cloquewerk's thought bank

Shortly after securing the Democratic nomination, Obama has apparently already showed that the modern political/economic machine doesn't care who is elected to represent it—it'll plow on anyway. A Reuters article outlined Obama's commitment to stopping the Iranian nuclear threat, to the point of increasing sanctions past what they already are. His commitment to the state of Israel is also unwavering: Jerusalem will "remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided", making sure that no one could possibly think that he would ever consider objecting to Israel's seizure of half of the city 40 years ago. Yup, there's modern democracy in practice.

Of course people have written far better essays on this subject than I could ever do. Here's one I read recently, lending more credence to the idea that an elected "representative" really can't change much.

( After Bobby Kennedy (There Was Barack Obama) )

Anyone who watches a lot of compressed video has probably come to hate audio-video sync problems. Having the sound come slightly before or after the associated video frames drives me crazy and pretty much ruins my enjoyment of the movie/show. Luckily a while ago I learned that you can adjust the sync in mplayer with the + and - keys, so now I rarely have to put up with such nonsense.

After doing this several times, I suddenly realized one day that I can always sync up the video and audio if I hit + or - enough. That is to say, I have never seen the audio go from being too early to too late with just one press of the button. But I have seen it happen with two presses. So the amount by which mplayer adjusts the sync with one button press--0.1 seconds--is apparently very close to our tolerance for synchronizing our senses. In other words, if some sensory input comes in from a couple different channels (in particular, visual and auditory), and I have mentally coordinated those senses into one external object (oh my Hegel class was so interesting!), as long as the matching inputs come in within 0.1 seconds of each other, I won't even notice.

Really interesting stuff. The issue of a "moment" in time is problematic, even if you accept the idealist thesis that time is integral to consciousness, not external reality, but this is evidence that consciousness apparently has a fairly fuzzy concept of a moment. Not really surprising, I suppose, but I found this example to be particularly illuminating.

Thought this quote from an article from about.com (what's up with that site anyway? They have like paid journalists or something?) about cracking the iPhone was interesting:

Do note: In all of this development, there are no guarantees that you won't render your phone inoperative (so-called "bricking"), but that was never guaranteed even with in-store use of the phone.

Ha.

I am impressed with Concordia's interlibrary-loan system. It's completely free for loans from all manner of libraries in the United States and Canada, and they'll even do the work of finding books for you, given the standard info (name, author, ISBN, etc.). For journal requests, it gets even better: they'll find it for you, photocopy it, and send it to you, and for free at that!

It costs, however, 7 cents per page to use the self-service photocopiers in the library to copy local journals. I guess there are far fewer interlibrary copies made than local ones, but if I were a lazier, cheaper person I'd try to just use other universities' resources.

I cracked my iPod the other day. Well not so much "I" as "jailbreakme.com". You just visit the site, and it will (with your approval) install (or should I say, meta-install) some installation software through a security hole, then it'll nicely patch the hole for you. Version 1.1.2 of firmware (or is it software now?) will patch that hole too, but then you can't do the "jail break", at least for now.

Anyway you know you're a geek when the most exciting moment so far about your new iPod Touch is the first command-line prompt you see on it, and the possibility of running a web server on it becomes in your mind awesome, ludicrous, and then very interesting in quick succession. I put python on it yesterday.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN!

Cloquewerk's Documentary Recommendation of the Week*

Anyone interested in historical/anthropological documentaries should check out BBC's The Story of India. It's a 6-part series covering the history of India from the first humans out of Africa to the modern day (I presume, having only watched half of it so far but already so enthralled that I had to tell others). I knew a bit about Indian history, but this show has already taught me far more than I knew before. I would write more, but I've gotta get back to episode 4.

* Title for effect only. Documentaries may not be recommended weekly, or ever again.**

** Yeah, maybe footnotes are starting to become a tired form of humour, but how about metafootnotes? Eh? Eh?

Enh I never do memes but this looks fun.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn’t finish, and strike through what you couldn’t stand. The numbers after each one are the number of LT users who used the tag of that book.


