He’s making a lot of sense here. Maybe we should re-elect him.
Episode CCLVII: I wonder if this is what the Endless Thread looks like to outsiders?
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
He’s making a lot of sense here. Maybe we should re-elect him.
Episode CCLVII: I wonder if this is what the Endless Thread looks like to outsiders?
I’m having a really shitty day. Weeks. Months. Whatever.
The only thing I’m looking forward to at this point is Rhinebeck, thank FSM only TEN DAYS AWAY. Which will have 25 awesome-er than awesome Pharyngulites, including Denmark & Austrian imports (YAY!). And there will be much rejoicing and partaking of alcohol and chocolate and bacon and geekiness and debating and knitting and wool and there will be sheep and possibly goats but we’ll try not to set them on fire and we’ll squeeze some tentacles in there somewhere (someone has to order calamari for dinner on Saturday)… and then next year the REST of you have to come so it will be even awesome-er…uh…-er.
And maybe at some point in November I won’t have to work weekends anymore, and the grants will be in and finished, and my training will be done, and I can actually come back to play in TET, because I miss you all much. :(
Anyway, in case anyone missed it last Thread, I’m organizing a project to help support Rebecca Watson through all this E-word MRA petty idiocy that just will not die. If interested, please email me at oniongirlsays at google mail dot com for more information. Feel free to spread the word elsewhere!
Meh. Just about any smaller doughnut store out there makes a better product than Krispy Kreme.
Secular group: 27 secret atheists in Congress
“The Guardian noted that experts agree that the number of secular Americans has doubled in the last 30 years, making them the fastest growing major “religious” group in the country, a classification that many non-believers would object to.”
Rey,
I dunno, I don’t eat at either of them I was just trying to join the ‘Obama can’t do anything correct’ bandwagon.
Or even small blue truck
^ This. I got harassed for my clothes, but it was after the kids had decided to pariah me… in fact they would send one kid to compliment me as bait to expose me for group shaming, for the very same shirt. They only do it to have someone to ostracize. IMHO, the ostracizing itself should get called out, not the excuse, whatever it is.
Given the previous, I’d like to know how this sort of finessing-of-stupid-rules works for kids more neurotypical than myself. I got attacked all the time for trying to finesse gender rules or religion rules, by kids and adults (“troublemaking”, natch.)
Cameron government, working hard to fight human rights
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/oct/04/theresa-may-wrong-cat-deportation?intcmp=239
The Sailor, just some figures from Germany for comparison:
from the Bundestag,
– 35.9% of MPs did not make public any information about their religious status
– 4.3% called themselves as “konfessionslos” (no member of any religion)
– 0.3% called themselves atheists (this might amount to 2 MPs, if I remember the number of seats right)
So here you see it: as long as you don’t call yourself atheist in public, which will make you unelectable as a strident no-nice atheist, you can do whatever you want, jut keep it private…
When Gerhard Schröder insisted not to say “So help me God” when he was being sworn in, as he regarded religion a private matter, the Bishops were all in uproar.. But later of course he was present when matters of state required the head of govt to take part in various religious services…
/rant
Anyone who doubts the truth of this phenomenon should check out Tavi Gevinson and take a look at some of her “brilliant”, “fashion forward” outfits. She is tiny, cute, articulate, white, from a loving financially comfortable family and — most important — able to invest time in, and display, a hobby coded very, very upper-class to legitimize her weird clothes. If someone less golden and privileged than her wore some of that stuff to school she would have been mocked and bullied flat in about two days. I don’t know about guys so much but there always seems to be a That Girl whose social status is sufficient that no matter how much she breaks the fashion rules for hoi polloi, she still smells like roses.
Fuck!
Try that again.
Anyone who doubts the truth of this phenomenon should check out Tavi Gevinson and take a look at some of her “brilliant”, “fashion forward” outfits. She is tiny, cute, articulate, white, from a loving financially comfortable family and — most important — able to invest time in, and display, a hobby coded very, very upper-class to legitimize her weird clothes. If someone less golden and privileged than her wore some of that stuff to school she would have been mocked and bullied flat in about two days. I don’t know about guys so much but there always seems to be a That Girl whose social status is sufficient that no matter how much she breaks the fashion rules for hoi polloi, she still smells like roses.
*hugs* for onion girl. Sorry about the general shitiness.
–
@CC, yeah the latter. If you ever go to Paris, don’t go here:
http://androuet.com/fromage%20paris%205%20France-6-fromagerie.html
(And if that doesn’t get the mildly deranged penguin back, I don’t know what will ….)
If you have it in November or September, I and crocheting Wife would at least have a chance to attend.
No Danish holidays in those months, so I can’t attend if I’m employed next year. And if I’m not employed, I doubt I can afford going.
Cheese heaven, that #521!!!!!
Most of what the entire family wears comes from Age Concern, NSPCA and Marie Curie Cancer Research shops (and anything outgrown but still in good nick goes straight back there) (is this what they call “thrift shops” in USAnian?) and Daughterspawn would occasionally get complimented at school for putting together good-looking combinations of clothes (she has a pretty good eye; mine is rubbish). If you get good quality second-hand stuff, how can anyone tell anyway that you didn’t just get it new – last year? (Why they would care is beyond me, though I know people do). Is there any cultural gap here, perhaps – I mean, do some of us live in cultures where it’s more acceptable to buy second-hand (or “vintage”!) than others?
There’s a new yarn/knitters shop in my town. I’m not into such things (I used to do embroidery) but I may not even have taken notice if not for folks here who raised my consciousness about how cool that community can be.
kirstinc,
Lest you think I was arguing for some other way to play the system, I wasn’t. The system needs to change.
kristinc
Heard her last weekend, too. She seemed pretty bright. And lucky.
@512: Venezuelan beaver?
blf! blf! Come back!!! [/Shane]
Fuck, I’d give up peas if blf would come back.
++++++++++++++++
Watching DrWho re-runs, (why yes, again, why do you ask?), and I really like the Winston Churchill episode.
This must feel awesome.
“No Danish holidays in those months, so I can’t attend if I’m employed next year. And if I’m not employed, I doubt I can afford going.”
Ahh, the Employment Conundrum, been there, not able to do that too. (I may have a T-Shirt.)
Mmmm, aged coagulated milk solids, via tasty bacteria and molds.
Dhorvath, not at all. Just musing on how the system is, as always, weighted towards people with privilege.
Therrin,
Yeah, I would do that.
___
Kristinc,
I am largely aware of how weighted things were in my favour. About the only thing I missed was being particularly tall, but I got my height early so I played that card for a number of years too. Kids are aware of most of what we are without the tempering that growing up can bring, (hell, most adults don’t temper it either.)
Today as I was walking her home from school my second-grader was worrying that her voice was too boyish. My heart broke a little.
My heart has been breaking a little over and over again since she started school and my happily buzz-cut, unselfconscious, comfortable-in-her-body, quirky individual of a daughter started worrying that her hair was too short, her teeth were ugly, she wears the wrong colors, and she’s not pretty enough unless she dresses up carefully. She now believes math is hard, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift are terribly important, makeup is something she desperately needs, and being “popular” is how you tell if someone is good or not.
Her self portrait this year is indistinguishable from the self portraits of all the other little girls — they all draw themselves with long hair, makeup, necklaces and earrings.
I feel like I’m watching her indoctrination into nonpersonhood.
