I'm a lasagna boy!

In which we diagram the sentence

A teaser on the front page of today's New York Times, print edition: "The New York Public Library is being given a cache of personal papers from the estate of Katharine Hepburn that focus on her stage career."

The story itself.

assuage

I think I have been mis-pronouncing assuage, but I am not certain. Instead of \uh-SWAYJ\ or \ə-ˈswāj\ I have been eliding the sw sound entirely \ə-ˈsāj\. I think; I am not sure. I know for certain that I did not properly pronounce cooperate when I first saw it (in second grade, I thought that two os together indicated a diphthong, a long sound. I still write coöperate in defiance of the lack of separation most editors have. Similarly, I had the emphasis in esophagus as equal on all syllables.

In which they shut up

Boston's transit riders, suffering tune wedgies these past two weeks at the hands of corporate djs and musicians have a reprieve, as the T discontinues the experiment.

Pumpkin ales

I had a bit of a dust-up at the grocery store while trying to buy their selection of pumpkin ales. I still have not tasted this year's Magnolia Pumpkin Ale, either; thus far, only one: Shipyard Brewing's Pumpkinhead Ale, from Maine, which tasted sweet and lacked subtlety.

In which the MacBook Pro is on its way out

Probably anticipating Leopard:

(salim@drassanes) ~ % last

salim     console  drassanes.local  Sat Oct 27 11:10   still logged in

reboot    ~                         Sat Oct 27 11:08 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Sat Oct 27 11:01 - crash  (00:06)

reboot    ~                         Sat Oct 27 11:00 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Mon Oct 15 16:47 - crash (11+18:13)

reboot    ~                         Mon Oct 15 16:47 

shutdown  ~                         Mon Oct 15 16:45 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Mon Oct 15 16:42 - 16:45  (00:02)

reboot    ~                         Mon Oct 15 15:26 

shutdown  ~                         Mon Oct 15 15:25 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Fri Oct  5 11:23 - 14:18 (10+02:54)

reboot    ~                         Fri Oct  5 11:22 

shutdown  ~                         Fri Oct  5 11:21 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Wed Oct  3 14:19 - 11:21 (1+21:02)

reboot    ~                         Wed Oct  3 14:18 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Mon Oct  1 10:28 - crash (2+03:49)

reboot    ~                         Mon Oct  1 10:27 

shutdown  ~                         Mon Oct  1 10:27 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Wed Sep 26 16:15 - 10:26 (4+18:11)

reboot    ~                         Wed Sep 26 16:05 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Mon Sep 24 10:05 - crash (2+06:00)

reboot    ~                         Mon Sep 24 10:04 

salim     console  drassanes.local  Wed Sep 12 06:52 - crash (12+03:12)

reboot    ~                         Wed Sep 12 06:49 

shutdown  ~                         Wed Sep 12 06:48 


wtmp begins Wed Sep 12 06:48 

One Good Turn

Kate Atkinson's second novel (a mystery? a comedy of errors? a drama?) featuring the hapless Scotsman-without-a-country Jackson Brodie irritated me. The first third of the novel, ostensibly a setup for a delicate plot rich with characters, jumped about without staying in one place long enough for me to appreciate the personalities or twists introduced; the remainder of the book, building on its themes, instead left loose ends for some of the minor characters, while telegraphing some of the more significant resolution in a way that made me not want to finish the dam' thing.

The novel, set in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival, lacks detail of both place and of dialogue. The author, also a Scot, shows the reader a city full of Eastern European intrigue but lacking in traditional Scotch character. Much like a television drama, the tension between Brodie and his stage-actress lover, the flamboyant Julia from Case Histories, never plays in any satifsying way. No passionate dialogues, no climactic scenes, but rather an assumption that the reader will accept the way in which their relationship develops. This book was nowhere as enjoyable as the Witold Rybczynski essay with the same title, but about the evolution of the screwdriver.