( Read more... )

Tonight on The Signal, my favourite CBC radio show, Laurie Brown is playing a piece by Arnold Schoenberg, performed by Martin Tielli, a guitarist for the Rheostatics. The Radio 2 website has this bit of trivia about Schoenberg, taken from Tielli's website, originally from a book called Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader:

Schoenberg was born September 13, 1874, and believed he would probably die on the 13th as well. He predicted it was most likely he would die on a Friday the 13th, and in 1951, when he was 76 (7+6=13). July 13, 1951 fell on a Friday, and Shoenberg stayed in bed that day, awaiting death. In the evening, his wife went to his room to scold him for wasting an entire day so foolishly. When she opened the door, Shoenberg looked up at her, uttered the single word "harmony," and dropped dead. Time of death: 11:47 p.m. ... 13 minutes before midnight.

Laurie does play too much Björk though.

"Tell me something about yourself and the country you came from," said the Scarecrow, when she had finished her dinner. So she told him all about Kansas, and how gray everything was there, and how the cyclone had carried her to this queer Land of Oz.

The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas."

"That is because you have no brains," answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home."

The Scarecrow sighed.

"Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains."

—Frank Baum, Wizard of Oz

Madhur Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, which for me is gastronomic holy scripture, introduces her recipes for kimchi (aka kimchee) thusly:

Just as a meal without wine is inconceivable for a Frenchman, a meal without kimchee is inconceivable for a Korean. Kimchee is not a liquor but a pickle—a hot, tart, often garlicky pickle that has an honoured place at all Korean meals, from breakfast to dinner. Kimchees may be made out of several vegetables, like cucumbers and radishes, but the most popular kimchee—perhaps because it is the cheapest—is made with Chinese cabbage.

In the late autumn trucks piled high with the pale-green vegetable drive into towns and villages and the entire female population of the country succumbs to feverish bouts of pickle-making.

Well paint me a Korean housewife 'cause I just made my first batch. I'm not sure if I've even had kimchi before, but one of my favourite packaged ramens is kimchi flavoured—kimchi is used not only as a pickle on the side but also to give taste to soups and other dishes. Nong Shim recently changed the ingredients of their kimchi ramen rendering it nonvegetarian, plus of course all ramen has MSG and other lovely products of the industrial-food age. Thus began another adventure in DIY food creation.

It's an... interesting process. You leave a bunch of shredded cabbage in salt water overnight, then transfer it to a bottle along with garlic, ginger, spring onions, ground chilli pepper, and sugar (although I used honey). You then top it up with the salt water, cover it loosely with a cloth, and leave it unattended for a few days. Yes, that's right, leave it out in the open, no fridge, no top aside from the cloth to prevent anything from falling in, sitting out free as a bird as nature may or may not have intended. I must say it was, and still is, a bit of a shock to my neovictorian cleanliness-next-to-godliness cultural background. In an age in which we have antibacterial this and sterilized that, I think it's enlightening and mind-opening to make something that sours in open air and then eat it. I've still only tried a couple of teaspoons, and it's tasty (albeit strange). I'm waiting for our next stir fry to chow down on it properly.

Pictured above is the final product. Bubbles that were not there when the process began escaped as I shook it up to distribute the (near-tablespoon) of cayenne pepper.

EDIT: Seems one of flickr blogging templates doesn't work, so I just deleted the entry and reposted. My apologies to anyone who commented in the interim; feel free to re-comment.

"I am sure the people in Canada recognize this is an illegal act and would like to see legislation preventing that from happening," argues Dan Fellman, some guy in charge of distribution at Warner Bros.