I protected her fiercely from all of this garbage for 5 years and in fact I cried when I decided to send her to kindergarten rather than homeschooling her for a year, because I knew perfectly well that she was a quirky, vibrant individual and that she would be pressured into some degree of conformity and girl-coded “niceness”. But I never dreamed it would be like this. I can’t stop it getting in at every tiny crack and pinhole.
And the worst thing is that she really, honestly believes all these ideas are hers and hers alone. She has no conception of how she’s being brainwashed and she absolutely cannot be talked into examining any of this stuff from a different angle.
Unrelated to the feminist issues, she has another math worksheet today: a page of addition and subtraction problems, and then the instruction “Choose one equation above. Explain how you can make a ten to find the partner.”
kristinc,
I hope I’ve misread you there, because it sounds like you kept her in a bubble and then exposed her to the external environment.
I’m watching Jeopardy! I’m saying that the questions are biased for who they want to be the winners.
SRSLY! Asking those math questions aren’t biased? Among the 3 contestants who has the idiot savant ability to immediately come up with those answers?
My mom was a 4th grade elementary school teacher for 30ish years. She did fine with most subjects, but I would facepalm at some of her math wording. Maybe you could offer to help reword the worksheets? As it is, that sounds like a bad Google translate. I’d be tempted to answer, “Ten is perfectly happy being single on hir own, and does not require a relationship to define hirself.”
John, with a kid younger than 5, it’s comparatively simple to shield them from toxic crap. I was able to decide what kinds of movies she watched, for instance, and if necessary sit with her and have age-appropriate discussion about them, and if I didn’t decide to expose her to a movie she just … didn’t know it existed and never missed it.
You can call it keeping her in a bubble if you want, but before she went to kindergarten she had no idea there could possibly be a problem with a girl having very short hair, no idea that being “pretty” was important, no idea that anything could be wrong with how her teeth looked or her voice sounded, no idea that she “shouldn’t” like certain colors, and no idea that it was important for her to dress in a way that other people approved of. She was allowed to live in her own body in ways that made her happy and comfortable. If you call that keeping her in a bubble than I am 100% for keeping kids in bubbles and I wish I could do it all her life.
I did lose patience and write “[Daughter] and I have no idea what this question means”. She was in class when, presumably, the concepts addressed by the worksheet were discussed, and she can do the math itself with ease, so I figured if she doesn’t understand the question it’s truly because the question is nonsensical.
SC:
Well, I must say, that strikes this amateur mixologist as counterintuitive! Wait, what? Oh, you meant the TV documentary? Well, that’s very different then: <EmilyLitella>Never mind!</EmilyLitella>
Seriously, no spoilers on Prohibition, please: I’m DVRing it, and I want to be surprised at how it turns out!
Actually, I haven’t watched as much of Ken Burns’ stuff as I should’ve, but every time I hear him interviewed (e.g., on Fresh Air), he comes off sounding like a pretty radical progressive. Good on ‘im!
Oh, John, you are just fromagging us now.
Frottage? Um, never mind. {/Latella]
kristinc, fair enough.
Your dismay is palpable and understandable.
Hopefully, you’ll be able to help her develop and strengthen her social immune system until she’s grown.
(Peer-pressure influence is strong, but so is yours)
dose of cuteness: gap in manhole cover + spilled ice cream + rat noses, GO
Youtube link
Finally found a working angle grinder!
Step two in the process of converting a boring, plain, square old meat cleaver into a badass skinning axe!
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/36/cleaveraxeduring.jpg/
I have some nice wood for handle scales, and am going to experiment with old burnt nails from the fire pit as rivets.
Awwww, they want ice cream too! So much cute :D
The cuteness of rats has turned out to be a survival trait for the colony in the back yard-
When the juveniles would wander around to eat spilled chicken feed and I’d catch them, the way they’d stare up at me when ‘bustec’ made it extremely difficult to want to kill them.
As far as I know they’re still around.
This sounds vaguely familiar, especially coupled with yesterday’s multiple ways to make twelve. Are they doing equation sets? My son did something like this in school. They had to find “sets” that matched. So, 5+5=10 was a match to 10-5=5. I’m not sure exactly, but it sounds like she would choose an equation like “10-7=3”, and then “make a ten to find the partner” by writing “7+3=10”. She’s making a sum of ten, and doing so by finding the partner equation to the one above.
[meta]
I should add, if anyone wants to contact me (for instance, regarding my apology) my g-mail is my nym. I just realized there’s no obvious way to contact me privately.
Not like I was gonna see it anyways, but I’m officially boycotting Scream 4. Their annoying pop up ad is just too obnoxious.
Carlie, no, yesterday and on previous days she was finding multiple equations that totaled the same single-digit numbers (learning that 4+4 is equivalent to 6+3). Today she was expected to use a certain finger-counting process to solve either addition problems that totaled teen numbers, or subtraction problems from teen numbers. She did use her fingers to successfully solve the equations, but I suspect not in the prescribed way? I have no idea where “make a ten” comes into it because the questions were things like 14-8 and 5+7.
Oh for pete’s sake. Today on Dyscalculic Theater …
I meant 4+5 is equivalent to 6+3, of course.
kristinc – huh, I don’t know then.
Unless that’s like how my dad taught me to do arithmetic more easily, by finding the tens.
5+7? You can make the ten by making it 3+7, and then there are two left over and put them in and it makes 12. I don’t think I ever did that with subtraction though, because that would be harder (you’d have to subtract and then add, so 14-10=4, and then there’s still 2 to go so add two to get 6)
I have absolutely no answer for the conformity issue – I think all kids go through phases of wanting desperately to belong, alternating with phases of wanting to be different.
Hugs to onion girl – hang in there!
Well, the gallery show was interesting, it was great fun to see Kamaka once again, his latest pieces are *amazing*. Saw a lot of nice work today, and I bought a fabulous wall sculpture of a human spine. I don’t get to bring it home until the 22nd though.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/571/cleaveraxefinished.jpg/
And here it is finished. A meat cleaver converted into a little crude hybrid between an axe and a knife. For now, the handle pegs are just really hard eastern maple wood. If they break, I’ll replace them with something better.
I have a dear friend who’s been bemusedly hand-holding me through all these misogyny threads, and xe just sent me this:
http://www.explosm.net/db/files/Comics/Matt/Keep-it-up,-creepy-dudes.-It-might-just-work-out-eventually..png
—
TLC, you’ve been grinding metal all this time? Aw, so lucky…
kristinc – I sympathize with the problems of gender police in elementary school – the “look sexy” nonsense was starting when my kids were in SECOND GRADE. It wasn’t why we started homeschooling (that was SonSpawn’s dyslexia), but a wonderful side-benefit is that the Spawn are now almost 16 and extremely resistant to the efforts of the gender police. Also good at identifying it – easier to spot it when you don’t have to live it several hours a day.
Of course, I also live in a house where a kid proclaimed, while watching Battlestar Galactica: Hey Starbuck, you just pistol whipped your husband. And it wasn’t a nice consensual safe-word pistol whipping, it was an “I want you dead” pistol whipping. What’s with that?
Pteryxx: Not much grinding, just a few simple cuts and a quick made handle. Not much use for wood cutting, but it would be great for butchery.
Also, great seeing you around here again.
Going hunting first thing tomorrow morning. This time, the brother’s bringing a bear tag.
I’m of two minds about it. I like and admire bears on general principal (largest predator I’m ever likely to see in the wild, and the close encounter I had as a kid has left me in a kind of awe of them ever since) but that won’t stop me from eating one if my brother happens to kill it. Coyotes are equal-opportunity feeders. ;)
I’d still rather get a deer though.
