Premier?

The tech Gods of the site should be aware: http://nielsenhayden.com/electrolite/ takes you through a strange sort of time warp.

(This is clearly a lingering side effect of last month's tech crisis, of much lower importance than the other side effects; but it should be on The List. :))

You're welcome.

I'm still trying to figure out some bits of this, but I'm sure I'll get it when I'm less completely brain-dead than I am right now.

it is scrutinised and studied, almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the mathematical niceties of the creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

Darn tripods!

I'm still trying to figure out some bits of this,

You've already got it.

Do I really get post 110 on thread 110 on 110/110?

Well, amazon.com just vomited forth a web page claiming that my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being. We'll see how long it takes for them to fix it, and if it happens again as soon as my ISP changes my dynamic IP address.

my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being

Well, I for one welcome our new Earl Cooley III overlord.

Random comment: You know you're living in a globalized world when you spend a pleasant dinner reading a Spanish newspaper while eavesdropping on the Italians talking at the next table, at a Chinese restaurant, in The Netherlands.

Have I mentioned that I kinda like this world?

Out of curiosity, albatross, where in the Netherlands?

abi: Leiden. I was at a conference at the Lorentz center this week.

Well, amazon.com just vomited forth a web page claiming that my access to their site is punitively blocked because I'm a robot and not a human being. We'll see how long it takes for them to fix it, and if it happens again as soon as my ISP changes my dynamic IP address.

So, to sum up, you are not a number, you are a free man?

Earl #7:

Just what I'd expect a robot to say.

Lovely place, Leiden. A good college town. A couple of my colleagues live there.

Have fun!

#7 - it's not just you, it's nearly everyone:
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=4532

abi #14:

It seems pretty nice, though I mostly saw the inside of the conference center and some restaurants near the university. I actually rented a bike, despite not having ridden since college, and managed not to end up in a canal. But I'm flying home tomorrow.

You're in Amsterdam, right?

RE: Amazon. https://www.amazon.com should work.

Old joke that only works in print — there are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary notation, and those who don't.

All hail the power and gloriousness of the New Open Thread! I beseech ye, observe and wonder! IOW "Gentlemen, BEHOLD!"

I have a link for you, to be filed under "The World: It's Small."

Purportedly it's an article about the JFK's assassination. Certainly the subject header says so, and its author, Greg Parker, has a website dedicated to the issue.

But I'm really not sure how this article fits in.

The reason I notice this article at all? It's about Weilbaechers - my mother's family. My cousin found via a random semi-vanity Google search (is it really a vanity search if it's not your name but your mother's maiden name?).

So, amused, I start reading... and then I'm going, "Hey! That's my grandfather! That really is!"

Although exactly what relation Dr. Maurice O. Weilbaecher (my grandfather) has to whatever case Parker's making about Joeseph O. Weilbaecher (relation unknown, at least to me) and this David Ferrie person upon which Parker seems to be casting aspersions, I do not know. It looks like he, too, just started Googling random contemporary Weilbaechers, and then trying to find out just about everything he could about them.

Not to mention there's a certain scent of Crackpot Conspiracy Theory about it all. A sort of "ooh, look, isn't this sinister too? And - ooh, look, another random fact I can make sound sinister! Oooh! Look!" Y'know. Fact finding to support the preexisting argument. Except I just am not sure what the argument is. Possibly it's connecting the assassination to research in eugenics and biological weaponry. And the Knights of Columbus. Who stand in for the Knights Templar, I'm sure. Not to mention we're playing the 6 Degrees of Separation From Jack Ruby game. Yay!

So I read along, all "What exactly is he saying about Grandpapa?", and then I get to this paragraph at the end:

A search of the web on Weilbaecher and some of the other doctors
shown above revealed a number of references to Jesuits. Another
shows the grand-daughter of Maurice got married in a Wiccan
ceremony to a grandson of one of grandpappy's partners. Yet another
shows a Dr David Weilbaecher as being involved in getting a medical
"miracle" recognised as such by the Catholic Church.

Only, who exactly is he alleging my husband's grandfather was? And what relevance does our handfasting have, again, to JFK and incidentally the price of rice in China? Dude?

I have emailed the author asking him these things, and expect no end of entertainment to follow.

Thank you, open thread; you are all powerful and full of sparkly shiny things.

Rob #18: Next we're going to get to the T-shirt question, right? ("How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?")

albatross,

I live (and am currently sitting) in a village just north of Amsterdam.

Good idea renting the bike. Dutch cities and Dutch culture are both intimately linked with biking. (I haven't fallen into a canal ever, but on one drastically homesick afternoon I did nearly crowd a friend into the river.)

Safe journey home.

Just an aviso. The odds of my showing up much between now and 23 Jun, are slim. The odds of my being an active participant in any interesting conversations is practically nil.

I'll be at beautiful Camp Bob, until then.

Take care. I'll write if I get work.