Heh, Fellman would like to see legislation to back up this "illegal act". Maybe it's 'cause I find phrases like "usually always" or "literally took my head off" to be a sign that we don't even know what we're talking about anymore, but the idea that you designate an action as illegal and then make a law prohibiting it seems to hint at a strange idea of what terms like "legal" and "illegal" mean in contemporary society.

This of course is not an argument for or against music copyright laws (my arguments against modern copyright laws are undoubtedly better expounded elsewhere). It's just an example of how the mainstream idea of public debate is so incredibly, and sadly unsurprisingly, inane.

Tuesday was the last day of my introduction-to-epistemology class. I'd never read much about the philosophy of knowledge, and I didn't really think I wanted to. Turns out I rather enjoyed the class, boring Scienticians like Ayer and Quine excepted (although the ensuing discussion was interesting).

My prof is a rarity apparently—someone who largely disagrees with the aim of much of traditional analytic philosophy, that is, that philosophy should be mostly about defining and elucidating the foundations of science. I was under the impression that there has been a lot of work done in the last twenty or thirty years that has moved on past this view, but according to him it's still quite prevalent, in North America at least. Perhaps iopha could tell you more about this.

About a third of the way through the semester, he showed a movie called Mindwalk. In terms of artistic presentation, the movie is lacking rather a lot. It's essentially one long conversation, which isn't exactly a thrilling concept to begin with, but the director doesn't seem to know how to make it engaging past just shooting it in different locations in and nearby an old church in France. But the content was quite interesting.

It's based on the 70s book The Tao of Physics; the director is actually the author's brother. I haven't read this book yet, but the ideas are quite similar to many of those in Morris Berman's The Re-enchantment of the World. Anyone who has spent any time with me when I've been in a philosophical/pedagogical mood has probably at least heard the name, if not heard me go on at length about it. I read this book in 2004, and it is the main reason I am now studying philosophy.

I've been interested in social justice issues for about 10 or so years now. After my realization that there were some rather Bad Things in the world and that we could do something about them, collectively and individually, for several reasons I quickly adopted a fairly radical stance—that of the general rejection of hierarchy and power structures, aka anarchism. I was, and remain, convinced that reforms and other band-aid solutions are not addressing the real problems of society, which I believe are largely caused by power imbalances. In a sense I am both pessimistic and optimistic about humanity: when a human gets into a position of authority over others, she or (more often, historically) he will have a high probability of misusing that power, sooner or later. She or he will also not normally give up such a position willingly, often (but not always) creating a list of reasons why it would be a bad idea to step down.

I realized that political philosophy played a large role in clarifying the systems and structures that would lead to and maintain decentralization of power in society, but as for the rest of philosophy I was largely ignorant. Although not defining myself as an engineer, that part of me is undeniable, and traditionally engineers sneer at philosophers. I didn't accept that view wholeheartedly, but I had yet to be shown that philosophy could actually affect anything or, in general, be "useful".

One of the best things about facilitating a class on anarchism at Dawson is the new ideas that you encounter in a class devoted to learning as a group, in which the facilitator, while performing some of the duties of a traditional teacher, is understood to be at least part student at the same time. Several people in my first class were hot on an idea called "primitivism". As with any vague idea like this one, there are a lot of definitions and a lot of ground covered, but what I have been able to take out of it is a new understanding of civilization through the study of "primitive" ("traditional", "simple", "hunter/gatherer") societies. Here, I was being told, was anarchism in as close to a "natural" state as we as a species seem to get. I read more on the issue, by radicals like Bob Black, Hakim Bey, Dave Watson, John Zerzan, although I have a lot more to read still.

I was surprised and distressed that these ideas seem to have gone unnoticed except by those who read a few quasi-underground publications. But when I read the back cover of The Re-enchantment of the World at a friend's house, I realized that some of these ideas were being discussed in an academic setting. Berman's book is a birdshot blast at a range of topics including physics, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and even alchemy. It was an attempt to examine some of the foundations of civilization and how we arrived at the worldview most of us share in contemporary western society.

