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Metadata
| Ben A. |
Ben H. |
Doug |
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Keep Telling Yourself How Great New York Is
Trying to get New Yorkers to consider that their city is not the greatest place on Earth is only slightly easier that persuading a Salafist that he might want to look into other religions to see what they have to offer. One aspect of New York life that the boosters tout is the idea that New York is "easy to get around." I love that you can rely on mass transit here they gush. If I dare to suggest that Los Angeles might have characteristics to commend it, my auditors blanche: But you'll be stuck in traffic for hours on your commute! Score one for the power of positive thinking; or perhaps the power of sunk real estate costs to bend thought. Perception, in this case, does not match up with reality, not that reality will change anyone's opinion. The Census bureau just released statistics on Americans' commuting experience. New York's average commute clocks in at second longest. Los Angeles: 16th, and ten minutes shorter than New York City.
[Ben H.: 9/2/06 13:06] |
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Public Theater Dead-weight Loss
Around this time of year, on my cab-ride in to work in the very early morning, I often see people camped out in front of the Public Theater. They have staked a place in line in order to get free tickets to, I think, Shakespeare-in-the-Park. When i see this scruffy collection of sleeping bags and tents on the sidewalk, I don't think about commitment to art, but rather of deadweight loss. Sleeping on a sidewalk is unpleasant; otherwise, we would consider homelessness a blessed state and not a tragedy to be remediated. Of course, if the Public cared about maximizing efficiency, it would simply sell tickets like any other theater. However, the Public's mission is to make theater "accessible." In this case, "accessible" means that as cash-poor as a would-be theatergoer may be, she can get tickets by agreeing to undergo the ordeal of sleeping on the sidewalk. In effect, the Public has created an equal opportunity for all to exchange suffering for tokens of value (tickets), but, unlike free-market work (a similar trade), the exchange takes place at a uniform rate for all. The Public gives away something of sufficient value as to inspire people to expose themselves to hours of unpleasantness. Yet, sadly, that unpleasantness is a complete deadweight loss: no one benefits from patrons' long night of shivering. Wouldn't it make more sense for the Public to require a like number of hours of fruitful unpleasantness? For example, maybe it should require those desiring tickets to pick up a certain number of pounds of unscooped dog-poop; or maybe to spend the night on the sidewalk so that NYC's homeless shelters can put the overflow in their beds; or perhaps to require them to watch Mother Courage and Her Children -- oh, wait, I think that's what they're in line for...
[Ben H.: 9/1/06 07:47] |
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Memories of Winthrop Suite's Videogame Room
Do you remember, Doug, when we used to play the Mac game 'Vette? It involved racing a Corvette through the streets of San Francisco. Teh designers put obstacles on the streets in the form of other cars and pedestrians, the latter of which consisted of stylized nuns and blind men. Other readers can surely guess that we very quickly gave up on the idea of racing and instead spent our time experimenting with new and better ways of running over the pedestrians.
Apparently, this fellow must have played the same game.
[Ben H.: 8/29/06 20:45] |
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Nice Work
It was a matter of time, Doug. The only risk was that Mauritania would in the upheaval of revolution change its currency before you could play the word.
[Ben H.: 8/29/06 20:35] |
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Recipes
Those brownie recipes look grand, Doug. Also, Deb suggests salting, rinsing, drying, and pan roasting eggplant to achieve the same effect (in this case, prior to curries, not ratatouille, but the same principle should hold).
[Ben A.: 8/27/06 18:36] |
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Brownies
This is the alpha and omega of all brownie discussion, as far as Dao and I are concerned. You may however want to have handy the recipe for POSTWAR PROSPERITY BROWNIES WITH ICE CREAM AND CHOCOLATE-PEANUT BUTTER SAUCE for the next time Bush declares his mission accomplished.