Update on the fantasy novel. Some named female characters are beginning to appear. p55 is the first, a one-off never-seen-again woman who smells of cinnamon appears immediately after a mention of prostitution – and she’s named “Hetara”. FFS.
TLC – if your brother should procure a legally hunted bear, and if you have nothing better to do than use a dog shedder brush on said bear carcass, and if that hair/undercoat happened to be stuck in a plastic bag and sent to me legally, I’d be thrilled to be able to spin bear down. Not enough to make an actual usable amount of yarn, of course, just to see what it feels like.
I’m a very odd person, but we already knew that.
Mattir: I homeschooled my son until he was old enough for third grade. I noticed that by that age he was really remarkably bullshit-proof. Most of the gender policing has seemed to roll off his back since then, and he now (age 12) proudly espouses anti-homophobia, anti-misogyny, pro-choice views. He figures that if someone has hateful views he doesn’t care much what they think of him. I am very proud of him, but I think it was easier for him when (as you say) it wasn’t the water he swam in for years.
Sending my daughter to school for kindergarten was going out on a limb; one of the reasons I sent her brother to public school eventually was because it was getting more difficult for me to get out in the world with the kids and avoid isolation, and my daughter is an extreme extrovert who really flourishes being surrounded all day by other kids. I’m beginning to wonder if I made the wrong call, not that I really could have made any other under the circumstances.
Alethea:
How subtle. :eyeroll:
TLC, to add to Mattir’s @552, Kamaka might be interested in teeth and claws. I’d be interested in them!
Bear body-bits?
(You could try to find a TCM loony and sell them for $$$, but you’d be enabling the horrid practice)
John, it’s a matter of not wasting the bear-bits if TLC and his brother kill one out hunting. He’s not out to kill one for the bits. I don’t approve of hunting for body bits.
Mattir @552
Bears have down????
I mean I knew that rabbits are birds but bears are ducks!!??!
I want to start a campaign to convince the TCM crowd that the body-parts do NOT work unless you kill the critter yourself.
I mean how could buying the stuff in a store work any better than that Big Pharma stuff?
No.
If you want to benefit from the critter’s chi (qi), you must take the chi from the bear by-your-own-self.
Using nothing more than a knife.
You must be naked.
And the bear must be wild, in the wild.
—
No one will go for this.
Mattir: Interesting idea. Bear Yarn. I’ll see what I can do, but no promises. My brother will be pretty excited about that bear hide. I intend to see to it that as much of it as possible is used. Anyone know any good recipes for bear ribs or bear steaks? Everyone always seems to do bear sausage.
Caine: Ah, my brother will definitely be putting dibs on the skull (with teeth intact) and claws.
Chigau: That makes sense, to the basest and most primitive part of my hunter gatherer mind. I like it.
Nooo, don’t kill teh bearz!
Is there actually a good reason to kill bears? Killing deer makes sense to me, for food and because we’ve knocked off most of the top predators, so population control is quite important. But why bear?
And on another tangent, this is pretty neat: evidence that the tendency to use supernatural explanations over natural ones is learned, not innate.
Good Morning
kristinc
Oh I know so well how you feel.
I’m constantly wondering how one verbal instruction wipes out a life-time worth of experience, of a world that has all the colours for all the genders.
I can still control her TV consumption, but I see in her games wat they’re talking about in kindergarten. They’re playing Winx, a show that has been criticised repeatedly for the extreme body image it confers.
And I swear those things are worse than they were in the 80’s, when I was a kid. I mean, even the boy play-sets had at least a token female kick-ass character (He-man was it for me)
clothes
Yep, that’s my experience, too. They’re just another thing they can tease you for if they want to.
The Laughing Coyote
I have eaten bear only once (to my knowledge).
It was in the form of “pork chops” cooked on a flat piece of metal over an open fire.
Pretty yummy as far as that kind of cooking goes.
The quotes on “pork chop” are because the provider refused to identify the meat before he fed us.
He reported that he had fed bear to other people and they *freaked* when they were told what it was.
My reaction was:
What? Really? uh, yuk? No, yummy. Got any more?
I was in my mid-20s, living in a tent for the summer, cooking over fires or Coleman stoves. All food was GOOD.
random ejaculation:
I can haz invisibility wetsuit plz?
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/10/invisibility-cloak-mirage/
way fucking cool.
Did someone say teeth and claws?
Alethea: Bear meat is considered quite good by many. I consider all things fair game, whether I find eating them myself distasteful or not (I’d never eat a dog, not even a dog who I didn’t like, but I don’t judge asian cultures that do). Bears aren’t particularly endangered either, at least not the black bear we’re likely to encounter.
I know every hunter says this, but I do respect everything I kill, even the little things like rabbits and grouse. Rabbits especially, because 9 times out of 10, their survival adaptations trump my primate brain easily. And of course, every possible body part I can use, I will use.
Bear oysters, anyone?
@ Caine
Hah! I should have known. That’s a sweet piece, nice buy.
@ Alethea H. Claw
They are really good food. Black bear meat is my personal favorite. Though I admit I am ambivalent about killing them, they are pleasant and interesting beasts.
Also, hunting harassment helps to keep them out of trouble…garbage-can bears have shortened life expectancies. It’s better for them if they are uncomfortable with humans.
Kill it with fire.
I watched maybe two episodes with my younger sister and didn’t notice any overt sexist stereotypes. A lot of dumb stereotypes (there’s the nerd girl, the shopping girl, the one into boys ectectect) but nothing you wouldn’t expect to see in anything with maybe a terrible writing team. The big issue, like you point out, is the body image.
Can only speak for what I observed in my little sister, but the big thing that drew her was the whole fashion aspect of it. The glitter, outfits and runway presentation of everything. Personally I don’t think that’s necessarily bad but like with all things fashion (meaning magazine cover) I have to wonder if the signals being sent about body image.
My sister (a thick girl. as in could beat half the wrestling team and be a decent body lifter if she didn’t think that would be to mannish) got a little fed up with it when none of the clothes she wanted to try came in her size. So she switched over to One Tree Hill.
We must be around the same age and yes — I was just telling Mr Kristin earlier that I don’t ever remember hearing a girl teased for “looking like a boy” with short hair when I was in elementary school. I think we’re going backwards.
True Kamaka, unless its name is Bart (RIP), Little Bart, or Honey Bump, a bear that associates with humans will generally only lead to heartbreak and disaster for all involved.
Like I said, I dunno if I would want to kill one myself, but my job on these hunts isn’t killing, it’s processing, and I won’t hesitate to process a bear my brother kills.
I know, Caine — I was sardonically and alliteratively riffing off then-recent comments to make a dig at TMC and its nasty consequences for animals. Too tersely, I know now.
(PETA fodder, those are)
Kamaka:
We met the artist on our way out. She’s terrific. I told her I was going to take it to my next appt. with my neuro and show off. Turns out she knows him, she works as a nurse at Kindred hospital in Mandan.
The Laughing Coyote
But could you kill…
a bunny in a wheelchair?
====
Kamaka
Then again, hunter killed bears don’t have life expectancies much longer than that. So perhaps hunter harassed bears would be the thing to strive for?
Nope. I was that girl (didn’t manage to grow a sensible amount of hair for anything before I hit puberty) and the other kids were cool with it. I was also the football-playing girl (soccer for you) who’d give you a bloody nose if you tried to attack me. And the kids were cool with it, the boys accepted me and the girls just shrugged their shoulders.