One of the areas that interested me most is the examination of the assumptions and foundations of modern science. Berman essentially posits (along with many others, I've since discovered) that the mechanistic view of the world, enforced by a distinct subject/object split, has given us some power over it in return for a loss of connection with it. Part of the solution he (vaguely) discusses is an enlargement or replacement of this kind of science with one dedicated to connections, systems, and holism.

But back to my class on epistemology... a year or two ago I became aware of the field of "cybernetics", which is the study of control and communications and a part of systems theory in general. Systems theory has only really been around for 50 years or so, maybe less, and has influenced many areas of knowledge, by its very nature being interdisciplinary. Sure enough, I managed to find some philosophical treatments of its ideas, and, more interestingly, the derivative idea of "second-order cybernetics", the cybernetics of cybernetics, discovered when cyberneticians attempted to use cybernetics to construct a model of the human mind. Knowing my prof has some similar ideas gave me extra impetus to write my term paper on the epistemological ramifications of cybernetics.

I present the paper below for those of you who, for whatever reason, are interested in reading a brief survey of a bit of the philosophical origins and a few of the interesting and relevant features and discoveries of cybernetics, in my opinion of course. This is only a 200-level course, so it's a short paper that doesn't do much more than cursorily scan a small part of a large terrain, with a bit of my interpretation thrown in, but if you're really interested it should provide some directions for more information. I found the online journal Constructivist Foundations to be particularly interesting.

Voilà: Teleology, Cybernetics, and Cartesian Dualism

Btw I apologize for the quality of the PDF... OpenOffice apparently still has some work to do on its PDF-exportation feature.

I've been a vegetarian for about 8.5 years now. Some of those years were as a vegan (or quite close to it), but I haven't knowingly touched any meat products in that time (oh except for one jello shooter once, I think, heh). It's actually only in the last couple years that I have really solidified my reasons for becoming a vegetarian, my vegetarian ethic if you will.

My mother raised the point, as did a friend of mine, that if I ate organic, ethically produced (i.e. not factory farmed) meat, I might have more of an effect on the welfare of animals, since, theoretically, the meat industry cares more about the opinions (via the dollars) of meat-eaters than of people who won't ever buy meat. Since it's highly unlikely that meat-eaters will ever fall into the minority, nevermind disappear, there will always be a meat industry, and we should aim to make it as ethical as possible through both boy- and buycotts.

The only retort I have for this, and it isn't foolproof, is that a reduced demand for meat would reduce the benefit of factory farms, which rely on high demand. But it would take quite a lot of vegetarians to accomplish that, and it's entirely possible to have an unethical small-scale farm.

The one reason for my vegetarianism that I've really stuck with is based on my belief that hypocrisy should be minimized—you should walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Here's how it works for me and my vegetarianism:

- I would be extremely uncomfortable (that's actually probably an understatement) killing an animal myself. And not just in a gross-out way, but in an ethical way—I'd have a hard time looking an animal, pretty much any animal, in the face and then pulling a trigger (metaphorically or literally). This is, I realize, entirely "in my head" and subjective, but that doesn't change anything for me.

- Therefore, it would be hypocritical of me to close my eyes and let someone do the killing for me. And since hypocrisy is bad, I must therefore be vegetarian.

This argument obviously only works because I have an actual ethical problem with killing an animal. It's not a reason for everyone to become vegetarian, if one has no real problem killing an animal. But I know of a good many people who are as uncomfortable with the idea of killing an animal as I am yet can chow down on a hamburger with no problems—unless, of course, you bring up the fact that they're eating an animal's muscles, in which case they tell you to shut up and not talk about it. That kind of hypocrisy makes me sad. You can talk all about the plants I eat and I won't get upset, and I've both planted and harvested plants before with no ethical quandries.

So I have more respect for hunters (that is, hunters who eat what they kill) than for people who can only bring themselves to buy shrinkwrapped, fully butchered meat, almost as divorced as possible from the actual act of killing. I actually only realized this a couple of years ago.