Aside: hapless comes into English via Old Norse, from the proto-Germanic root *khapan meaning "convenient, fit". The connotation of being without luck dates back almost a millennium.

In which we fight the tyranny of the automobile

The International Chindogu Society presents the roll-up zebra crossing.

"chindogu" comes from the Japanese words for "weird" and "tool". The Chindogu site definitely contains some unusual devices, along the lines of "I Can't Believe They Invented It!". Chocolate toothpaste? The Juice Loosener? The Hay-Fever Hat?

lexiphanes

The oddly euphonic lexiphanes cheers me: although an adjective, it appears plural; it includes one of my very favourite roots, phain-, "to show" (cf. epiphany); and it means "bombastic, or "a pretentious user of words".

It is also a dialogue (of Lucian? in imitation of Lucian?), the name of an Athenian comic poet, and a sort of beetle.

cagoule

A cagoule, a type of cover-all waterproof jacket, also refers to the right-wing Comité secret d'action révolutionnaire. This sort of jacket went out of style with the end of the Seventies, apparently.

Lance Hahn

Pitchfork reports that Lance Hahn of most excellent rockers J Church died.

meanderthal

The cute neologism meanderthal comes from the barely-evolved slowcoaches who crowd city sidewalks, plodding along and gumming up the works. The New York Times has some words of advice for these and other pedestrian miscreants.

Salim and the chocolate factory

Last week, I went on an field trip to Vere Goods. Their factory occupies a single floor of a narrow industrial building crowded along a nondescript street of import/export shops at the southern edge of the garment district. Vere chocolate, which takes its name from the Latin for "true", specializes in hand-made chocolate candy from single-origin cacao beans.

We gathered around a large table in the kitchen area, and tried our hand at dipping chocolate pieces into ganache, making truffles. The ganache is a mixture of cocoa solids and butter, and pours out of a special machine at a tightly-controlled temperature (today, 30º). We filled wide metal mixing bowls with the ganache, and used metal dipping forks to place square, rectangular, and spherical chocolate pieces into the ganache. We could then dress the pieces with toppings such as chopped dried figs, freeze-dried raspberry (a powder), poppy seeds. We also had the more mundane ingredients, such as cocoa powder, espresso bits, and so forth. We used the forks to etch small patterns, usually geometric, into the cooling ganache; to arrange the pieces into other shapes, by placing a pecan atop the candy for example; and we kept the ganache bowls fluid by stirring them slowly.

After we had made a large tray each (I am happy to say that I pioneered the tasting of pieces along the way, with the reasoning that "I need to know how these taste if I am to make proper chocolates!", so my tray was thus slightly less-populous than others'), we placed them in a cooling rack in order that the ganache might set.

We then filled pastry bags with ganache and began making lollipops -- and other shapes. We squeezed out the ganache onto wax paper, making not only round but various other shapes; we squeezed melted chocolate onto special sheets of paper that had patterns made of cocoa butter, which transferred to the cooling chocolate.

The chocolate was delicious, with a very strong and distinctive taste of cocoa. The taste was unlike any other chocolate I have tasted, and strongly showed the single-origin bean, much as a varietal coffee or wine reflects a characteristic flavour.

At the end of the chocolate-making we packaged our candies (very low in sugar; with at least 75% cacao in the chocolate, and only crystallized cane sugar, the chocolates are definitely not "sweet") into boxes and cellophane bags. We also each had a sheet of chilled chocolate to take home, should we want to temper it and re-use it.

I learned a lot about chocolate-making, but, more importantly, had a good time. Previously I have visited chocolatiers in Bareclona, Paris, and San Francisco, and this was by far the most exciting (perhaps because I got my hands dirty!) and the most intriguing.

Photos.

