Aha! I am early enough to ask a question. I think this is the ideal forum for such an inquiry. I have read the phrase "know from" to mean "know about" occasionally, I think even here on this blog maybe. Like, "I'm American and I know from George Washington," or something. I'm probably using it wrong. Anyway I've read it, especially on the Internet, but where do people actually say it? Where does it come from? I'm from Connecticut and I've never heard anyone say it in my life, only read it. And whenever I read it it kind of bothers me with curiosity.

Does anyone know?

And I'm early enough to provide an answer.

A cursory Google survey confirmed my recollection that "know from" is a Yiddishism. I think of it as a New Yorkish idiom, which often implies a Yiddish origin. Many of these Yiddishisms have been circulated via show business, so don't be surprised by your hearing it more on TV and movies than in your everyday life.

Individualfrog, for what is worth, I had always assumed that it was a kind of variation of the good old "don't know his ass from a hole in the ground" or "don't know shit from shinola" expression common in the midwest; but I was told by a linguist that it came from a mistranslation of either the german or yiddish "von" (about) as "from". So what in German would be "don't know about" came out in English as "don't know from".
Can't find an actual reference on that, though.

To #1 (individualfrog)

I think it's from Yiddish, but am not sure. It's (AFAIK) not a German construction; I don't remember "Ich weiß von..." from (admittedly long-ago) high school German class.

9th. Attend to the effects tea and coffee produce upon you.

Hmmm... Not sure what Syd means here.

A cursory Google survey confirmed my recollection that "know from" is a Yiddishism.

Just because I'm a Silly Linguist Person, I like to call these "Yiddicisms." Just for fun. This goes with calling the state of being frantic "franticity," and so on.

Seriously, I think it's very much New York dialect (did you know that "New York" is by itself one of only five major dialect groups in the US?), and it's usually used in the negative: "I don't know from classical" said to me by a jazz musician; "...and I'm gonna make 'em all exactly alike! So when he stops, he don't know from gas, he don't know from burgers, he don't know from nothin'!" from Inserts, a movie that was trashy despite the great efforts of Richard Dreyfus, of all people, to make it good.

#5 Serge, I don't know either. I do know from college that they always helped create a great stippling effect while I was illustrating.

calling the state of being frantic "franticity"

And, Xopher, is FDR really responsible for calling the state of being normal "normalcy"?

(As for Inserts, that takes me back a few years - 28 of them. It was a bit jarring to watch that right after Superman - the movie.)

Steve @ 7... So, you too think Syd was talking of the activity quaintly refered to by ladies as 'powdering their nose'?

(Wow... Barely started and already the thread has gone downhill.)

Is there such a thing as contests for the best Rube Goldberg contraption of the year? If so, is there a web site that runs films of said contraptions in action? Watching the MythBusters's own such creation a couple of weeks ago reminded me how much fun they are.

Thanks for that letter, Teresa and Sydney.

So who's going to edit The Oxford Book of Blogging?

Re coffee and tes: Sydney could also be talking about the effect that stimulants have on Lady Georgina.

True, James. That would explain Syd's warning against "...everything likely to excite feeling or emotion not ending in active benevolence..."

And I see that Sapmurat Niyazov Turkmenbashi is no longer with us in this Vale of Tears. Pinochet, Turkmenbashi... dare we hope for a dictatorial trifecta for Christmas this year?

Serge @9, well, I was going more for the caffine. After a long night with a 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew, you could lay down those dots like a madman. Although, from what I hear, that "other thing" also worked well, I could never afford such things so I don't know from personal experience. Just for the kids, either activity is not recommended. Each are bitchers to come down from.

Having felt a bit low myself this holiday season, I am printing this excellent advice out in a charming old-fashioned font and plan to refer to it frequently. Nothing like an amusing book, a cup of coffee, and a blazing fire to lift the spirits!

Serge and Steve - I wondered about the tea and coffee as well. But my own first guess was that Syd might have been referencing the effects of the caffeine in both beverages -- tea, frex, has been known as "the cup that cheers but does not inebriate" since before the date of this letter, and a lady in low spirits must be in need of good cheer. But I'd welcome a more definitive answer :-)

is FDR really responsible for calling the state of being normal "normalcy"?

The OED's first quotation for "normalcy" is from 1857, so I'm going with "no".

"the cup that cheers but does not inebriate"

I like that, Harriet. Sounds so classy.

In #10 Serge writes:

Is there such a thing as contests for the best Rube Goldberg contraption of the year? If so, is there a web site that runs films of said contraptions in action?

There are certainly college competitions. In '91 I attended one at Purdue that was most amusing. Aha, this may help.

There must be video of such things. Don't forget to search on "Heath Robinson" as well as "Rube Goldberg!"

Until you find the motherlode of Rube Goldberg student videos, you can content yourself with the short film The Way Things Go and the Honda "Cog" commercial. These were discussed in this forum a few years ago.

'Normalcy' goes that far back, Jennifer? I shall promptly call my wife and chastise her for misinforming me, even though today is her birthday. I might even withhold giving her that statue of UnderDog, as further punishment. (Or I could instead go downstairs to Starbucks and have some of the other cup that cheers but does not inebriate.)

I believe that "normalcy," as a coinage, is usually attributed to Warren G. Harding.

It sure does, Serge.

Debra, Harding is the third source quoted by the OED.

(I love having free online OED access from work. So much easier than waiting until I'm home and getting out the actual book.)

