Later On

The crème fraiche finally made and it is divine: not so sweet as the heavy cream from which it’s made, but also not tart like yogurt—something in between, and its consistency changed to a soft thick almost-pudding, like it has become one giant soft curd. Totally divine. This is the buttermilk culture, which works at room temperature, with 1 pint of heavy cream. It took about 48 hours, but this is the first batch from the culture. I imagine the next will go faster: good shot of fully active culture should start things off fast.

Higher rates of obesity in 16 states, with no states showing a decline—so presumably obesity rates in the other 34 states remained constant. Thus my weight-loss book, once available, will have a larger potential market.

It’s astonishing the degree to which this country seems helpless in the face of this problem—as it is in the face of so many problems now. It’s as if the country has lost its can-do attitude and willingness to confront and tackle difficult issues.

What to do—and the dangers.

I was walking over to The Wife’s apartment to pick up my Brompton, when my foot twisted and I fell. I was walking a slanting path across a road descending a steep hill, and my left foot twisted as I placed it. I scraped my right knee enough that it bled, but the pants did not tear or even abrade: very tough stuff (Magellan travel pants). The ankle though:

We googled sprains, and learned the RICE technique: Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. The Wife is bringing me an Ace bandage to wrap the sprain, and I’ve used frozen peas for 20 minutes, which I’ll repeat every couple of hours. I am going to see a doctor tomorrow just to check.

Pain in the foot. This is the same ankle I sprained quite severely when I was around 26 or 27: running in place in a hallway, caught my ankle on the wall and landed on the top of my left foot. That one required crutches for several weeks (thus my fond memory of the crutches: without them I would have been immobilized).

One problem with recording police as they perform official duties is that they seem frequently to confiscate cellphones with cameras and destroy either the phone of the SIM card. Doing this is illegal, but they are the cops, so whom can you call?

What is needed, obviously, is a way to stream the video directly to the cloud so that the police cannot destroy the record. I hadn’t realized it, but this is available now. Clive Thompson reports in Wired:

When Mans Adler founded Bambuser—a Sweden-based service that lets people broadcast live video from their cell phones to the Internet—his idea was simply to help users share their lives with friends in real time. Early this year, however, Adler saw an explosion of use from a political powder keg: Egypt.

During the Arab Spring, pro-democracy activists discovered that Bambuser let them thwart the Egyptian secret police. If a protester filmed an incident of police brutality, it didn’t matter whether they were arrested and their phone confiscated: The footage had already streamed to the world, where it catalyzed political energy against the Mubarak regime.

“The police thought, if we take all the phones, we can control the information. But they didn’t,” Adler notes. “The message still got out.”

The Arab uprisings showed that the use of video as a monitoring tool has shifted decisively. Throughout the ’90s and ’00s, civil libertarians worried about governments and corporations slapping up surveillance cameras all over the place. The fear was that they’d be used as tools of oppression. But now those tools are being democratized, and we are witnessing an emerging culture of “sousveillance.”

Sousveillance is the monitoring of events not by those above (surveiller in French) but by citizens, from below (sous-). The neologism was coined by Steve Mann, a pioneer in wearable computing at the University of Toronto. In the ’90s, Mann rigged a head-mounted camera to broadcast images online and found that it was great for documenting everyday malfeasance, like electrical-code violations. He also discovered that it made security guards uneasy. They’d ask him to remove the camera—and when he wouldn’t, they’d escort him away or even tackle him.

“I realized, this is the inverse of surveillance,” he said.

Granted, omnipresent recording is a double-edged sword. When activists posted videos of the protests in despotic Middle Eastern states, government agents eagerly downloaded the amateur footage and used it to identify and target dissidents.

But sousveillance will not go away. If anything, it’ll become woven ever more tightly into everyday life, with new tools arriving that let citizens document incidents in surprising new ways. . .

Continue reading.

The Genius Bar is a great idea, and I appreciate the commenters who urged me to take my MacBook Pro there after I posted about the mysterious intermittent 2-second blackouts.

The guy who waited on me first set the “dim-out” time from 1 minute to 10, which he said is a more normal time. He then ran a utility to repair all the internal permissions, which took about 10 minutes to complete. Finally, he noted the problem and the steps he took so that if I come in again, there will be a record.

Then I talked about backups and got a nifty little 1 TB hard drive that is completely powered by the USB connection. I’m keeping it beside my chair and I’ll just run Time Machine at the end of each day to keep things up to date. 1 TB pocket drive for $140. Amazing.

