August 2006 Archives

From the tired-and-sad-of-hearing-about-10-year-old-kicked-up-dirt-so-why- not-make-something-up department:

Local C'ville resident Calin Cole made a startling discovery today, proclaiming his hunch at a noon press conference hosted by Channel 29 News: "John Karr is G-Man from Half-Life 2! Just look at him -- it's written all over that clammy, CG face." Indeed, the similarities are uncanny. CNN reports that DNA evidence "says Karr didn't kill JonBenet", evidence that further supports Cole's assertion Karr is in fact the product of an artist's rendering. When asked to comment, Cole stated, "Well, umm, G-Man doesn't have DNA. Duh!"

Doug Wood, animator for G-Man, expressed happiness with G-Man in Half-Life 2's "sinister edge":

I wanted the player to never quite know what side the G-Man was on. I would have him express an apologetic look toward Freeman as he "regretted" to put Mr. Freeman in this situation, but then give a slight smirk or smile at the end to keep you guessing about his sincerity.

Wood declined requests for comments on the connection between G-Man and Karr, but reiterated G-Man's questionable sincerity. "It's G-Man I made sinister and creepy. G-Man!"

When asked the suspected motive behind such a hoax, Cole shocked gathered reporters by revealing an industry secret kept under wraps by major news corporations. "The formula is simple!," he exclaimed, then turned to this schematic:

But in the interest of not giving everything away, Cole refused to explain what could possibly be happening before the last arrow and what is really leading to profit. "The time element? I'm not sure. But I do know it's working. The media attention is huge and HL2 sales are up 40%." When asked what he planned to do with this information Cole concluded, "Nothing. I'm going to go help my guild pound a new dungeon in WoW."

[Thanks to C. Cole for the schematic idea. Also, I'm not trying to make-light of Ramsey's murder. I am just blown away by Karr's striking resemblance to G-Man -- He looks more like G-Man than the fellow who was actually used as his model.]

What did I eat before I knew the deliciousness of Thai food? It sort of amazes me because now it's something I eat one to three times a month. Greg and I made a dish last night that may arguably be our best yet. The most fun part about making it seems to be the variety of combinations and the anticipation of how it will turn out.

Like Greg, I get really excited about eating. I got so inspired by last night's concoction, I took a picture and decided I'd write about it. Here's how we made it.

Luckily, Charlottesville has a Farmer's Market on Saturdays, so we were able to get the basil and most of the veggies straight from local growers. I think this was one of the main reasons it tasted so good. Everything else came either from the supermarket or stuff I have around my kitchen. Here are rough proportions, and let me just say this makes a lot of sauce, enough for 6 healthy servings.

• 1 bunch Thai basil


• 3 tbsp red curry paste


• 1 tbsp crushed, red pepper


• 2 cans coconut milk


• 1 can chicken broth


• 1 eggplant


• 1 carrot


• 1 potato


• 2 small red peppers (or 1 large red pepper)


• handful shitake and/or crimini mushrooms (6-12)


• 1/2 box frozen baby (sweet) peas -- unbuttered!


• 9 oz bag of spinach


• 1/2 lbs fresh, unpeeled shrimp


• 1/4 lbs bay scallops


• 2 cups jasmine rice


• lime wedges for garnish


• **

One of the hardest things to perfect about this sauce is the right amount of chunkiness-to-liquid, so while it may not seem like enough to just have one carrot or one potato, it goes a long way once everything else is in there.

Okay, start by getting everything ready. The potato cooks a little differently than everything else, so wash it, cut it into cubes and give it a quick boil for about 5 minutes or until just soft. When that's done, drain and put to the side. Consider adding a little salt and or cumin to the potato cubes while they're still warm.

Wash all the veggies. Peel the carrot and cut it and the red pepper(s) into small strips. Depending on how large the eggplant is, cut into half-circles or cubes. I really love shitake mushrooms but I also had some fresh crimini mushrooms so I chopped up about 5 or 6 of each. Peel the shrimp and rinse them in cold water along with the bay scallops.

If you have enough forethought to know you'll be making curry later in the day, chill the coconut milk (overnight or all day is preferable, but I always forget) until ready to cook as this helps separate the cream from the clear juice. The cream sits on top, so scoop off the cream (from both cans) into a large skillet and put the juice aside. Add the curry paste and crushed red pepper to the cream and simmer until everything is well blended. Add some basil now if you'd like. I just rinsed and pulled it directly off the stems. How much you add is up to you; overall we used about a third of the bunch.