Oh, I should probably mention that the quotation after the Harding is:

1929 G. N. CLARK in S.P.E. Tract XXXIII. 417 If...'normalcy' is ever to become an accepted word it will presumably be because the late President Harding did not know any better.

Which strikes me as nicely ironic.

Individualfrog #1: 'Know from' is a Yiddishism, still I believe heard frequently in New York. I recall one of my political theory teachers (a man of impeccably WASP origin) using it very frequently. I taxed him about it, and he said that, given that political theory was a field with a lot of Jewish participants it wasn't surprising that something had rubbed off on him.

Bill (#20) and Serge (#10)

I think that previous thread about wonderful machines ended up bleeding over onto Neil Gaiman's blog as well (or vice versa): Tuesday, April 22, 2003.

Also, someone provided him with a link to Arthur Ganson's mechanical sculptures, which you really must see.

Thanks, Bill Higgins and Joe J. About the MythBusters's own contraption, my only complaint is that I wish the frozen turkey falling out of the oven had led to more than crash-test dummy Buster falling off his chair. Seems like an anvil falling on his head would have been the perfect grand finale. Still, the cymbal-clanking monkeys were a nice touch.

sidelight: Liberal (n.): Conservative who's just seen his health-insurance premiums go up 81%

(beavis/butthead chuckling)

Funny stuff.

Coffee and tea were not uncommonly promoted as medicines in the early modern era.

"Furthermore, respectable society physicians such Hans Sloane and John Radcliffe were not above trading on their reputations as physicians, and produced and promoted branded medicines. In Sloane's case this took the form of drinking chocolate; other exotic 'luxury' goods such as tea, coffee and tobacco were all promoted for their supposed health-giving effects, and as medicinal products may be considered within the same broad category of proprietary medicines. Users for many of these medicines also came from respectable classes - as the prices often appear to indicate. Rogers' Oils, the proprietary gout medicine promoted by Dr William Stukeley in the 1730s, were used by a number of men of wealth and rank, including Pitt and Walpole, as Porter and Rousseau (1998) have noted."

link

PayPerPost is forced to require disclosure in its word-of-mouth campaigns.

Finally some progress on that front, for those who followed the thread here at the beginning of the month.

Drinking chocolate for medicinal purposes, Sarah S? So that's why my wife likes the stuff so much - although she prefers it in solid form.

Then there's Sir Sidney Smith's March from John Chambers' massive ABC Tunefinder site. If you're looking for a traditional European tune (tune, not song), particularly Celtic or British, start here.

It makes a surprisingly good harp tune, perhaps because of the Carolan-like phrases and irregularity.

According to the excellent site The Fiddler's Companion:

SIR SYDNEY SMITH'S MARCH. AKA – “Handel’s Gavotte.” English, March. G Major. Standard. AABB. Sir William Sidney Smith (1764-1840) was a British admiral and naval hero during the Napoleonic Wars, especially remembered for his defence of Acre against Napoleon in 1799. Smith apparently liked to think of himself as a second (Horatio) Nelson, and in fact he was instrumental along with that more famous admiral in ending Bonaparte’s dreams of eastern conquest. It is unfortunate that while Nelson became a national hero of immense proportions, Smith remains all but forgotten. There was a rivalry between the two, as well as friendship, and Smith hoped to snatch Nelson’s laurels by destroying the combined French and Spanish fleets with newly invented rockets and torpedoes before Nelson fought them decisively at sea off Cape Trafalgar in 1806.

Sir Sidney led a colorful life. An adventurer as was as strategist and naval expert, he had been imprisoned as a spy in Paris, with the threat of execution, until he made a daring escape. He was a diplomat with a flair for the theatrical, and returned to London from the Middle East wearing Arab robes, presaging Lawrence of Arabia a century later. It may be no surprise that Smith lived in Paris, the capital of his former enemy, for the last twenty-five years of his life.

#31 Serge--

There's always a good justification for chocolate. Interestingly enough, the current research on antioxidants suggests that what were essentially wild guesses on the part of early modern doctors weren't that far off--about some stuff.

The cutting live birds in half and applying them to the feet or head to draw the "vapors" out....not so much.

Sarah S #29: The Dutch East India Company employed physicians to promote tea as the wonder drug of the seventeenth century. Boxer's The Dutch Seaborne Empire mentions one who prescribed tea in doses of twenty to two-hundred cups per day.

Fragano (#34)--

That's fabulous! I wonder if he meant the "venti" cups or the "tall" ones?

Now seems about the right time to recommend David Liss's The Coffee Trader."

Sarah S #35: I've always assumed the traditional teacup.

James @ #12 et al: if Lady G. had not simple depression but bipolar disorder, caffeine might not have been good for her in her manic phase.

The cutting live birds in half and applying them to the feet or head to draw the "vapors" out

Drawing vapors thru people's feet, Sarah S? Is that what they thought was the cause of stinky feet?

Serge (#38) Nope, it had to do with trying to stop fevers or other problems. They did it to John Donne when he had "relapsing fever" and also to Henry (James I's oldest son) when he was dying of whatever he died of.

It was not a stunningly effective treatment.

"Run, run, run, as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the Stinky Cheese Man!"

Since 'tis the Season to be jolly, tra-la-la-LA... And since lots of things seem to be on YouTube... Does anybody have a link to Saturday Night Live's skit about the year Kris Kringle got food poisoning the night before Christmas so his wife phoned his old buddy Hannukah Harry to stand in for him?