On the food topic, I'd like to reiterate how great the vegetable selection in France is. You can bike up the street and get fresh beautiful EU-subsidized produce from an outdoor market any day of the week. We made a tremendous ratatouille last night (if I may say so) to take advantage of this. Ratatouille is often -- and maybe this is just another thing to chalk up to the woeful state of non-high-end Parisian restaurants -- oily mush used to decorate a plate of meat. Part of the reason this happens is that eggplant and zucchini suck up oil like sponges. Somebody came up with the great idea of baking the eggplant rather than sauteing it -- we read this in a magazine at Dao's sister Que's place. Turns out it works great, and makes the ratatouille substantial enough to work as a main course. We used dried oregano and fresh basil as the only spices and served it on fried quick-cook-polenta wedges with goat cheese. I highly recommend the combination.
You can get equally good vegetables in the US at Whole Foods too, but of course, as Ben A notes: forty-five dollars.
I'm planning to go the new Quai Branly museum of non-western art with a friend in the next few days; this should allow me to post something about some cultural phenomenon other than food (you know my ambivalence about this). Part of food's appeal is that it's participative, though; you can try to compete, or better yet "dialog", with the established masters. No matter how much French-inspired enthusiasm I may muster for the wretched of the earth, I can't see myself going out and whittling my own phallic idols.
[Doug: 8/27/06 11:20] |
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Bug or Feature
We bought a tub of miniature brownies at Whole Foods today. That source implies two things: first, that they are excellent, second, that they cost forty five bucks, which is the minimum price there. Anyway, when you open the tub, it emits a noise like a fricking machine gun. It seems the lid is secured by a series of plastic flanges, and the result must be along the same design as a cricket leg, because it produces an unaccountable racket. My only question is, should I regard this as a useful feature (because it dissuades me from eating brownies) or a deficit (because it prevents me from sneaking brownies).
Pluto Agonistes
I think the principle is this: anything that revises information learned in grade school is simply infuriating. That's all most of us have.
[Ben A.: 8/26/06 22:55] |
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Celestial Triviality
I think this story is a wonderful illustration of Daniel Boorstin's concept of a "pseudo-event." From all the press, you would think the decision means that the scientists are going to swing their wave-motion gun toward Pluto and obliterate it. Look, there are hunks of rock and frozen gas of various sizes floating around out in space, the classification of which among the categories of "planet" and "dwarf planet" are entirely arbitrary.
Now, that said, whenever anything in this world is changed in any way for any reason, it can be counted on that some group will react with indignance, shock, outrage or some combination of the three. The prize question today: can we predict what group will protest Pluto's downgrade? If we were talking about a city getting downgraded to the status of town, we could expect complaint from the residents. As far as we and SETI know, that's not an issue for Pluto. Citizens of Jupiter, FL and owners of Saturn and Mercury vehicles might support the move as it lends greater dignity to their planetary eponyms, which no longer share their august status with the now-downgraded runty ice-ball. But given Pluto's nefarious mythological associations, no towns or fancy products have taken its name as their own. Maybe fans of the Disney character?
[Ben H.: 8/24/06 13:01] |
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A Formidable Enemy
the al- Qaeda leader would "ramble on" about his favourite TV shows, The Wonder Years, Miami Vice and MacGyver
To give the devil his due, those are all great shows.
[Ben A.: 8/23/06 08:33] |
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Why Outsourcing Won't Completely Destroy America
Considering the cost advantage of places like India, some observers worry that American business will have nothing left to offer the rest of the world. Leaving David Ricardo aside, there is strong evidence that India still would do best to rely on American brand management.
But if the proprietor of the Hilter's Cross restaurant insists on trying to develop this dubious brand, may he at least consider the following promotion:
The Blitzkrieg Value Meal!
A combined air, land, and sea assault of flavors!
Chicken, Lamb, and Fish, all served within 5 minutes or your Reichsmarks back!
[Ben H.: 8/23/06 07:18] |
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Early Programming Exploits Unearthed (Un-basemented Anyway)
John G. managed to convert some almost twenty-year-old floppy disks from my parents' basement into files that his Macintosh Apple II emulator can read. Result: resurrection of our old Lode Runner levels, some of which I believe qualify as works of art (I will have to verify this) as well as some old BASIC games I wrote. It is amazing to think how cool programming games seemed to me back then. For various reasons I am thinking of sprucing up my relativity-based space-combat game, but it seems like the transition from thinking to doing is going to require electric shocks, so little enthusiasm do I have. And to think of the energy and excitement that went into the game pictured below, "Squidhunter"! (I must have been about 13.) You are the boat (dot) on top of the water; the target is the squid (dot) deep in the water; the obstacles to your shots (dots, not pictured) are the herrings (multiple dots) elsewhere in the water.