Now's a good time to get the water boiling for the rice. Once added, the rice takes about 15 minutes to cook.

Add the shrimp and scallops to the curry cream sauce. DO NOT COOK ALL THE WAY. This is key or you will just have a mouth full of chewiness. Simmer the mixture for a minute or two, just until the shrimp start to turn pink, then remove the seafood from the sauce, put in a bowl and set aside.

Pour in the remainder of the coconut juice (the clear stuff) and the can of chicken broth. Bring back up to a low, bubbly simmer.

Now it's veggie time***. Add the eggplant, peppers, peas and carrots to the sauce however you'd like -- we usually hold back on the mushrooms because they cook quickly. Simmer to your liking and cover. Then begin adding spinach by the handful. Cover after adding, let it wilt a bit, stir it in, then add more spinach. You can add up to the whole bag or save it for salads.

Once your rice is almost done and you're about ready to eat, stir in the mushrooms for about a minute. If the potatoes are not very soft, add now. If they are, remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the potatoes and seafood. The residual heat from the sauce itself will cook them quite nicely.

Let me reiterate about the spices: the Thai basil is fantastic. It has a mintiness that is perfect for this dish. If you can't get your hands on it, mixing regular basil with mint works well, too. Try chopping it up. Add the basil throughout cooking and chop up some raw basil to put on top when served.

Also, I love this dish *really* spicy. I add crushed red pepper throughout cooking and also use more curry paste than the recommended 2 tablespoons.

Serve the mixture over rice, garnish with basil and a lime wedge (don't just look at it -- squeeze the juice all over the sauce) and enjoy!

* This began as a variation of the Epicurious.com recipe, "Thai Shrimp and Spinach Curry".

** Experiment! Butternut squash, bamboo shoots and water chestnuts area really great additions, too. Using reddish vegetables for red curry and greener vegetables for green curry works really well. Or delete meat! This is great with tofu, too.

*** Normally, we use naam pla, or Thai fish sauce, but to my dismay, I was out. I think it worked fine this time because the seafood has its own inherent fishiness, but otherwise, this adds a nice flavor (2 tablespoons added to the veggies).

Two weeks ago, I made one of the most frivalous purchases of my life: I bought an XBox 360. (I know, I know; Microsoft.)

What's more, the main motivation was so I could play Halo 2. For two years I enjoyed Halo on my PowerBook, but sadly had to look at it in the lowest resolution because my compy just couldn't handle it. And how long will I have to wait to see H2 available on a Mac?

I have 2 more weeks to decide whether or not I want to return the Xbox (of course there's always eBay). Until then, via Metafilter, I am enjoying this gallery from Craig Mullins, commissioned by Bungie for some storyboard-like video game images. He has a beautiful portfolio.

[And that weapon Dervish is holding?? ROCKS!]

The New York Times posted an interesting article yesterday about the law-breaking, foie-gras-serving restaurateurs of Chicago. The Windy City is the first in the U.S. to ban the selling of this "fatty liver", though it appears California will ban its production and the "sale of the product when made from force fed birds" by 2012.

For the most part (and pomp aside), I agree with Grant DePorter of Harry Caray's Restaurant. From the NYTimes article:

We really don’t think the City Council should decide what Chicagoans eat. What’s next? Some other city outlaws brussels sprouts? Another outlaws chicken? Another, green beans?

The idea of any city's council outlawing what is ingested by its citizens seems absurd*. Banning the production of foods produced by cruel practices, however, is a whole different matter. I don't think we could get very far talking about cruel treatment of brussels sprouts or green beans, but many would argue that the treatment of fish, chickens, pigs and cattle is rather cruel, indeed.

So who wins? I personally have never had foie gras. Looking at that shot of the foie gras pizza at Connie's Pizza piques my interest, for sure. Let's be honest: that looks tasty. And Neil Finn and Jerry Stout couldn't be happier about it! (Not to be confused with Neil Finn of Crowded House who went on to have a rather prolific solo career.) Maybe my curiosity resides in my Bulgarian heritage -- that's 2000 years of foie gras production, apparently.

Seriously though, the images of foie gras farms and production practices (not for the faint of heart!!) certainly move me to want to ban its production. For that matter, is there any foie gras produced by not force-feeding fowl? (And if so, can it even be called "foie gras" in that instance, or just paté?) Is there a wonderful pond where ducks/geese/the like are allowed to roam and eat to their gullets' content, becoming obese over a nice, leisurely lifespan? I can't seem to find any evidence of that.

