08.17.07
Military blogs NOT a big risk
Contradicting previous claims by the military that soldier’s personal blogs (milbogs) “needlessly place lives at risk,” a series of audits by the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell between January 2006 and January 2007 “suggests that official Defense Department websites post material far more potentially harmful than anything found on a individual’s blog.” The audits found “found at least 1,813 violations of operational security policy on 878 official military websites” compared to “28 breaches, at most, on 594 individual blogs during the same period.”
Miss Megs at the vet
First vet visit in a long time. One thing was she occasionally walks oddly, throwing one leg out a bit. Joint problem? (Probably not—she doesn’t show any evidence of pain, and the veg felt her back leg and hip joints throughly and she didn’t complain.) Fleas? Yep, though very light infestation. Still… Advantage every four weeks.
Megs made no sound on the drive to the vet or on the drive home, no sound in the vet office. She really wanted to get down, but was surprisingly cooperative. Very quiet kitty. Still 9 lbs, which has been her weight for three years or so.
CCTV surveillance and crime rates
How I hate reporting in which the obvious question is ignored! Case in point: in the current issue of The Week, Susan Caskie comments:
But the paranoid among us can take solace in the fact that the U.S. is not the most spied-upon country in the democratic world. That would be Britain. The United Kingdom started installing hundreds of thousands of video surveillance cames in the 1990s, aup the program as a crime-fighting measure, and it ramped up the program immediately after 9/11. The country is now studded with some 4.2 million cameras—more than the rest of Europe put together—to watch a population of 60 million. [Hello, George Orwell. - LG] On average, each British subject is caught on film 300 times a day, in all sorts of activities, from trying on clothes to vomiting outside the pub.
The obvious question, unasked and unanswered by Caskie, is: Does it work? Has the crime rate declined with all this surveillance? Why the question did not occur to her, I have no idea, but I did a little googling and found this report (PDF file), which includes this passage:
Read the whole report for more.
Astra Superior Platinum update
I received the Astra Superior blades from Barber Depot, and they seem to be identical to the ones from Razor and Brush. I have not shaved with them as yet, though.
Become vegetarian the easy way
Very interesting post on how to make the transition from omnivore to herbivore.
Knife sharpening
Good video on sharpening a knife, via Slashdot. Unfortunately the guy is a language vandal: casual, pointless use of obscenity, thus draining the words of their life and power. Still, good instructions.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: See this comprehensive post on knife sharpening systems.
Food notes
Last night I cooked some turkey necks. I used to get these for 50¢ a pound, but someone must have let the cat out of the bag, and the latest ones were $1.30/lb. Very tasty, lots of meat. I simmer them for three hours in water to which I’ve added the juice of 2-3 lemons (acid to help break down cartilage), star anise (The Wife likes), and whole cloves and whole allspice (The Eldest suggests using whenever possible or you’ll go to your grave with full jars of them).
Then I let them cool, and this morning picked all the meat off the bones. I usually make turkey-neck soup. As you’ve gathered, my approach to recipes is casual and improvisational, which is fine except when you get the perfect soup—which, according to The Wife—I did one time with the turkey-neck soup. Of course, I have never been able to duplicate it. So it goes.
This time, though, I’m going to use the meat in stir-fries of sorts, so I used the stock to cook some beans. You don’t need to soak beans before cooking—just cook them longer. According to Cook’s Illustrated, the beans have more flavor if you don’t soak them, and I think that’s particularly true if you’re cooking them in a stock. I used some cranberry beans I had on hand.
And another note: the chia seed is fine—not really much taste, for all its nutritional excellence. I decided I’d just add 2 Tbs (1/2 a serving) to the morning cereal. So the cereal now consists of 1/3 cup oat groats and 1 Tbs flaxseed, simmered for 45 minutes in 1 cup of water over low heat, uncovered. I then add 2 Tbs chia seed, 1 Tbs blackstrap molasses, 1/2 oz. walnut pieces, and a good slug of pepper sauce. Stir it all up, and you have quite a healthful breakfast.