Earl #7: Are you sure you're not a cabbage or something?

abi #21: Thanks! The good news is, Swissair doesn't have a chance to mess up my flight this time. The bad news is, United does, and they're probably more likely to do it.

albatross 9: I made a similar comment to a friend when we were in a Spanish restaurant being waited on by a French waiter while listening to a Swedish Finn singing Brazilian songs in English.

And I should have known it was binary. It's been a long week.

What threw me is that it's also Open Thread One-Ten (OTOT); even though I knew that couldn't be it, my mind kept drifting to it.

The only US date that goes unquestioned in Europe is 9/11

On 9 November 2005 I caught a coach from Rotorua to Auckland*. Neither I nor any of the other passengers were able to convince the driver it wasn't the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

* Having just been been walking through the Land of Mordor (formerly known as Tongariro National park) I was referring to the city as "Orcland".

Working reservations in a hotel, whenever I get a reservations request from overseas in the 6/6/08 format, I always respond back to them with a confirmation in the format of June 6, 2008, which helps prevent mixups.

Although we do often list Japanese under their given rather than family name. Either they try to compensate for us or we for them or both, and we almost always seem to get it wrong.

Sometimes I worry that I too often use open threads to plumb the depths of the fluorosphere’s accumulated wisdom. This place just includes such a massive amount of knowledge, it often surpasses the power of a million googles. (Which is, by the way, a one with a hundred and six zeros behind it.) The lure to ask is irresistible!

I’m looking for a very specific kind of cookbook or cooking lesson thing. I’m not even sure if what I want would qualify as a cookbook. Here's the thing: I know how to follow a recipe, and I can cook many things perfectly well. I'm even pretty good at improvisational cooking, of the ‘put spices on meat/veggies, cook them together in a pan, eat’ variety.

What I don't know is a lot of the dead simple, 'duh' techniques, the kind that people usually say they learned from parents or other relatives, stuff you don't put in a cookbook because people just know them. This isn't to say my mother couldn't cook, it's just that when I lived with her I let her do the cooking. I paid some attention, but I was never there cooking while she watched. And some basic stuff about how to use knives or whatnot entirely escaped me, and I just pick up something sharp and try to cut things, heedless of if it's the right tool for the job.

I'm looking for a book that will go into detail on the fiddly bits, that will explain what knife and cutting board and pot to use in certain situations, and how exactly to sauté and how to slice, when to use a saucepan and when to use a skillet. I'd prefer a big shiny book, but other media (videos, etc) might be fine if they were particularly awesome.

I've thumbed through some 'beginner's cookbooks,' but they either started far too basic (this is how you preheat your oven! This is how you measure ingredients) or focused on recipes that didn’t include any advanced techniques.

At home I mostly use a Joy of Cooking and a Better Homes and Gardens, together with the internet. I'm not even sure if such a thing as I want exists. But I figured I might as well ask.

Dylan Meconis, she of Battlestar GalactiSimpsons, has also created a small, but amusing, Nerd Taxonomy.

An example of a very capable political phone message.

Leah Miller @ 29, How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman might be a place to look. It generally covers those things within recipes, though.

Well, my Amazon access is back. Odd thing was, the message I got depended on the browser I used. Firefox and Safari gave the get thee hence, foul robot page, and Internet Explorer and Opera gave me a more generic sorry about the problem page.

As for being an overlord, I've actually given that a fair amount of thought; I've come to the conclusion that I could only be a truly effective tyrant if the job includes perks of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. I am ready and willing to serve in that capacity, but, as you can see, I'm a bit picky about the signing conditions.

Leah Miller #29: Cook's Illustrated magazine often has sections like "Knifework 101" and "Sauteeing 101," with clearly-drawn illustrations. The "how-tos" section of their website (cooksillustrated.com) looks to contain most of the things I remember. They say they have a free 14-day trial; I don't know if it requires entering credit card information, but I've had a subscription in the past ($25/year) and found it to be very good value.

I'll be at beautiful Camp Bob, until then.

[muttering]Lucky schmuck[/muttering] I mean, Have fun! :-)

Dylan Meconis is also a fan of the classics, and she recently posted about finding a snippet of The Lost Books of the Odyssey posted to a telephone pole. The work appears to be similar to Borges' "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (that is, the conceit is that the text was an archaeological discovery rather than written by a modern author).

She has two excerpts up, which I thought looked like something that the literati of the phosphorosphere might enjoy.

In the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, "What is the way to the land of the dead?"

Circe answers, "You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off a layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle.

"By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes."

The book itself is available as a free download (although also available for purchase in print if one so desires):

  http://the-lost-books.com/index.htm

Wow, that's lovely writing there, very dark. It seems to me very much in the flavor of Calvino.

Leah Miller #29:

Would Jacques Pepin's La Technique sound about right? (Fear not, it's in English.)

Leah, what you want is Egullet. Their forum has a large selection of cooking courses and demonstrations, often by professional chefs. This includes things like knife skills, choosing a knife, and how to sharpen a knife. (along with a whole lot more, including things you maybe didn't want to know, like how to make confit of duck *g*)

I find their material is more helpful than cookbooks as it starts with the very basics and takes you up to professional skills, all in one place and with one teacher. Since the basics build into the professional skills in a logical way, it's very useful. Often similar material is addressed by several people within a discussion, so if one explanation doesn't click, another may.