Obama turns out to be not what he promised: his record on civil and human rights is worse than that of George W. Bush/Dick Cheney. His administration is setting new records for secrecy and has already set a new record for vengeful pursuit of whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing. His embrace of the financial industry and ultra-stupid (and demonstrably wrong) economic theories is as embarrassing as it is damaging. He pretty much had to be forced to take each step forward on gay rights, resisting all the way. And now his DEA has turned against medical marijuana, both in its actions (raids on dispensaries and patients) and in its refusal to consider drug laws on the merits.

John Hoeffel reports in the LA Times:

Marijuana has been approved by California, many other states and the nation’s capital to treat a range of illnesses, but in a decision announced Friday the federal government ruled that it has no accepted medical use and should remain classified as a highly dangerous drug like heroin.

The decision comes almost nine years after medical marijuana supporters asked the government to reclassify cannabis to take into account a growing body of worldwide research that shows its effectiveness in treating certain diseases, such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

Advocates for the medical use of the drug criticized the ruling but were elated that the Obama administration has finally acted, which allows them to appeal to the federal courts. The decision to deny the request was made by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and comes less than two months after advocates asked the U.S. Court of Appeals to force the administration to respond to their petition.

“We have foiled the government’s strategy of delay, and we can now go head-to-head on the merits,” said Joe Elford, the chief counsel for Americans for Safe Access and the lead attorney on the lawsuit. . .

Continue reading.

One standby of science-fiction is the Replicator: a machine that makes any machine. You only need one, provided it has or can get the templates, blueprints, files, or instructions it needs for any specific item.

Here’s one in action:

I’ve noticed a fall-off in blogging activity. I’m not sure what’s behind it, but I believe that it’s temporary. As you note from the preceding post, I am now more kindly disposed toward my unconscious self, and I’m sure the reasons for fewer posts lies to a great degree with it.

I’ve also noted that my letter-writing has picked up quite a bit—I often start the day with a great desire to write a letter, part of which stems from the desire to communicate that also provided motive power for the blog. But with letters one also has the tactile and sensual pleasures of pen, ink, paper, and handwriting, so there’s much to draw me in that direction.

A blog post, of course, has a much greater readership than a letter, so I am going to investigate and explore my recent disinclination to post. And I’ll probably blog about it as well: forewarned is forearmed.

Still: I have a book to write, The Niece is going to be here for a week starting Wednesday, and I am doing more reading. So the blog rate might be less than in the past, at least for a while.

The more I read Timothy Wilson’s of Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious, the more I realize how much I internalized from when I first started reading the book before I went on the weight-loss program. Llast night, as I thought about it, I realized that the mind’s structure and functioning, as described by Wilson in his book, really does seem to fit with how I now view weight loss. I’ll describe what I’ve learned and how it seems to work for me.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently realized that the Palmolive shave stick makes really good lather. And I’m loving the Wee Scot and its Mighty Mouse sort of power, so the lather part of today’s shave was an easy choice—and I did indeed get a wonderful lather. The Mühle R41—not the new model, but its more comfortable (for me) predecessor—did a fine job with an Astra Keramik blade, previously used. And then a splash of Pinaud Clubman Special Reserve, which really does seem to be a bit above the other Clubman aftershaves.

I’m good to go—specifically to the Apple Genius Bar for advice on the screen blackouts on my MacBook Pro.

Buttermilk is another room-temperature culture, and the same culture is also used to make crème fraiche (using heavy cream). So I have a pint of heavy cream, and once the buttermilk has made, I’ll use a quarter-cup of that to start the cream.

The Greek-yogurt culture requires incubation (110ºF). As they advised, I first heated the milk to 180ºF and then let it cool before introducing the culture. I have a yogurtmaker that uses 2-qt tubs, but I’m making only a quart for the first batch—their advice to give the culture the best chance. Next batch will be 2 quarts.

First checkpoint is tomorrow morning. Then if it hasn’t started (sometimes, I gather, the first batch takes longer), I still have all day and into the evening. And tomorrow night, if needed.

UPDATE: Questions in comments led me to search for clarification, and I’ve updated the post with what I learned.

A blog reader passed along his recipe from an experiment in making an aftershave balm. The model was Castle Forbes: why not aim high?

He makes only a small quantity at a time:

1. Mix equal parts witch hazel (he uses high-quality witch hazel from a supplies shop) and Aloe Vera gel. He uses 50ml of each, just under 1/4 c each.
2. Add a little glycerin (you can try it with and without to see how you like it). He uses 5-10ml, or 1-2 tsp.
3. Add a little Lime essential oil (or Lavender or what you will) for fragrance.
4. Add a little water to thin it if you want.