[Doug: 8/23/06 04:15] |
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@#$%&$#@!
Not a good weekend for Boston baseball, granted. Amdist the panic and gloom, however, I feel compelled to note that a) the Yankees and Red Sox are not as ill-matched as the past five games have suggested, and b) it is only August. Four games out of the wild card isn't where the Sox wanted to be after having the second best record at the All-Star break, but I, for one, am keeping hope alive.
[Ben A.: 8/22/06 08:22] |
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5 out of 5!
A foreboding of what's to come in the playoffs, Ben? Assuming the wild-card is even within reach...
[Ben H.: 8/21/06 16:59] |
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Fichte Anticipates Neuroscience
our critics stand firm on their inability to frame the concept required of them [a subject with free will], and we must take their word for this. Not that they have been wholly deprived of the concept of the pure self through mere rational or mental deficiency....The ground of this inability of theirs does not reside in any special weakness of intellect, but rather in a weakness of their whole character
--Fichte, Science of Knowledge
Also: The majority of men could sooner be brought to believe themselves a piece of lava in the moon than to take themselves for a subject with free will
[Ben A.: 8/21/06 06:49] |
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Branches of Academic Philosophy
"Analytic" : the intersection of acuity and vacuity
"Continental" : the Higher Philology
"Neuroscientific" : the attempt to prove that the mind is nothing but a brute machine -- by example
[Doug: 8/21/06 04:56] |
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Super-Quixotic Leftie Concerns
As far as modernity and progress goes, I am firmly in the "two cheers" camp. I do not wish to submit heedlessly to the yoke of rationalism; I despise technocracy; I empathize with the Napoleon of Notting Hill. Yet with all my small 'c' conservative sympathies I cannot understand the leftie fixation on the depradations of Wal-Mart. Unleash the wrath of the regulatory state on monopolists and abusive employers. That's fine, as Doug says. Unjust labor practices, however, do not explain one eight of one tenth of one percent of the angst and outrage Wal-Mart generates. Rather Wal-Mart has become a totem of capitalist rapacity. No amount of money saved in the food budgets of the poor will absolve them now.
[Ben A.: 8/20/06 22:46] |
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Mr. Hooper Doesn't Live Here Any More
Growing up in Pleasantville, my family used to shop for groceries at a small store run by a Mr. Arcidiacano. He functioned not merely as a purveyor of fruits and vegetables, but also of news, tips, information, and overall civic glue. My parents gladly paid a small premium for these other services, though it must be recognized that Mr A didn't sell manifestly inferior product as compared to the local Grand Union. Mr A lived in town, raised a family there, (and after mnay years wound up selling the grocery store and becoming the main commercial real estate broker in the area).
However, I encourage you to try to find a Mr. Arcidiacano in Manhattan or another American central city. In my experience in Murray Hill and Central Square, what I found instead were stores staffed by people who either couldn't or wouldn't speak English, stores whose idea of hygienic standards consisted of letting a cat roam the aisles to scare off the rats and mice, stores which sold basic staples at a 50-100% markup over large grocery chain prices. And whatever abuses Wal-mart allegedly perpetrates against its employees, it could not have been worse than what these store-owners (mostly Koreans in this case, as far as I could tell) dished out to the (almost certainly) illegal Mexicans (mostly poblanos, as far as I could tell).
[Ben H.: 8/20/06 20:22] |
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Mr. Hooper, Filthy Wog?