That's the main reason I'm a vegetarian, although I started out with others. For instance, by avoiding meat, and knowing that there are at least a few other people who avoid meat, the general suffering level of life on the earth is reduced a tiny bit. Even if plants suffer in some comparable way (and I haven't seen anything really convincing for this argument), at least I'm removing one level of suffering—plant to human instead of plant to animal to human. This also is an argument from a resources point of view (energy is lost in the intermediate step of being transformed from plant to animal). But all in all, I just plain dislike hypocrisy.

Anarchism is a set of ideas, ranging from philosophical to political to economic to sociological and further, with the common idea that unequal power relations are Bad Things. Different anarchists say different things about exactly how or why hierarchical structures are bad, how they should be abolished, and even what constitutes a hierarchy, but all¹ agree that they should, whenever possible, be avoided. Indeed this is simply the etymology of the word "anarchy", which is derived from the Greek word "anarchos", meaning "without ruler", and not having rulers is essentially what anarchism is about.

As a theory, anarchism had its beginnings in the middle of the 19th century. Anarchistic thoughts can be seen much earlier, such as in the writings of Gerrard Winstanley, and some trace anarchistic writings as far back as the Stoic philosopher Zeno of Citium (though I haven't read anything particularly anarchist in Greek writings yet). Most agree that four men in the 19th century set out basic anarchist thought: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. They didn't so much invent anarchism as much as give a theoretical basis for anarchist ideas, fleshing out concepts that had been tossed around society for who knows how long, probably since the ideas of social power and authority were first conceived (invented or recognized). They didn't all agree with one another either—Stirner refutes some of Proudhon's writings in The Ego and Its Own and elsewhere. But each influenced later anarchists in various ways, even if only by way of refutations.

While spanning many spheres, anarchism is more of a philosophy, a way of looking at things, than anything else. There is no orthodoxy, as opposed to Marxism, although individual schools might be more or less dogmatic. But as a whole, anarchism can be compared to the philosophy of the Greeks, who saw their actions guided by their philosophies. Anarchism is a way of approaching the various facets of life, social and individual, and it is generally agreed that anarchism is useless without practical applications; most anarchists are activists in one way or another. Many anarchists, though definitely not all, embrace the variety of interpretations; one could only think that, "after the Revolution", there would not be one society but a multitude, all living out anarchistic ideas in their own ways.

Next week: Proudhon's views on property

---

1 I use "all" in this sense as meaning all who self-identify as anarchists. However, this is not quite true; there is, in fact, a set of ideas called "anarchocapitalism". It is a variant of right-wing libertarianism, the economic ideal of which is a completely free market with no government to interfere with it. All industries, all services, would be privately owned. They take "anarchism" as meaning strictly "no government", where all other anarchists (to my knowledge) take it in the more general sense of "no rulers" or "no authority" of any kind.

I should have posted this a while ago... but here we go. I wrote a paper on the implications of the theory of special relativity on free will. Some people were asking, either out of real interest or to be polite (I don't really care which :), to read it, so there it is.

The PDF looks kinda weird sometimes for some reason; a bunch of letters are smushed together. I dunno what caused this, but apparently open office's PDF exporter could use some work. It prints fine... anyway sorry 'bout that.

( An introduction )

Yessir, I do enjoy a good Tom Collins once in a while.

1. Ensure you have adequate powdered sugar. I try to buy ethical sugar, which comes fairly coarse, for whatever reason, so I use my mini-food processor-robot to grind it down to a powder. Powdered sugar mixes easier, so you don't get a thick, grainy syrup at the bottom.