His mixing instructions:

When all the ingredients combined, mix very well. I used a egg beater. I guess you could use a blender. Mix until you’re happy with the consistency of the product. It’s the GEL of the Aloe, that makes it thick enough to be balm-like, but you can add water to make it thin/thick enough to come out of a bottle easily. If you don’t add water, then you may need to put it in a tub, where you can easily use your fingers to apply rather than trying to pour from a bottle. You only need a little to spread on your face. It will go a long way—or you can use it liberally since it’s so inexpensive to make.

You could use and compare the consistency of this with your Castle Forbes Lavender you’ve purchased and make it the same.

He says that it’s as close to Castle Forbes Lime as you get without the price tag. In adding the essential oil, add just one drop, shake, let sit, and see how you like it. If not enough, add one more drop—it’s very easy to add too much, so caution is advised.

So far as preservatives are concerned, if you use this balm regularly, the alcohol in the witch hazel may well be enough, or you can use organic ingredients that are natural preservatives.

It occurred to me that keeping the aftershave in the fridge could be quite pleasant during the summer months: a kind of super-menthol sensation.

I introduced the Wee Scot to Queen Charlotte Soaps’ Celestial Woods today. They seemed to get along quite well—the wee brush held plenty of lather for three passes, and the pinewoods fragrance of the soap was most pleasant. My Pils with a previously used Swedish Gillette blade did a very smooth job—it is indeed a good razor—and a splash of the Provence Santé finished the shave with an interesting fragrance.

A commenter yesterday reminded me of Dr. Chris Moss’s discovery that glycerin can serve as a pre-shave and, unlike pre-shave oils, one that does not affect lather. So this morning I brought out the glycerin and gave it a go again. (Moss first tried Geo. F. Trumper’s Coral Skin Food as an every-pass pre-shave, and found that it worked for him. He suspected that the glycerin was what was working, so then he tried straight glycerin, which worked as well—as is much less costly.)

And indeed the lather was unaffected. But once again I find that pre-shave treatments don’t seem to do much for me: I could detect no improvement over a regular shave.

The Shavemac brush seems enormous, but it does a good job. Hefty guy, too. I worked up a good lather with the Woods of Windsor soap, then three smooth passes with my last remaining Polsilver blade (my stash is on its way to The Son, who favors this make—enough to get him through 18 months, I would guess). A splash of the Woods of Windsor aftershave—it lost its label in a shipping leak from a Royall Lyme aftershave—and I’m ready for the day.

What a first-class asshole.

UPDATE: What this incident tells us.

A review of Barry Estabrook’s new book Tomatoland, on how the free hand of the market ruined the tomato. From the review:

. . . Florida’s sandy soil, Mr. Estabrook writes, is as devoid of plant nutrients as a pile of moon rocks. “Florida growers,” he writes, “may as well be raising their plants in a sterile hydroponic medium.”

He continues, witheringly: “To get a successful crop, they pump the soil full of chemical fertilizers and can blast the plants with more than 100 different herbicides and pesticides, including some of the most toxic in agribusiness’s arsenal.” Migrant workers are coated with these chemicals too. The toll that’s taken on them, in the form of birth defects, cancer and other ailments, is hideous to observe and should fill those who eat Florida tomatoes with shame.

And all this for what? Hard, tasteless, uniform green balls that barely dent when they fall off a truck at 60 miles per hour and that must be gassed to achieve the sick-pink hue they present in supermarkets. It’s no wonder generations of Americans have grown up thinking tomatoes were a fraud perpetrated by God, their parents or Taco Bell. . .

I’m a big (if vicarious) fan of horn combs: they don’t build up static electricity, they are kind to hair (being made of hair themselves), and they work wonderfully. The Wife is a big fan, and Molly also likes being combed with a horn comb.

Here’s a site that has what look to be excellent horn combs for prices substantially lower than I’ve seen elsewhere. (The higher prices were for horn combs from France.) Well worth a try by anyone with long hair—and, IMO, a good gift to someone with long hair.

Every now and then—maybe twice a day—my MacBook screen will go black in an instant. All processing seems suspended for perhaps 1-2 seconds. Then everything comes back. Very weird and worrisome, but when I mentioned this, other Apple owners said, yes, that’s the way it works. I think “works” is a bit of an exaggeration for this performance, but do others have this problem? FWIW, it never happened on my Windows machines.

So far, it’s always come back after these episodes. My fingers are crossed.

Interesting and more or less what one has suspected. Organizations that operate in secrecy find it easy to cover up their mistakes and failings, which sets up a dynamic that might be called “falling to the bottom… and beyond.” The CIA seems little more than criminal organization, funded by the government.