The "fairness" angle of the walmart-vs-mom-and-pop debate only comes into play, I think, when somebody violates some recognized norm of business ethics. Like selling at a loss until you wipe out the competition and then hiking prices, or abusing immigrant laborers. If Walmart does this kind of thing then they should be sued and boycotted. However, if the charge against Walmart is that they offer low prices by being huge and impersonal, I think you have to let the consumer decide. I can say personally that I'm willing to pay more for a Mr. Hooper-like experience. Our corner grocer is a nucleus of the neighborhood we moved into a few months ago. I've met multiple people through him and learned useful stuff about the neighborhood. He's incredible talkative and if you don't at some point say "I'm leaving now" you'll stay in the store indefinitely. I'm willing to pay a 50% premium on a bottle of diet coke now and then to stay plugged into the neighborhood. If people in a given American region don't want to do likewise, it's their choice, but also their loss. (In NYC the situation is obviously different; delis seem to thrive there because locals value their own ambulation at an average of 5 cents per step and factor this into their shopping plans.)
[Doug: 8/20/06 14:35] |
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French Radio
Finally bought a mini-hi-fi system for the apartment. (Still no internet or phone but that's another story.) Turned on French radio this morning, got this snippet.
Interviewer. Hello. A recent travel company ad said, "You can fail everything, but not your vacation." Do you agree?
Interviewee. No, not completely. I think one can fail everything ...
[Doug: 8/20/06 03:59] |
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Sauce For the Gander
I complain when public figures get raked over the coals by the guardians of political correctness for making perfectly valid, if uncomfortable observations about on or another ethnic group. Generally, it is guys on my side of the political spectrum that wind up victimized in this way. However, from time to time, a lefty trips over his own tongue. While I may revel in the discomfiture of a political figure I dislike, it doesn't make the P.C. "shock and outrage" any more reasonable.
Andrew Young brought down the wrath of various "anti-discrimination" panjandrums when he made comments defending Wal-mart, his client, against the charge that it somehow does wrong against urban communities by displacing small business.
In the interview, published yesterday in The Los Angeles Sentinel, a weekly, Mr. Young said that Wal-Mart “should” displace mom-and-pop stores in urban neighborhoods.
“You see those are the people who have been overcharging us,” he said of the owners of the small stores, “and they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs.”
To which I say: fuck, yeah. What exactly is untrue about this observation? We've all lived in big cities and we all therefore know that little grocery stores are absurdly expensive and sell borderline rotten meat and produce. And who would deny that it is for the most part Koreans and Arabs running these stores. I don't doubt that some decades ago Jews played the role of crappy grocery-store owner. The only possibly unfair word in there is "overcharging", to the extent it suggests a pricing policy born of malice and/or monopoly rather than inefficiency and small scale. It is totally unreasonable for anti-Wal-mart activists to rile up black and hispanic customers against the chain store out of some supposed solidarity with small store-owners. They are no more members of the community they serve than Sam Walton.
[Ben H.: 8/18/06 06:34] |
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How Much Difference Six Years Makes
I wrote this little essay on the estate tax for my own amusement (indeed, I am lame!) back in the dawn of the new century. Opening up the time capsule is always painful (check out the discussion of the budget surplus in paragraph 2...), but it can be instructive, so I will inflict it on you. Man, the world looked different then, although the GOP still lacks anything like a domestic policy vision and the democrats are still ensorcelled by what is worst in Rawls...
Symptomatic: What the estate tax debate tells us about the dispositions of America’s left and right
By any normal measure, the estate and gift tax produces only minor effects on American life. Why then has repeal surfaced as a Republican legislative centerpiece? And why has the repeal so inflamed opponents? The answer to these questions reveals much about the current doctrines of the American left and right.
First some facts. The combined estate and gift tax is a wealth tax – it enforces a levy if combined estate and lifetime gifts exceed $650,000. The tax’s contribution to federal revenues is fairly modest. In 1995, the estate and gift tax accounted for less than $16 billion, under 2% of total federal tax receipts. If Congressional Budget Office projections can be credited, the $105 billion in revenues lost by a repeal over the next ten years would be dwarfed by an anticipated $4.5 trillion budget surplus. Nor would a repeal drastically alter the situation of most households: in 1997, fewer than 50,000 Americans paid any estate or gift tax.