Xopher@6: I've certainly heard it in the positive. "And trust me, he knows from suits!" in an archaic source, and "Him? He doesn't know from cars. I know from cars!" from an elderly family friend (this is not a construction my family tended to use, as they were not Yiddish speakers).

TNH: That Noka expose is dynamite. Good investigative reporting, good research, good math. Thanks for the link!

I posted this on Open Thread 76 minutes before OT 77 appeared. I'm copying it here so that it has a better chance of getting seen and answered.

I have a procedural question.

Over on the "Brilliant Sendup" thread, someone accidently did something with tags that made the whole thing almost unreadable in Safari from that point on.

Another poster pointed this out in a later comment. No moderators responded to this, so I made a post with the title "I see bad tags," on analogy with the "X sees comment spam" post titles. No moderators responded to this either, and until the thread died its own death, it remained almost unreadable.

Question 1: Can the moderators fix this kind of problem?

Question 2: Assuming the answer to question 1 is yes, do they consider it worth the time and effort to do so?

Question 3: Assuming the answers to questions 1 and 2 are yes, how does one notify them that it needs to be done?

I'm asking just so I'll know in the future.

"Know from" always reminds me of

I am never forget the day I am given first original paper to write. It was on analytic and algebraic topology of locally Euclidean parameterization of infinitely differentiable Riemannian manifold.
Bozhe moi!
This I know from nothing.
But I think of great Lobachevsky and get idea - ahah!

Did you all see this:

"Lots more. Do your own bloody research.

I'm completely out of patience with the ignorance displayed by the lefty blogosphere on this issue over the last couple of days."

Posted by: Patrick Nielsen Hayden

And that's Patrick on a *good* day, when Teresa made him take his meds. He's from Brooklyn, where not only are the weak killed and eaten, but the merely somewhat strong, as well. They work in the Flatiron building (image), the only building in NYC designed specifically to destroy other buildings by ramming).

During the 2004 black-out, after hijacking a bus from the Flatiron Building back to Brooklyn, they threw a barbeque - with the passengers as main course. They then led a mob of Brooklynites ('mob' is the basic plural term for Brooklynites, like herd, flock or school) and destroyed all bridges across the East River, to prevent starving Manhattanites from getting to Brooklyn. Not because they needed to defend Brooklyn, but because Manhattanites are just too stringy and lean for Brooklyn tastes.

Patrick and Teresa work for Tor books (as in 'we tore that lousy writer a new ______'). SM Stirling was inspired to write the Draka series after seeing them 'edit' a troublesome new writer - Patrick held the writer out the windwo by his shoes, while Teresa pointed out each and every flaw in the guy's work. It's not *their* fault that the writer was wearing slip-ons. However, Patrick did immediately call the police, and fess up to littering.

Teresa likes to knit, sitting outdoors in a park. She says that outdoor knitting runs in the family, ever since the late 1780's, back in France.

I could go on, but they've probably traced my internet connection by now.

Ciao,

Posted by: Barry | Dec 20, 2006 6:45:18 PM

from here.

I think it's complimentary, but it may have been intended otherwise.

11th. Don’t expect too much from human life—a sorry business at the best.

For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.

#23 OED at work -

Any readers that have library cards, do take a moment to find out what you can access through your library's web site. I get OED access, newspapers, magazines (many full text), Encyclopædia Britannica, Grove Music, and several dozen other databases and services.

A library is a wonderful thing.

#23 OED at work -

Any readers that have library cards, do take a moment to find out what you can access through your library's web site. I get OED access, newspapers, magazines (many full text), Encyclopædia Britannica, Grove Music, and several dozen other databases and services.

A library is a wonderful thing.

36 & 35:

In a full set of china, you have both tea cups and coffee cups. You can tell the difference because the tea cups are larger.

#34 Fragano Ledgister "doses of twenty to two-hundred cups per day."

That makes me have to visit the restroom just thinking about it. All you needed to add was the sound of water running.

#34 Fragano Ledgister "doses of twenty to two-hundred cups per day."

I was wondering if they were demi-tasse size.

Tracie #32 - according to Wikipedia, Sir William Sidney Smith KCB (21 June 1764 – 26 May 1840), the naval hero after whom the March was named, is a different fellow from Sydney Smith (June 3, 1771, Woodford, Essex, England– February 22, 1845), the English writer and clergyman who penned the "Letter to Lady Georgiana Morpeth".

Both men seem to have lived fascinating lives.

I'd heard of Sydney-Smith-the-writer in my readings into the history and culture of Regency England (and the Duke of Wellington and other evil passions of mine) but I'd never known anything about him or recalled seeing anything of his writing. Having now looked him up on Wikipedia, I'm putting him on the list of Historical People Whose Works I Really Need To Read When I Have The Time, and must thank TNH for bringing him to our attention.

the Duke of Wellington and other evil passions of mine

In that case, Harriet... In the Sharpe TV movies, Wellington is shown as more interested in a man's military competence than in his social origins, but it is my understanding that this is an invention of the movies. No matter what, they were enjoyable and my wife, for some reason I can't fathom, thought that Sean Bean looked damned good in that black outfit of his.

The cutting live birds in half and applying them to the feet or head to draw the "vapors" out....not so much.