I would begin with the class on picking a knife I think. After you have identified a knife to work with, I'd check whether it's sharp. Then, once it's sharp, I'd start on the knife skills course. Potatoes for the win!

This is the master key to the great gate,
we hold it close and know it keeps desire
as far from us as we would modulate
our patient thoughts. So much is on the wire
that we would not expect you to enquire
about such matters we must deem absurd,
you would take after your departed sire;
we are the keepers of the truest word

We will erase and then rewrite the slate
as long as you sing gravely in the choir
in tones that cheer and do not sneer or grate,
you'll find that we are conqueror and buyer
and that our hand is over you entire.
All that you have we have indeed conferred,
your very heart we know is out for hire;
we are the keepers of the truest word

We are the masters of what you call fate
and will place you into the line of fire
for our good reasons and not out of hate.
Since all you have we easily acquire,
we see you as just one suit of attire --
or just another member of the herd.
Who cares how well you play on the lyre?
We are the keepers of the truest word.

Prince, on such matters you are no denier
but keep your eye upon the noble bird,
do not with any fools seek to conspire;
we are the keepers of the truest word.

Rob Rusick #18: My younger son is the proud possessor of a t-shirt bearing that message.

Interstate 110 in California, at least the part of it that was the Arroyo Seco Parkway, was the first freeway in California. For that reason, the number always brings to mind the theme of Unintended Consequences.

Fragano #40: Very nice. I think you wrote "on" for "upon" in the second to last line of the second to last stanza. At least, it seemed to miss a beat.

I’m looking for a very specific kind of cookbook or cooking lesson thing.

I think you might want the Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Leah, #29, the closest I've come across is Good Housekeeping's Complete Cook's Book. This seems to be out of print; there may be a newer version under a different title (It's a bit late and I can't concentrate well enough to check but I will be browsing the food section of a bookshop or two tomorrow so may be able to give more information then). It's not exactly what you're describing but it does go into detail of what cooking techniques are suitable for which cuts of meat, types of vegetable etc. I describe it as the book that tells you everything you need to know before you start to follow a recipe.

I like Robert Rodriguez' advice with regards to cooking: You don't need to learn to cook everything well, just the stuff you like. His advice is to start with half a dozen dishes you love to eat and learn to cook those. Everything else is extra.

Alex #44, my Fannie Farmer at least (a 1990s paperback) doesn't have instructions on that basic a level, or if it does, they aren't easily accessible to the casual user. Joy of Cooking's slightly better in that regard, but I still think the Cook's Illustrated how-tos are more along the "basic kitchen technique" lines that Leah wants, since she's already got Joy of Cooking and it's not giving her what she wants.

Leah @ #29:

I second Alex Cohen's Fannie recommendation. I have a fondness for the edition published in 1968, but Marion Cunningham's 1994 revision is acceptable. I have both. I learned to cook working my way through the 1968 Fannie. My eight year-old self learned to cook because Grandma cooked, and she is awesome and my mother's cooking skills are seriously lacking. I was doing the household cooking by the time I was ten.

Julia Child's The Way To Cook has good information too. Arrgh. I wish I was at home, I could look through my shelves and see what looks like it would fit the bill.

Looking at that picture of my shelves, what about one of the Alton Brown books about technique for covering which pan to use, when, and why.

Earl Cooley III @7:
"Bot-like searching detected"?

Xopher @26:
It's a sign! (which will make sense only to those who know some Hebrew)

albatross #43: Thanks! It seems to work to my ear, but you're probably right.

Leah: I offer up Linda Hodges Gibson's The Off-Campus, On-Campus Cookbook which my Mom gave me upon going away to college. It may not be as thorough as you'd really like, but the things it does cover, it covers for an audience that is cooking for themselves for the first time.

"Over 225 Easy and Inexpensive Recipes"
"Guides for buying and storing meat, poultry, fruits, and vegetables"
"All About Eggs"
"Timetables"
"Sample Menus"

I use it constantly for substitutions and common measurement conversions. It may or may not still be in print. It may or may not be useful to you.

In my 8th-grade photography class, Vic Cooper had a 110 'spy' camera. I coveted that thing. Years later, I somehow ended up with a used one sort of like it that never ever worked. So much for that dream. They seem to be phasing out the film, so spies probably have to use digital cameras now.

In other news, another one of my notebook gags has showed up in a reputable venue. The way I had it, you can just see the tennies of the aliens, whose socks stand taller than our heads, and the humans are looking at a copy of To Serve Man and saying, "My god! It's a tennis book!" (You can see how the great Ruben Bolling handles it in this week's "Tom, the Dancing Bug.")

Apropos of it's Friday afternoon:
The human ear is not designed for 3 1/2 hours of conference calls. Even when you can switch headphones / earbuds.

Leah @29,
I'm thinking a combination of 2 things could help. riffing on stuff we've said in earlier discussions on cooking (which we do a lot, and is always fun to do. Food pron!)

