Excitement building

I'm looking forward to Saturday with great expectation. If things work out, and I hope they will, I may get to watch the Boat Race (don't ask which one: there is only one Boat Race) for the first time since, if memory serves me (which it rarely does these days) 1987.
The race had not been televised over here until last year --- and last year I was not in the US, and didn't have any way to get access to ESPNU, who are showing it.
I'm hoping to persuade my local publican to tune one of his multiple tv sets to it this weekend.

Yours, excited,
N.

Night shift

Every few weeks at the moment I am required (I hate to say "forced") to be at work for a few hours in the evening. I didn't realise until this afternoon just how much I am beginning to get soft, lazy and resentful of such an intrusion on my private life!
Back in the pre-dawn of history (aka before the children were born) I didn't mind half as much, so long as it didn't impinge on something important outside.
And I guess that my feeling haven't really changed: it's just that children are the something important outside that fill up all my time now.

Yours, working, now and until 9 or 10 tonight,
N.

Happy Birthday, EP

Uncle Paul would have been 95 today: Pali Bacsi, as some knew him, died twelve years ago, but lives on through the mathematics he created, the people he inspired, and especially through the problems he posed.

Yours, in memory,
N.

I finished a book!

A whole book! Today! A grown-up book! And I'd only been reading it for a few months!

The reason I bring this up is that while I used to read a book in a time span measured in hours or days, months is now the norm. Somehow children, slowly failing eyesight (why, I may finally have to have prescription lenses one day!) and more and more demands on my time (oh, and I guess laptop with fast wireless internet access) have combined to make reading more difficult for me. I have tried to curtail my expenditure on books, to the extent that I now buy 30-40 times as many books as I read, whereas I used to only buy 3-4 times as many....

This book was "The Indian Clerk", a novelization of the interactions of the Indian mathematician (and genius) Ramanujan, and his mentor and friend, Hardy. A fascinating read, albeit filled with more discussions of Hardy's homosexuality than might be deemed necessary --- be warned if this will offend you: otherwise, it is in some ways an important part of the book: it is who Hardy was, after all --- and occasionally getting an American viewpoint on Cambridge which somehow misses the point of an English or Cambridge quirk: all in all, it seems to have most of the story well and accurately told: the details I know well are all in accordance with the other biographies etc: the mathematics is not *too* badly done (although the continued reference to divergent sequences, followed by the series

1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8...

as opposed to the harmonic series I am sure that he meant, rankle a bit)

An interesting and enjoyable read: a good window onto academia in Cambridge during the first world war, and if you are not aware of Ramanujan, a pretty good introduction to his life.

Yours, as read,
N.

Fortune Cookies

Last week, at the asia festival, one of the parents had made home-made fortune cookies: Boo's teacher had had all the students come up with their favourite fortunes, and these were the messages inserted into the cookies.

I have to say that I am particularly partial to Boo's entry.

Read to your mummy and daddy every day.

Yours, fortunate indeed,
N.

The election

I'm so looking forward to the primary season being over. At that point, I hope that the race can get serious, and folks who disagree little with each other can work together to pass bills that they have in common.
The suggestion today seems to be that, second to Clinton winning the presidency, her favourite outcome would be Obama losing to McCain in the general. That way she could run next time around as the "I told you so" candidate.
But I suspect that if the reason that Obama loses in the general is perceived to be the fact that Clinton has soured it for him, then democrats in four years time are likely to hold a grudge. She'd do far better, in my mind, strengthening the democratic brand, becoming a strong democratic leader of the senate, and then working from there.

Yours, for peace,
N.

Easter

Contrary to the previous post, not all about today was bad: this morning the children woke up late (seven thirty) for a Sunday, and allowed us to get up gently before wanting to go out and hunt for the easter eggs (actually, mini chocolate eggs, placed atop playdough containers, whose pastel colours seemed eastery enough without the sugar content!)
And LOML had bought roller skates for them both, so they wanted to try them out: so far they've only been up and down the front porch --- but sometime in the next few days we'll probably take them to the skating rink so that they can try it out for real.

Yours, on a roll,
N.

One parenting crisis a day

Only one, that's all I'm allowing myself.
Today I finally had to face the "we're going to run away from you in the grocery store, giggling and laughing at the top of our lungs, round the corner, out of your sight, and not stop when you tell us to, then scream because you won't buy us a toy" behaviour.
I had the experience of having to try to get both, each, of them to look at me and listen to me, to get them to hear that it was because I loved them that I didn't want them out of my sight, etc. All the words that we wish we never had to say, but in this world, definitely need to. And this, of course, just made the screaming more intense.
It got worse: I finally bundled Skibo into the grocery cart, and Boo onto my shoulders, to much screaming and complaining: woman walked around the corner, saw my plight, and asked if they were my grandchildren, and did I need any help.
Clearly, I had let them get so totally out of control that they couldn't be my own children! I tried to explain that it was a tantrum about not getting a toy, etc.... and walked away wishing the floor would swallow me.

A few minutes later, though, now with Boo in the cart and Skibo on my shoulders, now happier and behaving nicely, I ran into the woman again. This time, as she asked "did you end up giving in?", I could hold my head up high and mouth the words "no, I didn't!"

Yours, playing the stern parent,
N.

Distressed

A nice day, on the whole --- beautiful weather, rowing to watch, etc: the sore throat I've not mentioned is still there, but...

And then, out of the blue, having sat on my lap reading, and then gone away to write something by herself, Boo comes up in tears: she insisted that she can't read, she can't write, it's all pretend!
In tears.
And I'm battling tears wanting to help, to take away whatever has caused this, not wanting to call it nonsense, though that surely is what it is. I don't want to demean her by calling it that when she so clearly feels incapable.

Much hugging and talking later, and mainly through LOML's intervention (LOML having been gone for the original discussion), Boo is now writing again. I'll try her on a little reading book tomorrow, when, I hope, all this will have blown over....


There's an old song, from the musical Salad Days: "We don't understand our children".... I was hoping for say another six or seven years before that happened!

Yours, confused,
N.

The long goodbye

Our friends --- for the last year or two, our best friends here --- move Sunday/Monday to the DC area. They are packing the truck tomorrow, he will drive it up on Sunday, and she and their son will stay with us Sunday night before driving up in the car on Monday morning.
And today was round seventeen of twentythree in the long goodbye process. Don't get me wrong: I'd very much prefer the multiple goodbyes! Today's were particularly nice: an egg hunt this morning (the big hit? finger mounted diffuse flashlights in nice colours, which Skibo immediately christened "laser beans") and then a pizza dinner at a very kid-friendly restaurant that has long been a favourite of their son.

The downside of so many goodbyes is that it reinforces the sadness at their leaving....

Yours, missing them already,
N.

Asia: China, India, etc

The children had their school "Asia Festival" today; each of the four preschool classrooms had taken a separate country to study: Boo's class learned about China, while Skibo studied India.
Quite a charming event, and over the past few weeks, it has given LOML and me an ideal opportunity to learn a little more about these countries, and also to explore the new wealth of information just a click away: to think that even a year or two ago it would have been really difficult to do what youtube lets us do in an instant. It's symptomatic of the shifts that we've been seeing over the past decade or so: mosaic in 1994-1997 or so, google around 2000, blogs over the past few years, and now youtube. And of course, other shifts that I'm omitting!

Yours, thoroughly charmed by the kids,
N.

King Arthur jumps the shark

I buy a lot of baking supplies and equipment from King Arthur: I like their bread flour, which is more expensive than most in the local supermarket, but consistently gives good results. I like the fact that they carry danish bread whisks, bulk yeast etc.
And they have a lovely cookbook: typically good baking recipes.
This morning, in anticipation of perhaps making hot cross buns tomorrow (not going to happen now, for various reasons) I started looking through my dozens of baking books to see which had recipes, to pick several, modify, merge and mix to my tastes.
To my great surprise most of them don't have recipes for them.
But my biggest surprise was that King Arthur flour, bastion of "make it at home, from scratch" doesn't have a recipe for them. It does have a recipe for Hot Cross Muffins, however: it assures us that this will give us the characteristic flavour in one third of the time.

(Aside: "jumping the shark" refers to the episode of Happy Days when everyone knew the series was finished: the Fonz, on waterskis, jumping over a shark)


Yours, amused.
N.