In which we have social security through fahion obscurity

Through the always-worthy News of the Weird email circular, I learned a little about the intersection of fashion and invention:

That is a purse in the guise of a manhole. The New York Times article features such other items as a children's backpack that converts into a typical Japanese fire-extinguisher and a slender skirt that folds into a ersatz vending machine (and completely conceals the wearer). The idea is that the wearer of these clothes feels more comfortable walking alone in deserted areas, knowing that they might easily blend into the urban streetscape if they feel threatened.

This concept might not work as readily around here: one sees few out-of-doors vending devices on Manhattan sidewalks; whether this is due to the ubiquity of bodegas, or the fear of vandalism, or some economic reason, I do not know. If the skirt converted to a nitrogen canister, or something more typically New York and non-interactive (neither a wire trash basket nor an umbrella vendor would pass muster), it could work.

Also through News of the Weird, and also security-related: catch a thief, receive beer for life*. *"for life" works out to a carton per month, which does not really seem like a whole lot, really. But still: Croucher Brewing sound like they make some tasty beer, and I sure hate to hear that "some blighters" took off with their laptop.

In which we excavate, virtually

As an update to the online map of Broadway and Bowling Green, I offer this historical map of Lower Manhattan, and this virtual tour.

In which we stare at the Marble of Doom

I wonder if the time-wasting (and time-waste-measurement) site Marble of Doom will accept uploads from Spin Control? Then we could collectively describe the amount of time that OSX programs spend blocking; correlating this information with ktrace output and see which programs use too many syscalls ...

Or perhaps we had best leave all this to the good developers at Apple.

ophidian

Again, my experience with freerice.com educates. I learned that ophidian is an adjective meaning "snake-like"; that an ambry, or "cupboard, pantry" is Chiefly British; and that bruxism is "the habit of clenching and grinding the teeth" (from the Greek brūkein, to gnash).

I guesed cauline, "growing on a stem", because of that indie-rock album I kept seeing but never playing at the WHPK station library (whose album was that?); I moved ahead in the game, but was wrong about the word's origin, though, because it comes from the Latin word for helmet and describes the sheath over a newborn human infant's head; pileus is given as a synonym, and also comes from the Latin.

Kill Ugly Radio

This slightly sweet, distinctively hoppy pale ale really hit the spot. Rarely do I find beers this hoppy to be so delicious; West Coast American craft beers tend to overdo the hops. Lagunitas Brewing produced Absolutely Free last year to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the landmark album by Frank Zappa (who enlightened my vocabulary, appears everywhere, appropriated out-of-style popular culture), and this year their Zappa seasonal is Kill Ugly Radio, and it is delectable.

apothegm

apothegm, an aphorism. I learned this word through the addictive and refreshing Free Rice, a vocabulary test through which one can donate rice to an "international aid agency".
The game also tossed out an old favourite of mine, lagniappe, at vocab level 47. I proceeded to level 48 and culverin, a sort of mediaeval cannon or "musket" as the site had it, without missing a word (I guessed at apothegm). I became retrograde, sank to level 44, and struggled to return to 47. Where I called it quits. After about forty-five minutes (and more than two thousand grains of rice).

In which I like your manifesto

I'd like to say that this is all Aram's fault, my leaping about the apartment and hollering in accents somewhere between Stoke-on-Trent and the Shannon.

... but really, since that day that I walked into his apartment on E. 55th St and heard the first Sea & Cake album, I know that he knows the tunes ("Junkie Nurse", Ken Vandermark, whoever the hell he is, Pong) and myriad other pieces of rock and roll.

This reminded me that on the past few occasions I have visited Grumpy the music playing on the diminutive jukebox has sounded entirely different than my stereo -- than any of my stereos. A few days ago, "Mad About Sadness" enchanted me (so much that I bought a copy the next day), and then the first Arcade Fire album, which I never especially liked. The combination of the brick-wall acoustics and the deliciously heavy aroma of coffee must be driving my music taste.