One of my late aunts-by-marriage grew up farming-poor somewhere in Texas during the Great Depression, and in later life told the story of how her family employed the split-chicken treatment when she was bitten on the ankle once by a rattlesnake -- putting a half-chicken on the bite, and replacing it after the flesh of the chicken had (or so she told it) turned green from the poison.

Saparmurat Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan, is dead.

# 4 "Ich weiß von ..." does exist, but would mean "I know via (enter name of person)". If talking about knowledge about a topic, you'd use "Ich weiß über .." , but there's "Ich weiß nichts von ..." which means "I don't know of (a change of plans/a rule/an event)".

Rifle Green, Sir!

James D Macdonald #55: I intend to celebrate by listening to opera on a car radio.

Steve Bucheit #50: Whenever I mention this in class (in discussing the media and the antiquity of advertising), I always wonder if this would have required living in a tepee.

P J Evans #51: I don't think so.

I also posted something in open thread 76 right before this one started, and if I may I'll just copy and paste it here (unless the answer to my question at the beginning is "no," and that's why this thread got started, in which case just ignore me). So:

Can I say something unrelated to anything else that's kind of snippy? I can? Even though I'm new? Thanks.

I've been reading through Teresa's particle on Noka chocolate and finding it fascinating, even though I'd never heard of Noka before. The critic on Dallas Food is funny, smart, knowledgeable, etc, and the topic is interesting.

But here I get to page five and he really pisses me off.

"Go to Chocolate Secrets on Oak Lawn and you can get Cluizel bars from Madagascar, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, and São Tomé (though you'd be better off buying them online for about a third less)."

The website is called "Dallas Food," and the guy goes out of his way to bring up a local business and then discourage people from going there?!?!? Am I the only one left who still thinks local is important?

Just heard a lengthy piece on SAD on NPR this morning. Did a little self-diagnosos - time to dig out the ionizing light box. Supposedly the ionizer works well overnight, so I'll put it on my nightstand and move it into the office next to my bicycle so I can ride the trainer while getting the dose of bright light first thing in the AM.

I'm telling myself that the days are lengthening! The sun is even out today in celebration of the solstice.

ethan @ 61

I think the writer is hinting that (in his opinion) the store marks them up way too much.

I need a cup of the beverage that cheers but does not inebriate with a large slug of booze in: the sweater I'm currently blocking grew and bled. It's a baby sweater, so bigger is OK, but I'm still irritated. And XRX's technical editors need to be garroted with a circular cable. Even their "clarifications" need clarifying.

ethan - local food blogs aren't just about promoting local business, they also tend to be about finding value, quality, service and a fair price. The author's gripe seems to be that Noka creates minimal value add, misrepresents what they do and charges an outrageous price when better alternatives are available for less.

My take on Noka is that they're exploiting the Needless Markup niche of people willing to pay a pile of money for the perception of luxury. Hmmm, both Texas companies...

To clarify, I have no gripe with the argument against Noka. That company is nonsense.

#63, I know, I know, it's just...the tone of it was so flip that it gave me the willies. Especially around Christmas, and especially with some local talk radio destruction that's happened where I am that I'll only go into if anyone seems interested, I'm very sensitive to that kind of thing. The whole notion of local-...what, localness? Anyway, the whole concept is being systematically rooted out and destroyed, and I'd like to think that a food blog named after its locale would be reluctant to so matter-of-factly advertise a local business's competitors.

ethan - he is promoting other local business that sell a better product that happens to have its final stage of manufacture elsewhere.

How local does local have to be? It's not as if anyone is growing cacao in Texas.

Larry, it's tasteless luxury combined with bragging rights.

And, yes, you get bragging rights with a Leica M8. But that doesn't have the bling factor.

Ethan at #66, don't tell me, Clear Channel is gobbling down all your local stations too?

It's so bad here that I maybe listen 1 hour a day, and then only if one of the local announcers is in the booth. I can remember when the radio was on most of the time when I was home.

Harriet #52: Indeed yes, Syd and Sid were different people, though they overlap chronologically. But Syd's similar name was enough to remind me of the tune, about which I previously knew only that is a traditional Northumberland tune -- nothing about its namesake. And this is, after all, an open thread. What I found amusing was the idea of getting naval history from a site about traditional music.

For Christmas, I usually give my father books on military history and my mother books on food. This year they're getting (jointly) Feeding Nelson's Navy. Mom is also getting an orb (she got the tiara a few years back) because at Thanksgiving she complained that she didn't have an orb. Or a sceptre either, but I couldn't find one I liked.

Did I mention that my parents are just a little bit strange? (In a good way, of course.) What can you expect -- they both started reading science fiction in childhood, my mother when she got a copy of A Princess of Mars for her 7th birthday in 1922. These are people who built a second weekend house in the mountains with library because they ran out of book space in their weekday house, and are now building an addition to the library.

Turkmenbashi died? That's fantastic news!

Regarding "18th. Keep good blazing fires":

There's a dumpster full of cardboard, styrofoam, used Huggies, and bags of dog poop a few blocks away that's begging for a tossed match.

Regarding the Splitting of Birds:

Do you split them into right and left, or rear and front? (Or, for that matter, top and bottom?)

When you use them as a compress, do you apply the feathered face or the bloody mess face to the body?

Turkmenbashi died? That's fantastic news!

Isn't it?

What with Milosevic, Pinochet, and Turkmenbashi, 2006 has been a good year for Ridding the World of Evil Leaders. Now I'm waiting for Kim Jong-Il to drop dead sometime in the next ten days.

