Yay, a step in the right direction

Nutrition labels must now show the amount of trans-fats in the food. This is great stuff, people will now be able to more closely watch what they are eating.

Most of the big food manufacturers have already switched away from trans fats (note: no increase in prices, no decrease in taste). Betcha didn't even notice that the Oreos you've been eating are now less bad for you. woo-hoo!

Finally, the general public will become aware of what pig farmers have known for years (they stopped feeding their pigs trans fats a long time ago because their pigs died).

Church Sexual Abuse Lawsuit

The latest ruling in the bankruptcy lawsuit came down, basically saying that all the parish property belongs to the Archdiocese.

Now, the whole issue is really disgusting - people in power, especially those of the church, abusing their power by abusing kids is horrible. And unfortunately, not amount of money will make things right.

I don't normally agree with going after those with money, but in this case it does appear that the Archdiocese did have a hand in concealing the problem from the public - which in my mind is actually worse than the original charge of child abuse. So, given that, I'm all for sticking it to the church for the whole thing.

Sadly, if the parishes' properties end up being liquidated, it's going to really hurt their communities. The people who belong to those churches will likely be disillusioned and the good services that the churches provide will be disrupted (if not completely discontinued). That's the potential downside to this ruling.

But in the end, I think it's the right course of action. The Church so completely controls all the parishes, it is only right that the Church lose the parishes. Perhaps this will be a wakeup call to the people attending the Church that still seems to be covering child abusers. Perhaps it's time to find a new church.

Just Stop It

I've gotten pretty accustomed to using my MS Windows laptop. But it occasionally pisses me off.

Right now it's the fact that when I want to kill a process, it just doesn't die. It takes like 5 minutes and freezes up the whole system.

In Unix, if I want to kill a process, I can do it. It happens instantly. No fuss, no muss.

Hot Fudge Sauce

Mmmm.... hot fudge sauce.

There's a recipe in my favorite cookbook I'd been wanting to try out. Hot fudge sauce.

Growing up, my favorite ice dish was the Hot Fudge Nutty Nutty at Farrell's (there used to be one in Portland). Why did I like the Hot Fudge Nutty Nutty? Because it had two (yes two) sides of hot fudge sauce. Wow.

You can always buy fudge sauce at the store, and the sauce at the co-op is top-notch. So far my cookbook has not led me wrong, so I put it to the test tonight.

I won't bore you with the recipe, let me just say that the fudge sauce was much tastier than the all-natural strawberry ice cream (which I normally groove on). Now I've got two batches of it stored in my freezer. Just stop by with some good ice cream and I'll show you how tasty the hot fudge sauce is.

Law Shows

I've watched a number of different law shows on TV and one thing is always bugging me.

The people hauled into jail almost never get a lawyer. "Close to Home" "NYPD Blue" "Law & Order (all 23 variations" etc. I just don't get it. Sure, some people are dumb and ignorant and don't know to get a lawyer. But come on, are the defendants always this clueless? People need to know they should get a lawyer as soon as they realize they're under investigation. So don't you forget it.

Oh, and I really dislike how the cops and prosecutors are often "bending" the rules or even breaking laws to go after people. There was one where the lady prosecutor completely ignored the defendant's right to an attorney to get some information. And while the show gave a small nod to the fact she was breaking the law, the whole scenario was set up as justified because a woman's life was saved (as though they couldn't have done both at the same time). Miranda Rights are pretty much guaranteed by the constitution (indirectly, but interpreted from the Fifth Amendment).

It's this kind of mentality that's lead to this attitude.

Classic Bush

As this Yahoo news story says, the administration is looking into the person who told the world that the NSA was spying on U.S. citizens without any oversight.

Classic "shoot the messenger" mentality. They never admit doing any wrong and just try to find and destroy anyone who reveals anything negative about what they've done.

