MinDstreaM

[dkastner]

Solorzano blanco (silver) Very rustic flavor with molasses/agave dominating, hint of vegetable. Maybe even a hint of dark cherry. Tobacco finish. Very good neat. Intrigued by the production process. Atypical use of younger agave plants and wild yeast fermentation. Thanks to the drunk manager at Spec's who recommended it.

[dkastner]

Fat Monday

Lent is fast approaching, and to celebrate, I prepared a "Sunday Roast" for Julie and I. We would have had it on Sunday, but the beef we got was frozen and wouldn't have thawed in time. I bought a grass-fed chuck roast cut from a local farm that we would roast. Since grass-fed beef is leaner than conventional, corn-fed beef, I thought the traditional crock pot method might not work as well. I surmised that Jamie Oliver would have a good english roast recipe, so I followed it. I also used his recipe for gravy. Along with the beef, I made boiled beets, green beans, potatoes, and Martha's recipe for Yorkshire pudding. To drink, we had a lovely 2009 Bordeaux. I really liked Jamie's method of placing the roast on a "vegetable trivet" then mashing the vegetables and cooking them with the juices to make the gravy. It really added a rich flavor to the gravy. It also answered the question of why the vegetables we were setting along side our roast chickens were so fatty - they are intended to be part of a gravy, not eaten as a side. One key to grass-fed roast beef is to slice the meat thinly - like nearly deli slice thin. This overcomes the chewiness you get with leaner beef. All of it was fantastic! A great splurge as we usually stick to vegetarian or chicken dishes. Tomorrow morning, I'm going to hit up a bakery for some Pączki!

[dkastner]

Cure the Addiction

It's no secret that Americans are addicted to foreign oil. What's the cheapest way to cure that addiction? Stop driving, of course! But as Americans, we're faced with a problem. While nicotine users have patches to help them quit and heroin users have methadone, there's nothing to help wean motorists from the pure bliss that is driving... Until now! Introducing the MotoSuit, a lifestyle garment that helps you transition to the world of walking and bicycling. Features: * Miss those smells from automobile land? MotoSuit's respirator will pipe car exhaust, spoiled food smells, and your favorite car freshener into your nostrils. * Do you crave those feelings of isolation and invincibility? MotoSuit's noise cancellation headset will silence others, leaving you fully isolated. MotoSuit includes steel body armor that allows you to plow over other walkers. * Are you used to being perched high above everyone else? MotoSuit's got your back! The adjustable stilts will help you tower over others and intimidate them with your superiority. * Sometimes walking seems so SLOW. MotoSuit's VR goggles sample the passing landscape and plays it back to you at 10x speed, allowing you to ignore your boring city. * Walking while on your cell phone lacks the danger and excitement you feel when driving with your phone. MotoSuit includes a "magic" disorientation system that causes you to stagger and move in unpredictable ways, keeping you on edge at all times. * Are you left with too much time for reading and surfing the web while on public transit? MotoSuit comes with a mini-game that simulates driving in rush hour traffic in the nation's best cities, like Atlanta, Dallas, and DC. The mini-game even allows you to send texts while playing! * Are you worried about all the calories you'll lose when not sitting in a comfy car seat? MotoSuit includes a feeding tube that streams flavorful, high fructose corn syrup-based beverages into your mouth. * The adventure of finding and paying for parking is now replaced with an even more exciting experience. Before you're allowed to enter your destination, MotoSuit will charge $14 to your account and require you to solve a randomly generated maze. As you get used to walking instead of driving everywhere, MotoSuit will slowly disable its weaning features. In up to 6 months, you can be car free! Order your MotoSuit today for only $8999 and help cure your addiction to foreign oil.

[dkastner]

Dear Keurig Users

I was skeptical when I first heard about the Keurig and their claims to deliver excellent tasting coffee. After trying it personally, I can confirm my skepticism. "So what," you may say, "it still tastes pretty good for a system that brews coffee for you in a matter of minutes." The trouble is that you can achieve the same level of convenience and superior taste without investing over a hundred dollars in equipment. You can also brew your coffee in a more environmentally responsible way. Here's how: Equipment needed: Electric kettle - $30 Pour-over coffee brewer - $15 Pre-ground coffee - $9/lb, or about 15 cents per cup (even cheaper if you go with Folgers) So far, we're at $45 in hardware and 15 cents per cup in coffee. Compare this to a Keurig - $110 for the machine and over 50 cents per cup of coffee. This means that you are over-paying 35 cents per cup, plus $65 in equipment - that's worth 433 cups of pour-over brewed coffee. How convenient is the pour-over method? Compare steps: Keurig: 1.) Fill machine with water 2.) Turn on machine, wait for water to boil (usually 2 minutes) 3.) Insert k-cup 4.) Press brewing button 5.) Wait 2 minutes Pour-over: 1.) Fill kettle with water 2.) Turn on kettle, wait for water to boil (usually 2 minutes) 3.) Scoop 1Tbsp coffee into pour-over brewer 4.) Pour hot water into pour-over brewer 5.) Wait 2 minutes 6.) Pour coffee into cup Not much of a difference. Now what about quality? The theory behind the k-cup is that vacuum-packed coffee retains its flavor better than coffee in a can or a bag. The truth is that vacuum-packed coffee that has been ground and sits in its container for weeks will always taste worse that freshly roasted and ground coffee. The fact that vacuum-packed coffee has no air inside means that the coffee has finished off-gassing CO2, which means it has effectively gone stale. Notice how the Keurig-brewed coffee has no foam after brewing. You have just payed a premium to drink stale coffee in the name of perceived convenience.