In which we fry, fry again

I have long desired a Donut Robot Mark II or contemporary equivalent, as used at the fantastic punk-rock Daily Dozen in Seattle, but today Damon pointed out the Dough-Nu-Matic, a home-kitchen-sized contraption designed for hey-presto! doughnut production. The device is also endorsed by the bike-riding donut guy, who sounds like a fellow after mine own heart.

Bees³

Bees, bees and elephants, invisible bees.

To get a honeybee hive ready to pollinate almonds in February, beekeepers must trick the bees into thinking it's spring, so the hive will be forced to lay brood, build its numbers and fatten its workers. Pollen patties - caked mixtures of sucrose, brewer's yeast and human-harvested flower pollen often imported from China are fed to the bees. Corn syrup is pumped into a plastic feeder in each hive through a gas pump. The mixture is tough to get right, and often gives the bees nosema, or diarrhea. Beekeepers spend an average of $20 per hive on winter feed. For a modest operation with 2,500 hives, that's a $50,000 bill for fake flowers.

Those who migrate to California in the fall to prep their bees for the almonds must find land to put them on. As development sucks up open space, many beekeepers find themselves driving farther and farther to their bee yards. Recently, some beekeepers are experimenting with storing hives for the winter in temperature-controlled potato cellars in the High Plains, and trucking them in right before bloom, saving on feeding costs.

The Chronicle article quoted above also has tit-bits on the second-largest beekeeper in the States (now that's an image) and on the honeybee matchmaker, whose wife's name is a palindrome for amen. All together, the narrative of the agribusiness of honey and almonds, two beautiful foods, makes me a little queasy. The characters might have stepped from a David Lynch movie, the farmers become further entrenched in abysmal business and poor agriculture, and China makes all the money.

In which we go round and round

It is like a song by The Cure.

I found this site while looking for a book on the portraiture of Jenny Saville, who "wallow[s] in the glory of expansiveness".

I do not know whose photograph appears above, but I really like it. I paged through hundreds of photographs on flickr answering to the "spiral" description, to no avail.

In which this is the Modern world

In London's Underground, one hears the admonishment "Mind the gap!" One hardly expects the same advice at the Tate Modern, but then one doesn't anticipate Doris Salcedo's Crevasse installation in the famous Turbine Hall.

According to Salcedo, the fissure is "bottomless... as deep as humanity".

However, it appears to be around three feet at its deepest point.

In which everything is

Photos of food from Big Tex, the annual Texas State Fair.

Ghost-dog chess

Under a slightly mis-leading name, the Hip-Hop Chess Federation presents such delights as Garry Kasparov versus RZA and Deep Blue against GZA/Genius. Or something.

In which we mourn the hyphen

This piece by Charles McGrath on hyphens disappearing from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary strikes me as ironic, since the New York Times is no bastion of punctilious punctuation (pardon my hypallage).

What’s getting the heave are most hyphens linking the halves of a compound noun. Some, like “ice cream,” “fig leaf,” “hobby horse” and “water bed,” have been fractured into two words, while many others, like “ bumblebee,” “crybaby” and “pigeonhole,” have been squeezed into one.

That “ice cream” and “bumblebee” ever had hyphens to begin with suggests an excess of fussiness on the part of older lexicographers, and may explain some of Mr. Stevenson’s annoyance. The issue of proper hyphenation has always been vexing for the Brits, far more than it is for us, and occasioned perhaps the single crankiest article in Fowler’s “Dictionary of Modern English Usage,” first published in 1926.

I am re-reading "Murder Must Advertise" and have been keeping a short list of the unusual words that appear, formed entirely of ordinary words linked with hyphens: guard-book, bosom-pal, shirt-sleeves, lunch-hour, block-maker, — a handful more. Probably through repeated reading of novels such as Sayers's, with their splendid punctuation, I have a dogmatic approach towards my own punctuation, from commas to emdashes, exclamation marks to obelisks.

In which he should not have kept the pipe, nor the hands

The CIA agent who tracked and arranged the killing of Che Guevara wishes he had kept Che's last pipe. Perhaps he could have arranged them with Che's severed hands, and formed a more perfect trophy?