Stefan @ 72
My mind is saying that they're using plucked-and-cleaned birds for this (thus no blood or feathers), and they're split lengthwise like the half-chickens in the stores. YMMV.

It still sounds like a really strange thing to do.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows???

Sounds like Hogwarts is in for a very truncated school year.

Tracie, your parents sound wonderful. Someday I hope my daughter will say "my parents are strange, in a GOOD way..."

Tracie (#23)/Harriet (#52)/ Tracie (#70): The letter's recipient reminds me of another popular Northumbrian number, "Morpeth Rant"--I encountered it and SSSM as smallpipes tunes.

Recently I've been exploring the FARNE (Folklore Archive Resource North East) site, which includes some wonderful pipe recordings as well as lots of other material about Northumbrian music--www.asaplive.com/FARNE/Home.cfm

Ethan @ #61, Speaking as someone who lives only a few miles from the Noka brick'n'mortar, and thus probably near to the Dallas Food blogger as well, there are two things that Dallasites love above all else: Eating Out (an oft-quoted statistic puts Dallas with a higher per-capita restaraunt supply than NYC) and Shopping. So I find it completely unsurprising that a local blogger would first mention a local source...followed immediately by its bargain competition.

BTW, Teresa...loved that Noka story, and will doubtless be reading more from Dallas Food in the future. Thanks for the linkage.

On a completely unrelated note, did anyone have any encounters with and/or participate in a Santarchy event? I did!

K @ #48:
Any readers that have library cards, do take a moment to find out what you can access through your library's web site. I get OED access, newspapers, magazines (many full text), Encyclopædia Britannica, Grove Music, and several dozen other databases and services.

(gloat)
I have subscriber access to LEME from my library (research university), which means I can use it from the day job.
(/gloat)

The public version is still a useful research for people without a subscription, though. Or, um, a fun thing to just w/a/s/t/e t/i/m/e browse around in:

Calamarie. a fish, that may bee well called the Sea Clarke, beinge furnished with necessaries for a scribe. (Bartas, 1605)

Having recently been tempted into reading much--not all--of the usenet R*ck*ids discussion, I particularly liked Mary K. Kuhner's explanation of why everyone was certain the original post was "an ad and not a contentless review".

I spend some time on ABEBooks forum, and every now and then we get a sockpuppet touting a self-pubbed book. They're easily spotted on a forum full of avid readers (and some writers) because of the lack of content, and the lack of detail about the _story_. Real readers will rabbit on and on about details of a story they like. The socks don't.

What I have real trouble understanding is _why_ they don't. After all, they're usually the writers. Won't most writers also happily rabbit on about the story, and how they decided to cut one bit and add another bit and how the characters simply would not do what they were told and all that? Self-pubbed writers are just as much in love with their work as any other writer. So why don't they talk about the story? Why can't they seem to come up with anything about their books that's specific as well as gushing?
Even when one particular sockpuppet decided to post as himself-the-author, and I asked him some polite writery questions, he evaded them all. Okay, I understood him evading the 'why did you go with this publisher' one, but he avoided talking about how he chose the names for his characters.

Does anyone have any idea why this would be? It seems to me Mr. S. avoided discussing characters and plotting as well.

Barbara, I'd say it's part of the paranoid mindset that leads a number of these folks to the self-pub model. Not only do they believe that regular publishers are sharks and out to get them, they may also believe that other writers are sharks and out to steal their ideas (which are clearly too original and groundbreaking for "traditional publishers" to touch). Just theorizing...

Speaking (as I was) of DallasFood.org...Holy Crap, I know what I want for dinner! Those of you who live in locales where CFS is not a staple...you have my pity.

Skwid @ 81

One of the things I miss, having moved from TX back to CA, is the DQ Dude. (DQs here don't do anything but Blizzards and Breezes.) It might not be great CFS, but when hot it's tasty.

Ethan (66), that area's got no shortage of good local chocolatiers. What it does have is a company with a 1300% markup on little bars of a melted and remolded but otherwise unmodified chocolate, Bonnat -- which, under its own name, is commercially available in wholesale lots. It takes a lot of nerve to boast about using no additives when you're just repackaging someone else's basic ingredient.

Did you understand that what Noka was selling was the idea of local production, and that their product was no more "local" than chocolate bars I made in my own kitchen from Valrhona bought at the baking & confectionery supply place a couple of blocks from here?

Skwid (81): My, but that's a fine-looking specimen. I'll resist temptation and make what I already have planned: filet mignon and funeral potatoes. It's the solstice, and we have a guest.

Barbara@80: I think Skwid's pegged it. A bunch of those who go the self-pubbed route show paranoia above and beyond the average writers' nerves. At least one person with whom I personally conversed is absolutely convinced Paramount owes him money because an alien race named in ST:TNG had the very same (one-syllable) name he once submitted to a Paramount contest. (He thought I was a lawyer, and wanted to sue. I don't know why he thought I was a lawyer. The whole thing was very weird.)

fake newsflash from the Onion:

"...Howard Dean: 'This decisive Democratic victory could very well be part of an unfathomably brilliant plan of Karl Rove's to position the Republicans for the 2016 elections, and probably beyond.'..."

Um, Teresa, you might want to go back and reread post #61. Ethan wasn't talking about Noka in terms of localness.