The only people who did apparently have a problem were old ladies who always mistook me for a boy and then blamed me disaprovingly.
I’m wondering what they’ll do to my youngest who is that dare-devil, spitfire kid, too. Even now she gets told that ” a boy was lost on her”. And they mean it as a compliment boy=better than girl as well as an insult, because she’s not a good girl.
She’ll either give a fuck or break.
julian
I haven’t watched it yet. It’s running on a TV-channel I cannot even remember the number of because the name is generally the equivalent of “crappy program”. And she’s way to small to watch it anyway.
I’m constantly puzzled by what other people think to be age-appropriate TV for preschoolers anyway. I’m pretty sure that by any standard Hannah Montana, Spiderman, X-men and Winx aren’t.
I wouldn’t mind fashion. I wouldn’t mind pink that much. I wouldn’t mind any of the stuff it is was what she was genuinly interested in. If she wants to become a profesional ballet dancer, go for it, girl. If she wants to work at CERN, go for it girl. If she wants to be a hairdresser, go for it girl. Even if she decided to become a catholic nun, as long as it was her decission, I would be kind of OK with it.
What breaks my heart is that I see how she thinks that she must choose one over the other because of her sex.
SQB: No. I can honestly say there’s no way I’d kill that particular bunny.
All issues of cuteness and courage aside, the hind legs are the best part, and a paralyzed rabbit wouldn’t build up much hind leg meat anyways. It’s a cute rabbit nonetheless, a li’l trooper.
Fair enough, TLC. I have no objection per se to hunting for food. As long as it’s not an endangered species, and not treated with cruelty.
The cute li’l bunny, though, gets it. Bunnies are evil and must die.
Like this?
Maybe some of these people are getting their ideas of gender roles from Strong Bad.
Y’know that paper I turned in yesterday?
I cited this.
Really.
Benjamin,
Hm, I probably saw this here for the first time, so apologies if you were the one who already linked it :
Lecture based on that paper
Let’s try again:
Link
I don’t remember whether I was the one who linked it, actually. Thanks for posting it again; it’s always great to watch.
PZ, I note that closing a thread doesn’t disable pingbacks.
Would be a good thing, except that spammers are abusing it (refer to Episode CCLIV for examples).
—
PS I see you’ve either found time for more page code tweaking or have had your minions do it. Not bad!
The wife’s chemotherapy was successful and the oncologist believes her cancer-free. So yesterday she had her left breast reconstructed. She’s home recovering and I’m taking a week off to
play computer games and post on Pharyngulawait on her hand and foot.@Alethea:
Another good reason to kill a bear is if it’s you or her.
My uncle was hunting caribou in the Northwest Territories (actually hunting, not I’m gonna sit here in a box and someone will release a captive animal into the area to get shot at and I’ll take it’s head and leave the rest.) While he was waiting for a caribou to approach, he heard a roar and turned around to see a huge black bear. Shot it a quite a few times before it went down. It was the bear or him. He’s of the sort who wouldn’t care if he got killed by a bear, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
Sadly he can’t hunt anymore because he’s got terrible arthritis.
*sounds of applause, champagne corks popping, confetti in the air*
I have no problem with people hunting stuff IF they (a) the critters are not endangered, (b) they eat and otherwise use as much of the critter as possible, (c) they actually do some work at tracking and such and thus expose themselves to physical discomfort and some amount of risk – no canned hunts (possible exceptions for people in wheelchairs), and (d) they don’t sell body bits to the TCM trade. These are my weird rules.
@TLC – it’s my understanding that the folks who tan bear hides have to comb the downy undercoat out of the pelt to help with the tanning process. If brother is having the pelt tanned (which is what I would do were I motivated to go on a bear hunt, which I’m not), ask him to have the taxidermist save the down for him.
We do own a bear tooth, found it on the ground in Colorado. A cousin of the Spouse’s, a wildlife biologist, identified it when we found it. Pretty neat.
‘Tis, congratz, awesome news!
—
(@TLC, thanks. Sometimes I can be active posting, sometimes not… it’s appreciated.)
‘Tis – hooray!
‘Tis,
That is great news.
If you don’t mind reading a notorious Evolutionary Psychologist, Sam Harris has a great interview with Steven Pinker up over here.
My freethinkers meeting tonight is about our favorite myths. They can be religious, conspiracy theories, etc. I’m having a hard time coming up with a really good one. I find Greek/Roman mythology interesting, but damn it, they’re all basically about rape. I’m not a fan of most religious myth because most of what I know is pretty boring or just fucking crazy. Anyone got a good one?
BYU football player Riley Nelson was recently forced to get his hair cut, and to issue an apology for letting it get so long. Apparently there’s something about the length of men’s hair in the BYU Honor Code, otherwise known as Stupid Rules.
The People have been speaking out. There’s an ode to Riley Nelson’s hair on YouTube. The last 1/3 of this video is quite good, as is Riley Nelson in all his long-haired glory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weS8U5zLXHs
There’s an entire article about the subject in the Salt Lake Tribune. The story is followed by four pages of comments (so far), including several referencing the length of Jesus Christ’s hair (as evidenced in mormon surfer-dude jayzus paintings). There are also comments on the general theme of the Church (LDS Church) being pretend, but football is real.
I imagine she’s referring to the bear’s wooly undercoat.
@592: I’m rather fond of some of the mythos (mythoses? how do you pluralize mythos?) described in Bujold’s fantasy novels. Or you could go with a nice conspiracy theory. I can give you half a dozen completely implausible theories about who killed JFK if you’re into that sort of thing.
@ Dianne
Conspiracy theories sound great. A lot of them are so crazy as to be both funny and harmless.
I was thinking about maybe showing this (mostly because it’s from one of my favorite movies).
Starstuff: Good one! Not exactly an example of a harmless conspiracy though.
Hurrah! *confetti*
–
“Mythoi”.
(D&D FTW again!)
–
@ Starstuff
Google around for “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus. (Link)
It is the story of my life… :'(
Studies of Universe’s Expansion Win Physics Nobel
@ ‘Tis
That is wonderful news.
an eye-rollable barbarism
@ Chas
eye-rollable barbarisms
(“rejections of God” … The God being Zeus, the term was applied to xtians.)
I’m grading.
I asked them for what they think was the best piece of evidence (implied that we discussed in the class material) that supported the idea of catastrophism.
One of them says Noah’s flood.
I’ll just be curled up over in the corner weeping for humanity for awhile now.
I’ve never run a barbarian character. </straight face>
Barbaric or not, the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary agrees with me.
–
@ Walton
Her Royal Highness Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, Dutchess of Alba has just got married. You had better get into the market before all the royal blood is married off… (Linky)
The undercoat of many dual coated mammals, especially those that live at high elevations or latitudes, is referred to as down. I’ve heard the term applied to the fluffy understuff of wolves, yak, and musk ox.
Also, Coyote – should the taxidermist be able to save the fluffy stuff from the pelt while preparing it, I’d probably be able to card it together with some more mundane sheep fur and make your brother a hat. Just as an incentive – wouldn’t be a 100% bear hat (which would probably be too hot anyway, no matter how cold it is where you are), but would have definite coolness points.
Yay for Mrs.’Tis !!!
Carlie: Well, it was just one, right?
I’m hoping that we don’t see ‘Tis at all for a week as he’s too occupied doting on Mrs. ‘Tis with footrubs and expensive chocolate.
‘Tis:
Brave news! That’s wonderful. You both deserve to be treated after the stress of dealing with everything.