1. A book like Shirley Corriher's CookWise: the Secrets of cooking revealed. She goes into the useful details of how recipes work & why the ingredients used are used--their chemistry and interactions with other ingredients.

It isn't a beginner's book per se, but then you're not a beginner--you just need updates on the basics you didn't get earlier. By teaching you the Why-it-works, it saves you a bunch of trial and error.

If you cook through the book (200 recipes- all the ones I've tried so far are tasty), then by the time you're done you'll have a good working knowledge of cooking & will know how to improvise*. I like her style/methods--there's also Alton Brown's books and similar**.

2. Something like Epicurious.com's recipes and instructional vids. (the website for Bon Appetit magazine). They have 20k recipes, with user rankings and comments.

The how-to videos help.

It isn't hard to find easy recipes for a particular ingredient which other users have ranked highly. So once you've learned one custard recipe, you can search for others to play with.

-------------------
* Nothing is too complicated, and it's not encyclopedic--just enough that when you're done, you'll know why "this flour instead of that," or "are eggs necessary here," or "why do they specify 150 degrees."

** I love my Bittman "how to cook everything" & my "Joy of Cooking,' but I don't recommend those for learning. Over 600 pages = too much. Ditto McGee. Cookwise is like a refresher for what you learned (or want to have learned) at home. The big tomes are like a refresher for culinary academy.

Debbie #930 in the previous Open Thread:

Yes, I've noticed it too. Posted comment is noted in "Recent Comments" on the "Front Page" but doesn't appear in the actual thread.

Further, I've had trouble with the whole threadful of comments loading with OT109. My browser normally only gets up to Julie L.'s comment #898. I'm also using Firefox (ver 2.0.0.14) on WIndows XP. I wonder if it's because of the threads being so long that the browser times out, before downloading the whole thread?

Re-loading the webpage will eventually fix it. First time I noticed it happening was yesterday.

#54
On dialup my browser times out at around 400 comments. (Ouch.) Best excuse I could find for going to DSL.

Leah, i have to beg off that I'm a cookbook freak. So I don't have a favorite. That said, I have keepers and stuff that I buy to see if it iinteresting to use (If I buy it and don't use it after 2 years, it gets resold). Most all of them are purchased at thrift stores, flea markets,1/2 Price Books and things like our Pembroke Day School Clothesline Sale so I'm never out big bucks.

Good Housekeeping has a shorter all-purpose cookbook that shows techniques as well as lots of good basic recipes.

The coolest thing I found recently (at the Pembroke sale) is a book of food science, why things work the way they do and how different materials should be treated to get the best result.

Reader's Digest used to have a good basic all round skills cookbook part of their Complete Guide series for home crafts.
It did have a fantastic white vanilla cake recipe in it. I haven't read it since the early 80's so I don't know what is in the current editions.

Leah: Probably a bit beyond what you're looking for, but I've coveted the Culinary Institute of America's The Professional Chef for a while. (It's probably well beyond what I'm prepared to learn from too.)

Fragano, #50: FWIW, my ear stumbled at the same place that albatross' did. "Upon" just seems to flow more smoothly there.

Delia Smith is famous for taking people from the basics of cooking onwards in a number of her books. Being bestsellers, there'll probably be 2nd-hand copies around, tho' I'm not sure if they were adapted for the US market.

Nowadays she (or her multinational marketing conglomerate) have, naturally, a website. This includes online 'how-to's which could be handy for a quick perusal of particular problems.

Do you think this 'Non Sequitur' strip (3rd of June, another sleepy, dusty, Delta day) is a little sideways reference to NYC's recent crane collapses?

In addition to learning cooking techniques, I suggest spending time getting to know ingredients. For example, high temperatures call for oils with high flash points, such as peanut or grapeseed oils. Olive oil can be used with medium heat. Extra virgin olive oil shouldn't be cooked at all - reserve it for when the raw flavor matters, otherwise use something cheaper.

Another example is that cooking mellows the sharpness of onions and garlic. You can cook onions for a long time, and the flavor keeps getting more interesting. But garlic gets bitter when overcooked, so it should be added later than the onions. In some recipes, you want the bite of the raw onion/shallot/garlic.

One of my local Public TV stations recently showed the old Jacques Pépin series on technique. Check your local listings. He also has a DVD set, as well as the previously mentioned book.

For home-style Chinese cooking, I like "How To Cook and Eat in Chinese", by the woman who invented the term 'stir-fry'. Part 1 covers the materials, tools, preparation, and cooking techniques. Part 2 provides recipes.

I have adopted the date format that I expect someday (maybe when the US goes metric, so don't hold your breath) will become the standard:

2008.06.07

Aside from being logical, like the 7 June 2008 format, if you type a bunch of dates in the computer this way they can automatically be sorted. (I first discovered this when typing up a series of concert bootlegs.)

I have completely switched over to this now, even when writing checks. 95.06.07 was even easier, but 08.06.07 is problematical, so "2008" is necessary.

Joy of Cooking is kind of thin if you're learning how to do stuff, you have to know what you're doing before you use it.