Boo's new school

I toured Boo's new school this morning: she's going to the local elementary school in the autumn, entering the "Kindergarten" year. LOML and I are both big believers in the value to society of a good, free, universal public education, and see it as a good use of tax dollars.
And we are going to try it out with our children, and it makes me a little nervous. Boo is clearly very bright, and with a late autumn birthday, she'll be one of the oldest in the class. These two facts unfortunately combine to make it possible, likely even, that she is going to be significantly ahead of most of her classmates. What makes me most nervous is the worry about whether the school will be able to take the time to push her to what she is capable of, or whether they will just focus on the (also incredibly needful) underperforming students.
How this all works out will, I suspect, make the difference between whether we keep Boo and Skibo in the public system, or whether we suck up the cost of $XK per year to put them back in the Montessori system. I'm really hoping that the public system works for her, but I'm not sure how grounded in reality that hope is.

Yours, learning,
N.

Ham and bean soup

We had a ham bone and a bunch of meat left over, and so I turned it into a ham and bean soup: I'd usually do a pea and ham soup with split peas, but LOML expressed a preference this time for a whole bunch of different beans: so that's what I did.
Fairly standard construction: saute some finely chopped onion, carrot, celery and garlic on fairly high heat until it is beginning to caramelize: simmer the ham bone with the vegetables in water to cover, together with some herbs (thyme, bay leaf, whatever else you wish) and seasonings (crack some peppercorns in for good flavour).
Simmer for a good couple of hours to extract all the hamly goodness.
Remove the bone(s) from the pot, rinse and sort the beans (I used a commercial dried 15 bean mix) and add to the soup. Bring to a low boil and low boil/simmer for a couple of hours. (You can go the route of soaking the beans overnight, and it will improve some things, most notably the jet-propulsive aftereffects!) Keep an eye on it, and make sure that there is enough liquid in it, and stir it fairly frequently to make sure the beans don't stick (and then burn).

Serve with (my) freshly baked bread (or better yet, follow my recipes:-)
Yours, feeling souper,
N.

Beef in Guinness pie

First, make way too much stew, so that when LOML invites three extra guests at short notice there is still lots of stew left over the next day.
Next, make your favourite flaky pastry: mine is from Jacques and Julia's cooking at home, and I've told you how to make it recently: chill the dough. Pre-heat the oven to 375 or 400: after an hour of resting, take the pastry from the fridge, roll out two disks, one slightly larger than the other: place the larger in a pie plate, fill with cold stew, top with the smaller disk, seal, brush with egg if desired (gives a nice colour), cut a couple of slashes for steam to escape, place in the oven on a middle rack (with a baking sheet beneath to catch drips) and bake until golden, and the pastry is cooked.

As always, if you try it, let me know!
N.

Beef in Guinness -- the recipe

The stew we served yesterday is the sort of thing that is incredibly easy to put together, and not too time consuming, except for the fact that it needs to sit in the oven for hours. Perfect for a crockpot preparation, if you are a crockpotter. We aren't, even though we have one.

4 pounds chuck, cut into large cubes (an inch or so is fine)
1 onion, fairly fine dice
Olive oil --- don't waste extra-virgin cold-pressed first-harvest demi-cru-du-monde on this
2-3 tablespoons of all purpose flour
2 cups diced tomatoes
2-5 cloves minced or pressed garlic, to taste -- I like more rather than less:-)
1-2 pounds of potatoes, depending on preferences: I use small red-skinned potatoes, cut into 1/2-1 inch dice
1 pound button mushrooms
1-2 pounds carrots, peeled, cut into 1/2 inch dice
Thyme
2 bay leaves
Salt, pepper

Pre-heat the oven to 325 F.
First heat a little oil over high heat in a big heavy pot or dutch oven: brown as much of the beef as will fit in an uncrowded layer (let the cubes sit on the hot surface for a few minutes until the outside is caramelized, turn, let them sit again, etc: I just caramelize two opposite sides this way, but you could do all six sides: 2 gets plenty of flavour). Remove the beef to a plate, add a little more oil if necessary, and brown some more cubes of chuck. Repeat until all the beef is browned.
Add a little oil if necessary, and throw in the onions. Over medium heat, stirring, cook the onions until translucent, using the juices to scrape up the fond from the bottom of the pot. Add the flour and stir well until all the lumps are gone.
Add a couple of cups of diced tomatoes (I used canned at this step: you could substitute tomato paste for a slightly different flavour/texture to the finished dish) and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Add back the meat and juices from the plates, pour in a 12 oz bottle or a 16oz can of "Draught Guinness" (or you could use Young's Chocolate Stout to good effect too!) and a cup of stock: if you've got beef, use it, otherwise chicken is fine. I used a hunk of frozen reduced chicken stock from the freezer. Add a teaspoon of thyme (twice that if fresh) and a couple of bay leaves, salt and pepper to taste. Cover, bring to a simmer, and put it into the oven for an hour.
Cube the potatoes, carrots, clean the mushrooms, and add to the stew. Re-cover, put back in the oven for at least another two hours.
Taste the meat about 15 minutes ahead: if it isn't falling apart tender, but it's almost there, you're okay: if it is still tough, give it another hour more. It may upset your guests to have to wait, but it will improve the dinner no end! And since the stew can sit, it is much better to make it early rather than late.

The potatoes should be near, but not at, a state of collapse, having absorbed the full flavour of the juices. The carrots should be tender, and the mushrooms juicy.


Yours, sharing,
N.

Beef in Guinness

Beef in Guinness is, indeed, splendid. And as an Irish stew, it makes for a wonderful St. Patrick's day dinner. With a mess of potage, just aubergine and carnation petals, and a six shilling bottle of Mule du Pape, a feast fit for a King! (Two credits for the first to identify the misquote above:-)

And there is enough left over to make the remainder into a steak and mushroom pie tomorrow (I'd go for steak and kidney, except for two facts: LOML is not a fan of kidneys, to put it mildly, and calves kidneys are impossible to find in this neck of the woods.)

Yours, pie-eyed: after all, it is St Patrick's day....
N.

Happy St Patrick's Day

to all of you, except for the snakes in the grass....
We're going to have a stew. Not an Irish stew. No, an Irish-inspired stew. Beef in Guinness, with onions and mushrooms and carrots. Oh, and (need you be told?) potatoes. Slow slow cooked for hours. At least four, maybe more. Of course, we're having tons of people over for dinner, so I need to go out on the morn' and get more meat. And more potatoes. Ah, the joy of last minute invitations.

Yours, not stewing over it,
N.

On the brink

When I was a child, I used to visit relatives who lived in Cheshire: their house (almost a small castle --- quite intimidating to me even now!) was on the edge of a steep slope. It was a wonderful, magical place, and at least one novel was written about King Arthur's temporary resting place being nearby.
At that time, and even now, I can walk near an edge. But it scares the bejeepers out of me. If I get close enough, it can paralyze me with fear.
And that is the way I feel looking at the markets with this week about to start: one of the largest investment banks in the US has lost 90+% of its value over a two day period (after an already precipitous loss). The dollar seems poised for a free-fall against other currencies.
Fiscally, this country seems likely to face a massive crisis. And I am not sure that I believe that its current leaders are mature enough to make sure that it will survive relatively unscathed.
It could come in days, it could come in months. It could never come. But I don't want to be the one to set the odds on those outcomes.

Yours, fearful,
N.

Clinton for majority leader in the senate

I'm joining the quite swell of voices calling for Clinton to stay in the Senate, for Reid to step aside as majority leader, and for her to assume the role. I think that she could be a great leader in that position, and not only that, on the issue of health care reform, it would put her in a more powerful role to shape the legislation than she'd have as president. And she certainly knows the issues there inside and out --- and could then be relied upon to bring Obama round to true universal coverage.
And then we could all work to make sure that Obama wins the presidency, and the democrats retain the majority in both chambers, so that things can be done in the new term.
And the current intra-party fights can end and be forgotten.

Yours, hoping,
N.

Origami

The school's fundraiser was yesterday evening, and as I may have mentioned twice (or more) over the past week or three, I spent a lot of time folding cranes, dodecahedral balls, masu boxes, dragons, elephants, etc.
LOML and I didn't go to the banquet: we couldn't afford the cost of the tickets, and felt that we had done our part helping out. Certainly if I charged a couple of bucks a piece for the origami it would have come to a lot more than the ticket price.
I had, however, hoped that I might have heard from the organizers today: perhaps they might have emailed a thank-you note, or possibly a photograph of the thirty tables, all with multiple pieces of origami placed on them.
Yes, they could have mailed a thank you. No, they haven't yet done so.
Maybe, maybe I'm peeved.

Yours, not holding my breath,
N.

Out of the blue

I love it when friends turn up out of the blue! Our friend Danny just knocked on the door this morning --- back in town for the day, and wanted to come by and say hello. We had a lovely chat for an hour or so, got caught up on all the news of him and his family -- and then he had to leave: he may be back tomorrow in time for dinner, so we may get another chance to chat, but even if not, it was a lovely surprise.