For Carlie – you can perhaps just stick your fingers in your ears and hope the student was referring to the Mediterranean flowing into the Black Sea via the Bosphorus Straits. Linky
Unless, of course, the reality-based geology has changed since I read this…
‘Tis and your miss (yeah, I know, but that doesn’t rhyme), congratulations!
‘Tis
This is wonderfull news.
I hope she recovers quickly, I see she has the best care
Something completly different
*sigh*
Some wonderfull day by day racism.
Some background: My gran needs to be watched all day. It’s not that you have to do much, it’s just to keep her from getting up while forgetting that she can’t walk as she used to. So, since we can’t do it all day, even with the best of planning, there are some women coming in to keep her company. They come from a kind of public agency that helps people who are long-time unemployed to get a foot back into the door.
Today, the agency called to tell that the woman who was supposed to come tomorrow can’t come and another woman would show up. We were warned that she is black.
Footrubs have been given. Right now the only things she’s able to keep down are chicken soup and saltine crackers. The chocolate will have to wait for a few days.
Giliell,
Oh shit. Really? I mean, holy shit, what were they thinking? A person is going to show up and help you out, their performance doesn’t even exist until they have like, you know, performed. Gah.
Yay! Ee! So happy for her and you! I hope she feels better soon.
If I’m not mistaken, “Tis and your Missus” actually does rhyme, but the rhyme is between a stressed syllable and an unstressed final syllable so it doesn’t scan very well. Does that make it a feminine rhyme? I tried to look it up but I gave up because I have no threshold for frustration today.
Why is that eye-rollable? It’s the correct Greek plural. *puzzled whine*
Lucky and awesome! I’m excited to see the hopefully inevitable pictures of the sculpture, which sounds super freaking cool.
—
As for why I have the low frustration threshold mentioned above, the rain and troubling dreams last night have me all sulky and bad-moody. My joints are acting up a lot worse than I would have expected, despite my taking ibuprofen for them, and I’m sorta curled up against a wall in the hallway since I have class in an hour and a half and I don’t want to go outside. Then I had these weird upsetting dreams that I can’t stop thinking about, which make it really hard for me to focus on anything else.
—
Plus, the woman I’m living with seems really resistant to understanding that I don’t use the television, I have never touched the television, and therefore I have no connection whatsoever to the television suddenly not working, nor do I have any clue how to fix it. I think she understands now that I’ve told her that most of the shows I watch have been canceled, I only watch shows using the internet, and I have never even turned on the television, but I’m not sure. Which just bothers me and I don’t get it. :(
‘Tis, that’s fantastic news!
Gilliel …. what? Why would they even … do you live in an overwhelmingly white area, such that the sight of a black person could be a startling rarity? (Not that that wouldn’t have its own problematic connotations.)
Classical Cipher,
A cautious hug is yours for the taking. Sorry today has dealt you crap from sleep to weather.
CC:
Yes, there will be pictures! I completely forgot to take photos of it at the gallery, so that will have to wait until the 22nd, nope, actually the 24th when we pick it up.
A minor correction. She’s not styled “Her Royal Highness”, since she is not an Infanta of Spain, nor a member of any other reigning house. Rather, as a Duchess and a Grandee of Spain, she is styled Excelentísima (“Most Excellent”), and addressed formally as Excelentísima Señora.
Rey – I’m not going to mention the ones that think that gravity pushes everything down.
Giliell – amazing, isn’t it? Ugh.
CC – virtual hugs. You’ve had a bad month. You need a break.
As an addendum to #621: This differs from practice in England, where a non-royal Duke or Duchess is styled “The Most Noble”* and addressed as “Your Grace”.
(*Historically, this was a contraction of “The Most High, Noble and Potent Prince”, but that style has fallen out of use.)
Historically, this was a contraction of “The Most High, Noble and Potent Prince”, but that style has fallen out of use.
Not surprised. To a modern US-American, that sounds like the title some guy earns by repeatedly demonstrating his…how to put this politely…lack of need for a PDE inhibitor while simultaneously enjoying the results of visiting several coffee houses in Amsterdam. Admittedly, it would be an impressive title to be able to obtain, but probably not a good one to put on one’s CV.
‘Tis, woohoo, snoopy dance and extra saltines for you and your wife.
++++++++++++++++
The chicken paper is now bookmarked and will be delivered when I’m hit with “citation needed” requests;-)
++++++++++++++++
TLC, nice miniature halberd, (not really a halberd, I just like the term;-)
It’s soup season. My repertoire includes butternut squash soup (with bacon), cream of green pea soup (with bacon), cream of cauliflower soup, cream of potato-chicken soup, corn chowder, smooth creamy lentil soup, pea soup, and I’ve been mulling over a possible curried chicken soup, maybe with white navy beans.
I would be delighted to hear about your, yes YOUR, different favorite soups, and perfectly happy to post any of the recipes for my soups to return the favor.
Blockquote>Admittedly, it would be an impressive title to be able to obtain, but probably not a good one to put on one’s CV. ‘It would look better on your CV than mine.’
Mister is making fresh tomato juice. Yum.
Kristinc, I’ve posted this before, but I’ll post it again. Be prepared for the haters. ;p
Gwenhyffar’s Dutch Pea Soup
Rinse 1 lb split peas and soak for a few hours in cold water. Drain well.
Bring the split peas, 10 oz spareribs, pork brisket or a mixture of these meats and 8 oz of cubed bacon to the boil with about 7 cups of water.
Meanwhile, wash 1 lb leeks and slice fairly thickly; peel 5 stalks of celery and chop or dice; peel 1 large carrot and cut into cubes or slices; wash 6 sprigs of celery leaves or parsley, chop half and reserve for garnish.
Stir the prepared vegetables and whole celery/parsley leaves into the soup and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste (take it easy on the salt since bacon is naturally salty). Cover the pan and simmer for at least 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Stir the soup occasionally and add a little extra water if necessary. The soup should be thick!
Remove the spareribs (or other meat) from the pan, discard the bones and chop the meat.
Return the chopped meat to the soup, add one sliced 10-oz cooked
smoked boiling sausage and garnish with a little chopped celery leaves or parsley. Serve with rye or pumpernickel bread, sliced French bread or toast (the first two are the more traditional).
NOTE: if smoked boiling sausage is not available, use 10 oz of
frankfurter sausage.
Blockquote FAIL!
++++++++++++++
kristinc, except for the pea soup, they look delicious. I will save them for a later date.
In my area we’re currently experiencing a minor heat wave, (yea!), so my mind is back on salads and fruits.
Tonight was 3 lettuces, cherry tomatoes, cubed ham & turkey, colby, feta, & brie, apple bits and black walnuts.
And an undressing to be determined.
@kristinc
You just made me very hungry, and I’m stuck on campus for several more hours.
I’ve only made two soups before: chicken noodle soup and loaded baked potato soup. I think I might try split pea soup next (since it’s one of my favorites).
Catching up. In no particular order (and sorry if I missed anyone):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
‘Tis,
Wonderful, wonderful news! I am delighted for you and the missus! =^_^=
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mattir,
Seconded! (i’ll miss you, ‘Tis, but it’ll be in a good cause!)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Benjamin “Acts of Baker” Geiger,
You should get extra credit for that. =^_^=
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Carlie,
Oh dear. There just had to be one, didn’t there?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Classical Cipher,
Sending hugs, grog, chocolate and other effective painkillers through the USB for you; partake of any and all as you wish.