When the Gang of Four sang "See the Girl on the TV dressed in a bikini, She doesn't think so but she's dressed for the H-Bomb" little did they know that the essence of Cold-War fashion would be dressed up with a Marxist icon, post-modern to the hilt. Post-modern, or simply iconic?

In which we reach the rock

The New York Times's piece onYukihiko Ikumori, a venerable climber of Rat Rock in New York City's Central Park. This brings up essential questions about journalism: how did the reporter find this story? It is a human-interest piece, rather than breaking news or analysis, yet surpasses 'most anything the Times has printed in the past several months (or years, perhaps; Neil Straus's Mingering Mike story of a few years ago was another highlight).

Sixth and Market

San Francisco, you are so dirty. I caught a cab down Market Street yesterday evening, and as the cabby skidded around the human obstacle course at the intersection of Sixth Street he muttered, "We are going through the Interzone." I started to chuckle, and he realised that he had spoken his mind aloud. He began to explain that he took the idea from William S. Burroughs's novel -- "Which one was that?" about the lawless region based on Tangier's international zone.

And that's what we were driving through.

Walking around Union Square and the Tenderloin today has revolted me: the number of people literally on the streets, simply standing around and blocking one's path, crowding one's nose, are more than a blot on the landscape — and why the fountain at UN Plaza — is repulsive; the people are a symbol of how lackadaisical San Francisco is about vagrancy. Care not cash?

In which I try, try again

The old saw says something along the lines of "If at first you don't fricassee, fry, fry a hen". I intended to keep tasting notes about beer, but fell pretty far behind. Here is a brief list, with an asterisk (*) next to the outstanding beers.

Racer 5
Brooklyn blast
Dogfish head  via Randall
Capt Lawrence imperial*
Lagunitas Sirius
Sly fox nelson
Long island summer ale
Smuttynose summer weizen
Beer craft 5th & union
High & mighty two headed monster
Docs cider
Blanche de Bruxelles witbier
Blue point from the cask
Ruby's amber at ruby's on coney island
Morimoto soba rogue*
Stone ruination IPA
Bklyn one
Dogfish head pangea
Ruination IPA stone
Blue point hoptical illusion*
Ipswich darkvale
Victory hop devil
Magic hat dark angel
Six point victory
Thomas hooker blond
Smuttynose imperial stout
Ipswich stout
Allagash white
Defiant
Southern rasp berry
Legacy euphoria*
Hennepin Saison*
Six points Bengali tiger
Church brew IPA
Maudite on draft *
Ephemere *
St amand biere du garde
Gulden draak *
Samuel smith tadcaster
Doc's draft cider
Gouden carolus
Marin tiburon blonde
Brown ale
Downtown brown
Some porter
Chimay cinq cents
Blue moon Belgian white
Sara's ruby mild *
Wit rabbit
Proving ground
Rosebud * 
Big cypress brown
Cole porter
Summer honey
Harlem sugar hill golden ale

In which we land a man on the moon

My sister Anar, reporting on space exploration and the terrestrial applications of satellites since Sputnik!

ESG

Through Metafilter, I discover that ESG are calling in quits after thirty years of just-under-the-radar hip-hop and funk. I heard of them in 2000, when Soul Jazz reissued "A South Bronx Story" and I got a copy.

In which baby's got the bends

Radiohead have decided to provide their new album online and to charge whatever fans are willing to pay, even $0.00. 0¢. Seven years ago, the band made Kid A freely available online after pre-release copies leaked to the Napster download network. It subsequently went platinum in the first week of its US release, thereby suggesting that Radiohead are not entirely off their commercially-successful nut.

In which I wish upon a star

A photograph I wish I had taken:

Photo by ciaran-sf. I have a set of photographs of transit point-of-sale machines, some behaving well, many abnormally.