Barbara Gordon #80: Obviously, the scheming members of the literary establishment are always looking to steal the brilliant ideas of the brave, maverick self-published writers they ruthlessly shut out of their tightly controlled monopoly.

Skwid @ 78:
Santarchy! Back before I was someone's boring mother with few sitters on call, I played along every year. Looks like a good crowd. Le sigh. I don't think I really need to ask, but did you have fun?

Teresa @ 84:
Are funeral potatoes something I ought to know about? I'm always on the lookout for a good potato recipe.

My spirits have been particularly low these last few weeks. I believe that the second point may help as I like my shower-bath to be quite hot.

Thank you TNH for the excellent advice.

Malthus, the word "local" is definitely present there. What am I missing?

I think what malthus is getting at is the online alternative to the local store:

Go to Chocolate Secrets on Oak Lawn and you can get Cluizel bars from Madagascar, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, and São Tomé (though you'd be better off buying them online for about a third less).

I suspect that what the reporter was suggesting is that 'Chocolate Secrets' marks the products up a bit more than necessary, although nothing like 'Noka' does.

I like the stuff at the top of the thread. Advice from one depressive to another on how to survive the miseries, which is just what I need at the mo. One thing which appears to have worked for me just today (if anyone's interested): staying awake for 24 hours straight. As part of my own spiritual/religious structure, I try to manage 24 hours awake for each solstice (so I've been up for 23 hours and 58 minutes now). This past week or so I've been having an attack of the miseries; at present they appear to be going away.

Must be something to do with forcing the brain to remain active for an extended period, although at this point I've no idea why. Any suggestions?

Sarah@89: Are funeral potatoes something I ought to know about? I'm always on the lookout for a good potato recipe.

See http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2006/12/mormon-culture-tournament-round-1-part-1/

funeral potatoes: La Cuisine de nouvelle Zion in the archives...

In re the thread referred to in post #45:
1. Shameful how long it took people to get around to Brunner and Zelazny.

2. About UKLeG's "sociology and anthropology" it helps a lot to know what the K stands for, and what her father was to modern anthropology. Bill Lipe, past president of the SAA, kept copies of The Dispossessed in his office to loan out to Anth majors who hadn't read it.

3. Frank Herbert wrote a lot of stuff other than Dune and its sequals; would that the Whipping Star stories had been his economic mainstay; fascinating, if weird, political writing is contained therein, as in Hellstrom's Hive.

Meg Thornton @ 93: My copy of the book is at home and I'm at work, unfortunately, but IIRC Andrew Solomon discusses this in The Noonday Demon.

*pause*

Just phoned home and had my husband check the index. He says that sleep deprivation as a treatment for depression is mentioned on pages 137 and 144.

The Noonday Demon and Against Depression (Peter Kramer) are the two best books about depression I've read.

10 minute countdown starting to the 2006 Winter Solstice, as the big ball of darkness falls upon the earth, and only a sacrifice of chocolate will bring back the light.

Yeah, sorry, I guess I wasn't clear enough. My problem was specifically with the Dallas Food guy bringing up the store, Chocolate Secrets, and then recommending you go online rather than support this local store. Nothing to do with Noka itself, which I agree seems to be a dummy business with no...er...business existing.

I understand that if this Chocolate Secrets store is selling things for three times as much as places online, then yeah, it makes sense to buy them online. But to say that you're "better off" going online than going to an actual physical local store rubs me very much the wrong way.

The article was good; just that one sentence bugged me. But if what Skwid says at 81 is true, then maybe locality or whatever word I'm actually looking for isn't as endangered in Dallas as it is other places. Which would be encouraging.

To Lori @ 69: Yep, Clear Channel. They just recently bought out one of the few remaining independent AM talk stations in Providence, RI. That station for decades was the home of a woman named Arlene Violet, who is a beloved beloved beloved local liberal talk radio host lady. Beloved. And liberal. When Clear Channel bought the station, they unceremoniously fired her (not even allowing her a last-show farewell because they misled her as to what her last day would be) and replaced her with...I can't remember which one, but one of the nationally syndicated conservative blowhard types. I got so distracted by the liberal-conservative switcheroo that it took me a while to realize that the problem with Arlene Violet wasn't primarily her politics. It was her very strong Rhode Island accent. She's a very promininent reminder to the people of RI that we have a culture and history unique to our location (as every location does). Clear Channel wants everywhere to be the same.

#98: " . . . only a sacrifice of chocolate . . ."

Well. Oddly enough. Without knowing the actual time of the solstice, at about that time I was wandering around the office with a big tin of home-made mint fudge, offering up pieces.

So, thank my co-workers for helping nudge the sun back up from the abyss.

Dave @ 68 - Bling is in the eye of the beholder! Not sure I'd spring for the M8, but if given one I'd certainly keep it. Still, the Nikon M80 would be bling enough for me.

Unfortunately, Santa doesn't have deep enough pockets for either...

I finally got curious enough to look up a recipe for Funeral Potatoes.

I think I've had that stuff! They just don't seem to call it that around here. Then again, I'm not sure what they do call it. But it does very often turn up at potluck-type gatherings.

The recipe cited above says "crumbs" but that "Many things can be used for crumbs, such as corn flakes or Chex cereal, bread crumbs, French's fried onions, or potato chips)." I think the potato chip variation is more common in my neck of the woods. French's fried onions, of course, will be in the green bean casserole. And the green bean casserole WILL be there, probably right next to the rigatoni.