I have mad bread skilz, once I got the stand mixer we gave away the bread machine because I hated the bread machine loaves and when you form the bread yourself, you can do a lot of different things.

And I've practiced lots and lots. My family likes just about anything that comes out, it's hard to keep still until the bread cools enough to slice safely. well... sometimes it just gets gutted and eaten on the spot.

Jeffrey Smith #63:
That's pretty much the date format we use for work computers used to capture analysis data, for the reason you mention. Except that we use e.g. '20080607' to name our folders. I avoid using dots and spaces in my folder/filenames ever since I got caught out when shifting from Windows XP to an OS that doesn't cope with spaces.

Jeffrey, you're almost using ISO8601

Jeffrey, #63: I think anyone who's ever had to do date-sorting with a computer uses that format. I adopted it for the same reasons.

Spherical Time @ 28: "Although we do often list Japanese under their given rather than family name. Either they try to compensate for us or we for them or both, and we almost always seem to get it wrong."

In academia this is dealt with by entirely capitalizing the family name, i.e. NAKAMURA Tetsuo, or WANG Xin. That way, it's clear which is which no matter how it is written. (Though I haven't yet seen a "John SMITH" anywhere, which would seem fair.)

OpenThreadiness: I vaguely remember someone mentioning a site that helps tie YouTube segments together into a single video for ease of watching, but I can't find it. Does anyone remember what I'm talking about? I found out that there's a documentary version of Guns, Germs, and Steel I want to watch.)

I find ISO8601 so useful that I find myself getting irrationally angry at the users who "need" their dates to be presented in some "more readable" form. Hrmph.

With regard to the remarkable Ned Sublette: I sort of worship him for his performance, alongside the fantastic Mark Manley, in Cory McAbee's The American Astronaut. You can see it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOJ8NmGyGbk. The American Astronaut is not a movie for everyone, but those who love it really love it. Also: Ned Sublette.

Most of what I know about cooking I learned from Joy of Cooking and Alton Brown.

A lot of episodes of Good Eats include some useful bit of technique, but it's a very random way to learn. There was an episode recently (American Slicer) that was about knives and cutting technique, and is probably worth watching.

His first cookbook (I'm Just Here For the Food) covers some of the basic stuff.

Open thread linkiness:

I recently encountered an interesting set of documentaries on the radio, in which a BBC investigative journalist reports on organised crime set-ups in various parts of the world (Brazil, South Africa, the Balkans, and... Canada), including interviews with some of the actual criminals.

Episodes are available on the BBC web site, beginning here.

T.W. from Open Thread 109 and anyone who's interested: You mentioned summer savory, and the fact that it's not always easy to find. It's readily available where I am. It's known as "Bohnenkraut", and if you buy some fresh green beans (yummmm!), you'll often be handed a hefty sprig to add to the cooking water. It goes very well with green beans, either warm or cold in salads. (And if you really can't find any, email me and we'll talk.)

Bob Rossney #69: With regard to the remarkable Ned Sublette

I was just noticing that he's in the credits of some of Glenn Branca's early works. Impressive career he's had himself there.

#69

My sister is very fond of that movie (and McAbey's work in general). I think it's a bit surreal, but interesting.

Name munged because I don't want to directly connect my real name with my somewhat more personal livejournal.

Apologies if anyone has done

this

before: I had to give it a go, regardless of whether fellow ML'ers have indeed addressed every possible parodical variant of William Carlos Williams.

Those of you who I've added in past: well, now you know it's me.

Oh, and I'm back in Portland now!

Yay!

Note that the even Global Unity Dates from April on (4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, 12/12) all fall on the same day of the week as each other in any given year. This coincidence handles a big chunk of the memorization required for John H. Conway's "Doomsday" technique for calculating the day of the week for any date.

heresiarch @ 68: Thanks, I'll try to keep that in mind.

#69 ::: Bob Rossney :::

PNH generously put the title of the remarkable Ned Sublette's latest book, The World That Made New Orleans, up in his "Particle" -- it's a link to a long interview with the equally, though younger, Jamaican writer-scholar, Garnette Cadogan, for Bomb Magzine. There are also videos of Ned performing, etc.

#73 ::: ethan :::

Ned tuned Branca's guitars (as he did Rhys Chattham's -- who will be doing a huge retro of his guitar things at Lincoln Center in August; Ned's one of the 'under conductors'). He tuned by ear, with tuning fork, and taught Branca a great deal about composition, since Branca was not, at least back then, a trained musician or composer.

That article on Bo Diddley that poured out of Ned last week, when hearing of the death of Bo Diddley, and that I mentioned on the previous Open Thread? He did place it, btw. With The Smithsonian Magazine.

Love,C.

Since we're talking about cookbooks, and someone mentioned a Chinese one, I'll take advantage of the opportunity. I once saw a book that went through the basic layout of a menu in a Chinese restaurant. It gave the characters for each dish, explained what they meant, what the cooking techniques and terms were, the history of the dishes and various types of Chinese cuisine, and tied it all in with the culture and language. It was fascinating, but I didn't have the money to buy it then, and now I can't find it, or anyone who's heard of it. It may have been British. Any ideas?