It's not ok for Clinton to lie about a personal matter (sex), but it's ok for Bush to lead us into war on false pretenses (making us less safe), it's ok for Bush to spy on U.S. citizens (what Constitution?), detain people indefinitely (it's just a piece of paper), torture (what Geneva conventions?), and behave very non-Christian (cuts to benefits programs, tax cuts for rich - i.e. help rich, screw poor).

And what is Congress doing for us? They're the ones we've elected to represent us. They're playing politics. Democrats are remaining useless because they don't know how to run a unified party, and Republicans are so busy toeing the political line that they are blind to the atrocities committed by our commander-in-chief.

Golden Slippers

Mary gave me a wonderful gift for Christmas, a hammered dulcimer. I was totally blown away by the gift. Over a year ago I rented a hammered dulcimer for several months and used the John McCutcheon Hammered Dulcimer Instruction Series CDs and book to learn how to play a couple of songs. After a couple of months I had to return the dulcimer - I wasn't playing as much as I should have, and it didn't make sense to continue renting.

Anyway, I've now got this beautiful musical instrument. I sat down yesterday and spent an hour getting re-acquainted with the dulcimer. I can now play the first version of Golden Slippers (one of the two songs I learned over a year ago). That's one thing that is nice about hammered dulcimers, they're relatively straight forward to learn. I'd put up a recording, but a couple of notes are pretty out of tune.

Anyone know how to tune an instrument with 62 strings?

War On Christmas

Happy Holidays everyone!

That's my little mini-war on Christmas.

I don't get the whole uproar. It's not as though those big companies are turning their backs on Christmas (just look at all the stuff they're selling), and "Happy Holidays" is just a little more generic, more inclusive. Isn't that what Christ was all about? Bringing religion to those shunned by the popular religion (Judaism)? How hypocritical.

Oh, and there was one thought I had recently that's related to the whole fundamental religious movement. Teaching abstinence as the only method of "safe sex" doesn't work for many reasons. Ironically, Christians believing in the Virgin Mary also know that abstinence doesn't work either. :)

Merry Christmas

Lovely

Well, looks like we've failed yet again. The Iraqi election appears to have resulted in a fundamentalist Shiite dominated Iraq. I don't think this was the "freedom" that we were promised by our leaders when we entered Iraq. Oh, right, we weren't promised to give Iraq freedom, but to rid it of WMDs. Good thing the Iraqi constitution guarantees freedom of religion ... oh, wait, it says that clerics can be in the courts.

But that's ok, it's not as though our own Constitution has been violated. Ah, but it has.

I do like Benjamin Franklin's quote on the subject of freedoms, "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

Scott Adams on Intelligence

Leave it to a comic strip writer to have deep insight into intelligence and God.

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/12/intelligence_is.html

For What It's Worth

I've put the contents of this blog under the Creative Commons license. Not that people have been scrambling to use my writings elsewhere. I could have chosen the GPL, but ... I don't know that I care about imposing that set of restrictions/freedoms on my blog contents.

If you don't know what those are, don't worry, you really only need to know if you were planning on using my text somewhere else.

Embarrassing display at work

I came across a display in the conference center at work last week. The goal of the display is to show the history of the area, and ultimately how great it is to have Intel in the "Sillicon Forest."

There happens to be a quote in the display that I found disgusting. This is what I wrote in my weekly status report. Only one person responded.

---

"[Native American] numbers were greatly reduced by the disease and aggressive expansion visited on them by European newcomers."

This is a quote from a prominent display in the JF Conference Center. The display provides a brief history of the area (Washington county in Oregon).

I'm a bit ashamed that we (Intel) would put up something describing the history of Native Americans and so drastically minimize their loss of land, culture, and lives.

First of all, the sentence is in the passive tone. Basic writing 101 tells you not to use this, so it must have been used purposefully.

Second, there is no hint of intentionality in the sentence. The European newcomers knew exactly what they were doing when they did it.