Yours, surprised,
N.

Red plate day

We have a tradition of a red plate: when someone has a great day (or a really rotten one) they get to use a red plate in celebration (or to cheer them up).
This morning, Boo and LOML worked on some writing practice: LOML wrote some sentences in cursive, and then Boo traced them. Then, while LOML and my backs were turned, without either of us realizing what was going on, Boo had turned the page in her notebook and started to write more.
She brought it through to us in the kitchen: she had written "I like going to the zoo" --- albeit spelled somewhat differently: but mistakes or not, she's FIVE, fer crying out loud! And she's writing! Her own thoughts!
Once I picked myself up of the floor, chin and all, we all cried a little and told her how wonderful she is! And took photographs for grandparents etc to see...

And Boo got to use the red plate for breakfast. And for dinner:-)

Yours, blown away, just completely blown away!
N.

Pi day

An almost belated happy pi day to you all! I'd have put up a post on this earlier, except that I grew up in the UK --- and as all the rest of the world outside of the US knows, March 14th is 14-3, not 3-14: consequently pi day would have to be April 31, which unfortunately doesn't exist!

Anyway, happy (US date format) pi day! No, I didn't bake a pi today: heck, I didn't even cook at all: LOML jumped at the opportunity to play in the kitchen, since I was busy at origami club! And no, LOML didn't bake a pi today either....

Yours, digitally,
N.

Three in one

Three posts in one, but really they are all about origami.

First, after much frantic folding, I finally finished fifty five thousand origami pieces. Well, actually, it is probably only in the hundreds, but it felt like more! And all the final folding was done in the origami club, with three new students today: they were all seven year olds who had been in the room last week when the club was folding, and decided that they wanted to try what the cool eleven year olds were doing.
The most thrilling part, though, was not what they folded under my supervision, it was how well one of the older students took the younger ones under her wing and taught them to fold masu boxes! Way to go, J!

Secondly: last night, Boo told me that she had been in her classroom that morning, and had walked past the bookshelves with the origami dragon, crane, frog, panda etc on: and, she said: "It made me cry! In a good way!"

Apparently this statement didn't make it to Miss G, her teacher, but somehow today origami came up in class, and Boo volunteered me to go to the class and show them all how I fold things: and I saw Miss G this afternoon, and have promised to do so on Monday morning. I don't think that I will get them all to fold anything: at 3-5 years old, they are too young to cope with in a group of twenty (individually, I could probably manage to do something, but not all at once): but I will be able to talk about origami, show them a few models, and hopefully have some fun. And give some fun too:-)

Yours, never done folding,
N.

Orchestral maneuvers

I used to play in an orchestra, half a lifetime ago. Actually, I played in more than one orchestra, and in a jazz band or two too. I was, however, never very good.
This never held me back (although I can't really say that it helped me out much either!) I was enthusiastic, and made that trombone dance and sing. Of key, perhaps. Arhythmically, possibly. The wrong notes at the wrong time, frequently.
Nonetheless, I had fun. And most of the time did okay.
This is why this news from Alexander McCall Smith (yes, he of the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series of mysteries, amongst others) is so thrilling to me!

Yours, oh so tempted,
N.

Spring is here

Of course, it's another week or so to go until the vernal equinox, but weather-wise, spring is here, spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer... etc.

But the kids' noses are still streaming, as I sit here I can hear Boo coughing and coughing and coughing in her sleep: Skibo sniffled all day, and coughed for much of it too: and their friend Ade had what looked like little worms coming out of his nose: literally, two permanent streams of liquid snot (sorry) all afternoon.

Yours, sprung,
N.

Three days and counting

Three days from now, all the origami worries will be over --- not only that, the benefit itself will be over, most of the origami will be gone, never to be seen again.

I had thought that I was well on top of things: there's a display table of pieces to fold, but that can be big or small, and the students from the origami club will be folding much of that on Friday: and there are some paper napkin waterlilies that need folding to be glued on top of masu boxes, but only ten or so, and they are really quick to fold.

Then yesterday, the organizer informed me that the benefit is suddenly going to be rather more successful than she had thought, and that there will be ten more tables, so she needs thirty more cranes. Please. As it were.

And actually, that is quite feasible: I drove out to the school this afternoon and picked up paper, and have folded ten or so in my free time this evening. It will get done.

Yours, still on schedule,
N.

Mississippi results and turnout

It appears that the Mississippi Secretary of State was wrong: he predicted light to moderate turnout today. He appears to have been out by a factor of around 4. Yes, he predicted 125,000 to 150,000 voters, and over 500,000 have turned out. Why, the Republicans alone, with no race of any importance left, almost beat his turnout figure!

Yours, as always saying "thank heavens for Mississippi",
N.

My absolute favourite food blogger

has a new post up.

Yours, egging her on,
N.

Coleslaw

LOML's cabbages have come up nicely in the garden, and so yesterday we had an asian chicken and cabbage salad -- Nigella's recipe --- which we have had many times and always end up saying "How come we always forget how much we like this?" And since there was well over half a head of cabbage left over, I decided to make a coleslaw: a few years ago I stumbled upon a recipe which I loved (I thought that it was in one of our cookbooks, but since we have several hundred cookbooks, I've been unable to figure out which recipe it was!)
It was a mayonnaise-free recipe: I am not a fan of creamy coleslaw -- I want it to bite back, so to speak. I finally found one on the web to try: as it turned out, LOML loved it, but I found it rather sweet. After I tinker with the sweetness/acidity levels and get it to one that I like, I'll post it. It definitely showed promise: it's just not quite there yet.

Yours, tartly, if a trifle over sweet,
N.

On the Eliot mess...

My favourite quote so far:

The unhinged reaction on the part of the media and, by extension the public, is a national embarrassment. Once more, the French are laughing. I don't really care what the French are doing, but still...do we have to keep making them laugh?

from Seth Greenland at Huffposthow can I top that?
All in all, it seems that this is an example of a brilliant yet flawed leader who will have taken down his career, and perhaps in the process diverted attention from a financial scandal that he was trying to highlight. All for the sake of a little sex.
I'd be mad at him if I weren't madder at the country for the stupid way we treat this stuff --- and I am as bad as anyone, laughing at Larry Craig's airport misadventures, or David Vitter's prostitution problems. Of course, in the latter cases, it was never clear to me in the first place that the johns were brilliant yet flawed leaders....It seems ridiculous to me that the basis for prosecuting him will not be engaging in dubious acts with a prostitute (whether or not this should be illegal, it is long settled law in the US that it is a State matter, not a Federal matter) it will be for "transporting across state lines for immoral purposes". Which of course brings to mind a dreadful joke, but that will remain untold.

Yours, considering the whole thing a dreadful joke,
N.

Ness he's not!

Eliot Spitzer is clearly no Eliot Ness.
And he won't be vice president either.
And from the look of it, he won't be governor
of New York for very much longer either!

Yours, (a)/(be)mused by it all,
N.

Chicken pot pie

Having roasted a couple of chickens last night for dinner, and only having eaten about half of the meat, and the weather being chilly, chicken pot pies were a natural on the menu for today.
We always have reduced chicken stock available (I make a big pot of stock, strain it, and then reduce it down until it is almost a jelly --- ten cups reduced to one cup, or so: then I freeze it in a saucepan, remove it, and cut it into one ounce chunks: whenever I need a cup of chicken stock I pull out a chunk and dissolve it in hot water: it makes making really great rice easy), so I simmered some carrots, and celery in stock for a while, added some frozen peas and corn, cubes of leftover chicken, added salt, pepper and about half a cup of heavy cream, and filled a pie.
I am so glad that I finally discovered how to make great pastry: for years this was something I'd try every few months, fail, and vow to try again someday.
Then I discovered cutting cold butter into small cubes (about 100 cubes from
a stick, which sounds a lot, but three slices along the length in each direction, then cutting into 10 or twelve pieces crosswise gives you that many) and for a savoury dough, replacing a quarter of the butter with lard, tossing it all with flour, and throwing it in the freezer for an hour before using a food processor to make the dough makes it easy.

6 oz cold butter, cut into small cubes
2 oz lard
2 cups all purpose flour
teaspoon or so of salt
1/3 cup of ice cold water

Toss the cubed butter and the lard with the sifted flour into the bowl of the food processor (with the blade in the bowl): put the whole lot in the freezer for an hour.
Pulse a few times, add most of the water, pulse again a few times, check if it is coming together, and if not, add a little more water. Pulse again.