Owlmirror, #36

Circe was a dungeon master?

Actually...

heresiarch @68:
Once or twice I have seen the capitalization technique used with Western names; I think it was a Japanese academic workshop or seminar.

@zzatz #62: Doesn't that cookbook have a foreword by Pearl S. Buck?

Lee #60: That sounds like a consensus to me, and while I can't change it here, it will be changed else where. Thanks.

geekosaur @81, re heresiarch @ 68,
I get the last-name-capitalization a lot in emails from friends and business colleagues who don't have a lot of real experience with western styles.
It always makes me feel like YHWH when I get an email saying
"Can RION-san please help me with my presentation?"
(In Japanese, the third person is often used to refer both to oneself and one's interlocutor).

#82
Yes. IMO, needs reprinting. (Somewhere in one of the boxes ....)

A good few years ago I had the Good Housekeeping Step-by-step Cookbook recommended to me and has been the most useful cook book I have owned. It's not just all the recipes but that it has a lot of explanation of techniques, and being someone who has zero feel for cooking, it is the one I've turned to for a lot of the basics.

Constance Ash #78: Damn. Even more impressive.

A. J. @ 75

Welcome back. We hope you brought the sun with you; it seems to be hiding from us.

(pulling things over from OT 109)
@Epacris #983:

cajunfj40 @921 Stuff-onna-stick and deep-frying thereof was also discussed in Open thread 70, starting around here with coverage of the Minnesota State Fair of 2006.

Thanks Epacris, I'll have to check that out sometime.

@Epacris #983:
In other news, it appears Moon Pies are an USian equivalent of Wagon Wheels in Oz (& UK?). Here they've shrunk from about a 4" diameter to 3" or slightly less. US foods are thought to have swollen up in the same time. Any thoughts on Moon Pies? I wonder if the UK Wagon Wheels have minimized themselves similarly?

@Mary Aileen #986:

Epacris (983): Yes, Moon Pies are what I thought of when someone described Wagon Wheels. They're mainly a Southern US delicacy, and pretty big. Four inches sounds about right.

I've seen Moon Pies at many truck stops, both Northern and Southern. In my youth in the South, Moon Pies were a treat I'd go for whenever possible. I particularly liked the double-decker ones. Nowadays, it seems they've done something horrid to the recipe (or would that be formula?) and they've become rather dry and much less yummy than I remember. It's also harder to find all the variants I remember up North. There used to be single and double decker variants, Vanilla, Chocolate and later on I think Strawberry may have arrived. Up North, all I see are double-decker Vanilla and sometimes Chocolate. 4" does seem about right - and they were about that size when I was younger too, IIRC. I think they might have gotten a bit thinner, though, maybe less marshmallow-type filling? I wouldn't be surprised if they have shrunk recently, as it's been a number of months since I had one.

Never had a Wagon Wheel for comparison, sorry.

Later,
-cajun

Did anyone else here watch Our Man in Havana on Turner last night? I was completely blown away. The cast! (Alec Guiness, Ernie Kovax, Burl Ives, Noel Coward, Maureen OHara and more). The dialog! (Witty to the max.) The relevance! (Faked data on Cuban weapons installations -- not to mention all Alec's "00" operatives -- *and* a lot of humor from attempts at private conversations in the men's loo.) The darkness! (Moles, assassins, whores, strippers, police corruption etc. etc.) The newly slapped-on G rating!

It had been ages since I'd seen the thing, and these days I can savor it much more.

As you may have noticed from my recent writing, if I wwere bipolar you might assume I was in the manic phase. Stuff has been streaming off of my fingers and through the keyboard to the screen.

Including some stuff for a furry shared-world site.

Which led to this description of a story I was working on:

Me, I'm just writing. But it seems to involve Lady Helen, the late King of England, assorted nice Jewish boys, at least four Police officers, two American tourists, a theatrical performance, and a chorus of ricksha drivers.

Right now, it all makes perfect sense.

Geekosaur@81: I see last name in all caps used frequently in genealogical circles. The intent is apparently to make the surnames stand out for those skimming.

Said circles also prefer their dates in 6 Jun 2008 fashion.

Tlönista, 82
& zzatz #62, & P J Evans, 85

Are you thinking of Pearl S. Buck's Oriental Cookbook? (1972/74)

re: Juli Thompson, 79,
Since we're talking about cookbooks, and someone mentioned a Chinese one, I'll take advantage of the opportunity. I once saw a book that went through the basic layout of a menu in a Chinese restaurant. It gave the characters for each dish, explained what they meant, what the cooking techniques and terms were, the history of the dishes and various types of Chinese cuisine, and tied it all in with the culture and language. It was fascinating, but I didn't have the money to buy it then, and now I can't find it, or anyone who's heard of it. It may have been British. Any ideas?

No ideas here, but that sounds friggin awesome! Please post us a followup if you find it.

Meta:
I got the long thread refresh error too. I had to clear the cache (firefox) in order to see the last dozen or so comments.

