Wednesday, May 21. 2014
 We link Dalrymple's stuff all the time. It's time to let you know about his new book, Threats of Pain and Ruin.
I learned, from the Amazon blurb, some things about him that I did not know:
Theodore Dalrymple is a former prison doctor and psychiatrist. He has been arrested as a spy in Gabon, been sought by the South African police for violating apartheid, visited the site of a civilian massacre by the government of Liberia, concealed his status as a writer for fear of execution in Equatorial Guinea, infiltrated an English communist group in order to attend the World Youth Festival in North Korea, performed Shakespeare in Afghanistan, smuggled banned books to dissidents in Romania, been arrested and struck with truncheons for photographing an anti-government demonstration in Albania and crossed both Africa and South America using only public transportation. He is also the author of more than two dozen books and innumerable essays.
If only half of that were true he'd be in line to be my next shrink - after I wear out my current confessore.
Prego, Dr. Ted.
- Ways of smoking meat. It's fun, easy hobby with endless room for creativity, and delicious food.
- He reminds us of the always-handy digital meat thermometer
- My Paris-trained chef friend says that canned or jarred Cassoulet au confit de canard is better than you will ever have time to make. Says it is dee-licious. Recommends the brand with the rooster. Sprinkle with breadcrumbs, heat up in oven until it begins to bubble, then some chopped parsley and it's ready.
- Does adding pasta water really matter? With some other excellent tips about pasta.
- Pasta with tuna roe. I had this in Sicily. Very pleasant. Nice with some squirts of lemon on it. I'd guess the best place to get that dried tuna roe is online, like so many good things.
- Sicilian classic primi: Pasta con Sarde. Sarde, sardines, are pretty much the same critter that we often call anchovies in the US, but not the canned brown overly-intense salted variety that most people (not me) hate on pizza. The dish is best with fresh sardine/anchovies, which you can find in some stores, or canned Italian sardines without the tomato. When I was a lad doing manual labor with mostly black and hispanic guys during summers, our favorite sandwich was sardines and onion slices with some mayo, on a hard roll. Maybe a leaf or two of lettuce.
- Another easy Sicilian one, ubiquitous in Sicily - Pasta alla Norma. You can use whatever type of pasta you like for that.
1. The world-wide present and historical range of the Moose (known as Elk in Europe and Asia). I did not know that they used to be in Rhode Island, nor did I know that there were any left in Colorado. In Maine and NH, they are all over the place and moving south due to global warming. Wolves and hunters are needed.
2. No wonder they are freaking out. Who knew this? In 2012, 57 percent of Greenland’s ice sheet melted between July 8 and July 12. Man, that must have been a hot week in Greenland.
Tuesday, May 20. 2014
Interesting stats, via Carpe Diem. Does it mean anything?
Confirmed: NO GLOBAL WARMING in 17 Years and 9 Months
But but but...
The Ideal Climate Citizen? North Korea
The Obama Coalition Is About to Come Apart - He owes it all to the Keystone Kops of the leisure class.
People making above $100,000 and below $40,000 vote Democratic. The people in the middle vote Republican.
I think it's more the women who vote Dem, at any income level.
 The dirty secret about the "pure" golf game is the amount of cheating, not just in tournaments - amateur tournaments mainly - but also in everyday play.
So here are my questions:
1. Do you cheat? Do you play with people who cheat?
2. If so, how? Is a mulligan cheating?
3. How prevalent, or accepted, do you think it is?
Pic of photographer pigeon from World War I in Photos: Animals at War
Scientists discover how to turn light into matter after 80-year quest
The Power of Character on ‘Mad Men’
The Knightly Ideal
How to get and keep a job
Nanny State University: Students Campaign for Warnings on “Offensive” Books
Fragile little totalitarian bullies. Trigger Warning for Maggie's Farm: "Danger!!! Reading this site might cause you to lose your hatred of Libertarian/Conservatives after a while."