Turn out onto plastic wrap, gather into two equal-ish piles, and press together to form two rounds of dough: wrap up in plastic wrap and press and shape into two rounds a few inches across, and less than half an inch thick. Refrigerate for half an hour or an hour or so.
Roll out into two circles to fit a nine inch pie plate. Etc.

It tasted good.

Yours, feeling flaky,
N.

A lovely day

A friend of LOML's and mine from some years back came to visit today: we hadn't seen her in at least three years, perhaps more: in the interim, lots of things have changed, and lots has stayed the same. We quickly settled into an easy rhythm, standing around in the kitchen cooking, catching up, and laughing a lot.
How pleasant:-) And she brought Veuve Cliquot too!


Yours, drinking to (and with) old friends,
N.

I find it curious

And when I say curious, what I mean is that I really don't understand this: the house next door to us has been sold twice over the past 8 years, once to a real estate company, and then to someone who leased it as a rental property, first to a lovely couple, and then to a dog-grooming business.
This week, a for sale sign went up outside the house. It is a small property, and both times that we've seen it sold, it has gone for a fairly reasonable price: but this time around, when we looked at the information on it, we discovered that they are asking more than twice what they paid for it! Now, they have put some work into it, but not that much --- it's absolutely ridiculous!
Of course, it's not like housing prices are in a slump or anything at the moment, or as if the economy were close to being declared in a recession....

Yours, dumbfounded,
N.

Football, with the feet

I've always wondered why it is that Americans call their autumnal sport "football", given that it seems to use almost as little foot-ball action as basketball and baseball do (and at least in those sports, bases and baskets are important). And it does get in the way of communicating with most of the rest of the world, for whom futbol is another sport entirely.

Some decades ago, the US government passed "Title IX" (that's 'nine', not 'ix'), outlawing the practice of denying any aspect of the educational experience to any group: and in particular this has been taken to mean: if schools or colleges spend money on a sport for boys or men, then they have to provide comparable opportunities for girls or women. This has led to a boom in opportunities for women to participate in sports, and one sport that has boomed as a result is soccer. This was evident in 96 and many of the subsequent years with the US team's strength in women's soccer.

And as a consequence it is easy to find soccer lessons and clubs for small children (and refreshingly they are gender non-specific). Boo and Skibo started this afternoon, with their first experience playing the game at the local "Y". Apparently they were fantastic (I was home making dinner while LOML took them to play --- we take turns getting to take them to this sort of thing), listening well to instruction, playing hard, and really doing very well with things like ball control, trapping the ball, stopping and starting, etc.

Of course, with soccer twice a week, gymnastics once a week, ballet once a week, we are already well on the way to the classic US overscheduled children. And they are only five and three. How do we regain control? We can't cancel dance or gymnastics. And with soccer, they are literally having a ball.

Yours, spinning,
N.

Harpies redux

The Toronto Globe and Mail is following up on the story of the Harpies interfering in the Democratic primary.

Still fuming.
N.

Oh! Canada!

How could you? It now appears that the Harper regime in Ottawa may have made up, a construction out of whole cloth, as it were, the story that the Obama campaign contacted the Canadian ambassador to say "ignore me on NAFTA -- I don't mean it".
According to the CBC, it now appears that the Harper crowd contacted Obama's campaign, deliberately leaked an inaccurate representation of what the campaign said. "Don't worry, Obama is not a protectionist" became "ignore what I say, I'm just saying it to get elected".
I'm disgusted in the government of the country I have in the past called home. I don't blame the country, but I do blame the Tories.

Yours, cursing the harpies,
N.

The idiocy of the US election process

Watching, fascinated, loving every minute of it, the current primaries and caucuses to determine who will compete for the presidency of the US, I am struck by the fact that whether or not I love watching it, the process is absurd. Ridiculous. Some states have primaries (i.e. votes) and others have caucuses (cf Lewis Carroll to see how ridiculous they are). And the ones which have primaries have arcane and weird rules to determine the number of "delegates" (some of whom may change their votes, if they wish, at some point). Surely it would be better to have a total vote count to determine the outcome?
And if it was deemed desirable to have states vote on different days, it certainly shouldn't be the case that their votes count for different amounts: early states get to help determine who gets voted off the primary ballot: but they don't get any extra influence. Nor should they get any less influence.
If every state had a primary rather than a caucus, perhaps it would be possible to pass such a proposal. But in the system we have now, is it possible to dream of a change?

Yours, dreaming of the day when the US endorses "one person, one vote" at last,
N.

How can it take days to count the votes?

On MSNBC just now, Chuck Todd, their political director, made the point that in some rural counties it can take days to count the votes. How on earth can this be? It's not like he was suggesting that these were areas in which precincts had millions of voters: the suggestion was that they were sparsely populated. How can it take so long?
Are they walking the results in to the county seat? Don't they have telephones? Computers? Calculators? Fingers? Rudimentary arithmetic skills?

Yours, bemused, befuddled and completely bewildered,
N.

A result worth mentioning

In the county of Loving, Texas, the results were in early. With 100% of precincts counted, Obama leads Clinton by a total of 7 votes to 5.

Yours, loving it,
N.

Another view of the turnout figures

Turnout in Ohio looks like it will come close to matching the general election turnout for the Democratic Party. Of course, there hasn't been a real race for a week or three on the Republican side, so there is bound to be less incentive to turn out.

Turnout in Texas is hard to estimate, since they are reporting early voting in a very strange (and unexplained) way --- so the count of 40% of precincts reporting is hard to extrapolate from. Still, there's already well over 1.6 million votes counted, and in the last general election the Republicans only got 4.5 million --- with their home son on the ticket!

In Vermont, turnout on the D side is likely to be about 150,000 --- or better than 80% of the last general election on the D side: in Rhode Island by comparison, curiously, the excitement was lacking -- it is only at about 65% of the last general election Democratic turnout. Why, it's down there with California!

Yours, crunching numbers,
N.

Clinton doesn't want good press

Surely, Clinton really really really can't want good press! Otherwise, would she really have arranged that the press room would be a mens' toilet? And did they really serve them food in there?????

Yours, completely flabbergasted!
N.

Parent Teacher conferences

LOML and I met with Boo and Skibo's teachers this afternoon --- and let me tell you, there is nothing that puffs a parent up quite like being told just how good and smart and well behaved not one, but both of your children are!
For some reason, the school doesn't seem to emphasize art very much --- and both Boo and Skibo love drawing at home: yesterday marked a turning point for both of them -- Boo drew a house which was quite identifiable as such, and then, to our astonishment, she drew little flowers in front of the house! And they looked like flowers!
Skibo, 21 months her junior, is learning from his older sister: his drawing yesterday of people showed him beginning to represent heads and bodies -- no arms or legs yet -- but he's a good few months of when she took the same step. Nice to see him shining too, as it is distressingly easy for us to always be amazed at what she can do, and then fail to recognize that he's doing something wonderful too.

Yours, amazed at them both,
N.

Brioche

I've been promising various friends that I would write up the brioche recipe for them: it is taken essentially from Julia Child's book "Baking With Julia" (a wonderful book: please do yourself a favour and run out and buy a copy!)

Stage 1:
1/3 cup warm milk
1 large egg
yeast
2 cups all purpose flour (I like to use King Arthur)
To start with, mix the warmed milk, the egg, about a tablespoon of yeast and one cup of the flour together into a shaggy mess in the bowl of a heavy duty stand mixer. Cover with the remaining flour. Leave uncovered to let the yeast come to life: the flour will 'crack', almost like a mini-earthquake after half an hour or so.

Stage 2:
1/4 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 1/2 cups ap flour
Add the sugar, the lightly beated eggs and one cup of the flour to the mixing bowl. Mix on slow until it comes together, add enough of the remaining flour that it creates a soft, slightly sticky dough. Now let the machine knead it for fifteen minutes or longer. Here the recipe recommends using medium-high speed, but my mixer's handbook has a "thou shalt not use the doughhook on high speed or any speed higher than '2'" injunction, together with "modify your bread recipes accordingly". So, give it at least 15 minutes, maybe longer, until you have a lovely dough.

Stage 3:
1 1/2 sticks cold unsalted butter
Bash the butter until it is cold but pliable, a similar stiffness to the dough. Cut into pieces, and gradually add to the dough, kneading for another few minutes after all the butter is added to ensure that it is well mixed in. The dough should feel cool, slightly tacky to the touch, and should have an almost silky feel to it. Put it in a large buttered bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and leave to rise.

After the dough has doubled, reach under the dough and run your hands around to collapse it: cover it again, and leave it in the fridge for at least 4-6 hours, preferably overnight. It's now ready for use in your favourite brioche recipe.