But of course sites like GoVeg.com and the International Vegetarian Union -- those which promote the switch to a vegetarian/vegan lifestyle -- post the most horrifying evidence of cruelty. These terrible images are juxtaposed with images of "happy" animals, and it's this kind of anthropomorphising that frustrates me. Like the caption under image 3.4: "Far away from horror of breeding and slaughterhouses, the joy of living appears on the face of the animals." (clicking will take you to a gallery of animal pictures, some of which innocuous, others gruesome). This could very well be true, but this is a hollow argument against animal cruelty.

These animals aren't being respected, period. I am incredibly disturbed by an image of a goose with a pipe shoved down its throat whether or not the bird happens to remind me of my favorite cartoon character. Pictures of adorable hatchlings might get me in the cutie-bone, but the most convincing argument for the banning of cruel farming practices is that which holds us accountable for our treatment of these animals; that we would (hopefully) want to reasonably and respectfully treat anything whose life we end in order to continue our own. There should be a certain amount of gratitude and reverence in such harvesting and consumption.

As far as I can tell, NO Foie Gras.org's mission is to end the cruel treatment of these birds, without any pull towards the vegetarian or vegan communities. (No direct or obvious pull, anyway.)

But I digress.

I am torn with the Chicago case. In no way should the food I put into my body be dictated by any "governing body" but my own. But if you ban its production, isn't that just indirectly banning your consuption of that food? Almost, except let's face it: even if there was a national ban on something like foie gras, it is still being produced all over the world and there would be ways, if I really, really wanted to eat it, to get it in my belly. And that would be of my own rebellious volition.

*Or, let's make that common place and have City Councils nationwide ban the ingestion of fast food. That would solve a lot of our nation's health problems, and fast.

Last night I saw Snakes on a Plane. How was it? It, in a word, rocked. I had *so much fun*. I realize this was in large part due to the fact that it was opening night and the crowd was very much energized and ready for the ride. So much so that the Regal's 7:30pm show was stopped mid-climax (so I overheard) by theater managers to allow Charlottesville police to come into the theater and remove "rowdy patrons".

April, Mallory and I got there fairly early, with 20 minutes of sitting time in the actual theater before the commercials -- oh, I'm sorry, "previews" -- began. There was an unremarkably sizeable crowd that was also relatively calm. Just before showtime, the lights were turned up and an official looking fellow ducked his head in from above near the projection booth. He informed us of the removal of the disordly moviegoers from the previous showing. As soon as he finished his lecture about having a good time and being respectful of others in the theater, our crowd errupted in whooping and hissing, suddenly invigorated and chompin' at the bit. I wish I could thank that guy. I'm not sure if the crowd would've been that excited had he not tempted us by the threat of police intervention.

I won't get into SoaP too much. I will say however, that Manohla Dargis' review for the NYTimes is pretty much right-on (spoilers: don't read if you'd rather not know anything before seeing it). I was worried I would be disappointed, worried the film could not possibly live up to the hype, but was delightfully surprised. Impressed, even. It was ridiculous at all the right moments, gratuitously violent in just the right ways and delivered Samuel L. Jackson on a silver platter of badass with a side of cool. I mean, it's what you would hope and want from a movie with such an incredibly blunt title. Its play with the theme and its audience is very smart, almost brilliant. See this while it's still in theaters or get the tub ready to invite friends over for a SoaPy party for the DVD release.

Okay, so I know the joke is old. But it's pretty funny. My friend April is moving to Portland, Oregon the end of next month, so as part of her Portland "research" we've been swapping crazy, eclectic Portland sites back and forth (forever!). One of my favorite sites, though, is about "the horse project". Basically, there are old horse rings all over the city and citizens have been charged with tethering small, toy horses/ponies to them. Here are some instructions. There is a group on flickr dedicated to it. Some shots are quite artistic. Some are cute (but that's not a horse!). Others are just hilarious. Portland seems like a fascinating and pretty, uh, interesting place (warning! NSFW).

::car alarm sounds outside::

You know the one -- the series of 5 or 6 different "whooping" noises popularized in the late '90s. This goes on for a few minutes.

Noah: The only thing car alarms do these days is embarrass the car owner.

[All agree.]

Me: We're all desensitized to it now; nobody pays attention.

[More agreement.]

Me: I think car alarms should be like ringtones. Instead of harsh noises, you pick a song that gets blasted really loud. People would pay attention to that.