The "disease and aggressive expansion" is further removed from the "European newcomers" by the phrase "visited on them". And, this phrase has a transient sound to it (visited - not permanent).

It would have been better had the display not mentioned the decline in Native American population at all. At least then we wouldn't be propagating the idea that the Native Americans either died off of natural diseases or were crowded out.

Couple of random links

Here are a few links I found interesting/aggravating this week.

The first is a humorous look at ID, and it is titled Designing Women. And Men. Made me laugh. Why? Because it's true.

The next piece of news really pissed me off. The national park service is considering a plan to allow corporate sponsorship of national parks. Please read this summary and sign the petition against the proposal. Can you imagine it? "Alaska arctic refuge, brought to you by Exxon, Mobil, and BP!" Or a big "Anaconda" sticker on El Capitan (Anaconda is (was?) a huge strip mining company).

The last link is an interesting twist on environmental activism that sounds like a good idea once you think about it. It is titled, How Prius drivers are gross polluters and other lessons of carbon credits.

Enjoy.

Train Mountain

Growing up, my family occasionally went to Shady Dell, a mini-railroad club with tracks that cover 4 acres. You'd show up with a picnic, hang out, and hop on and off the trains - riding around the park. There were big bridges, streams, and an honest-to-goodness roundhouse.

I thought it was pretty big, but it turns out there's a similar thing called Train Mountain somewhere between Crater Lake and Grants Pass. They've got 25 miles of track, freight trains (carrying 7,000 pounds of cargo), mountain grades, everything. I've got to check it out sometime.

Mexico Follow-up

Two things I forgot to mention about the Mexico trip.

1) The best deal of the trip was a little juice stand we found a couple of blocks from the hotel in Mexico City. On our way to the airport we stopped there and got a large orange juice. 32 ounces of fresh squeezed orange juice for less than a dollar. Mmmmm....

2) Everywhere you go in Mexico, people are sweeping the sidewalks and streets. And they're all doing it with brooms that look like they're straight out of a Harry Potter movie. I wanted to grab one of the brooms and try to fly away on it. But I figured I probably exceeded the weight capacity...

Mexico

Mary and I just returned from a ten day vacation in Mexico with my parents. We went spent time in a few days in Mexico City, a couple of days in Cuernavaca, and the rest of the time in Oaxaca. There was far too much to try to detail, so I'll go over the highlights.

The market in Cuernavaca has an entrance you'd never guess. Some innocent steps off a regular street lead you down some stairs, around a corner, and past a ton of singing Christmas lights, up more steps, down steps, up steps, down more steps. It was like walking on a serpents' back. You then enter the market - past guys selling live bugs as appetizers. The vegetable stands don't show the food as prettily as the stands in Oaxaca, but the spice stands have very nice displays - often in very nice wooden cases. The entrance (if you could ever find it) and the pretty spices make this market a winner.

The main cathedral in Cuernavaca was also pretty cool. Unfortunately, most of the frescos were pretty badly damaged. However the ret of the church is very simple yet modern. The baptismal pool is huge (the babies could swim laps), and the main altar is in front of a large metal cube that has half a dozen beautiful, modern, red glass candle holders hanging. The podium and actual altar also look like (tasteful) modern art. Worth checking out.

In Oaxaca, Mary and I took a cooking class at El Naranjo. Iliana, the chef, takes great pride in traditional Oaxacan cuisine. Before this class, I never thought I liked mole. In this class we made one of the 7 traditional local recipes, Amarillo. Iliana explained the history of moles, their importance in Oaxacan cuisine, and showed us how to make them. Oaxaca is in the area where there are more varieties of chilis grown in the world - and when you go through the markets - you cannot avoid noticing the prominent role chilis play. The stands in the Oaxaca market have more chilis than the stands in any other markets you'll find in Mexico. Anyway, the class was a bunch of fun - 4 hours of in-depth discussion of cooking. We got lots of hands-on experience with most of the dishes - dry roasting the dried chilis, blending the salsas and the soup. Mary was having flashbacks to sitting in lectures (the stools were remarkably not-comfortable), I was on cloud nine. After cooking everything, Iliana took us on a tour of the market and then the chocolate shop. Then we sat down to a meal of everything we had just prepared - a huge, delicious meal.