For the dessert pizza, flatten a round of dough (half of the batch above) into a 9 inch circle (I put it into a parchment lined nine-inch circular stoneware pie plate.
Bake it at 375 for about 20 minutes, until golden brown. Top with coulis and drizzle with melted chocolate, white or otherwise.

Yours, because I felt you kneaded to know,
N.

Red wine reduction with steak

Yesterday we helped a friend celebrate her 40th birthday (yes, we hang out with those youngsters all the time...): when we had asked her her favourite foods, she indicated that she liked pan fried steak with a red wine reduction sauce: so naturally I decided it was time to learn how to do that.
America's Best Recipes to the rescue: one of the first cookbooks I look at before trying something new, and I tried it as written yesterday. The reduction was simple to make: finely mince a shallot, a couple of small mushrooms, a small carrot, and simmer it with a cup of good red wine, for about 20-30 minutes. Strain, and reduce some more.
Cook the steaks in the pan (high heat, to caramelize the outside of the steaks), remove the meat to a platter, and tent with foil to let it rest. In the pan put a finely minced shallot, cook over low heat for a minute, add a third of a cup each of chicken and beef stock, simmer to reduce for several minutes. Add the wine reduction, cook over low for a few minutes, then whisk in three tablespoons of cold unsalted butter, a tablespoon at a time. Salt and pepper and pour over the plated steaks.

It was quite delicious! As with all wine reductions, use a wine that you actively enjoy drinking: its flavours will concentrate immensely in the reduction process. Likewise, the better stock you use, the better, too.

Yours, saucily,
N.

SNL's Hillary impersonation

Saturday Night Live's impersonations of both Obama and Clinton were abolutely awful: or so I thought until Hillary herself turned up to read the "Live from..." line, and Amy Pohler came out in the same outfit: I realized that the big problem with her impersonation is the mouth: she's frantic, and Hillary herself is slower, more careful.

The Obama impersonation, as yet, has nothing to recommend it. Perhaps there will be something better later in the show....

Yours, uncopied,
N.

A new month

and already, a sad start. I dropped a knife this morning, and the handle broke. Broke off. And the knife is the first decent knife I ever bought: I'd had it for almost twenty five years --- a six inch utility knife good for just about anything.
Now, it isn't my favourite knife -- or wasn't, I should say -- I far prefer eight inch chefs knives now for most tasks, and I have another six inch utility knife that I preferred anyway: but it was and old friend. And now it's sitting on the counter, waiting for me to throw it away. It's hard, just throwing away an old friend you've had for decades.

Yours, down,
N.

Blogs are down

but it appears that posting still works. How unusual.

Yours, repressing an urge to write and write and write.
N.

Happy Birthday!

A very happy birthday to all those people who were born on the 29th of February! I remember growing up thinking about how sad it must be for them to only get a real birthday once every four years: but now, I think about how special each of those real birthdays must feel!

Yours, bringing greetings,
N.

More on reading

Boo's teacher lent her a book yesterday to take home and read to LOML and me: and she did! several times:-) Previously, she had read several pages (and in reality actually much more text than in this book) of a longer book: the key thing here is that this time she read a whole book! It's fantastic to see the look of achievement on her face as she finishes! And fascinating to watch and hear as she starts gaining confidence in her words, recognizing the common ones more and more by sight, and becoming less hesitant in reading, actually grouping the words together in sentences!
And recognizing that a sentence is a question, and giving the words a rising tone!

I love being read to by her:-) I just can't wait till the books get to be less dreadful!

Yours, paged,
N.

More origami opportunities

I'm gradually finding more opportunities to do origami --- there are two new ones on the horizon.
A few months ago an arts centre opened up in the next town over from where we live: and various people have mentioned to me that they are looking for people to teach various arts skills: I know several people involved, and am going to see if I can get started with something this summer.
For the second one, I'm making some pieces that will be photographed and used for a t-shirt for a local math competition in a few weeks: I'll probably run a fun 20 minute seminar on how to fold them in between the morning and afternoon sessions of the competition. It will definitely be interesting to teach to older students than the ones I work with every Friday afternoon at the moment!

Yours, keeping down the day job, but enjoying the extracurricular activity,
N.

It's taken me an hour to get to this screen

And now I can't do anything else. It won't publish. All I can do is type in the text and hope that I can publish it in the morning.

Computer problems left, right, up the middle, overhead, overheard, under the bed today. Enough that LOML threatened to make me stay at home rather than going to our friends house for dinner if my mood didn't lighten. Needless to say, that helped cheer me up immensely.

Tant pis. A night without the web. I can do it. I will survive.

Yours, clawing at the ceiling.
N.

Something is wrong with our network at home

I don't think that it is inside the house --- I suspect that it is a problem with our internet service provider. But LOML can't get to gmail, and I'm finding various pages interminably slow to load.
So, no real post this evening.
Yours, in apology,
N.

More politics --- don't read:-)

Mark Halperin, one of the more successful poli-journalists around, a future all-star talking head, has a list of ways that he thinks that McCain can beat Obama. And one of them is to play the "Manchurian Candidate" card: now, let me see: the plot of the Manchurian Candidate: a former prisoner of war from a time long ago, during a land war in Asia, turns out to have been brainwashed, and is now running for high political office. And which of McCain and Obama spent more time in an environment where such brainwashing could happen? Does anyone else, say, anyone with a clue, feel that this would be a profitable avenue for McCain to explore?

Yours, unwashed, brain or otherwise,
N.

More politics --- don't read:-)

Someone far more eloquent than I

I could never write this way --- but this is what I was trying to say the other day.

Yours, hoping for a nadir, not a Nader,
N.

Stan Rogers they're not

but this is tremendous... check out this youtube of Fry and Laurie kicking ass.....

Yours, still twitching,
N.

Jon Stewart just made the oscars for me...

(and I suppose the backstage producers too....) Two people came out to receive the oscar for best song: one of them talked too long, so the other didn't get to have a say.
And in what for me is a first, a few minutes later, Stewart announced that she hadn't hand a chance to say her thanks, and brought her out again! So, so sweet.
And neither of them were famous --- a delightful oscar!

Yours, touched,
N.

Not again, Nader

Ralph Nader announced this morning that he will again run for President. After what happened in 2000, in which all and sundry (with the exception of Nader) recognize that he made the difference between Gore winning the popular vote and the electoral college, and his failing to be credited with a win in Florida --- Nader still seems to think that Gore did better in Florida and nationwide because he himself was in the race (what arrogant idiocy!) --- can there really be anyone out there who cares about Nader's issues who really will vote for Nader again?

I think that one measure of an individual is whether the collective impact of the
differences they make around them are for the better or for the worse. It is clear in my mind which side of the line, say, the current president falls. In Nader's case, I think that the case can be made that, as Bush's great enabler, he is a net negative.
In spite of all the good he did as a consumer advocate, his net impact is awful.

With luck the election this time around will be a bit less close than in 2000.

Yours, rooting against the raiders,
N.

Phew

Breathing through my nose again: so much better:-)

Yours, aerated,
N.

All quet on the Western front

Too quiet. Another lazy day --- we didn't go to an international festival at a local elementary school --- none of us feeling up to anything strenuous. In my case, it's at least partly the flu --- or near-flu symptoms. I'd hoped that being vaccinated would stave it off, but this year's strain is apparently rather virulent. Sinuses stuffed, muscles aching, nose running: fortunately no fever or chills yet.

Time to snuggle up in my big armchair, and watch the latest Harry Potter dvd.

Yours, ughly,
N.

The origami is coming together

The school's fundraiser is three weeks hence, and so we are beginning to get a sense of urgency about getting the origami all folded (they have an asian theme to the fundraiser this year, and so I am coordinating the students folding enough pieces to decorate all the tables).
Apparently there will be 20 large tables, with several pieces on each ---- 11 of them will be sponsor tables with more substantial main pieces --- ranging from cranes made from 12 inch paper (mostly done) to geometric shapes, other animals, etc.
I think that we've done about 80% of the folding so far --- including all the folding that we did for the hundreds of invitations! --- but the remaining pieces are the ones that we need for the important (i.e. expensive) tables, and hence need to be more impressive!

Conveniently, I may be out of town for a few days a week before the benefit happens -- giving me an additional incentive to have everything done next week!

I've been promised photographs of the final displays --- LOML and I are better at donating our time to projects than our money! --- and will post them here in a few weeks time.



Yours, piecing it all together,
N.