So why the big fuss? For opponents of repeal, the estate tax represents a central commitment of American egalitarianism. UC Berkeley economist Brad De Long connects the repeal of estate tax to a larger movement undermining the principle of equality of opportunity. If the estate tax is repealed, De Long writes: "there will still be a country called "America" ... But that country will lack a good deal of what made America special."
This is just silly. What immigrant will despair of a better life if Chloe Gates inherits 80 billion instead of 40? Indeed, the estate tax (aside from temporary wartime levies) dates back only to 1916. Commitment to the American dream predates the Wilson administration precisely because American idealism has rarely manifested as the desire to apportion levels of wealth to merit.
Rather, the central goal of American egalitarianism has been to secure careers and positions open to talent. In a word: meritocracy. This effort proceeds largely independently of wealth taxes, and has been spectacularly successful. The bulk of fortune 500 CEOs were not born rich. Nor does our political class hail largely from old money. We may not have a country where Joe Sixpack Jr. starts life with the same bank balance as Alexander Chardonnay III, but equality of opportunity doesn't entail equal probability of flying first class.
If opposition to the estate tax is based on hyperbolic egalitarianism, what does emphatic support for repeal indicate? What drives Republican zeal over an admittedly minor element of the tax code? There are some real victims of the estate tax. Illiquid assets – small business, family farms – can be devastated by estate taxes. But these cases comprise only a tiny fraction of taxable estates. To preserve small farms and businesses, more narrowly tailored reform would suffice.
So again, what inspires wholesale repeal? One motivation is transparent. Wealthy people are largely Republican, and it's always nice to raise money from people for whom you've just done a favor.
But alas, mere partisan pork-barreling can't explain the degree of emphasis. Republican focus on the estate tax is symptomatic of a larger lack of vision, of a party that has lost its way. With welfare reform co-opted by New Democrats, Congressional Republicans uncomfortable with assertive action on foreign policy or social issues retain only the dregs of the Reagan agenda: Beating the tom-toms for minor tax-reduction schemes. Repeal of the estate tax, eliminating the "marriage penalty," a permanent ban on Internet taxation. Although only the last of these is spectacularly ill conceived, these are not ideas to fire hearts and minds.
The left response - albeit overly dramatic - retains some grandeur. Perhaps the estate tax is small potatoes. But "excessive" fruits of hard work and good fortune are a social resource, and the best people to allocate these resources (surprise!) aren't those connected with creating them. Until the government can feed, cloth, house, doctor, and educate every child, we can't think of remitting funds to the rich. We may have heard the tune before, but at least you can dance to it. The problem with the GOP's competing vision: there isn't one. Maybe it has something to do with faith-based organizations. It’s hard to say. Al Gore's charisma deficit may make this point pressing: it's hard to govern if you don't know what you stand for.
[Ben A.: 8/15/06 00:48] |
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Airline Screwage
Based on what I experienced at Charles de Gaulle yesterday, I have to believe if this heightened security doesn't slacken soon, airlines heavily dependent on international traffic with the U.S. are fucked pretty hard. Even though rules do not preclude carry-ons in France, de facto people had to check all but the smallest bags. I have never noted CDG security to be particularly onerous. This time it took 45 minutes. My carry-on was completely disassembled at security. Full pat-down after the metal detector. Bag again disassembled at the jetway and another patdown. They were doing this to everybody as far as I could tell. It took 1 hour and 55 minutes to fully board the 767. This has got to put a serious kink it quick-turn plans, not to mention the fact that somebody has to pay for this small army of extra security people.
Another casualty has got to be duty-free. You can't carry on any fluids, even if you bought at duty-free. That kills perfumes and spirits trade, which has to be big part of their trade. (Actually, just heard the UK has changed the rules to allow carry-on of duty-free items).
Of course, I sincerely doubt any of this will do much to prevent a future attack. There are still a lot of holes, I reckon. Plots are foiled by unraveling them beforehand through good policework and domestic spying. Let's hope the new york times "allows" friendly governments to keep working on this front. Every American and UK mosque should be riddled with spies. Agents provocateurs should be propositioning participants in Islamic chat-rooms. Mail should be opened and phones tapped. Terrorists should not make it to airport check-in.