Found via Whatever:
The Note at the Bottom of the Pond

Must-read.

OK, the Doctor Who two-parter is finished.

If that doesn't get a Hugo nomination there's going to be some really remarkable qualifying drama filling the lists

Me @45, Eddie Cochrane @86 - From browsing the Good Housekeeping Step-by-Step Cookbook, it looks like it contains much of the information of the out-of-print Good Housekeeping Cook's Book, but with more recipes integrated into it; in other words, even more like it sounds Leah wanted. I am willing to endorse it as much as possible, considering that I haven't actually read or used it.

There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand trinary, those who don't, and those who are reaching for a dictionary.

I've heard of a book that analyzes Chinese menus, but thought it was mentioned in the New Hacker's Dictionary, and a fast look doesn't turn it up.

Leah,
It's probably both more and less than you're looking for, but I love Good Eats. Alton Brown does a very good job, I think, in explaining not just the how but the why of things. And he's just so gosh darn cute, although I realize that's probably irrelevant. They're on video -- the only downside I can see is that he only deals with one issue an episode (beef itself takes two episodes, IIRC), so getting through them would take a while.

"Good Eats" is one of my kids' favorite Food Network shows, along with "Ace of Cakes."

don delny@93: No, How To Cook and Eat in Chinese is by Buwei Yang Chao, first published in 1945. I have the 1972 paperback, which is holding up surprisingly well. Unlike my copy of Joy of Cooking, which is shedding. I looked at a newer version of Joy, but didn't like it; I don't recall why.

Faren Miller @ 90... Drat. I'll have to make sure to catch Our Man in Havana next time TCM show sit. Right now, they're showing On The Beach, which they'd aired not long ago, so who knows? (I am looking forward to the day when someone at TCM decides to show, back to back, On The Beach, Dr.Strangelove, Failsafe and The Bedford Incident. Wheeee! Not.)

The Lost Books pdf has registration marks on every page, even though it's meant to be read on the screen. I find this to be a terrible waste of nonexistent ink.

Clifton @ #94, following the links, here's the text in more legible form (scroll down a tad).

We shoulda done that for our pool.

Erik Nelson @ 101: The better to impose them, my dear. And it's especially important to check colour registration printing in black ink like this!

What's more odd, the left and right pages seem to be switched.

There was a paperback book called The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters by McCawley, which helps you read Chinese menus. It is absolutely not a cookbook. (Could also use being reprinted.)

zzatz, 99,
re: How To Cook and Eat in Chinese is by Buwei Yang Chao, first published in 1945.

Ah! Thank you for that. Triggered a nice little link-trance, that. (Among other things, the word stir-fry is attributed to the author(s).* See Language Log via Adam Sampson.

*bonus round:
“Hse” is the gender-neutral term for he/she coined by Professor Yuen Ren Chao, Dr. Chao’s husband, to make up for a third-person singular pronoun in English other than the rather formal and stiff sounding, “one.” via Tigers and StrawberriesTigers and Strawberries

heresiarch @68, et al.:

Fully capitalizing the family name, whether it comes first as in Japanese or Hungarian or last as in English, French, etc., is common practice in the Esperanto community.

Jim 106: There's an Esperanto community?

I have a question about the definition of sockpuppetry. It's obvious that when one person posts to the same thread on the same forum about the same subject under different names, trying to create an appearance of consensus for some position they hold, that's our prototypical sockpuppetry. On the other hand, if someone uses multiple online handles but never uses two of them on the same forum, or refers to anything said by one of their online persona when writing under another, that's not a use of sockpuppets. Where between those extremes would you draw the line? What if someone were to post to the same forum with different handles, but not to the same thread? Or to the same thread, but the different personas don't support one another; maybe they argue against each other (non-trollishly, let's say, for the sake of argument)?

I have a vague story idea about a guy whose multiple online handles are connected to him, & his anonymity lost with bad real-world consequences, as a result of some researchers running a stylistic analysis tool that shows when two extensive samples of text are probably written by the same person. The above questions may or may not be relevant to the story, depending on how and whether it develops.

The idea occurred to me a while ago after I was involved in a discussion on another forum, where someone emailed me offlist pointing out that several of the other posters were the same person, and the poll I had taken was invalid because most of the votes on one side were spurious. After the fact it seemed obvious, because they all wrote in the same pedantic style, but I hadn't noticed until this friend pointed it out in offlist mail.

Clifton, #94: Cute, but not at all the direction I thought it was going to go. After the first couple of sentences, I was expecting something more along the lines of this:

If you are reading this then I can only assume that you have removed the pond under which this note was buried.

Of course, as I am not around at the moment, I am not in a position to comment on why you may have chosen to remove the pond and, it is fair to say, that there could be any number of reasons for doing so. Still, I feel it only my duty to warn you that if you continue along this path, the results may be dire.

You see, this is no ordinary pond. This property was acquired by the Council of Watchers in 1978 specifically for the purpose of sealing an incipient Hellmouth at this location. The pond was installed to make sure that no one would be likely to disturb the seal in the course of future years.