Please test before release, part 2
Now Skype has done it. I downloaded and installed the latest release of Skype, which has many nice new features, and found it couldn’t connect. Moreover, I couldn’t even submit a trouble report—the box where you describe the problem (required) is blocked so that you can’t make an entry. Looking at their forum, I discovered why:
Hello everyone,
Apologies for the delay, but we can now update you on the Skype sign-on issue. As we continue to work hard at resolving the problem, we wanted to dispel some of the concerns that you may have. The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user’s own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.
Rest assured that everyone at Skype is working around the clock — from Tallinn to Luxembourg to San Jose — to resume normal service as quickly as possible.
Bizarre: pastors co-opted for government takeover
This is just plain weird—has the Federal government gone totally insane? Take a look:
A shocking KSLA news report has confirmed the story we first broke last year, that Clergy Response Teams are being trained by the federal government to “quell dissent” and pacify citizens to obey the government in the event of a declaration of martial law.
In May 2006, we exposed the existence of a nationwide FEMA program which is training Pastors and other religious representatives to become secret police enforcers who teach their congregations to “obey the government” in preparation for the implementation of martial law, property and firearm seizures, mass vaccination programs and forced relocation.
A whistleblower who was secretly enrolled into the program told us that the feds were clandestinely recruiting religious leaders to help implement Homeland Security directives in anticipation of a potential bio-terrorist attack, any natural disaster or a nationally declared emergency.
The first directive was for Pastors to preach to their congregations Romans 13, the often taken out of context bible passage that was used by Hitler to hoodwink Christians into supporting him, in order to teach them to “obey the government” when martial law is declared.
It was related to the Pastors that quarantines, martial law and forced relocation were a problem for state authorities when enforcing federal mandates due to the “cowboy mentality” of citizens standing up for their property and second amendment rights as well as farmers defending their crops and livestock from seizure.
A little jazz break with Dinah Washington
From the movie Jazz on a Summer’s Day:
And a younger Dinah:
And her signature tune:
Italic handwriting
A recipient of an inscribed copy of Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving commented that his wife admired my handwriting, so I thought I should post something about it. I’ll include links to instructional books (generally to inexpensive secondhand copies) and to stores that sell good pens.
I will distinguish italic handwriting (aka chancery cursive) from italic calligraphy. In calligraphy, as I use the term, letters are more drawn than written, and every stroke is pulled—no pushing. In handwriting, you’re simply doing the usual handwriting thing, though (for italic) with a specific point, letter shape, and angle. Technically, “calligraphy” means “beautiful writing,” so would apply to handwriting as well as to formal calligraphy, and others don’t necessarily make the distinction that I do.
End of the Rose road
I think I’ve used the last of my Rose shaving creams and soaps, so now this series ends. This morning it was Geo. F. Trumper Rose shaving cream, a highly pigmented cream so not to be used with a silvertip brush—it would become a rosetip brush. I used my dark brown Plisson from Paris, and got a wonderful lather—the lather’s perfectly white, of course, and quite rosy in fragrance.
I used a Gillette NEW with an Astra Keramik Platinum blade, and it was as smooth as one could desire. Maybe it’s that thing where the second shave is even better than the first? At any rate, extremely smooth and nice shave, followed by New York aftershave, a creation of Parfums de Nicolaï. Note the diaresis over the i, which means that the i is to be pronounced separately, rather than “ai” being a diphthong (Cf. Zoë, coöperate). And yet if the “i” is pronounced as one expects (like the “i” in “machine”), it amounts to the diphthong anyway. Very curious. Could it be the hand of a marketer at work?
I should specifically mention from time to time that I always now wash my beard at the sink with Musgo Real Glyce Lime Oil pre-shave soap, and that practice has, for me, noticeably improved the quality of my shave. Wash, partially rinse with a splash of warm water, and lather.
