reports in ways that sometimes perfectly negate the authors' intentions.
- Omitting links to sources available on the Web, even when such links are easily obtained.
- Cherry picking: citing a few studies supporting a particular viewpoint while ignoring studies supporting the opposite view. I don't know the literature on this topic to gauge with any accuracy the balance between pro- and anti-medical-marijuana arguments in the literature, but it's child's play to find some favorable reports (a couple of dozen are referenced here and here, for starters), and to pretend that none exist, as the DEA does, is just plain dishonest scholarship.
- Many of the most crucial, and contentious, points have no citations to back them up.
- Other stuff, which I'll point out in context.
One might argue that the DEA article isn't trying to be a scholarly report. A neutral skeptic would never buy all this crap, let alone a hostile one. However, if they're going to intentionally half-ass it so badly, why bother with citations at all? I also have plenty to say about the quote logic unquote used here. Among other things, it is evidently too much to ask that the DEA cite information that actually bolsters its argument somehow. If you have time, you might want to read the intact article first, and then my review, since I diced it up pretty finely to address each reference when cited. I'll reprint the original in bold, and will comment in regular text. Disclaimer: I don't partake of the noble herb, myself. Disclaimer 2: No, really. ( Commence.... )Tags: general_science, skepticism
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Here we go again with yet another Holiday Letter™ preview. We have here is the unedited version: what we will circulate officially will be about 25% shorter. Have to let this stew for a day or two and then snip out the least interesting bits. I'm quite proud of how restrained I was with crowing about the election. (According to my hit counter, my family Christmas letter manual has, in the past week, risen to #1 on the popularity list for entry pages, accounting for 20-25% of first-page hits. I can't believe I'm popular enough to be found on a Google search for "christmas letter" or any variation; it's much more likely that someone famous linked to that page.) By tradition, Kathy and I each write one page, and as usual, I'm second, so at the point I start she has just turned the letter over to me (as the reader turns over the page). ( Family Christmas letter ahead... )Tags: bij_hoose, christmas, politics
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Recipe time again, already? Since we now own a house, we feel obliged to host a few Thanksgivings, both to restore the balance of karma and to show off (not to mention use) the full power of our excellent Thanksgiving venue. I post the following recipe in honor of my mother, who fine-tuned it to a high degree of scrumptiousness over several decades' worth of Thanksgivings, and who dutifully instructed me in its subtleties before we permanently moved out of Thanksgiving-invitation range. Back when, we called it "soft." I don't know which one of us kids invented the name, but it was probably me, as I was the biggest stuffing fanatic. As far as I know, I'm the only one of us to have carried on the tradition, which has continued now for one full generation. Alas, unless we can hand the recipe sideways, instead of down, to someone—and that is one reason I'm posting it here—the tradition may derail before two. We won't hold our celebration until Sunday, for logistical reasons, so what follows may be considered a kind of rehearsal. Bread StuffingMakes ca. 3 quarts (2.7 liters, or 3/32 bushel, or 7/128 boatload) of stuffing, enough for 12 guests plus leftovers. WARNING: Preparations must start four days in advance (see Procedure).Reagents:- Two large loaves Wonder™ Classic white bread (Note: You must have Wonder bread. No other brand will do. This bread rests at the very core of tradition.)
- 12 oz. (325 g) Jimmy Dean™ pork sausage (in bulk—not as links or patties! Well, maybe patties, but definitely not links.) (optional)
- 1 c. (two sticks; 200 g) butter
- 1½ c. (330 ml) finely chopped celery
- ¾ c. (170 ml) finely chopped yellow onion (preferably a paint-peeling powerhouse)
- 1 tbsp. (15 ml) crumbled, dried sage
- 1 tsp. (5 ml) ground black pepper
- 2 tbsp. (30 ml) salt (optional; I prefer to substitute chicken bouillon, below)
- 1X1 chicken bouillon2, as needed
Procedure:- Four nights before the day of final preparation, slit the bread packages and store loaves of bread at room temperature—but not so warm that the bread will grow mold—in a secure place, away from marauding cats. Thus, if you plan to make stuffing on Thursday, start drying the bread Sunday night. (This step is intended to dry out the bread enough to prevent it from glomming together while mixing the stuffing, but not so far that it gets hard and brittle.)
- The night before final preparation, break the entire two loaves of bread, including the crusts, into pieces no larger than ¼ inch (6 mm), yielding ca. 3 quarts (well-packed) of bread pieces. Warning: Done by hand, this step takes four hours for one person. Kathy and I have made a ritual out of breaking bread while watching a movie. Store bread pieces overnight in a very large container open to the air. If you think of it, stir the pieces once or twice in a few hours before you go to bed. If you forget, no problem.
- Mix sage and pepper into the bread pieces. Add salt only if you do not plan to moisten the stuffing with bouillon, below.
- Optional: Brown sausage, dividing it into the smallest pieces that are convenient, and drain fat. Mix into the bread.
- Melt butter in a skillet, and sauté3 onions and celery therein until tender.
- Add the onion-celery slurry to the nascent stuffing one large spoonful at a time, mixing all the while. By this time things the kitchen should be suffused with a delicious aroma.
- Add hot chicken bouillon little by little, mixing thoroughly after each. In my experience, about ½ to ¾ cup is necessary to properly moisturize. Warning: The dividing line between "almost moist enough" and "soggy" is very fine. Go very slowly once the stuffing begins to clump together while mixing—no more than one tablespoon at a time.
- Press stuffing into a casserole and bake at 350 °F (175 °C) until golden brown—ca. 30 to 45 min, depending on the depth.
Variations: If you are watching your salt intake, I recommend using water instead of bouillon to moisten the stuffing, especially if you include the sausage. You might be able to get away with less butter—¾ cup is enough to sauté the vegetables—but hey, it's Thanksgiving, so why should you? _______________________
1"1X" means "at the working concentration." Biochemistry labs often make up and store common solutions in super-concentrated form, diluting it down when needed, to keep from having to store hundreds of liters of the stuff. If the strong version is n times the working concentration, then it receives the prefix "nX" to indicate it must be diluted 1:n before use.
2You've often heard that salt was once so valuable that we get the word salary from the Latin word for salt. However, nobody to my knowledge has pointed out the implication that at some time, chicken bouillon may have been as valuable as gold bullion. It was almost certainly true during the California and Alaska gold rushes.
3If you wish to take after my favorite Beetle Bailey comic of all time and salute the onions and celery, instead, go right ahead.Tags: recipe
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