Imagination

LOML was out this evening for dinner, having cooked a meal for our friends, one of whom has had a couple of strokes recently. So I was left to have dinner with Boo and Skibo by myself: and it was a lovely time (mostly). We had roast chicken, with salad, and they both were more than happy to chow down on the chicken. Neither of them are big fans of salad, so I got them to pretend that the red lettuce leaves were strawberries, and from there, their imaginations took off: they both finished off their salads, alternately pretending they were eating m&ms, mandarin oranges, even some really weird things like leaves with caterpillars on:-)

All in all, a lovely evening.
Yours, smitten with their imaginations,
N.

McCain and the IseWoman

I do not like McCain: I think that he has had a free pass from the press on multiple issues: he's touted by the media as a "straight talker" when he has flipped more flops than a pair of sandals: and he is seen as a paragon of ethics in politics in spite of being "One-of-Five" in the Keating scandal back in the late eighties/early nineties.
Nonetheless, I don't think that the issue here is whether he had a sexual relationship with Ms Iseman: that should be an issue between him and his wife, and of course, if true, I guess also Ms Iseman.
No, I believe that the more important issue here is this: what the heck was he doing having such an intimate relationship (I mean in terms of the closeness of the friendship) with a lobbyist, inviting her along at completely inappropriate moments?

Let's not focus on the sex: let's focus on the policy favours he did for her.

Yours, favouring this approach,
N.

On the rise

Have you ever looked at the moon through a telescope? I was absolutely unprepared for how fast it moves: on the screen, showing about half a moon's width, you could see it moving: the telescope needed to be realigned every few seconds!

Don't believe me? I'm going to try uploading video now to show it! First time uploading video, so if it doesn't work, bear with me:-) And if you have a slow
connection, don't click on it!

Yours, moved,
N.

"the whole of the moon"

Tonight was an eclipse of the moon: and since we have a nearly new telescope, with a USB camera, this was a nice opportunity to try to learn to use the new equipment... an hour to get everything set up, and a while to try things out: it worked after a fashion. Unfortunately, the title of the post notwithstanding, I didn't get to see the whole of the moon (in the camera): the field of view was too restricted: but nonetheless, I'm reasonably pleased with the images below!

Yours, baying at the moon,
N.

Linking to brilliance

Here is a wonderful cartoon on why the US government was right to get the telecom companies to spy on citizens, and right to give them retroactive immunity from prosecution.... sheer brilliance.

Yours, in awe,
N.

Turnout in Washington State

Both parties had a caucus in Washington State a couple of weeks ago: and both have primaries today: the Republican primary actually determines more delegates, but the Democratic primary is merely for show, as far as delegates go.
And even so, it appears that the Democrats will spank the Republicans on turnout.

Yours, with apologies to all those who are not completely obsessed with the minutiae of US politics!
N.

With apoloies to Monty Python

I love Monty Python: some of their insanity was inspired brilliance: but they have left an ugly residue on the political process in the US. I refer, of course to "this theory, this theory which is mine...." which seems to have led large numbers of people in this country to regard any vaguely held belief as a theory, as equally valid as any other theory.

I am (surely even more obviously) referring to the "debate" over evolution: amongst the scientific community, there is a legitimate debate, about whether the details of the theory need to be tweaked: there are serious schisms about subtle points (for example, punctuated evolution): but there is really not a serious division about whether evolution, broadly described, happens. And it is to a very large extent, almost overwhelmingly, a scientific theory: that is to say that its premises can be used to generate conjectures, and these conjectures can then be tested: the theory can be proven to be false, or merely flawed, or in need of tweaking.

This is something that can't be said of the alternatives pushed by those on the anti-evolution side. They may describe their alternatives as "theories" just as they deride evolution as "just at theory": in this they misuse the word theory at least once. Evolution is indeed, just a scientific theory: their alternatives are merely "theories" in the Pythonesque sense.

I was prompted to these musings by the decision by the Florida school board to give the official thumbs up to the teaching of the theory of evolution: with the emphasis on "theory": perhaps we in the scientific community can now lobby the state (and other states) to mandate the teaching of what it means for a theory to be a theory!

Yours, speaking merely theoretically,
N.

Rash predictions

With 10% of precincts responding, it looks as though the results will be around
Obama: 500,000
Clinton: 430,000
McCain: 230,000
Huckabee: 160,000
Paul: 18,000
Romney: 8,000

Quite something.

Yours, saying no more,
N.

Update: with about 50% reporting, it appears that Obama's total will go up, and all of the others will go down. And as of now, Clinton is leading the Republican party. But just slightly.

The big race is on

Can Clinton pull out a win tonight? No, not against Obama --- that race has already been called: and it looks highly likely that Senator Clinton will get more votes than Senator McCain: no, the remaining horserace tonight is this: can Clinton, losing the democratic primary, still get more votes than the Republicans combined?

Yours, counting every vote
N.

Let us all have a network moment

Please, wherever you are, in the US or elsewhere, will you do me a favour? Will you stick your head out of the window (metaphorically speaking) and tell everyone that you are mad as hell and you are not going to take it any more? Please?
And link to this post: which makes me absolutely mad as hell.
Yours, fuming,
N.

On words

There has been much said back and forth over the past couple of weeks about words versus deeds, with the Clinton campaign trying to make the case that while they will be able to get things done, all Obama has is rhetoric.
Now, it seems to me that a natural response to this is "Words mean something". Followed by "here are some examples of great US rhetoric which changed things. And even someone like me, who grew up in another country and continent can name the speeches, the lines one would quote.
I could have written Deval Patrick's speech. I could have written Obama's speech. Any educated US citizen would have written a similar speech. It is not surprising: it is not original: it is, however, deep and meaningful.
Does Obama's "quoting" of Patrick rise to the level of plagiarism? That to me is a difficult question: at the formal level, probably not, since the words that were identical were actually quotes (and clearly intended as quotes) from earlier speeches. Did his expressing an identical idea with slightly different words make it plagiarism? As I have tried to express above, I don't quite think so.

A completely different question, of course, is whether he or Patrick actually wrote the speech in the first place: and if they both had the same speechwriter write it, can it really be called plagiarism?

Yours, probably saying the same thing as a lot of other people right now,
N.

For Presidents' Day

A quiz. One question. I have a non-authoritative answer, thanks to some googling: what is a "nutmeg dealer"? And why does this make me want to write a cookbook for this time of year with "nutmeg dealer" in the title?

Yours, amused,
N.

A wet and miserable, hence lazy, day

The weather cooperated today: with LOML and I being in particularly unenergetic frames of mind, and the children wanting to play balloon catch inside for hours, we had a spectacularly nothing-y lazy day. Just what we wanted.
Of course, for the children it is a three day weekend (Presidents' Day, or perhaps more accurately, All Presidents' But the Resident's Day), so Boo and Skibo can sit at home and contemplate Millard Fillmore and other strangely named individuals. It will be interesting to see tomorrow morning if they bounce out of bed the way they have been doing recently -- on weekends they have this unerring sense of "we don't have to go to school, so we can come and bounce on Mummy and Daddy in their bed at 6am", whereas on schooldays, they are much more restrained. By which I mean that they have to be physically lifted out of bed at 7:25 or 7:30. And dressed. Unerring, I tell you. Unnerving too.

Yours, bounced upon,
N.

Happy new year

again.
From what I understand from reading about it on the web, the Chinese New Year celebration lasts for a couple of weeks, and various days have special significance. One of the traditions is that of days which are auspicious to have visitors -- family and friends -- come over and participate in a feast.
And today is either one of those days, or very close to it.
So we had friends over this evening, and ate, and enjoyed each others company, wished each other a happy new year (again), and all in all had a good time.
After we'd eaten our fill, and had taken the remnants out to the kitchen, we swung children around to the Beatles --- a very joyful, if not-particularly-traditional end to a Chinese new year feast!


Yours, still singing obla di blada,
N.

Reading

Boo appears to be on the precipice, about to take that massive step out into the unknown: she is hesitantly, slowly, but with more and more confidence, reading words and occasionally phrases in books --- and this evening sat down with LOML and with me and read almost a dozen pages of Kipper to us. She is doing so wonderfully well: we have been waiting for this moment, and are thoroughly enjoying seeing her take these steps!

Yours, thrilled, proud, delighted!
N.

Happy St. Valentine's Day

To all my readers, both of you (or all three of you, I lost count)!

I must say, I miss the days of the UK some few decades ago, when valentines were supposed to be anonymous -- and you gave hints to suggest your identity to the object of your affection: so much more subtle and romantic than the current version of "buy flowers or else"...
Yours, in a retrospective yet romantic mood,
N.

One of those days

when I leave for work at 7am and get home at about 10pm. Fortunately they are few and far between, and I did actually managed to spend an hour at home in the middle of the day --- LOML took Skibo to be assessed for the school district pre-K program (the state-run education program for 4 year olds): unfortunately, it is designed for families well below the average income, and we are aways above, or for students with special needs --- so naturally Skibo was on his best behaviour, showing just how smart, co-ordinated, talented, and generally with it he can be! Oh well, at least the non-state-run version exists and is tax-deductible.....