[Ben H.: 8/14/06 07:18] |
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Excellence in Miniature
Corey Patterson will liekly never play in an All-Star game. Yesterday, however, he laid down the most perfect bunt single I have ever seen. Almost 20% of his hits this year (19/104) have been bunts. Awesome.
[Ben A.: 8/13/06 12:44] |
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Get Me the Number for Greyhound Charters
According to the Chicago Tribune, Hezbollah has a pocket of strong support in Dearborn, Michigan. Apparently the chilling effect of the Patriot Act and other supposed Bushian assaults on civil liberties does not constitute so deep a freeze that Dearborn religionists-of-peace fear making their sympathies public.
"If the FBI wants to come after those who support the resistance done by Hezbollah, then they better bring a fleet of buses," said Osama Siblani, publisher of the local Arab-American News and an outspoken activist. "I for one would be willing to go to jail."
Buses? Heck, I'll chip in and charter a few. I say: let's roll.
[Ben H.: 8/11/06 09:37] |
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Go to the RAF Museum
That will be a cure for what ails. The War cabinet is also good. Fun Fact: Churchill disliked staples, and thus papers in the war cabinet were held together by odd thong-like contrivances.
[Ben A.: 8/10/06 07:19] |
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New Frontiers of Schlemihl-hood
Add some whipped-cream to that sundae. I woke up this morning to the news of the foiled terrorism plot against UK-to-US flights. The BBC basically told viewers "don't even bother coming to the airport." I had to check out of my hotel this morning, because it is sold out for tonight and switch to another hotel. What do you think the probability is that the new hotel actually accomodates me with hordes of visitors extending their trips? Fuck.
[Ben H.: 8/10/06 05:36] |
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... So Does Shit, and I Am At the Bottom of the Hill
The one redeeming result, though, of a lifetime of schlemihl-hood is that nothing really surprises me anymore.
For example, I just humped out to Heathrow only to discover that between the time I left the office and the time I got to the BA desk (40 mins), the once-a-week direct flight to tbilisi was canceled due to "mechanical fault". OK, shit happens. But for a schlemihl it must go further. The only other workable flight is through Moscow. Fine. It requires an airport change in Moscow, so I would have to go thru immigration. Fine. Except my Russian visa expired... 9 days ago. And the last flight back to NYC: in another terminal, leaving in 10 minutes. D'oh. And the cherry on the sunday, the hotel where I stayed last night in london: sold out.
Even for a schlemihl, a good show I must say. The BA lady was very surprised at how calm I was, after a series of screaming Georgians. Hey, do your worst BA! You can't shock *me*!
[Ben H.: 8/9/06 17:54] |
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Water Flows Downhill
Am I alone in thinking that this principle ought to be among those known to all functioning adults? Then why does it seem so consistently to have escaped the previous owners of our apartment? The built-in "drying" rack next to the kitchen sink is at a lower elevation than it, so that rather than flowing into into the sink, the dripping water just sits there; maybe this was meant to allow salt-harvesting via evaporation and so to save a few pennies on a basic seasoning. This would be consistent with the anything-to-save-money that seems to have been behind most of their home "improvements". And this bathtub that seems to have special channels built into it, collecting shower water on one side, channeling it onto the floor on the other? Human idiocy knows no bounds
[Doug: 8/9/06 13:34] |
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Who Left Me Off the Elders of Zion Listserv?
Lieberman's campaign may have sputtered to defeat, but the Israeli shekel, at least, has some serious Joe-mentum. Rockets falling on Haifa? Setbacks in the ground offensive? Terrible international press? ILS takes all that and still rallies! After a brief spike to 4.55 at the start of the campaign, ILS has been on a one-way trip to 4.35. If I didn't know any better (wink, wink) I'd say there is an international Jewish conspiracy to prop up ILS in the face of bad news for Israel. Now home come I didn't get the memo?
Or perhaps the market, in its distributed wisdom, sees matters in a clearer, more objective light than the mainsteam media?