Why the "Check Your Privilege" Crowd Won't Win
The extremist error was to draw the attention of the broader public in the first place. They can only win in undemocratic spaces, spaces where an elite minority can act without an effective majoritarian backlash. The radicals prefer to seize control of these spaces, to achieve influence on them, or to carve out fiefdoms within them. Failing that, a small but vocal minority can badger elites unused to dealing with bad press and public pressure. Indeed, all of the recent radical victories have been confined to elite, undemocratic spaces. The media? A salon for well-educated Northeasterners. Universities? Opaque bureaucracies flush with cash. Corporate boards in the tech industry? They’re corporate boards in the tech industry. And that’s the dark truth of Cultural Marxism: While it claims to stand for equality and against elite privilege, its method has always been to become the elite, not to destroy it.
A Connecticut Yankee in Appalachia - Alice Ely Chapman wages a one-woman war on poverty
Reynolds: Higher ed becoming a joke
Thomas Sowell – Campus Rape Cases Should be Handled by the Criminal Justice System
Goldberg: The Washington Post, Life & the Trouble with Experts
Greg Mankiw feels that Summers has the best review of Piketty
Behold the power of Power Line: It appears The Nation has scrubbed the politically incorrect comments we highlighted here.
Settled science and saturated fats
Warmist Bill Moyers is utterly concerned with saving the planet from “climate change”, so, obviously, he recommends that Warmists practice what they preach, and has promised to give up his own use of fossil fuels!
The IRS’s Media Firewall
EPA to Unveil Carbon Regs Next Month
The insanity of the Left’s opposition to voter ID Laws summed up in one poster
The Logic of Castro’s Nomination:
It’s More Than Identity Politics
The New Palestinian "Journalists"
Monday, May 19. 2014
That's a menu for tourists. Note that their prix fixe menu includes a primi, a secondi, and a side of something. Only tourists eat dessert. Tourist menus are generally in Italian and English, but not because of Americans. It's to keep it simple: European travelers read and speak English better than many Americans, especially the Dutch, Czechs, the Germans, the Swiss, and the Scandinavians. Aussies always the most fun to meet - warm, open, exuberant, and they will try anything. Brits stand-offish and chilly which is annoying when you are of Brit extraction yourself and want to see them as your paysans. I liked the Czechs we encountered best: adventurous, curious, friendly, energetic, with joie de vivre and happy to travel on the cheap. Wood-grilled meat is the typical Sicilian secondi, but they love their seafood too - and their eggplant (melanzine). Pretty much all kitchens have wood-fired grills. Wish I had an old stone-lined one indoors, but my iron grill is outdoors. I too prefer wood to charcoal.
Before we left western Sicily to head to the Madonie Mountains in central Sicily, we took a side trip to take this tiny ferry see Motya. Phoenicians founded this walled island colony in 800 BC (along with many other cities in Sicily). The Greeks drove them out, but they came back again and were finally eliminated by the Romans when they just got fed up with them.
Lots more fun stuff below the fold. Have you planned your trip yet? Or have we saved you the trouble?
Friends consider us to be adventurous travelers because we plan our trips ourselves, drive ourselves, study the books ourselves, educate and guide ourselves, visit places where few people go, etc. Happily, our kids now can do the same. Mrs. BD is a great travel-planner, relatively fearless with a great sense of adventure and economy and she doesn't mind mountain driving which sometimes gives me the creeps (and she doesn't really mind getting lost - figures she's still somewhere safely on planet earth). But come on, people - how about some guardrails for the narrow cliff-edge roads? Sheesh. Some of us have a touch of acrophobia.
Continue reading "Sicily Travelogue #3, with Sicilian food!"
 Is there any difference, other than the surroundings in which you eat it - and the flavors?
Sort-of, not very much.
Not as sweet as American ice cream. Mrs. BD likes Pistachio best, I prefer Hazelnut (Nocello - and you'd better say Nocello or they won't know what the heck you are talking about) - but I'll try anything to try to keep my weight up.
It's a wonder, this internet. Here's a classic, for y'all or for your kids' edumacation: Henry Hazlitt's 1946 Economics in One Lesson.
College costs more and more, even as it gets objectively worse. Only
people worse off than indebted grads: adjuncts
 College Bans Fencing Team from Practicing w/their “Weapons”
Deep question: Is a Hump Day camel … racist?
California Chrome's run in Belmont Stakes in doubt over nasal strips?