Fun food facts: before the Spanish came, the people of "Mexico" only cooked using the methods of dry roasting, steaming, and grilling - they did not cook using fat. The meat used in mole sauce is generally very bland (boiled) so as not to compete with the intricate flavors of the mole sauce. The Amarillo mole is not yellow (amarillo means yellow). The mole negro is not the darkest mole - Chichillo is (mole means black). The cinnamon used in Mexico is not the same as the cinnamon used in the U.S. and Mexico uses 80% of the cinnamon produced by Sri Lanka (the Mexican version isn't as hot, but is more complicated and yummy). The corn meal (masa) is made by cooking the corn with lime - which greatly increases the available protein content in the corn. In Oaxaca, black beans are often flavored with avocado leaves (not your regular avocado - whose leaves are poisonous) which tastes quite a bit like anise.

We later ate an actual dinner at the restaurant, which was delicious and very reasonably priced. Highly recommended. Not quite as good, but very tasty as well, was Grandma's (La Casa Abuelita) on the Zocalo. Both restaurants turned mom and me to moles.

The other high point in Oaxaca for me was the Ethnobotanical Garden. From the current entrance, the garden appears pretty boring. The four of us took a tour right before sunset on a Friday night with a Spanish-speaking guide. I picked up a little bit of what was going on, but not too much. We were all amazed by the beauty of the garden. I decided to come back the next day when an English speaking guide gave the tour. Very much worth the return. The tour lasted 2.5 hours and it zipped by so fast I didn't realize how long I'd been following the guy around. The garden is right next to the Museum of Oaxacan Cultures (worth a visit) and is intimately tied to the museum and the history of the region. The guy who led our tour was personally involved in getting convent and the old grounds turned into the museum/library/garden, and he was obviously proud. Turns out, about 12 years ago, the government was considering turning the whole thing into a high-end hotel and large parking lot. The state of Oaxaca is unique in Latin America in that over 90% of all land is communally owned (i.e. not private), and turning a piece of its history into a hotel would be a slap in the face.

The highlights of the garden tour were all the ways the garden had been organized to reflect the history and art of the region. The layout of the garden is intimately tied to the architecture of the convent, and makes as much use of the archeological findings possible. All rainwater from the convent and church is gathered in a cistern system to water the grounds. Unique and attractive water aqueducts water tie the entire garden together. Neat things I learned during the tour were: the natives made rubber from cactus (Spaniards never saw balls that bounced before), they domesticated squash for the seeds (protein source), several species of cacti (to make fences and dyes), a species of insect, and most importantly they domesticated corn. The insect, Cochineal, is used to die fabric, paints, and cosmetics. The dye is the reason Oaxaca exists: just after the time the Spanish found the dye, it became the most expensive agricultural product in the world, and the wealth brought in by the dye is the reason Oaxaca is the cultural and artistic center of Mexico that it is. It was also too expensive to gather the by slave labor - so the Spanish let the natives keep their freedom and land and simply imposed a tax on their sales - this is the root of the reason that Oaxacan's own over 90% of the land in the state to this date. The natives domesticated three varieties of prickly pear cacti - partially to eat, and partially to grow these insects. The Cochineal were then bred to produce more dye (and less wax). The most amazing feat of domestication is, of course corn - which was bred from a simple grain (with a single row of seeds) into a plant having 10's of rows of seeds around a central cob. And corn is gearing up to be the most important grain in the future: it can be grown at all elevations, and from the equator up through the temperate zones. The guide talked about how people in Mexico want the government to assert their property rights over corn and demand a portion of the profits Mansanto is starting to gain from privitizing corn.