[Ben H.: 8/9/06 09:41] |
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Joe-Mentum
Lieberman has announced an independent run, where earlier polling suggests he should cruise in the general. I hope so, and not just on Kevin Youkilis grounds. The left-wing conniption fit resulting from a Liberman independent win promises to be immensely entertaining. Also, Lieberman is the only man in the senate who sounds exactly like Reverend Lovejoy. That would be tough to lose.
[Ben A.: 8/9/06 07:38] |
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I Will Never Complain about a Busted FX Trade Again
I cannot in good conscience wail about settlement failures when in Vietnam an FX trade gone awry can mean a bullet in the head. On the other hand, one could argue that Vietnamese capitalism has adopted greater standards of accountability than the Western version. Eliot Spitzer no doubt looks on with envy.
[Ben H.: 8/9/06 04:51] |
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But then again, other evidence would suggest that Dems haven't completely abandoned moderation. Cynthia McKinney lost, which means 0% of Democrats guilty of attacking Capitol Police officers will remain in the next Congress!
[Ben H.: 8/9/06 04:48] |
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Lieberman
Unless he runs as an independent, only two of the Democratic senators who voted for Gulf War I will serve in 2007. And one of them is Harry Reid.
[Ben A.: 8/8/06 23:29] |
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Clean Slate
As part of an effort to keep myself out of a summer slump I'm starting a new page on the Bandarlog (the monthly refresh has become less and less punctual).
And in lieu of kicking off with something interesting, let me post an off-the-top-of-my-head resume of what's been happening in my life. I believe our readership is small enough that this will not amount to an undue burden on humanity's web-surfing time. While I've never kept a diary, I would occasionally write, in whatever notebook was at hand, what I would retrospectively call executive summaries of my life-projects. This always had a bracing effect. It would renew my sense of my life having some narrative structure: I had done so-and-so, which betrayed some misunderstanding of life or people or something; upon realizing my misunderstanding I had changed cities or professions as a correction; now I was sitting somewhere reflecting but ready to continue in some meaningful project that had grown out of this correction; soon I would have accomplished the present stage of the project and would tackle the next. (Usually these projects had something to do with California and the philosophy of Epicurus, but there's no need to dwell on the details here.) I seem to recall doing something similar on the Bandarlog, latterly, once or twice. The point I want to make now, if only to myself, is that I haven't done this sort of thing in a long time. Probably it has stopped being plausible to me that my life has any sort of narrative structure. This could be a good thing if it were part of a consciously-chosen live-in-the-moment Buddhist practice. But I haven't been meditating much for the last year at least, and no other aspect in my life has been Buddhist either. So I can't even say that my life is mindfully unstructured: it is unmindfully unstructured. To a degree I couldn't have imagined eight years ago, I have become unreflective. I hardly read anything, except maybe Curbed. My math project has temporarily stalled (mostly because this what's-wrong-with-France book project -- equally doomed, it seems -- has monopolized my reverie time, which is to say my days). Our Bay Area friend Ed and his girlfriend are staying with us in Paris; I find I have little to say except food-related banter. (One still goes to museums in Paris, but one doesn't really talk about what one sees there, and who knows what we retain from our visits. I won't speculate on why this should be so, since you've already heard my this-will-caramelize-that thesis. But Joel Robuchon, Alain Ducasse, Dickie Senderens -- these are the names that will stick to our ribs when we get back home.) The food-related banter might nag at my super-ego less if my foodie friends were as heavy drinkers as I, and allowed to me to drown my super-ego in good company, but alas, Ed is allergic to alcohol. In any case, this is something that is happening with me: we have friends in town. Ed is actually an active freelance programmer and it is instructive for me, an inactive freelance programmer, to hang out with him, insofar as I might one day opt to reactivate myself. And as I hear about his friends who are cajoling him to join their start-up e-commerce portal-agglomerator-thingy, all I can think is that's it's so desperately dull and tedious and stuffy and boring and desperately DULL. So if I re-enter the workforce, or a workforce, it will probably not