Yours, learning, but not as fast as Skibo,
N.

Ouch

Tortured logic indeed. Scalia appears to be arguing that if you are tortured before you are convicted that is okay, even if the constitution would forbid it after conviction.

Sometimes I wonder about some of the folks on the extreme right. And other times, I don't wonder. I just know. This is one of those times.

Can't find a good link to this: there was a short piece on NPR earlier, and an AP report that I can't find right now. Here is the show he was interviewed on.

Yours, in disgust,
N.

The falls at the end of the walk

As you can see, the falls were lacking in water: rather an insipid drop: still pretty, but the drought has really become made plain.

The water was flowing just enough to look crystal clear: but last time we were here, the water level was about three feet higher, and much faster. This time, it was clear that socks and shoes had to come off.

Both children rolled up their trousers: Skibo, of course, managed to fall down in the water several times --- and had we thought to bring a change of trousers for him? Of course we hadn't.

LOML was seized with an urge to do a series on feet. Here are two of them.

As a scientist, I was pleased to see examples of geology. Or rocks, or stones, or whatever these are. Pretty:-)

Yours, from the falls,
N.

A lovely day in the woods

Saturday was a gorgeous day here. LOML and I had been discussing the fact that we hadn't gone 'xplorin' in a while --- before the children were born we'd often take a map, randomly pick somewhere a few dozen miles from here, and go see it. With the children (and especially with a combination of "where are we going" and "are we there yet?") the idea of a random destination has become somewhat less attractive: but there are a number of places we've found, and we hadn't been to many of them in quite a while.
We decided to visit a local waterfall: it is about a half hour drive, then a good half hour walk (longer with little legs!) along a gentle trail into the woods.
It had been well over a year since we had been there, and the intervening months have been full of drought and almost empty of rain: it showed in the waterfall, which was rather more of a trickle than a fall: but it was beautiful still: the day was great, and the children took off their socks and shoes and paddled around in the pools of water at the base of the falls.

Only here can we go up into the mountains, in the middle of winter, and paddle barefoot in a stream!

Yours, warmly,
N.

Pandora's music box

What I"m listening to right now: Stan Rogers' "Free in the Harbour", from his album Northwest Passage. I listen to this song a lot: it is a hauntingly beautiful, a story of how children of fishermen leave their traditions to become oil refinery workers in Alberta. I know some of these people (or at least, I knew the children of farmers who did the same thing): and the song is deeper for all that.

But what is of interest here is that I am listening to it on a radio station "Stan Rogers Radio": it plays music of a similar type. It's not a real radio station: it is a construct of Pandora.com which I have created to play songs of this type. I've told it to throw in things like Pete Seeger, Woody and Arlo Guthrie, etc, and it plays a bunch of other interesting things too.
Unfortunately it's only available in the US: licensing issues keep them from allowing access in other countries: and its collection is not perfect: no Zoe Lewis, for example, which surprised me a little (I expected not to find Jennifer Gasoi or Nancy Day, for example, but I thought that Lewis's Sheep might be well enough known that she'd show up!) But if you are in this country, I'd recommend giving it a try. Throw in your favourite musicians and see what it spits back at you!

I have an awful feeling that this is going to be a fiscal disaster for me --- it will introduce me to new music I'll end up wanting to buy.

Yours, anticipating musically induced poverty,
N.

Mr Fry blogs. On open source

A stray column on a blog I read (one rather better known, I suspect, than almost all the others I read put together) (it's eschaton, atrios's blog) noted that Stephen Fry has a blog.
Now, there is only one Stephen Fry: at least as far as I am concerned: he is the man to whom Emma Thompson turned in Peter's Friends and said "Fill me with your little babies!"; Blackadder's Duke, General, and nemesis all those years.

I watched Fry and others in Footlights a year or two ago (here a year or two should be read as a decade or seventythruvizx): if pressed, I could probably still recreate a bad joke or none from the revue. Needless to say, I'm a fan. Even of his books, which are merely hilariously funny.

And I go to read said blog, only to discover that he has the same proclivities as I, that is to say, he's a linux and open source bigot!

Oh my. I now have two things in common with Mr. Fry! Does this mean that I have a chance to become a success in the future too?

Yours, aspiring,
N.

Agnosticism, atheism and theism

David Horton, at the Huffington Post, had a piece a few days ago in which he proclaimed that there is no middle ground between a belief in God and atheism: he has no room for agnostics. Unfortunately, the HuffPost has no room for comments, at least from those who don't sign up with an account with them, and I hate having to have accounts here there and everywhere. So I have to respond in public, here.

To an extent, I agree with him. I have no truck with agnostics. At least, in the Huxleyian sense of the word: in its original meaning agnosticism was the belief that it was and would forever remain impossible to know whether there was a God. And that is a position I don't hold: it is clear to me that if God doesn't exist then it is highly likely we will never be able to disprove her existence (so on one side, I side with the atheists): on the other, however, I maintain that if there was a God, she certainly could prove to us her existence. Or at least demonstrate it to an extent that we'd have more reason to believe it than to believe, say, that the sun would rise tomorrow. So, I don't hold that it is impossible to know.
Of course, Horton more likely had in mind the wishy-washy group of whom I'm a proud member: a group who choose not to say "I believe in God": I've seen no personal evidence for one, and have not got a solid reason (other than cultural and heritage) to choose one particular incarnation of a description of a supreme being over another: indeed, the multitude of different belief structures around is one of the reasons I see not to be persuaded by any of them. Each proclaims that they are the way, the tao, etc. Most of them are not the way (a fact which most theists are happy to proclaim: they are just reluctant to include their own beliefs in that unfortunately large group!)
On the flip side, however, I am not an atheist. To me, atheism is a positive belief --- in the non-existence of a supreme being: and again, to me, to believe in such a thing, I need evidence. And as the old saw goes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So I choose not to be an atheist. Merely disinterested in the whole thing.

Except, of course, when it impinges on my life: when others attempt to impose their beliefs on me, to change the way I live. Please don't be offended, but I have no wish to say "so help me God" at any point in a legal proceeding: nor have I any wish to include "under God" in the saying of the pledge of allegiance of which this country is so proud.

The world is a mysterious, amazing place, full of magic and wonder: but I don't need to invoke the supernatural to explain our lack of understanding. I'll proclaim that loud and proud. But I don't need to say "I'm an atheist" to do so.

Yours, toasting irrelevance,
N.

Evidence

that I am right. Here.

The cartoon strip is worth visiting.

Yours, vindicated,
N.

6001, A Race Oddity

The race to the Whitehouse had it's little oddity on Tuesday: there was a tied vote, 6001 - 6001 Clinton-Obama, out of 12346 votes cast (it would have been so much prettier if there had been exactly one fewer vote cast!). National Public Radio today stated (without clarification) that a mathematics professor had shown that the odds of this happening were less than one in a million.

I'd beg to differ, except that I poked around a little, and discovered that what she showed was that the odds of this happening if the vote were a random sample from the same distribution as the entire state was less than one in a million. Hence, she concluded, there is a different distribution for the folks in Syracuse than for the rest of the state, in which Clinton won by a reasonably large margin.

"Well", says I, "hit me with the stupid stick and colour me purple."

Of course there was a different distribution. Look at the bloody vote! It counts everyone who chose to vote. The votes are different.

Now, if she had been talking instead about polling, or random samples, then she might have a point. But the vote in Syracuse was not a random sample of opinion there, it was an actual vote: it is not a sample, it is the true outcome!

And even if it were referring to sampling, it wouldn't be surprising. It would be reflecting a common outcome, namely that populations are not homogeneous in their opinions: she was testing an hypothesis (that the distribution in Syracuse is the same as the average distribution around the state) which one would almost certainly expect to be false in this election. Obama is a hit on college campuses, and Syracuse is a college town: it is to be expected that he might outperform there than he did in some other areas.

To give Professor Kim her due, she was probably asked to perform this calculation by the press: specifically the Post-Standard.

Here, though, is the calculation that I wish that she had added:
Now that we have convinced ourselves that the distribution is not the same as the rest of the state, let us ask instead the better question: suppose that the population were tied in its opinion of Clinton and Obama, and we take a random sample of 12346 voters: what is the probability that we'd end up with and exact tie then? To persuade you that this is not as unlikely as you think, let's simplify it slightly: instead of 12346 voters, some of whom might vote for a third candidate or spoil a ballot, let's toss a fair coin 12002 times, and ask for the probability that it comes up heads 6001 times and tails 6001 times.

