Snow Use’s Kitchen: dishes fit to make hearts melt and mouths water…
In Snow Use’s kitchen there stood a large stove,
And what she cooked on it she cooked with much love.
She used chunks of chocolate, melted in steam,
And sugar and egg-whites and oodles of cream.
(And, for effect, an occasional scream!)
She stirred it and mashed itinto a thick paste,
And added some cognac to give it more taste.
(As to the calories: they went to waist)
She poured the concoction into a strange mold;
Then into the freezer until it got cold.
(With a note saying: Please do not spindle or fold)
And when it was frozen so-o-o pleased was Snow Use,
For she had made Thidwick, the chocolate mousse
For a moment I am a thesaurus joining at a breakneck pace
misplaced ideas with corollaries, antonyms with alternatives, symmetry with simulacra.
and then I am back in the moment. recalling, lives ago, looking forward to this future, married to my (smart, lovely, mad) sweetheart. perennially fighting over homes and children and unmeant slights and trivia.
I chose otherwards, nor ever doubted that, though it would have been sane and not wrong. now she has colonies of frozen fertilized embryos waiting for the next wave; you have families to love and sweat and curse and laugh about; I have corollaries yet beginning. different paths are necessarily incommensurable; and to the extent they can be directly compared, they all come out to the same possibilities in the end. never demean where you are; find the joints and levers at hand and use them with confidence and joy.
Women hefting weight: a global physical meme of strength and focus
I ran across a random development conference today. It included a classic photo of a woman in a wrap carrying a load on her head. This was being used to represent the “members of the local community” in Bali, in political discourse about the use of their land. Even the little thumbnail image used in diagrams to represent community vs. industry showed men wearing typical clothing and women wearing typical clothing… and carrying 15kg.
The same thing happens in images from across Africa, where women more often than men are the ones carrying heavy loads to and fro; at least on their heads (rather than on motorbikes or other vehicles). This strikes me as a meme reflective of strength and work ethic, though so omnipresent it is simply taken as a fact of life and not worth remarking on. I wonder what other such memes are out there.
HT: Studie Rede via: IEEE Actionable Data Book
Aside: I mistakenly began to write something here about ‘development porn’. A concept worth discussing but riddled with untruth… and not behind this meme, which is widely present in media in all cultures, not just in the eye of ‘international development’.
Electricity and the body electric [robot counterpoint]
a quick aside while travelling, remembering also the Horowitz lab printer that printed a strange page while powered off, after I slept next to it
I like to get the lightest machines I can, and slide them into thin bags. Currently using: a $170 Samsung chromebook, which suits me just fine. That’s both because I heartily support the concept – a 2-lb machine that can survive droptests [if not the XO’s dropkick-test!] – and because I tend to destroy drives.
Recently, the faults tend to be electrical. And now that I have switched to SSD, these are harder to recover from. It seems to be controller death — and I still have a recent frotzed drive so I can find out, if I find someone who can debug Sandforce controllers. At any rate, I’ve lost two SSD’s on my Macbook Air in the past 2 months. All of which makes me even happier about one aspect of Chromebooks that some deplore: the lack of permanent on-disk apps or data.
Meanwhile, I wonder if it’s becoming easier to find customizable tempest cases for laptops – shielding works both ways!
Double entendres, or adianoetas, as seen by linguists
The paper: “That’s What She Said: Double Entendre Identification”
“Surely Yuriy Kiddon me”, I thought, reading this University of Washington monograph. But no, they really are that cool over there.
The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science, by Irving Langmuir
This overview of pattern-creation in the guise of science and its mob effect on whole fields must be read and relished.
The Six Symptoms of Pathological Science:
- The maximum effect observed is produced by an agent of barely detectable intensity. The magnitude of the effect is largely independent of the intensity of the cause.
- The effect is of a magnitude close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of low statistical significance of individual results.
- There are claims of great, even extraordinary, accuracy
- Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested (with enthusiasm)
- Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment (this may be contagious)
- The ratio of supporters to critics rises to somewhere near 50%, then falls gradually to zero.
Also, note that the “Allison effect” and mechanism is the most amazing example given, and may show something different than standard pathological science: it was considered good science for over a decade, and by hundreds of practitioners.
From a talk famously given by Langmuir (1932 Chemistry N’Laureate) in 1953, transcribed by Robert Hall, illustrated by Physics Today, republished and promoted by professors and authors.
Amanda Palmer on the subtleties of pride for working artists
A great multi-sided discussion from the AFP blog, with at least three incompatible views worth considering (and unifying in one moral code, if you’re looking for a challenge).
How should artists set expectations for how large popular shows and venues play out, when they each draw on dozens of performers, from pick-up –> auditioned one-night –> well-known drop-ins from past collabs –> long-term tour staff?
Sudo make me an Internet
Over the past year, in the US, Italy and other countries, Internet communities have flexed their muscles and demonstrated their popularity and capacity for organizing public opinion, by convincing lawmakers not to pass bills that would have made life difficult for ‘Net service providers and site owners.
Recently, two US Congressmen who were important opponents of SOPA in the House and Senate, Darrell Issa and Ron Wyden, called for and then published a draft Digital Citizen’s Bill of Rights, which they opened for public annotation and comment. (Kudos for the concept and quick turnaround – that’s a more direct engagement of readers than any other political effort I’ve seen recently. But I hope they keep developing the platform, or move it to something more refactorable.)
This week a more global network of organizations that strive for open access to knowledge and the Internet have published a “Declaration of Internet Freedom“, calling for governments and institutions and people everywhere to support a similar set of principles that support what we have come to think of as a free (and adaptable) Internet. I support that effort, as do the EFF, Public Knowledge, Free Press, and the Cheezburger empire. Even if the ‘declaration’ is more a proposition of principles to uphold.
You can sign on to the declaration online.
P.S. for an explanation of the subject, see this.
Nori Be!
Umino Hiroyuki: Featured at Tokyo’s Katagami Style through May 27.