[dkastner]

Al Stewart - Modern Times, Chess/Janus, 1975

[dkastner]

Simon and Garfunkel - Bookends, Columbia, 1968

[dkastner]

Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd - Guitar/Guitar, Columbia. What do you get when you hire classical guitarists to play jazz and blues? A soulless, mind-numbing snoozefest.

[dkastner]

Jarreau (s/t), Warner Brothers, 1983. Jarreau is a fantastic jazz vocalist. Some of the material is borderline cheesy, but. His vocal skill and positive message make the album enjoyable. You can see his hilarious video for Mornin'

[dkastner]

The Best of Carly Simon, Volume 1, Elektra, 1975. One of the great pop singer/songwriters. Of course, You're So Vain is the standout.

[dkastner]

Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - Night Moves, Capitol, 1976. Some good, old fashioned rock and roll. In fact, according to Seger, rock and roll never forgets. Side one focuses on the exploits of womanizing men prowling the night. Side two features Bob’s lamentations about women who have betrayed him and a veiled reference to sticking it to the man.

[dkastner]

Seals and Crofts - Diamond Girl, Warner Bros., 1973. Is this what happened to hippies? Or was this a simultaneous rural adoption and backlash against the counterculture? This album is awash in biblical imagery, Victorian idealizations of women, and a little back home country thrown in, with a “back to the land” theme. Not that I don’t find myself feeling in a back to the land mood from time to time. However, much of this is shlock.

[dkastner]

Boz Scaggs (s/t), Atlantic, 1978. As I began working my way through some second hand records from a friend, I was prepared for the worst. However, Scaggs was a pleasant surprise. There were some great soft rock tracks, but then many songs tended toward twangy country, which weren’t my cup of tea. Good recording quality, overall. Favs were I’ll be Long Gone and Loan Me a Dime.

[dkastner]

Robert Hickok’s Music Appreciation, Columbia Special Productions, 1971. 8 LPs. A collection of classical works from medieval chant to modern compositions. Some of the recordings are of poor quality, and I felt the selections didn’t represent the periods that well. For instance, two entire sides were devoted to Mozart, and one side was squandered on Haydn.

[dkastner]

The Maltese Falcon

A couple months ago, I bought a six-pack of Malta India, a Peurto Rican drink that is a "near beer" - basically a drink consisting of wort that would otherwise become beer if left to ferment. The first drink you take tastes crisp, with a hint of maltiness and molasses. However, as you drink it, the molasses taste takes over and it becomes undrinkable. With four bottles remaining, I decided I couldn't let them go to waste, so I would have to find some sort of concoction to make it drinkable. My theory was that while there was some acidity to the drink, it lacked bitterness to balance the sweet malt flavor, just as adding hops would add bitterness to a wort fermented into beer. Today at lunch, I put my theory to the test. In preparation, I brewed a little extra coffee this morning. I mixed 2 parts malta with 1 part coffee and a dash of vanilla extract (some extract I made at home using 6 vanilla beans soaked in 1 cup of vodka). The result: something akin to homemade coke or a non-alcoholic (depends on the vanilla extract) Founder's Breakfast Stout. I call it the Maltese Falcon. So if you're craving a cola and don't want the high fructose corn syrup or phosphoric acid, this is your drink!

[rentzsch]

[hypomodern]

This piece basically echoes my own thoughts on the App Store: it’s a fine idea, but the current implementation is lacking a ton of features that developers of high quality mac applications are going to need. Its saving grace is that Apple isn’t making it the only game in town, but that, too, might be a problem: it risks creating a “lemons market” of sorts: if it becomes the go-to place for new mac users and is full of iphone-sized $3 games…

I think it has potential, so long as Apple is willing to provide the tools developers will need to make it a success.

rentzsch:

I’ve long wanted better application management on Mac OS X, so I applaud the Mac App Store. Application installation has always been a train-wreck on Mac OS X, but at least independent developers were able to make the application updating process reasonable enough thanks to Andy Matuschak’s…

[dkastner]

To me, it's interesting that this is basically what Microsoft did with Windows Update so many years ago. I recall being able to find third party software through it or some other control panel app. We'll see if Apple can work their magic on this type of solution, too.

[dkastner]

People move well on their feet. This primitive means of getting around will, on closer analysis, appear quite effective when compared with the lot of people in modern cities or on industrialized farms. It will appear particularly attractive once it has been understood that modern Americans walk, on the average, as many miles as their ancestors-most of them through tunnels, corridors, parking lots, and stores. People on their feet are more or less equal. People solely dependent on their feet move on the spur of the moment, at three to four miles per hour, in any direction and to any place from which they are not legally or physically barred. An improvement on this native degree of mobility by new transport technology should be expected to safeguard these values and to add some new ones, such as greater range, time economies, comfort, or more opportunities for the disabled. So far this is not what has happened. Instead, the growth of the transportation industry has everywhere had the reverse effect. From the moment its machines could put more than a certain horsepower behind any one passenger, this industry has reduced equality among men, restricted their mobility to a system of industrially defined routes, and created time scarcity of unprecedented severity. As the speed of their vehicles crosses a threshold, citizens become transportation consumers on the daily loop that brings them back to their home, a circuit which the United States Department of Commerce calls a ``trip'' as opposed to the ``travel'' for which Americans leave home equipped with a toothbrush. ... The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.

Ivan Illich, Energy Equity (1973) http://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1973_energy_equity.html Still reading it, not 100% sound, but still some great quotes

[dkastner]

Michigan's economy is quite representative of the entire US economy: agriculture, industry, and finance all in one state. Although, in Michigan we don't dress up our finance sector with serious looking buildings and serious looking employees. We simply call them casinos and gamblers.

Me