be in that capacity. What else is happening. Why, I made some food for our guests, of course! One night it was broiled oeufs mollets with breadcrumbs on baby spinach with a lemon vinaigrette -- a continuation of this highly uninteresting saga -- the lemon vinaigrette was a step forward but the dish was still not in the same league as the dish at Laurent. Maybe I need to step up to the sorrel butter as specified -- or maybe the Laurent version's toothsomeness was just due to their sneaking some MSG into it, the bastards. That night I also made some whitefish fillets crusted with poppy seeds which came out well enough. They tended to fall apart, though, so that aside from the ones I served the guests, the rest of the fish kind of disintegrated into an amorphous if tasty glob. No doubt there is some secret to preserving the integrity of fillets when sauteing them (and it likely begins with choosing a different kind of fish than I did). On Friday I decided to make -- I'm not sure why, other than that eggplant is in season -- the moussaka recipe from Julia Child. (Just now I found what seems to be the only Julie/Julia Project reference to this recipe: For dinner, I had originally planned to use leftover lamb to make moussaka. Then I looked at the moussaka recipe in more detail. Turns out moussaka is a pain in the fucking ass. There was a time when I would have jumped right in – started cooking moussaka at nine o’clock at night, sleep be damned. I’m getting old, I guess. That page is the first excerpt of this semifamous blog/book I've ever seen and it doesn't encourage me to read further.) Again just for the hell of it, I decided not to take any significant shortcuts. I even made the accompanying tomato sauce by the book. The whole thing took about four hours in the kitchen. I believe I made a good instantiation of the recipe. My verdict on the recipe is, first of all, that it is visually stunning: after baking the eggplant in the oven you scrape out the flesh and use the skins to line the casserole that will later be inverted on a serving tray, giving the impression of a glorious purple cake. The taste, however, was merely okay. There are a couple of reasons. One is that the recipe is, of course, a French one, and it departs in a few ways from the autochthonous version that was probably goes back to Aristophanes -- no white sauce, and a thyme/rosemary-oriented seasoning rather than a nutmeg-oriented one. Second, the frenchified tomato sauce was too heavy for it. A light, simple tomato sauce would have complemented it better; the sauce that Julia gave a pointer to, with its butter-oil-flour roux, would be more at home on a leg of pheasant at a nineteenth-century nobleman's hunting lodge. (Maybe Julia was aware of this but sacrificed the perfection of individual dishes to an overall impression of systematicity, of coherence, whereby one sauce builds on another and each dish involves one or two sauces taken from a small repertoire. If her moussaka recipe had its own tomato-sauce sub-recipe, maybe nobody would "jump right in".) In any case, if I ever make this dish again, it will (1) have half beef and half lamb, rather than all lamb, which tended to over-mutton the global effect, (2) be layered with bechamel sauce and -- get this -- parsnip rounds (after having this inspiration I read online that the Macedonian version involves a layer of potato rounds, which I think validates my inspiration), (3) possibly go in the nutmeg direction rather than the thyme/rosemary one. Another thing that's happening in my life is some minor homeowner annoyances, but I don't feel right listing them knowing that Ben H is having less minor ones (involving cranes big enough to require closing off your street, if I remember correctly). What else. We went to Ikea thanks to our friend QC and his car. Bought some stuff. The weather's been pleasantly cool. I suppose it's all good.
[Doug: 8/6/06 17:47] |
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Al-Reuters is red-faced after bloggers busted them for running an obviously doctored photo of bombed-out Beirut. Of course, the Reuters editors' culpability in this is negligence rather than outright mendacity. The prime culprit: the Arab stringer that supplied the photo. But at what point does Reuters' reliance on these stringers become knowing connivance with propagandists? This is not by a long shot the first time an Arab stringer has slipped doctored or invented material into a western wire service, or even into Al-Reuters, for that matter. Staged insurgent car bombs and firefights in Iraq, the al-Dura imposture in the West Bank: at what point do the wire services admit that giving an Arab a camera to photograph Middle East news and expecting to get honest results is like handing your wallet to a 10-year old gypsy and expecting to get it back at all.
[Ben H.: 8/6/06 10:04] |
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