This is an easy calculation to do: it turns out that the most likely number of heads you'll get is exactly 6001, and that the probability that this happens is about 0.00728: that is, about 0.7%, or almost one percent of the time. In other words, while ties are unlikely, they are not prohibitively so, when taking samples from tied distributions. Furthermore, if you perform this experiment, say, one hundred times, the odds of seeing a tie at least once are better than 50-50 (about 52% in fact). So, if this sampling model is a good model of the elections, if there were 100 precincts in which opinion was tied, you would not be surprised to see tied votes!
I've drastically simplified the model, mainly for the ease of computation, but more sophisticated models give the same qualitative behaviour: once you accept that different areas in the state have different populations, this sort of outcome becomes much less unlikely than the media, and Professor Kim, have suggested!

Rather than giving the media the message that 6001-6001 is this dramatically unlikely event, I wish she had taken the opportunity to demonstrate yet another circumstance in which coincidences do happen!

Yours, counting votes,
N.

Romney pulls an Edwards

He insisted over the past couple of days that he was staying in the race for the long term, and then called a new conference to announce he was dropping out.

I was a little surprised that he used CPAC as his venue (okay, it wasn't really a news conference, it was a scheduled speech): perhaps he thinks that in four years this will make a good jumping off point for his campaign against President Oba/nton.

I thought that his ultra-honourable reason for dropping out --- so as not to split the party and thereby allow the Democrats to win the election --- seemed disingenuous at best. I suspect that there were some discussions between him and his family about how best to spend the rest of his fortune: on them, or on a losing race for President....

Still, it can't be easy to be a presidential candidate, especially one who has been taken seriously by the media, and have to choose to drop out. So, although I have no sympathy for most of his this-year-expressed views (as opposed to his views of a few years back when he was running in Massachusetts) I'm signing off as

Yours, with a smidge of sympathy for the individual,
N.

Business strategies

A question for all my economist/marketing/business experts amongst my friends (of whom I may actually have none):
Differential pricing is a long established practice in the business world: paperbacks versus hardbacks, first/business class versus cattle club, overnight shipping versus slow boat to China. And in the book market, it is reasonably clear that publishers release the hardback at a higher price, early, to milk as much out of those willing to pay more, and making cheapskates like me wait another few months to buy a copy. The hardback costs more to print, so it is more expensive.
In the airline industry, the seats are bigger, drinks are free, and it is "exclusive" so you don't have to mingle with the cheap-seaters. There is a perceived value for the seats. And it is justified, since the seats are bigger, so they take up more room, so it is appropriate to pay more, right?
In the shipping business, the value to the customer is clear. If you pay a bit more, you get your stuff shipped to you much more quickly.

What is less clear is where the extra cost to the supplier comes in. Is it really that much more expensive to ship things two-day rather than five-day?

And so to my question: I've travelled less in the past few years than before, but every time I travel, it seems like the conditions have got worse than the previous trip. Have the airlines actually been deliberately trying to make condtions worse in the cheap seats? Or is it just a result of malign neglect?
And UPS seems to be great at overnight shipping, but their standard shipping seems to be deteriorating rapidly: a few months ago I tracked a package only to discover it was sitting in a warehouse a few hundred miles from here for four days. I can't conceive the benefit to UPS to store that package longer than a few hours --- other than deliberately sabotaging one service to tempt people to use a more expensive alternative. Again, is this a deliberate policy? Am I imagining it?

This came to the front of my attention today, when I found out some stuff I ordered on Sunday on Amazon is due for delivery on Tuesday: nine days later! I am looking forward to tracking it to find out where it stays for four days this time!

Yours, cheapskating on thin ice,
N.

Bad storms. Really really bad storms

The tornado-bearing storms yesterday which hit much of the southern part of the US were really really bad. Huge numbers of tornados, and non-tornadic winds in the 60-70 miles per hour range. Over fifty people killed, over several states.
A ton of people to keep in your thoughts.

Yours, saddened and horrified,
N.

Simplistic turnout estimates for various states

Alabama: D 526K: R 524K
Alaska: too early
Arizona: too early
Arkansas: D 311K: R 200K *This is a stunner to me!*
California: too early
Colorado: too early
Connecticut: D 357K: R 163K
Delaware: D 96K: R 50K
Georgia: D 889: R 945K
Idaho: too early, no Republican event today
Illinois: D 2055K: R 688K
Kansas (caucus): D 28k: no Republican event today: (state delegates, whatever that means)
Massachusetts: D 1238K: R 493K
Minnesota (caucus): D 145K: R 63K (but the R's result may really be too early to tell: not voters, but state delegates, whatever that means)
Missouri: D 723K: R 579K
Montana (caucus: no Democratic event today): R 1K (state delegates, whatever that means)
New Jersey: D 1123K: R 565K
New Mexico: too early, no Republican event today
New York: D 1752K: R 596K
North Dakota (caucuses): D 19K: R 9K (State delegates, whatever that means: not voters, I assume)
Oklahoma: D 411K: R 301K (another stunner!)
Tennessee: D 641K: R 563K
Utah: too early
West Virginia: no Democratic event: no vote totals reported for Republicans.

Turnout

At this point, it appears that the turnout on the Democratic side has been much better than the turnout on the Republican side: in particular, scanning down the list of results on CNN's website a moment ago, it appeared that the Republicans led in Georgia, and that Alabama and perhaps one or two other southern states are the only other ones in which Republican turnout came close to the Democratic turnout.
Is this because the Democrats are more engaged in the race? care more? are more energized?

Of course, Utah is yet to come in.

Yours, definitely energized,
N.

Swings and roundabouts...

I'm not going to blog tonight --- except to say that I am glued to the screen, watching the results come in, the exit polls discussed, the prognosticators and pundits talking their little heads off.

Yours, glued,
N.

The shape of Cornish pasties

I'm now confused. Yesterday I messed up the shape of the Cornish pasties: I folded over in half and crimped, much like a Jamaican patty or a calzone: this morning when the gracious MrsMagpie sent me a link to a recipe online, complete with lovely photograph, I realised that I remember the shapes differently, and I had messed up. The pasty should be folded up from both sides, joined at the top in the middle and crimped that way.
I prepared a posting on that score, and prepared to issue the standard triplicate mea culpas to the family for yesterday's error. Then I started investigating other recipes: and I discovered that wikipedia claims the folded-over shape to be traditional, with the folded-up version to be more from Devon.
And now I find that the BBC has a report about the Cornish Pasty Association, whose website has lovely pictures suggesting something halfway between folded-up and folded-over.

Clearly I need to do some more research here.

Yours, confused by non-origami folding,
N.

Cornish Pasties and a call to Cornish readers

I remember cornish pasties fondly from growing up in the UK. And even though they were never from Cornwall, nor baked by a Cornish baker even, they were good, and are to be recreated. Lovingly.

But not last night. I followed Nigella Lawson's recipe, from her "How To Eat" book, I believe: the flavour was okay, pretty good, in fact. But the pastry. It just wasn't right: it was light, it was flaky, it was tasty, it was tender: but it didn't have the heft to it, the integrity to it that a cornish pasty calls for.

Pasties are thing which should be picked up and eaten by hand. Last night's were delicious on a fork, but they weren't pasties.

I know I have a slew of Cornish readers --- well, two or three at least: any recipes/tips/suggestions?

Yours, with thanks in advance,
N.

I wonder how much I take in subconsciously

It is interesting to me that I have managed to train myself well enough not to pay conscious attention to the advertising on television that during the superbowl, I have to make a special effort to focus on the ads, to remember to watch them. I actually do want to watch them, but keep finding myself looking up from the computer to find I've missed one.

Mind you, this year I haven't seen many that were worth paying attention to.

Yours, less than bowled over,
N.

Red Plate

There is a small story behind the red plates: we were given one each as baby shower gifts for Boo and Skibo: they came with an explanation --- they are to be used only when someone has a particularly good or a particularly bad day: they are in celebration of the good, or commiseration of the bad. It's a tradition we liked, and we have tried (not hard enough) to adopt it as our own. I won't go into the (good) circumstances of the appearance of the plate on Wednesday (the night we had calzones) at least not here and not now. We had guests round that day, and so we were able to share a nice family tradition with them: they liked it enough they took details of where to obtain the plates, and I think that they may adopt it for themselves as well:-)

Yours, sharing traditions,
N.

A first attempt

A first attempt at making calzone: they tasted pretty good, but I got lazy and didn't brush with an eggwash: the colour was not as washed out as it looks, but it was definitely not as golden as I would have liked.

Yours, stuffed,
N.