Jackson: I think you're onto something!

Harry: I'd play "I Just Called (To Say I Love You)".

Me: Definitely! I mean, I'm sure some would elect for the "hip-hop", but I imagine most are desensitized to that, too. It's gotta be the kind of song you'd never expect to hear loud.

Harry: I'd buy a cellphone just to set the ringtone to "Bridge Over Troubled Water".

I think I'd make my car alarm play "Can You Read My Mind". Nothing says "step away from my car!" like a song announcing that Superman is your boyfriend.

In a realated story: For the record, I think "Bridge Over Troubled Water" is maybe one of Simon & Garfunkel's worst songs. That's right, I said it. It's not even a bad track, they just have **so many other amazing tunes**. It comes from a wonderful album, however (Bridge Over Troubled Water), but it is by far its weakest link.

I’m scratchin’ my head over here. I am having major issues with either 1) my machine/iTunes or 2) my iPod. I was leaning towards the latter, but now I’m not so sure. Two nights ago, I noticed something peculiar: my iPod, “FELIX”, would mount on my desktop, but was not recognized in iTunes. What’s more, all of my email actually lives on FELIX and Mail was also unable to recognize FELIX was present. That meant I could not check my email (not by using Mail, anyway). I was, however, able to look around inside of FELIX using Finder.

After a nice marathon IM with my pal, mistersquid (plus a previous pep-talk on the wonders of keeping daily Mail backups), I was able to restore Mail to its usual self, pulling all the needed info off FELIX just fine.

::wipes sweat off brow::

But what about iTunes? I made a backup of all my music files, made a backup copy of my iTunes preferences file for giggles (com.apple.iTunes.plist), (gulp) deleted iTunes, and downloaded a new copy of iTunes, straight from Apple. The .dmg finished downloading, double-clicking produced the usual, mounted disk image, and inside I found the stock Read-Me file and the iTunes installer (iTunes.mpkg). I double-clicked it and off we went. Not so fast! I got to the fifth step of the install and noticed something interesting:

Of the three possible selections for what to install on my HD partition, “ebi”, the main thing that I want, iTunes, was shown to have a size of 0 bytes. WTH?!? That, and the "Action" to be taken for all three options, "Skip". Oh, and when I tried to select any of these options?

I was not allowed to actually “check” any of the three possible selections. Weird! “Okay,” I thought, “I am sketched-out by that 0 bytes, and this installer obviously does not want me to get specific with my selections, so let’s click ‘Easy Install’ and see what happens. . .”

“. . . okay,” I clicked “Install” and

There is nothing to install!!! “But I got this directly from Apple!” I was maybe a little emotional at this point. I then proceeded to eject the disk image, delete the .dmg and redownload the installer from Apple’s website. All of the above happened again.

I am so stupefied.

I am a little concerned because this iPod has been formatted for a PC, and I’ve been traipsing files back and forth with it between my work PC and my home Mac. I wonder if I will have to reformat it for a Mac and call it a day. For now I’m just going to brood about this and be sad I am without access to both my iPod and iTunes on my Mac. That, and I am throwing this out there for anyone who is a little more savvy about all of this stuff than me. The only real hack I’ve seen for the most similar situation was for Linux and that is a beast beyond my comprehension.

UPDATE: So msq was mostly right in thinking that installer had reason to believe iTunes was still on my machine, but not because the application itself was still there. It was actually because iTunes "receipts" were still hanging around. As I mention above (and shown in the first and second screenshots), all of the components in the installer were uncheckable and dimmed (or, not installable). Apple suggests:

1. Quit the iTunes installer.


2. Quit iTunes.


3. Open the /Library/Receipts folder on your hard disk.


4. Drag the following files to the Trash:
   
   
   
   • iTunes.pkg
   
   
   • iTunesX.pkg (where X is a version number)
   
   
   
   


5. Open the iTunes installer again and proceed with the installation.

That worked. I actually had four receipts to delete, but then I was able to reinstall iTunes. FELIX still didn't show up in this new version of iTunes however, and so I gave up. I took all the data off the 'pod and restored it, this time back to it's home on my Mac. I'm sad I won't have the convenience of plugging it in on my work PC, but at least now I can get rid of that CAPS-LOCK nightmare, and name it how I wanted it in the first place, "felix".