(There’s plenty to go around, for anyone else who wants.)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Giliell,
Gaaaarrrrgh! Whatever did you (or the person who took the call) say to them? =ô.ô=
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dianne
That had me literally laughing out loud! Thank you! =^_^=
Yay for ‘Tis Herself! Excellent news.
kristinc, I think you could add a bit more bacon to some of those. My favourite soup of all time is roast tomato and red lentil. It’s also good with some roasted red capsicum (aka bell pepper) added.
I think I might perhaps have figured out Walton’s royalty obsession. It sounds a lot like Pokemons. Collect and battle! Can a Serenissima beat an Excelentísima? And they “evolve” as their relatives die. Your Prince has evolved! It is now a King! Princess Mary, I choose you!
Soup is the zombie of cuisine.
Best wishes to ‘Tis and wife!
Italian Wikipedia has shut down. Any page will lead to an info page about the shut down. Try for instance, http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologia
(Then click on “en” for the English translation)
The Redhead’s recipe for split or potato soups: Start with the starch. Add all meat groups as necessary and available to make interesting, along with stock/gravy makings. Add onions, garlic, and bacon as necessary. Boil until done. Serve with hearty bread and wine/beer.
Pelamun,
Net neutrality looks to be a big battle in the coming decade. Look at how Google and Facebook flex their muscles and then consider how most people access the internet. I have a nervous sensation, but I don’t know enough to see where we are going.
Dang, that should be split PEA or potato soups. *ducks to avoid a possible mildly deranged penguin*
Nerd,
Then cast aside the over cooked pot of smelly stuff and eat the bread while drinking the beer. Soup is not something I eat on purpose. More to the point, I avoid it assiduously.
There’s definitely a bacon pattern to my favorite soups. It’s been my go-to method for making things taste good and I started feeling like it’s kind of a crutch so I’m actively trying to use other seasonings and so on for flavor.
That roast tomato and red lentil sounds delicious. I should definitely try it before tomatoes start looking sorry and costing as much as the moon.
I have a rocky relationship with pea soup. My mother cooked pea soups and bean soups constantly when I was growing up and we were poor, and she was a bad cook and they had very little flavor, so legumes kind of taste like deprivation to me :/ I’m trying to teach myself to like them again (and having some success).
Oh no. I mean, I really dislike the idea that you can chop all your random leftovers up in bits, swim them in broth and call it soup. Ick. But carefully designed soups can be such a treat. I thought for a few minutes I had seen God, the first time I tasted butternut soup with bacon.
kirstinc,
I love the way you worded that, thanks.
Dhorvath,
I thought net neutrality was about how private companies treat different types of data? In the Wikipedia case, it’s more about government intervention, in this case an absurdly restrictive defamation law…
Pelamun,
I thought it was broader, leading into things like China’s highly restrictive policies for example. If the net turns into a nation by nation product it will lose many things in the process. If I am using the wrong term, my apologies.
NEWS ALERT: Steve Jobs has died!
Apparently, Steve Jobs just passed.
— sent from my MacBook Pro
Well, that seems to fit his recent change of focus. I think he lived a good life, and has certainly made an impact. Still, it won’t be easy for family and friends, no matter how good his life and how well prepared he was for death. I hope they can muddle through that mess with a minimum of media interference.
Watching Ken Burns’ Prohibition
Pretty good. Not his best documentary that I’ve seen, but still very good.
Jazz, despite some obvious omissions, is hard to beat.
Tom Kha Gai would like to have a word with you out back.
Rev BDC,
Should I bring some Miracle Whip?
RIP Steve Jobs. Now, you live on as an internet virus that will surely make someone a lot of money.
Steve Jobs has died – and I couldn’t post that fact because my MacBook kept claiming that the page that this thread is on wasn’t responding.
He was just 25 days older than my husband.
Giliell
I suppose it’s possible in their work they deal with a lot of entrenched racism in seniors (poor alot). That’s the most charitable explanation I can come up with.
Apple is a very greedy company.
I nearly bought a Macintosh even though it was a bit pricier, having outgrown my Apple ][ clone (which also ran CP/M via dual processors), back in the day, but then found out that the price did not include the keyboard!
They were value for money if you were computer-illiterate, I suppose, and only did things by rote.
(Also, they were very, very slow compared to command interface PCs; those early models used most of their processing power to run the interface)
Speaking of slow, lots of failures to load FTB pages lately (ie today).
Therrin, yeah.
I wonder if there’s a DOS attack involved.
Therrin:
Yeah, I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to get FtB to load at all today.
Yeah this is the shitstorm is my guess.
yawn
Well, that’s a rather… undignified image. And not something one would associate with, say, His Grace the Duke of Marlborough, although I daresay some of his ancestors were less reputable.
(But yes, it is a rather silly title, and no longer used even in formal situations. “His Grace” is the only style now ordinarily used for British dukes.)
Soup…soup is not a meal, no matter what the people at Campbells want you to think. My stomach persists in classifying them as “beverages”, rumbles loudly, and demands that you bring on the next remove. (And if it has enough chunks of actual food in it to qualify as a meal, it is no longer “soup”, it is “stew”.)
–
cicely, are you aware of the etymology of the term ‘restaurant’?
(Soup is highly-nutritious and easily-digestible)
I had the same loading issues earlier, but it seems to be working fine now.
Why is the time stamp set for GMT? Did the servers migrate again while I wasn’t looking?
I don’t worry what Campbell’s thinks. I worry what the Redhead thinks, and wish to avoid a month of liver and soggy boild spinach.
John, that rather depends what you put in your soup :)
Good grief, I misspelled my own ‘nym.
I love a good hearty soup and several slices of bread as a meal.
Chili with cornbread works too. Darn, now I need a snack.
Has anyone read this?
Louis D. Brandeis: A Life – Melvin Urofsky
I’m debating picking it up and testing my reading ADD with it’s 900 or so pages.
He’s always intrigued me, I’ve just never read anything about him past little bits here and there.
Alethea, you just clobbered me with the pedant-bat! :)
Yeah.
—
In our household, all soups use a stock base, generally consisting of simmered left-overs (don’t throw out those chop-bones or carrot-tops, people!).
Further to Tethys’s comment, from the pfft:
Soup as a meal? Not usually, but soup with cheese toasties usually is. Or a really substantial soup like a Laksa or a Chinese style with noodles. Carbs. Gotta have the carbs. Legumes tend to add a lot to the filling nature of a soup, but I still want toast with my pea & ham or tomato & lentil soup.
The thing is that “soup” is so generic a thing, covering Bouillon to Laksa – thin, thick, meaty, veggie, etc. I can’t see how one can generalise about all soups, except that they all contain more liquid than a stew.
BTW, my latest find for making stock when you don’t have enough leftovers is chicken necks. My local butcher sells them by the kilo. The cats adore them, and they make a really substantial stock. Not that I’m back on the cooking much. For my birthday, I made alot of cake, but that seems to have worn me out for the next week.
John M,
Should I mail them to you?
Have you people never had Pho or Tom Kha Gai or Home Made Chicken noodle made with your own stock or real Ministrone or cuban black bean soup?
DO I NEED TO GO SOUP NAZI UP IN THIS MOTHERFUCKER?
Rev BDC,
How many iterations of soup would I need try in order to satisfy you that I don’t like soup?
I save poultry bones, carrot ends, tiny withered garlic cloves and onion scraps for stock too. (I would save beef or pork bones but we eat so little red meat now that there isn’t enough of those bones to amount to anything. Most of my soup starts either with a chicken stock or a vegetable stock I make with roasted carrots, onion, celery and garlic.