Fluorosphere the bright and much-knowing:

Is there a secret to beautifully wrapper presents?

Because I see the presents I've just wrapped, and they're presentable, but not quite as elegant as others I've seen. Is it simply practice and not being in the hurry I usually am? Was there a class in wrapping at finishing school?

Kathryn I feel your pain. However, I live with the Queen of Wrapping so most of the time she's my go-to for attractive wrapping. This year she's kind of out of sorts with a f-cked up knee that will be operated on Dec. 27 (the new partial knee replacement)... so I think I'm on my lame own-self for wrapping. I can do it neatly but not nearly as imaginatively.

Wish I could offer guidance.

Kathryn,

In this case, Martha Stewart is your friend. She has some very good tips on gift wrapping on her website that stay the same from year to year. Every year, her Christmas materials come out with more suggestions. Many of these are either overpriced or far too fussy, but there are always a few that are cheap, easy and good looking. I keep an eye out each year to add something new to my repertoire.

For example, this year's keeper was paper doilies. They can be easily trimmed and laid against a solid backing to spectacular effect.

Go to her website and check the Christmas section, and browse the Christmas issue of her magazine at the bookstore. You'll get lots of great ideas!

(Note, my former brother-in-law is a professional chef, and rips her recipes apart. Apparently they frequently have wrong cooking times, ingredients that aren't in season or are otherwise unavailable, bad instructions and other major problems. I also don't have a small army of assistants to carry out her home decorating ideas in my house. But the gift wrapping stuff is the one thing of hers I follow.)

Kathryn, Paula: tell me about the wrapping thing! My mother is an indifferent wrapper, but my father does lovely folds and pleats and tapeless assemblages of perfectly-sized paper. Somehow, my sister and I both ended up in similar marriages - indifferent ourselves, but with husbands who are very precise about the matter. And no, that never entered into my relationship-screening criteria!

I just figure that as long as the paper stays on the gift, completely covering it, I have done my duty.

I like creasing the giftwrap with my fingernails. It makes everything look neater.

Kathryn et alia: Having just wrapped a bunch of gifts, I have some suggestions to offer.

Use the nicest paper and ribbon that you can afford. Note that the heavy paper stuff doesn't take tape very well and works best if you are going to be tying the package with ribbon that can take the stress and hold the paper closed (not just putting a bow on top).

Measure carefully so you don't have excess paper.

I love the paper that has a grid on the inside, but you can usually use the decorative pattern to guide straight cuts.

Fold over all exposed edges.

As Maureen pointed out above, make sharp creases with your fingernails.

But above all, your recipients will just be happy to get a gift, and will probably be more interested in the contents than how carefully it's wrapped. I think wrapping presents is like ironing; you should put as much care and attention into is as makes you happy. I love wrapping presents, and spend far too much time and money on it, but it's not like I spend Christmas morning internally critiquing the neatness of the wrapping job on my presents.

Following on the other thread: On the topic of chocolate, I just made a batch of cranberry almond bark as a quick hostess gift (I just emerged from a morass of grading, so I have about a day to do all my errands before I get on a plane). I melted a pound of chopped chocolate in a metal bowl over simmering water, stirred in a cup each of sweetened dried cranberries and toasted slivered almonds, spread it in an aluminum-foil lined 9x13 pan, and chilled it for a couple of hours before peeling off the foil and cutting it into squares. Highly recommended as an easy, tasty homemade gift.

When I was a little sprout, my sister worked as a gift wrap girl (as they were known at the time) at the long-gone Gertz department store in downtown Jamaica, Queens. She could do a basic wrap on an oddly shaped package and fling on a few handmade ribbons in mere seconds. It was absolutely amazing.

As a guy, I get a pass on wrapping - if the whole box gets covered, it's all good.

No, I didn't mean to be away from here for days, it just happened that way....

Meanwhile...

Thursday morning I headed into word with AM 1200 and AM 1430 both having AirAmerica on, two stations which Clear Channel, purveyor o larger=that-the-damned-billboards-Johnson's-Presidency-paid-the-predecessors-of-Clear-Channel-to-remove, owns.

Driving home after 6 PM, both stations were playing some kind of shitty Hispanic music (as opposed to e.g. some Ladino songs I heard played as a child, which were wonderful sounding music me).

I was pissed.

I went to http:/www.bostonsprogressivetalk.com and it forwarded to some URL with rhumba.com in it, and a webpage with the word "rhumba" on it and "under construction.

I electronically sent the following to the FCC, Sens. Kerry and Kennedy, and Cong. Meehan:

I would like to complain to the FCC about the removal of AirAmerica from AM 1200 and 1430 in Eastern Massachusetts and replacement of its programming with Hispanic music.

There are multiple rightwing hatemonger stations in eastern Massachusetts, the AirAmerica programming was the ONLY commercial non-rightwing talk show, and almost the only programming with any FEMALE talkshow hosts, to get airtime in this area.

Now it's gone, replaced by "rhumba" which I had no liking or appreciation for whatsoever.

As a citizen of the USA I find it extremely offensive that the airwaves have rightwing Christian bigotry and evangelism to be found everywhere, and a suppresion of anything to the left of the likes of Ralph Reed for programming over the so-called "public airwaves."

I want AirAmerica, NOT music aimed at illiterate in English immigrants many of whom are NOT here legally, and NOT rightwing extremist hatemonger radio trying to push women back into pink ghettos of typing pools and into the kitchen as unpaid slave family labor!