Anyway, the tour was great. The garden is simply beautiful, and very impressive since it was an barracks for the army just 10 years ago.

The trip ended with Mom hunting down a guy selling a painted, wooden burro she seemed to have taken a liking to just before our last lunch. We had a little time to kill before catching the bus to the airport, so we tried to find the seller. No luck. Mere seconds before we hailed the cab, Mom let out a shriek when she saw the guy. Needless to say, she bought the thing and smuggled it through customs.

Music Critic

Last week I bought my first two CDs in months. I used to buy a lot of music when I was going to grad school in Berkeley. There are great used stores in Berkeley, and I must have gone into them a couple of times a week. That was where I finished out my collection of Depeche Mode. You see, they released a 6-piece boxed set (that's 6 boxes, each with 4-6 discs) completely filled with remixes. I ended up buying all the singles by themselves - the boxed set was pretty rare and hard to come by.

Anyhoo, they released another album this month, Playing the Angel. So I picked it up. I wasn't expecting much, and I wasn't surprised by the songs. Well, let me rephrase: the songs weren't that interesting. I was surprised by the noise level in the first song - it certainly started off like some angry teenager might. The songs are reasonable in the middle of the album, and by the end ... not so remarkable - I can't even recall what the end sounds like. They use a lot of distortion, which was never my favorite musical effect.

Overall, the band appears to be moving toward a "hard" image, with aggressive sounding music. And that's not my thing. I prefer music with a good beat - more pop or electronic. I'll probably warm up to the CD after a few more listens, but it'll only be passable.

But wait, I mentioned two CDs - what was the other one?

I had been humming some tunes for a week or so before going to Everyday Music - the Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" album. For years I've noticed that all movie rental shops (yes all) seem to have that video. Finally I couldn't resist the temptation, and I rented the video. That was a kick @ss concert - I wish I'd been there. So I scoured the EM shop and found the only copy of SMS they had (a scuf in the recent arrivals). I've listened to it more than the Mode album, and it's a sure winner.

Yummies

One of my favorite restaurants in Eugene is Lucky Noodle. They have an awesome version of Khi Mao (drunken noodles). For Thai food, what Pad Thai is to most people, khi mao is to me. I can't get enough of that dish.

Mary figured she'd look up a recipe - which got me all excited. I looked at a number of the recipes on the web, and a lot sounded like just soy sauce and fish sauce. I've done a combination of soy and fish sauces, and while it can be tasty, it definitely doesn't have the richness I've found in the drunken noodles. Two of the recipes happened to look pretty similar (see the link above) - both having some fun new ingredients. One is black soy sauce, a thick, molasses-like soy sauce. The other ingredient, Golden Mountain Sauce, a very light, not-so salty sauce. To me, the Golden Mountain sauce tastes very much like Bragg Liquid Aminos and that could be used in a pinch. For the black soy sauce, you could probably use a mixture of half low-sodium soy and half molasses. The other vital ingredients are fish sauce, Thai chills, and basil.

We have a small Thai chili pepper plant in the back garden. It produced about a dozen very cute, and very hot, chili peppers. I've made a little bit of hot sauce that's aging in the fridge - but I did get to put a couple of them into the Drunken Noodles. It's nice to have a good use for the peppers.

I whipped up the ingredients as directed, and voila! A pretty kick-butt dish of noodles. I recommend undersoaking the noodles - they cook quickly in the heat of the wok - and it's better to start with undersoaked noodles.

The other fine discovery of the weekend (again, thanks to Mary) is a new gin: Desert Juniper Gin. They make their gin with fresh juniper berries - no extracts. They're like a micro-brewery, except for liquor. I made myself a number of gin and tonics with lots of lime. Very tasty.

Legislate from the Bench

Huh?

What the hell does that mean?

With all the hubub about the supreme court nominations, the conservatives often throw out this bullsh*t about not wanting judges to "legislate from the bench." They've never said what it is, other than not liking certain "liberal" judgements.