Want to Know If Your Food Is Genetically Modified? Across the country, an aggressive grassroots movement is winning support with its demands for GMO labeling. If only it had science on its side.
Three Ways of Looking at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
15 Examples Of "Liberal Privilege"
Check Your Own Damn Privilege Week at College Insurrection
Spying Is Meant to Crush Citizens’ Dissent, Not Catch Terrorists
Minimum wage: Learning the laws of economics the hard way
An Idea Whose Time Has Ended? Take our poll: Should the federal government get out of the student loan business?
Kerry tells Yale grads to keep faith in government
What???
The Great Society at 50
What LBJ Wrought - After 50 years of his anti-poverty policy, a “tangle of pathologies” has spread dramatically.
The Real Palestinian Refugee Crisis
Among other talents, Mrs. BD does flowers for parties. Not for pay, but for the challenge of it. This is a haul from NYC's flower district. Wander around there for fun if you're in NY, but they usually sell out their nighttime shipments by 9 am. Serious flower people are there by 6 or 7 am.
Sunday, May 18. 2014
I mailed a bottle of Sicilian Limoncello to Roger de Hauteville. Hope he likes this product of his ancestral homeland. Best when chilled in my view. My Italian in-laws are fond of it. Me? Not so much. And Grappa, I feel, is even worse but the Italians love that stuff too.
When it comes to lemon flavor, I can munch a big Sicilian lemon just picked from the tree as if it were an orange. Deliciously sweet zing.
There is no single form of higher ed. It's a topic about which I have posted a number of times: Seven Competing Views of Higher Education
It's a good, brief summary. I wouldn't use the word "competing," though. "Coexisting" captures it better.
Seven Competing Views of Higher Education
Seven Competing Views of Higher Education
I'll bet anybody $1000 that Miami will not be underwater in ten years. Any takers?
Here's the scare headline: Miami Will Likely Be Underwater Before Congress Acts on Climate Change. Oh no - I'm scared. Not Miami! Not the US Congress! Yikes. Only Congress can save us from drowning. Or do they mean in 4000 years, when they do not realize next ice age will have lowered the oceans once again so that you can walk from Britain to France as they used to do before our SUVs ruined everything? I am deeply, deeply, seriously concerned, and it keeps me up at night. If you are not "deeply concerned" about something, there must be something morally wrong with you.
We all must become deeply, seriously concerned about something. Otherwise, what's the point of our existence? How do we otherwise justify it, right? We are foolish animals, me included. OMG, I think I accidentally ate a non-organic, GMO tomato last night. I am doomed.
Meanwhile, backtracking climate gurus warn that you should not expect their models to be correct. Not to worry, I do not and will not worry about models of any sort. All of the genius market models have been wrong, and those guys are much smarter than climate scientists.
John 14:1-14
14:1 "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
14:2 In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
14:3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.
14:4 And you know the way to the place where I am going."
14:5 Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?"
14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
14:7 If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him."
14:8 Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied."
14:9 Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?
14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
14:11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves.
14:12 Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.
14:13 I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14:14 If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
Saturday, May 17. 2014
 Eggplant is such a ubiquitous food in Sicily that you would not expect that the name, in Sicilian dialect "moolinyan", would also be a disparaging word for those with dark skin.
We had eggplant in Sicily at least three ways:
- We were served it as part of antipasto plates at least twice, sliced fairly thin with skin on and wood grilled and blackened a bit the way I like grilled vegetables.
- We were served it in the form of caponata as a bruschetta, again as part of an antipasto plate. It was served on wood-toasted bread. Fire-toasted bread is the best.
- We were served it at least three times as a pasta sauce. It's a peasant staple. Annoying that they sometimes do it with skin on, but they do. Sometimes they add chopped olives to that, or spicy pork sausage meat or zucchini. Pignoli or raisins, too. It's pretty good but not great. The only great southern Italian and Sicilian foods are their fish. Just my opinion, of course, and I do eat all of this stuff sometimes even though I am not a big fan of pasta courses.
Here's an all-purpose eggplant caponata.