I would like to see the licenses YANKED for those stations and given to some corporation which will put AirAmerica programming back on it!

And I would ALSO like to see the licenses yanked of the stations with the rightwing evangelizing hatemongers yanked, and THOSE stations could get the Hispanic music!

#111:I want AirAmerica, NOT music aimed at illiterate in English immigrants many of whom are NOT here legally, and NOT rightwing extremist hatemonger radio trying to push women back into pink ghettos of typing pools and into the kitchen as unpaid slave family labor!

Um... I understand that this is something you wrote in the heat of anger. The loss of diversity on the airwaves is an awful thing, especially when with the ultra right wing dominance of talk radio, there was already little balance. However, as a formerly illiterate in English immigrant, and the son of the same (albeit we immigrated to this country legally and are now citizens), can I point out that the format the radio stations switched to is really not the issue? Am I being presumptuous when I suggest that you're not angry because they switched to some bastardized version of Latin American music? You are angry because they switched away from Air America. (i.e., they undoubtedly found Air America unprofitable.)

In that case, it really does not help your case to take a swipe at immigrants, regardless of their legal status. I don't think it's your intent, but what you sent to the FCC shows a greater vehemence for Hispanics and Hispanic music more than anything else. It reads like the most horrible thing they could have done in the world was replace it with Hispanic music. (I would have thought the most horrible thing would have been to replace it with more right wing radio.) I'm not saying that replacing Air America with classical music or bluegrass would have been ok. I'm say that I'd like to believe that rather than singling out Hispanics, you meant to express your outrage at losing a source of liberal radio.

(For the record, I'm ethnically Chinese, so I'm not reacting out of some slight to my native culture. I'm reacting out of the sense that you may have missed your target.)

Is there a secret to beautifully wrapper presents?

I get the job of wrapping at home. I use a lot of tape. Basically, every flap that gets folded gets taped down so it stays tight to the package. "puffy" or loose wrapping ain't pretty.

Got it, Ethan: not local production, but local purchase. I'm with you there. "Whenever possible, shop where you live" is one of the great rules for building good neighborhoods.

Paula - In addition to what JC said (sorry - don't mean to pile on, but it jumped out at me too, and I'm a white guy) I think you're confused about the FCC's role, both by mission and by the current political state of affairs.

If you've noticed, both editorials an editorial replies have all but disappeared from the airwaves. This is because there's no longer a mandate for any sort of balance or community service, and what little is left is not enforced.

Today, the FCC exists mostly as a language-nanny, charged with pandering to religious zealots. That's it. Shrieking harpies calling for the slaughter of people who oppose the GOP? A-OK! Janet Jackson's nipple? An offense against all things pure and good that must be destroyed!

I was incensed because the only commercial non-rightwing talk format in the area was gone, replaced by stuff that I find intolerable. I don't dislike all Hispanic music, but what I was hearing was at least as aggravating to me as disco, the rhythm and tonality I reacted HIGHLY negatively to.

Note that I DID suggest replacing the rightwing talk radio with Hispanic music.

The anti-immigrant-without-papers comment was aimed at the FCC rightwing apparatchiks--if they are so against undocumented Hispanics, WHY are they allowing format changes that violate all that "English as national language and culture" attitude?!

I -am- angry at the Hispanic music, there are ALREADY Hispanic radio channels here. There is NO non-rightwing English-speaking commercial radio freely broadcast programming that I can recall hearing here in years, other than the now-gone AirAmerica programming, in this part of the US now.

The two stations are Clear Channel stations. Clear Channel under a -decent- government, would be busted up.... Clear Channel's more egregiously covering the landscape with giant billboards than the one the Johnson administration got removed, and the biggest most obnoxious one I've ever seen, blocks the view of the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge from central Boson, instead of the bridge, one sees a giant monstrosity of a Clear Channel billboard, from the waterfront, from the the open air market, from the land that the central artery used to be on...

Hundreds of millions of dollars of graphically pretty bridge, and the view the citizenry gets is stinking Clear Channel commercial advertising on the biggest billboard I have ever seen. It's totally obscene.

I have a slightly glib and oft-unheeded rule about presents I buy: when possible, look for square or rectangular items (books, CDs) or things which can be placed in boxes with those shapes. It makes wrapping simpler if you're the impatient sort.

I defy anyone to wrap anything cylindrical and make it look professional.

Gift wrap: see the main page.

So, what I'm wondering about the whole split-fowl medical treatment is how they do the double-blind test. I mean, what constitutes a placebo in such a case?

Thanks,
-V.

(See, it's a set-up for a rubber-chicken joke. Don't say I never got you anything for solstice...)

Ladies and gentlemen:

The Snowman Irn-Bru advert.

Warning: will keep running through your head for DAYS.

Meg #93: more on sleep deprivation in the treatment of depression here.

Courtesy of a link at Nashville radio station WRLT*, Christmas music from local group Fleming & John:

Winter Wonderland as you've never heard it before.

Happy holidays, ya'll.

*a radio station that makes Clear Channel's head spin like a big ol' top

Lila @120:

The funny looking thing at the very beginning is the Falkirk Wheel (Better pictures here.)

It's a bizarre, fantastic sight in person, like something from an Iain M Banks book.

My mother and sister just loved the old Snowman cartoon. They'd get a big kick out of the Irn-Bru spoof.