Wired posted an article yesterday highlighting Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wale’s call for authors to "put more emphasis on quality, not quantity". This comes right on the heels of Monday night’s "The Wørd", a daily segment on Comedy Central’s Daily Show spin-off, "The Colbert Report". This edition of the Wørd showcased "Wikiality", christened by the show’s host and namesake Stephen Colbert as an apt companion for his favorite linguistic abomination—coincidentally the first Wørd to be aired on the show—"truthiness". Click here or the screen-shot to watch the "Wikiality" segment on YouTube.

Now, Stephen Colbert says he thinks of the character he portrays on The Report as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed, high-status idiot". The whole premise of the show being that Colbert reports what he feels to be true and what he feels should be news---all part of being a truly patriotic, often jingoistic, supporter of President Bush. I disagree with Mike’s post over at techdirt.com that Colbert is trying to one-up "The Daily Show"'s popularity over the Net Neutrality debate. Instead, I think this ties in quite nicely. (You'll notice that both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart are executive producers of The Report.) I mean, if we had regulatory practices imposed as to how we are able to interact with/access/use the Internet, we couldn't have this kind of fun! Seriously, though, this is the point: the Internet exists because it is outside of the jurisdiction of large companies and governmental control, mostly (I would like to see this debate be a unified and global one, prompting action in the handful of countries regulating their citizens’ access to the Internet).

[Say, you passed it: be sure to check out the Web's reoccurring favorites like the awesome Tron-guy, the Backstreet-Boys-singing Chinese duo and the Sponge Monkeys from rathergood.com in the music video, "We Are The Web", on savetheinternet.com.]

Back to Wikipedia on our smaller, national scale. The interesting part about all of this is that Colbert realizes he has a rather impressionable fan base. He merely suggests tweaking the Wikipedia entry for African elephants to read that their population has tripled in size, and Wikipedia was flooded by Colbert-watching "vandals". In response, Wikipedia locked down almost every entry tied to Stephen and the Report, as well as entries on elephants, African elephants, Oregon (Stephen begins all his Wikipedia talk by comments of Oregon being "California's Canada", "Washington's Mexico" and/or "Idaho's Portugal"), truthiness and they even locked the user account, StephenColbert. Speaking of Washington, Colbert also quips that if he wants to believe George Washington didn’t have slaves that it’s his “right” to believe such a thing. And that's the beauty of it: all he has to do is log on to Wikipedia to make it fact.

The following evening, Colbert responded to the lock-down with a segment in which he "opened" the phone lines to answer "viewers' calls" (per usual, all staged). This second video (click here or the image to follow the link to YouTube) shows the dialogue between Stephen and an unhappy caller that first alerted me to the locking of certain Wikipedia entries.

What a frenzy! It’s certainly not one of my favorite Wørds, but I appreciate that it pointed out Wikipedia’s complete malleability. That, and how you certainly need to take all of its entries with a grain of salt. Or perhaps a rim of salt. Let’s just say a nice, Virginia cured ham with a warm, honey glaze.

It also reminded me of an insurance “beginner’s school” conference I attended a few months ago where the first speaker asked us all to brainstorm about just what, exactly, we think insurance is. After having us contribute some of our thoughts, ideas and feelings on insurance, she began her lecture: "According to Wikipedia, insurance is. . . ." I was shocked. Each of our companies forked over somewhere on the order of $1,000 for each of us to attend (tuition + airfare + hotel) and one of the main reference sources for the program was Wikipedia?! Amazing.

At its best, I do think Wikipedia is a great melding of presumed fact and I honestly feel that most people moved to contribute knowledge to this Internet encyclopedia do so because they want to contribute correct, objective information. This is very easily muddled, however—perhaps because of the overwhelming influence of our gut, or intuition (read: personal bias).

Having spent about seven months of my life in Micronesia, about two months in the Federated States of Micronesia and about five months in the Republic of Palau, I stumbled upon some Wiki entries about this region and was stunned to find that someone had described the people of these island nations as "immoral" and that the countries were "writhing" with uncivilized peoples. (Yes, "writhing", not "rife".) I quickly edited those entries, deleted the biased accounts and added some (of what I thought were) interesting tidbits of my own. Wow, checking back in on those entries just now, I see a lot of it has been updated with much more information, some of which I had come across at some point during my short stint with the research library at the Belau National Museum.

So, even as much as I have perused Wikipedia and learned a thing or two, thank you, Stephen Colbert. Though Wikipedia’s community aspect has been a hopeful check to keep everyone honest, thanks for reminding us that people are also easily influenced, especially for a laugh.