Because I care.
Archives for August 2009
France Update
The following should be more widely available, beginning immediately.
* Bleu de Brebis. Whole Foods had this cheese once in 2005 for something like a week. Thus, as with Tartufello Pecorino, hope lives.
* Chipirons en encre (squid cooked in ink).
* Gateau Basque. If the Obama Socialist Food Rationing Board can only squeeze in one dessert cake from the Pyrenees, local consensus holds that the cream kind beats the one made with cherries.
* Dorade or similar fish cooked whole.
* Serrano ham. You can actually get American versions of this in specialty markets these days, but here it is as ubiquitous as watery, tasteless sliced ham in the States. I would love for someone with an economics degree to explain how a Serrano jambon beurre here costs less than crappo-brand ham on wonderbread with American cheese and mustard-like processed food product.
I understand better how customs officers keep their eyes on the Spanish and the Basque more than almost anyone else. One can easily imagine how much happiness can be squeezed into the secret(ish) parts of a suitcase, and I’m not even talking about the impressive pot plant that my neighbor has on his balcony.
Visiting the family is uneventful, thank the heavens.
Finally, for whichever readers recommended The Discovery of France in my book thread, many many thanks. The book makes an extremely useful travel guide while touring the stubbornly unassimilated pays.
Fil Ouvert
Parlez.
Sunday Night Open Thread
I think this is the third weekend I have made it without watching the Sunday shows and instead have done something different in the morning. Today I just went to the rails to trails with the dog, then worked on stuff I would normally do on Monday while watching the history channel. I felt better for it, although I may have wondered what President McCain thought once or twice.
Spent the afternoon working, and went to Petco with Tammy and Sam and Lily, because that is where the pets go. Everyone behaved and I got Lily a new collar. I am gonna keep the Steelers collar for game day, but I think the new one looks better for everyday. The new collar:
For dinner, I went to Brian and Tammy’s again, and we had a spectacular meal. My uncle (who was a WWII navy vet and is super cool) and my cousin went fishing in Alaska last week, and they caught several hundred pounds of halibut and salmon, and a bit of it found its way to my house, so Brian cooked up a feast. So delicious, and the difference is just unbelievable. The salmon was cooked with a beurre blanc, and the halibut was served on a bed of spinach with mushrooms and tomatoes. It was to die for, and the texture was unbelievable. The fact that the meat was so perfect is a testament to how flash-freezing fish as it is caught preserves the cell structure. Probably one of the best pieces of fish I have ever had. The chef deserves mad props, too.
After that, for fun, we chilled with the dogs and watched Goodfellas. The temperature outside was perfect.
Today was a good day. I got work done, I hung out with my dog, I hung out with my friends, I just got off the phone with mom and dad and they are doing well after spending the week in Pittsburgh celebrating the 41st anniversary, and sitting here right now before I got to bed, I just realize how damned good it all is.
This really is a good thing we humans have going.
Eeyore Is Smarter Than Pooh
Via Scientific American, a behavioral ecologist and a psychiatrist suggest that a major depressive incident may make people better able to solve complex problems and social dilemmas :
Depressed people often think intensely about their problems. These thoughts are called ruminations; they are persistent and depressed people have difficulty thinking about anything else. Numerous studies have also shown that this thinking style is often highly analytical. They dwell on a complex problem, breaking it down into smaller components, which are considered one at a time.
This analytical style of thought, of course, can be very productive. Each component is not as difficult, so the problem becomes more tractable. Indeed, when you are faced with a difficult problem, such as a math problem, feeling depressed is often a useful response that may help you analyze and solve it. For instance, in some of our research, we have found evidence that people who get more depressed while they are working on complex problems in an intelligence test tend to score higher on the test.
During my scholastic career, I frequently got depressed when attempting to work math problems (took basic high school algebra three times and still don’t understand it). I’d stare at the paper until the numbers started dancing, ruminating on the problem until I reached the correct solution: “That’s it; I am sooo fvcked.”
Then I’d throw up.
Which totally makes sense now, because of course serotonin function affects the gastrointestional tract as well as that lump at the top of the spinal column.
Move over Monica Goodling
Regent in the governor’s hizouse, or running for it anyway. I don’t think there’s too much value in holding a 20 year-old master’s thesis against anyone (I skipped reading the article til TPM excerpted it and I saw the Regent connection), but this one is radical enough that McDonnell should have to go through and explain exactly which right-wing extremist things he still believes and which ones he doesn’t.
The thesis wasn’t so much a case against government as a blueprint to change what he saw as a liberal model into one that actively promoted conservative, faith-based principles through tax policy, the public schools, welfare reform and other avenues.
“Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state,” he wrote. “Historically, the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment were intended to prevent government encroachment upon the free church, not eliminate the impact of religion on society.”
He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach “traditional Judeo-Christian values” and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to “exclude parental spanking.” He lamented the “purging of religious influence” from public schools. And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.
It always come down to spanking, doesn’t it?
In complete fairness, McDonnell has been less of a whack as a public servant than that thesis suggests. Nevertheless, after reading about his thesis and contemplating the possibility (however unlikely) of Republicans running the country again, I was ready to go home to take pain pills and die.
McCain in the membrane
Eric Boehlert digs up some data I was wondering about:
But back to the loser angle real quick. Again, after Sunday, McCain will have made eleven Sunday morning talk show appearances this year. Asks Benen, “Refresh my memory: was there this much interest in John Kerry’s take on current events in 2005?
Answer: There was not. In 2005, between Meet the Press, Face the Nation, This week, Fox News Sunday and CNN’s Late Edition (which has basically morphed into today’s State of the Union), John Kerry made a total of three appearances on those program during the first eight months of 2005, according to a search of Nexis.
Again, I’m not complaining politically. As a Democrat, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted Kerry on the tube in 2005.
I remember reading a while ago — I won’t be able to find the link because I don’t remember the quote well enough — a Republican saying something like “When we lose an election, we take the people who ran the campaign out back and shoot them. When Democrats lose an election, they hire the same people to run the next campaign.” I realize that candidates/elected officials are not the same thing as campaign managers, but I’ve got to think that recycling losing front men isn’t that much smarter than recycling losing political operatives. When someone loses a general presidential election, stick him on an ice floe and push him out to sea. If he wins a Nobel prize like Al Gore did, then he can come back.
The overall dynamic here is very strange, though. John Edwards cheats on his cancer-stricken wife and becomes a pariah. Newt Gingrich serves his wife with divorce papers as she’s coming out of surgery and the Joe Kleins of the world still slobber all over him. Dukakis and Kerry lose, they go into hiding. Bob Dole becomes a popular pornographic Pepsi pitchman and John McCain starts co-hosting the Sunday shows.
Update. Not exactly the same thing, but Jenna Bush just got a gig with the “Today” show.