A thin or cream soup minus sides might not be a meal but it’s a very nice snack.
@John Morales
Yes, the dipping is mandatory. A good crusty loaf with a generous smear of butter is my preference.
There are german spice cookies called pfefferneusse(pepper nuts) that you must dip in milk/tea/mulled wine to eat.
All of them.
Hmmmph. Soup haters.
We just enjoyed a lovely soup with chicken stock, cauliflower, and roasted red bell peppers (pureed once the cauliflower is soft), with chicken, wax pepper, wild rice, mushrooms and a bit of extra sharp cheddar. That’s dinner, and I don’t care if you say otherwise.
Soup haters gonna hate, I guess.
Rev,
My life would be awfully busy then.
___
Pfeffernuesse are awesome just by themselves.
Dhorvath, so, do you drink fruit juice?
Vaguely. Mostly I drink things that are sweet.
Could be why I eat so many crackers with it.
No, I am not; I await enlightenment. :)
Just not at all stomach-satisfying. A “meal” of soup needs back-up; quite a lot of bread, or a sandwich.
IMO, YMMV, etc.
–
As who would not? Liver ranks right down there in the rung just above peas, and about equal with turnips. And I like my spinach crisp.
–
I can’t recall where exactly I read this factoid, but apparently pfefferneusse is an ancient cookie. the oldest recipes call for harts horn as a leavening agent.
Todays baking powder and baking soda probably result in a much softer cookie.
I wish I knew which of my Aunts made my favorite version so I could get her recipe. mmmmmmmm cardamom
“Soup” is a very wide term, which includes stew.
I usually eat soup with enough crackers crushed into it to make it closer in texture to paste than water.
Soup is a thin term.
I should clarify. Do shakes and smoothies count as soup?
Dhorvath, I guess not.
(There goes my quip about food-juice! :| )
—
cicely, it comes from establishment selling ‘restoratives’, this referring to soup as a health product.
You’ve never had my lentil soup.
Trust me — it fills you up, alright!
(Almost solid when in the fridge (carve it with a spoon!), only liquefies when heated to above body-temperature)
PS Lentil soup is a most excellent source of fibre no less than carbohydrates, and with a not-insignificant amount of protein to boot.
I like lentil soup.
(P.S. Annoyingly, I have to have an account in order to post at Blag Hag and Dispatches. I usually comment here without using my account, but when I’ve previously posted on another part of Freethoughtblogs in the same browsing session, I comment using my account. I mention this in case anyone was wondering why my ‘nym is sometimes capitalised and hyperlinked, and sometimes not.)
Yay for ‘Tis and Ms. ‘Tis (that should rhyme, right? since we are apparently rhyming for this? all good things should have rhymes!)
Hugs if wanted to Classical Cipher. I hate those dreams that stay with you when you’re awake. May tomorrow be better!
I love soup. I eat it all winter because I can make a lot and and freeze it in serving-sized containers to eat for weeeeeeks. Mmmmm. I hate the cold of winter but I love the soup (and sweaters, but you can’t eat those).
Lentil soup? I can haz recipe(s)? I am newly in love with lentils.
I have to admit, I prefer thick soups to brothy, and that seems to avoid the “it’s a drink” response of my body. For anything with veg. products in it, I take some chunks out and put them through the blender and back again to thicken things up. If that can’t be done, then that’s what tearing up the accompanying roll (because there must be one!) and tossing the pieces in is for. :)
Walton – I’ve commented at the ftb blaghag without an account.
I started really getting into soups when I realized you can make a pretty good one easily – take whatever your main ingredient is, add onions and garlic and decent broth (which can mean from a decent bullion), some salt and pepper, and you’re good to go. The trick is caramelizing the hell out of the onions first. That makes everything taste good.
Am I a fanboy if I got excited when PZ responded to my Tweet? lol. How are you thread?
Carlie, I don’t see your status updates anymore!
aladegorrion, I’m a fairly sloppy cook, but, FWIW:
Get a couple of hundred grams of brown lentils, soak in cold water for at least a couple of hours, remove any floaties (husks etc).
The lentils will swell up a fair bit as they soften.
Chop up an onion or two, fairly fine.
Maybe chop up some capsicum, same as the onion.
Chop up a clove or two of garlic fairly fine, if you like garlic.
Get about a half-liter of stock ready, doesn’t matter what kind.
Drain the lentils.
Gently heat a glug of olive oil in the saucepan, then add onion (and capsicum if you’re using it) and gently start softening them.
Meantime, chop up a chorizo or similar quite chunky (or maybe pork bits or even bacon), then turn the heat up to medium and add that to the sizzling pot.
When the meaty bits are done (or browned, if using pork), add the garlic, making sure to stir so as not to burn it.
Add a bit of the stock to pot to stop the cooking briefly, then add the drained lentils, then cover the lot with stock (maybe one centimeter over the top).
Add some salt and whatever other spices you like (I often use paprika and pepper), then simmer the bejesus out of it, stirring now and then.
Towards the end of the process, it becomes quite thick; this is the time to stir fairly often and keep an eye out, until the glop wants to begin to stick to the bottom pot and burn.
Remove from heat; it’s done!
(I like to add some vinegar to my serve when eating, my wife thinks that’s weird)
ATTEMPTING to play Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money mission.
It’s like they took every single thing someone would find hair pullingly frustrating about a game and just condensed it into elemental “FUCK YOU”
I swear it’s “I Want To Be The Guy” in 3D
Dhorvath, OM
How do you feel about stew?
My version of lentil soup is half an onion and a couple celery stalks chopped and sauteed till golden in whatever fat strikes me as nice; about 4 sliced garlic cloves stirred into that for a minute; 1 cup of “green” (brown) lentils, one diced carrot, one bay leaf, a quart of stock, and a couple smoked pork neck bones. Cook for a couple hours, fish out the pork bones carefully, set them aside to cool. Puree the soup well in the blender with 1 tsp each dried basil, thyme and oregano, and a couple good grinds of pepper. Return the soup to the pan, shred the meat off the pork bones into the soup, salt the soup and taste, adjusting seasonings and/or adding liquid to adjust the consistency as necessary.
My daughter would live on this stuff if I let her.
kristinc, your version sounds excellent, if a tad laborious to prepare.
(I’m generally a lazy cook)
Ing, I have it on good authority that the best way to deal with that mission is looking up cheat codes. Or so says SonSpawn, who talks at me way more than I’d prefer about New Vegas.
There are recipes for soup?
Next you’ll be telling me that there are recipes for chili.
‘Tis Himself, OM@584
Congrats on the successful treatment! Modern medical science is a wonderful thing. many years of good health to your wife and you.
Happy Monkey!
By the way, I’ve been following Pharyngula since I read a blurb about interesting sites it in a magazine (Time or Newsweek or some-such) does anyone know which mag or how long ago that was? I figger 2002 or 2003, but I can’t remember and the searches I’ve done haven’t turned it up so far. Thanks for any info.
Don’t think I can bring up the cheat menu on the PS3 version.
I’m with chigau. Recipes? Nah, soup just happens. Never the same twice. =^_^=
Vegetable trimmings get fed to our neighbours’ hens. Bones get used for stock and then (other than fish or poultry, of course) fed to the dog. We used to give chicken carcases to the cat but she has twice in the last year had an intestinal blockage after eating chicken bones so she only gets the skin and scraps now.