As in the different parts of Italy, in Sicily they use whatever sizes or shapes their local sub-regional version of (non-egg, in S. Italy and Sicily) pasta happen to be, which is made fresh daily at the corner market. It's generally sold out before it's fully-dried. In northern Sicily, a preferred pasta is Busiata. It's a thick, curly, hand-made and hand-curled pasta. There's a career: Busiata-curler.
True story: I broke a front tooth on a hard piece of busiata and spent the rest of the trip with a missing front tooth. I told Mrs. BD that I was imitating a Brit, but also threatened to superglue a pebble in there. "Al dente" indeed. In Italy, they do serve pasta quite hard, pretty chewy with some hard and dry parts. I've broken a few front teeth, the first one playing hockey.
(A reminder about pasta: the authentic Italian way is not to put sauce on top, but to throw the pasta into the saucepan and to just lightly coat the pasta with the sauce. There is never very much sauce, just the flavoring really. After all, it's just a primi, pasta is a flavor-delivery system, but if you are a farmer you need those carbs.) I'll post on some very unusual Sicilian pasta dishes that we had, in the future. Some were more like soups.
I too was taught to avoid the passive voice, but to avoid it as a rule of thumb and not as an absolute. It has its uses.
 An interesting website: American Renaissance
From Duck Vaginas to Bumblebee Sex: The Amazingly Overlooked Science of Genitals
"Overlooked"? Who has ever overlooked genitals?
"Gluten Sensitivity" May Be a Misnomer for Distinct Illnesses to Various Wheat Proteins
I am yet to be convinced that it exists
Here’s what’s not sustainable: organic farming
No matter what the boss says about flextime, get to work early
Berkeley students say their biodegradable caps and gowns aren’t green enough and it’s an embarrassment
Sure is an embarassment, but not in the way they think
On Top of Piketty - The new Marxism has nothing to offer us but chains.
... Marx has never vanished from the academy. The stubborn refusal of applied Marxism to produce anything but mass murder merely led to efforts to reframe the philosophy. Through much of the 20th century, Marx was clearly the greatest economist of all time, but his ideas had never been properly put into practice. Then he might have dwindled as an economist but was indisputably an important historian. When that didn’t pan out, Gramscian “cultural Marxism” allowed overwhelmed graduate students to avoid economics and history altogether in order to focus on Batman. When all else failed (and with Marxism, it always fails), Marx lived on through the claim that while his ideas may have faded, he was still an important figure of literature — a particular howler to anybody familiar with his clotted, vituperative, headache-inducing prose.
I'd vote yes. If they used to be reserved for Brit royalty, they're good enough for me. Furthermore, Mute Swans are not even native to North America. They were imports to grace the ponds of 19th C Long Island robber baron estates - but they are not garden decor. They are royal food.
The painting tells me that working in a royal kitchen was a pretty good gig.
Article here.
Friday, May 16. 2014
 "Nine out of ten doctors would not recommend anyone go into medicine today," the headline of an online news post read.
An article in Forbes Magazine last month cited the selfless dedication physicians bring to the practice of medicine caring only for the well being of their patients. Both statements are gross exaggerations. While many doctors are unhappy with the changes in medical practice they are not retiring in droves, and while most doctors care a great deal for their patients there are also those who care more about their compensation. Certainly more of the older generation of practitioners, my generation of physicians, have been stunned by the changes that have occurred over the past 25 years in the delivery of health care, but also by the loss of a sense of power doctors once had. The axis of physician, nurse, patient is now a mosaic which includes many other "providers" not anticipated twenty years ago.
One of the first changes was to remove the doctor from his pinnacle by calling him (his/him will stand for both genders in the interest of brevity) a "health care provider." Thus, medical care deliverers became like Dr. Pepper drinkers, "I'm a Pepper, she's a Pepper, wouldn't you like to be a Pepper too?" We groused about it but only a few of us saw the dark clouds on the western horizon, managed care was approaching. Up until that time the community hospital was basically a doctor's club complete with private dining room. As care became more complicated and sophisticated - intensive care units and CAT scans did not exist in the 1960s when I was an intern and resident - the hospital became more of an independent institution that could serve patients with its own staff to service physician referrals.
Continue reading "Medical Malaise"
|
Due cappuccini, at a highway rest stop. Some cocoa powder dusting on top. Yes, cappuccino is a morning/breakfast drink.