I cannot stress strongly enough that breaking the seal would be a very bad idea. The things which would be likely to emerge would eat your sanity, if not your brain itself. By far the safest course of action would be for you to put the pond back as you found it. If you fail to do so, I cannot answer for the consequences.

The reality was a tad anticlimactic.

Xopher @107:

Yes, smaller than sf fandom but large enough. I'd guess somewhere between 100,000 and 2 million speakers -- the higher figure is more commonly quoted but I suspect the true figure is lower.

PNH: About the "Whitey" video...did I ever tell you I like you? I lied.

Re: Chinese food

Out of the mists of memory comes a college or university (Columbia?) that offered a language course in then-current Restaurant Chinese. As many of the local entrepreneurs of these establishments had fled China when it went Red, and the Mandarin (?) was highly stylized, ordinary Chinese/English English/Chinese dictionaries would get you nowhere.

For example: The Clouds of August
Was it a soup? A dessert? The presentation of part of a main course?

Vague recollections of Calvin Trillin mentioning it.

Elise is having another of her fabulous sales -- look at the necklace crowns!

Forgot the kicker:

The first taught, and most useful phrase, was
"Please bring me what those people are having."

Someone posted this insane video on a website I frequent, under the title "Would you do this?"

My answer was "If the word 'no' were written a thousand times on every subatomic particle in the universe, it could not express the noness of my no."

Xopher @115 - For many years my friends and I have suggested that the Earth's Defence System consists of a giant forked stick, a pair of elastic braces and my friend Stan*. It's good to see that this plan is being taken seriously.

* I note that to saturate this system aliens would only need to send 2 UFOs at once. I note in addition that on one occasion I contended that the moon was only a mile and a half up, and then calculated what mass it would be, assuming it was made entirely of cheese; this was part of the costing for upgrading the slingshot to a rocket-harpoon. I don't think that anyone was fooled**.

** Unlike the time I explained that stealth bombers travelled faster than the speed of sound to outrun radar waves; I was told off for misusing my scientific knowledge for that one.

Why you should never put your phone in the microwave...

Bob Rossney, #69, I didn't know that was Ned! That's a weird movie. I watched it twice and decided I was probably not the right audience and sent it back to Netflix.

Oft Known, etc., #75, back home, Yay!

Jim Henry, #108, you don't need a tool -- Teresa and I used to do this all the time on rasff.

American Astronaut is a damn weird movie, and I only ever saw half of it (at a friend's house.)

1. Patrick, you bastard.
2. Xopher @115, that has my son written all over it (but then he's nine.)
3. Squee moment of 2008: I've been BoingBoing'd for Paul Bunyan and the Spambot. (Also Sideshowed, which was pretty cool, too.)

Michael, #120: And well-deserved, too! You've really caught the flavor of the originals.

I always did love Paul Bunyan stories. I think maybe I got another of these in the pipeline, with Nikola Tesla. Still mulling it over. They're fun to write, though.

#119: The rocket nerd community has this schizo attitude toward The Astronaut Farmer.

On one hand . . . a guy building a rocket! In his barn! And he's defying authority to go into space!

On the other . . . so many technical flaws that the bad paint job on the Saturn V in Apollo 13 pales in comparison.

And it turns into a relationship picture. Which rocket nerds think is icky.

Let it be noted that the unity dates aren't the only unambiguous ones. In the European format, anything after 14 January or the 13th for any other month qualifies. In the U.S. format, anything after the 13th in October through December does.

People continue to be impressed with Little Brother:

Michael Swanwick's latest blog post has some nice things to say, and a story about spreading the word to a section of the population that one might not immediately think of as being part of the book's audience.

Jim Henry @ 106: "Fully capitalizing the family name, whether it comes first as in Japanese or Hungarian or last as in English, French, etc., is common practice in the Esperanto community."

Interesting. I wonder who did it first?

Lee @ 109 I like your version better. If I found your version, I'd fill the pond back up, half out of admiration and half out of caution.

Xopher @ 115: Wheeeee! I would do that nine times.

Calling upon the infinite wisdom (and collective memory) of the Fluorosphere:

While reading Charles DeLint's short story "Pixel Pixies," I was reminded of another short story about a man corresponding with an author friend about the author's belief that there's some kind of fairy-ish creature living in his typewriter, helping him write...and it's under attack by some other creature(s). If this sounds familiar to anyone, can you remind me of the author, title, and collection/anthology in which it appeared?

Many thanks!

PJ Evans @104:_The Eater's Guide to Chinese Characters_ by McCawley

Damn, you beat me to it. Multiple used copies can be found through AddAll.com at very affordable prices, though I feel compelled to say that I didn't find this book quite as useful as I might've hoped, even from the perspective of (at the time I acquired it) some minimal foreknowledge of the basic "critter" characters that tell you which animal is involved. Among other things, IIRC he failed to explain that the "meat" character (esp. when used as a radical within more complex characters) is often simplified to look like the "moon" character, which confused me no end. The format is also very dense and textbook-like; the second half of the book is a comprehensive dictionary o