It just comes across as people meaning that they want things to be like they were in the good old days, when men were men, women knew their place, and blacks were slaves. Strict constructionists should probably agree that blacks are not full citizens, and neither are women. Those pesky amendments weren't in the original document, so why the heck should we pay attention to them?

Let's try actually listening to what people have to say w/out creating these stupid sound bytes. Listen and actually use your brain.

Chicago

Mary and I went to Carl and Jana's wedding this past weekend. I've known Carl since 2nd or 3rd grade (that's currently under debate), but it was nice to see him tie the knot. We haven't been close since high school (mostly due the the fact we haven't been in the same city for more than a couple days since then), but I always get a kick out of seeing him.

Neither Mary nor I had ever been to Chicago before. We found a B&B called the Nyberg B&B which happened to be real close to both the church where wedding took place, and our friends Paul and Luaren.

First, the Bed and Breakfast. It was a neat old Victorian house, the hosts were nice, but they didn't seem very into the whole "hosting" thing. They were never around for breakfast (a continental one), and the house was oddly set up. For one thing, the house was full of odds and ends (antiques and art and the such). It all looked like someone had paid some kind of money for it, but most people don't usually cover every surface with a trinket/figurine/chair/painting. Anyway, it was a bit odd. Which is fine for Mary and me - we were sort of expecting it, but I don't know that I'd recommend it to others. Mary may have hit upon the real purpose of the Bed and Breakfast - a tax write-off for the home-owners.

The wedding was very nice - good singing (as long as you didn't listen to me), a touching ceremony, all that stuff. Carl looked sharp in his tuxedo, and Jana wore a beautiful dress. About the only other thing I can say about the ceremony was that weddings mean a little something to me now that I'm married. I didn't understand them before, but now I do.

The reception was at a cool old barn that was relocated in the mid 1990's as a community center. The bar was in the silo - which was lit solely by a dozen large white candles - very neat. We stuffed ourselves with too much food, listened to some good live folk music - and some of us did the folk/square dancing. I was happy to see Carl and Jana getting to spend a little alone time during the reception - hopefully the remember some of it.

The rest of the weekend was spent bouncing between various places in Chicago and Paul and Lauren's condo. We had a great time hanging out with them (it'd been since our own wedding that we'd seen them). Paul let us drive El Nino (his old car) which was fun - though not as much fun as the Porsche GT we saw outside of the pizza place.

We also got to meet the twins (Elise wasn't feeling real well but put on a good show, and Mark impressed us with his agility jumping off the padded blocks), and reunite ourselves with their cat (whose name escapes me at the moment). Friday night we even got Paul and Lauren out for an adults-only evening - which it sounds like they hadn't had in quite a while.

Of course the trip was accented by all sorts of good food. Sage on the first night with Paul and Lauren provided some good food and nice wine, in a very casual atmosphere. While wandering around the local neighborhood, Mary and I lunched at Coobah, an awesome restaurant serving eggs benedict to die for and a mojito that was the best I'd had this year. Sunday morning started off with a good breakfast at Kitch'n - a groovy breakfast place I'd hold up against any of the groovy places in Portland. While wandering on Michigan Ave, we stopped into the Signature Lounge for a drink and an awesome view of the city. Women - go to the bathroom there, the view is awesome. Men - our bathroom is tiny, windowless, and purely functional. I highly recommend their signature drink, a sidecar - it was awesome - almost as good as the mojito at Coobah. Paul picked us up and picked up a deep-dish pizza at Pizzeria Uno - another awesome meal. Lastly, on our way from the art museum to the subway, we picked up couple of tasty sandwiches at Au Bon Pain. The pastries were a little lacking, but the sandwiches held us through to Portland.

There was far too much to do and see in Chicago - we'll have to go back for more. If for no other reason than to check out some new restaurants.