I wish we had room for a freezer. When I’m well enough I like to batch-bake, but I have to restrict quantities* as we only have a small fridge-freezer. When I’m not well enough to spend hours in the kitchen I don’t bake; it can be weeks between baking sessions.
Fortunately hubby is very good at things like soup and roasts, and I can usually manage those or pasta meals such as lasagne and bolognese. But I think everyone misses cakes and pies (it’s difficult to find decent ones ready-made at an affordable price). He is teaching himself to bake. The last carrot cake he made was, he says, popular (he took it to work, much to the boys’ disappointment) and he has made several loaves of gluten-free bread for me over the last year (in the bread oven).
*Of course, with three male teenagers in the house, a dozen muffins can vanish in almost as few minutes. A giant meat pie (recipe: ‘feeds 8-10’) lasts one meal. I need to find the energy to teach them to bake. They can do just about anything else in the kitchen (although they prefer the quick results from packets and ready-made frozen stuff).
As you may have heard, Adam “Ebonmuse” Lee has spurned the stampede of prominent atheist bloggers to FTB and has joined “The Big Think” instead; “Daylight Atheism” is now to be found at http://bigthink.com/blogs/daylight-atheism .
Adam is now two posts in at his new digs, and he’s already been set upon by a surprising number of tone trolls. (In fact, his Post #2 is already a defense against said tone trolls.) It doesn’t appear to be a coordinated attack; I’ve never heard of The Big Think otherwise, but I’m getting the sense that much of the commentariat there just isn’t prepared for or comfortable with that horrible zealous lunacy called overt atheism.
A few of us (but actually, uh, mostly me) have been trying to beat back the tide of tone trolling in the comment sections on Adam’s two posts; anyone want to jump in with us? Unfortunately The Big Think uses Disqus comments (yechh), and it’s odd that one can’t post or even see comments on the site until one clicks on an individual post title to get to the post’s dedicated page(s)… but anyway I think Adam deserves more commenter support over there than he’s currently getting.
Tigger_the_Wing
Pot-roast.
Big pot-roast.
and baked veggies.
@ Walton
Quite literally raised into the air. The Sacred King (or Prince) is not allowed to touch the ground. This is not (just) a social thing, to mark superiority but rather because the king is filled with magic that might discharge to the ground like electricity. This is a very universal aspect of kingship around the world. (Of which modern royals are a mere shadow.)
Latin nōbilis, originally, capable of being known, hence well-known, noble, from noscere to know,… renowned.
Filled with strong, fruitful magic.
Of course, a divine ruler would have to be killed before old age and the magic passed on to a successor.
Do you know more about these royal roles amongst your own royal family? Are there any modern traditions that refer back to the original rites?
Rieux,
Bah.
@ PZ
I bet yours can’t do this:
Jumping Zebrafish!
I take weight wa*chers or similar microwave meals to work with me. The loud rumbling of my completely unsatisfied stomach always needs to be silenced by eating large amounts of tea biscuits.
John Morales #709
re Rieux’s link
Did you actually follow the link before you said “Bah”?
The linked post was truly (exceptionally) mediocre.
Doesn’t that deserve something better than a “Bah”?
Cicely:
A small bowl of soup will fill me up.
I like Rieux, a person obviously much wiser than me. But this attitude of some, to see commenters here as some kind of mercenary army that can be recruited on request is really annoying. As if people here have nothing better to do than to stomp out every troll infestation anywhere on the internet !
chigau, yeah, I did.
First thing I noticed is I would have had to page to read the rest of the post*, the second is that such tone-trolling as I found** was of the most innocuous variety. Hardly worth my time.
(I do quite like Ebonmuse, though)
—
* Page 1 of 3, and pages chunked to fit on a single screen?
Stuff that for a joke.
** After having to sort the comments into order! Bah.
Caine
Me, too.
But as long as the vat-o-soup is available, I’m there every couple of hours.
Chigau:
Not me. One serving is enough.
John Morales
I agree.
I was
beingtrying to be wry.And I didn’t penetrate as deeply into it.
Just not that interesting.
Bah.
No worries, chigau — I grokked you. :)
(I can be a bit dry)
One became an acrobat. He was known as “The Amazing Grace”.
(pada-boom).
SQB, you and Her Highness have inspired me:
The Flying Trapeze
This is great, from Jane Caro
Caine and all other split pea soup lovers, you should come to the Netherlands during the winter. It’s sold all over the place, especially on ice skating rinks. We call it ‘snert’ (pronounced ‘snared’, but with a shorter vowel, a shorter r and a harder t). There even is a streetcar in Rotterdam dedicated to it.
As for the recipe, you could try adding a potato to the mix, as well as some Maggi. Also, it’s often put through a food mill (passe-vite). It should be thick enough that when it cools, you should be able to eat it with a knife and a fork.
I’m hungry now.
SQB, if I ever end up in the Netherlands, I won’t leave. :)
Good morning
Well, have bee shopping. NOw, apart from the snowsuits, the kids should have their winter-wardrobe full.
kristinc
Well, black people are mostly a rarity in western Germany unless you’re near on of the US military bases. So, yeah, rare occurence: yes. Any reason to believe them “dangerous”: no
Tigger
My dad told them that he doesn’t care if she’s green in the face.
Therrin
Well, I actually think that’s the explenation, too. But the racism that’s behind it, the fact that they feel the need to “warn” people is apalling. In my eyes, as a customer, you can take it or leave it. If the only thing you can say against somebody is that they’re the wrong colour, then you can pay the standard rate from non-public agencies.
Soup
Grandma’s potato soup
2 carrots
bit of leech
onion
bit of celery if you want
->chop finely, roast in a little oil
add about 2 lbs of diced potatoes.
cover with water
add salt, pepper, maybe a bit of bacon or just bacon rind if you like
Cook until soft
Mash everything, but never ever use an electric blender.
Add milk to make it a smooth creamy soup
cut up some bacon and an onion, fry both in a little oil, add to soup, season to taste, add a little parsley.
Alternatively, you can leave out the bacon and add fish and seafood to make a seafood chowder.
Thetis
That’s not true! You can totally nibble them and break your teeth!
Reminds me of the Lebkuchen my mum-in-law once made. My dad-in-law claimed she’d used a recipy from the local china and tiles company: You could put them into a cup full of coffee for 5 minutes. Then the coffee would just pearl off, leaving the thing as dry as ever.
Giliell, I really hope you mean leek, not leech.
Rorschach, I want to apologize for my first comment on your blog being a rather negative one. I stand by the comment itself, but I shouldn’t have responded to a post from a couple of months ago, and I shouldn’t have made it my first response on your blog, which I read from time to time and usually enjoy.
Eeek! I’m a fairly adventurous eater, but leech soup is going too far. :)
I like recipes, they give me ideas. Sometimes I even cook exactly from them. Even for soup or chilli.
Bloggers don’t get the comfort of a three strike rule, so I’m not fussed really, you know….Thanks for swinging by anyway !
Ehm, yes, leek, not leech.
Although a small one probably won’t spoil the thing :)
I’m a soup lover, but I can’t stand “vegetable soup”. I love all vegetables as soup, but just “vegetable soup” usually makes up a mixture that doesn’t taste like any of the vegetables to begin with and doesn’t taste nice to stop with.
It’s like watercolours: All colours are great, but when you mix them they become a dul and dirty greyish-brown.
SQB
I proudly announce to have a Maggie-free household, even though it is considered to be the only condiment people here even know.
We’re just waiting for the
hammerportcullis to fallGet him a body bag, Johnny!
NEW THREAD!