2. Now technically these things are supposed to be served in "Collins glasses". I relate to the idea of having a diverse array of glassware on multiple levels: there are good reasons to have different types of glasses, and regardless it's fun... a bit of class never killed anyone. But anyway, I personally think that the Collins glass goes a bit beyond both reason and emotion. It's essentially a large highball glass--tall and skinny. I think the tall glasses I have qualify somewhere between highball and Collins, so I use them for drinks like this and gin & tonics, Harvey Wallbangers, melonballs, rum & colas, and such.

3. Now add 2 ounces of gin, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and the juice of half a lemon. Obviously fresh juice is best, but I often use bottled lemon juice, either for expediency or for want of lemons. Good lemon juice is key either way... I use some sort of organic lemon juice that comes in a glass bottle from my local natural food store. About 2 tablespoons should suffice. This also makes it very easy to remember: it's the 2-2-2 drink. 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 tablespoons lemon juice, 2 ounces gin.

4. Add ice. Lots. Fill the glass. This isn't a huge hot-summer-day chugging drink. The taste belies the alcohol content. Plus, too much soda will dilute it.

5. Fill the glass with soda. Roughly half the liquid should be soda.

6. Adjust all parameters for taste and repeat until fully satisifed.

7. (optional) A straw is sometimes fun. Warning: drinks go down even faster with straws.

BONUS: Add a half of an ounce of cherry liqueur and your drink is magically transformed into a Singapore Sling! That's right, a good Singapore Sling is essentially a Tom Collins plus cherry... think cherry lemonade (mmmmmmMMMmm! refreshing!). Best thing I've ever tried (and they claim on the label that it's an ingredient in the "original" Singapore Sling) is Heering, a Danish liqueur. They don't carry it in the SAQ, and they recently stopped carrying it in the LCBO though...

Hmm I'm gonna email them right now. Singapore Slings are too tasty to give up on that easily.

A few years ago I started teaching a class (more correctly, "facilitating a learning band") at Dawson CEGEP in their New School program. I've now facilitated four classes, three on the topic of "anarchism". Dawson's New School is a small subdepartment, an experiment in alternative pedagogy. About 35 years ago, Dawson students were asked to come up with ideas to improve college education. One way or another (I don't know the details), what emerged was the idea of a small class with an emphasis on discussion and participation on all levels—students having control over their class, selecting topics and the tools for evaluation. The founders dubbed this approach to pedagogy "critical humanism".

The teacher in New School is replaced by a "facilitator"; this role varies slightly according to the class, but it is essentially being a guide to discussion, both in the senses of presenting material to discuss and of facilitating the discussion itself. In some classes, I essentially lecture for half the time, and in others I merely participate in a discussion. I am officially, according to Dawson, a "teacher in training", though I'm not paid more than a $100 honorarium per semester. However the administration has recently decided that even unpaid facilitators need Master's Degrees, but I have essentially been grandfathered in with help from the fact that I'm taking courses in philosophy at Concordia, ostensibly with the goal of obtaining some sort of graduate degree in something or other someday in the future.

A very interesting facet of New School is the concept of a "band". Up to a few years ago, New School had a class, which all were encouraged (and earlier forced) to take, just called "Band". The class was of a standard New-School size, usually no more than 13 or 14 and often less, and met twice a week for 3 hours each time. There was mostly no other work, and the grade was 100% participation. The class would be spent in discussion on a variety of topics, usually suggested by the students themselves. The goal of the class was to improve communication skills in many ways, to learn how to relate to a number of other people, presumably most of whom you didn't really know before the class. As in all New School classes, everything said was confidential, and students would admit surprising things after the group had formed an "identity", as they say in New School.

Dawson's administration of late has been, well, shall way say hostile to the ideas and activities of New School. Apparently New School has always had its ups and downs over its 30-plus-year life, but I would be surprised if this wasn't one of the worst. Not only have Bands been entirely eliminated, but learning bands (originally called learning groups, when Band was a separate class) have had their maximum participation grade reduced from 50% to 30% and now to 20%. I think the classes are functioning essentially the same for now, but with the reduced participation mark it's conceivable that the priority, and thus the quality, of discussions will deteriorate.

But not to be too negative, if New School classes continue to function well (as all of mine have), it would be heartening to see that participation would still be valued despite its lack of enforceability. Perhaps that's closer to the heart of New School anyway, that people can come together and have intelligent conversations about a variety of topics without being forced to.

---

I don't know of any good anarchist "textbooks" out there, although there are a number of decent but limited surveys, and the curriculum of New School is supposed to be at least somewhat fluid, so I find and sometimes edit readings each week. I have a few "standards", but I change many of the readings from semester to semester. Sometimes I do this for clarity, if I've had a chance to study a topic more on my own and find a better piece, but also because the class has input on what specifically they want to study.

So I figured that, hey, not everybody can be in a New School class, so why not put the readings up on the web? Obviously this is not a real substitute, since the discussions are irreplaceable, but I plan to write a short commentary on each one, essentially what I would be presenting in the "lecture" part of the class.

We'll go through anarchist ideas, thinkers, events, and activists from the 19th century to today. The fact that anarchism is about as far from orthodoxy as possible means several things however. It is impossible to represent the entire spectrum of anarchistic ideas, since they range from the sociological to the economic and even to the aesthetic. Furthermore, I have my own biases, although I do not agree with all aspects of the chosen topics; in fact, many of the ideas are contradictory. But I've tried to give a fairly faithful survey of some of the important aspects of the theory and practice of anarchism.

Next time: Introduction to anarchism

From the current (12:30 am) Official Weather Warning from Environment Canada:

En addition, a low pressure systeme currently over Arkansas will move
rapidly northeastward and reach the state of New York Monday evening.
Near the lows track, significant snow amounts, that is near 15
centimeters, are expected by late Monday over several southwestern
and central areas of the province.

Heheh I absolutely love language mashups.

A couple nice things I discovered lately:

- Saint-Paulin cheese. I'm not a cheese connoisseur, but every so often I try something new. Saint-Paulin is a local, vegetarian (no rennet) cheese, apparently similar to Oka (which I haven't tried much). I found it at Rocky Montana, a local (and great) grocer.

- VIA Rail now serves only Fair-Trade coffee. Actually they've been doing it since June, but I only discovered this on my most recent trip. I must say I'm both impressed and (pleasantly) surprised.

And with an iBook, a video cable, an audio cable, and a USB joystick, I've set up my own SNES emulating system that I can play on the TV with an actual controller (which beats the hell out of a keyboard). There are some annoying periodic short pauses, but hopefully I'll be able to fix that at some point. It's still very playable.

Ah, the world isn't so bad...

A number of people have asked me about the recipe for Indian lentil soup that I use. Here it is for your cooking and eating pleasure. It's pretty simple, if time consuming.

MASOOR DAL SOUP

Taken from Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, by Madhur Jaffrey, edited slightly by cloquewerk

- 10 whole cloves
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp whole black peppercorns
- 6½ oz./185 g whole masoor dal*, picked over, washed, and drained
- ½ tsp ground turmeric
- 1¼–1½ tsp salt
- 1 tbs lime juice
- 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (use as desired)

[* Regular ol' red lentils.]

Tie the cloves, bay leaves, and peppercorns in a piece of cheesecloth [I use a large tea ball].

Put the dal and 1 qt/1150 mL water into a heavy 2½–3-qt/2¾–3½-L pot and bring to the boil. Remove the scum that rises to the top and discard it. Add the spice bundle and the turmeric to the pot. Turn heat to low, cover so the lid is very slightly ajar, and simmer very gently for 1½ hours. Remove the spice bundle and discard it. Put the soup in a blender or food processor (you may have to do this in two batches) and blend until it is smooth. Add the salt, lime juice, and cayenne. Stir to mix.

Madhur Jaffrey also likes to add croûtons to hers, made by frying small pieces of bread in a fair amount of oil.