Dinner notes

I’m having the leeks & salmon (recipe here), along with the bean-garlic-walnut-cilantro dip (recipe here).

Torturing Democracy

Watch, read, and vote. War crimes deserve punishment.

More evidence regarding global warming

From the Scientific American:

Humanity’s impact on climate has been detected on every continent except Antarctica, or so said the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in February 2007. No longer: scientists, comparing decades of records from 17 Antarctic weather stations with computer simulations of Earth’s climate, found that human-induced global warming has been heating up the continent that is home to the South Pole, as well.

“We have detected the human fingerprint in both the Arctic and Antarctic region[s],” says Peter Stott, a climate modeler at the U.K. Met (meteorological) Office’s Hadley Center, and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

The researchers compared 100 years of weather records from the Arctic and 50-plus years of those kept on Antarctica with the results of four computer models. Their findings: natural influences such as changes in the amount of sunlight or volcanic eruptions did not explain the warming trends, but the results matched when increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions were added to the mix.

In the past few decades, average Arctic temperatures have warmed roughly 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius); average temperatures in Antarctica have warmed slightly less than 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius).

Lead study author Nathan Gillett, a climatologist at Environment Canada, the government ministry charged with Canadian environmental protection and issues, notes that the collapse of the Larsen B and Wilkins ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has warmed more than any other part of the entire world, has already been linked to global warming.

As if the new finding is not disturbing enough, researchers may have underestimated …

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Big change in political dirty campaigning

It’s the Web, which immediately elevates into visibility any dirty tricks. Very interesting article on what’s happening as a result.

Everyone can hear it now. This Internet-driven, hyperactive presidential race is forcing accountability on two of the oldest tricks in politics: dog whistles and secret smears.

With a “dog whistle,” politicians use code words to signal unpopular stances to one target audience, while avoiding a backlash because the reference is lost on others. Many people miss President Bush’s layered language for evangelicals, from hinting that legal abortion is like slavery to his odd prediction that history will see Iraq as just “a comma.” (It only makes sense if you know the proverb, “Never put a period where God has put a comma.”) Code words don’t fool everyone, but from “states’ rights” to “welfare queens,” GOP campaigns have tapped racial resentment without facing widespread opprobrium. Secret smears run on a similar axis, enabling politicians to undermine an opponent without taking responsibility for the attack. But the times are changing.From his race to his name, Barack Obama seemed like the perfect target for such coded attacks. Indeed, some Republicans were eager to run the old playbook on him. “Count me down as somebody who underestimates Barack Hussein Obama, please,” said GOP strategist Ed Rogers, speaking on MSNBC’s Hardball in the headier days of 2006. Yet Rogers, like the McCain campaign, underestimated not only Obama but a new media model that swiftly blasts would-be Swiftboaters.

Partisan and muckraking bloggers now fight political operatives’ efforts to keep unseemly attacks below the radar. Take automated “robo” phone calls, which often deploy the sharp attacks that campaigns don’t want exposed in the mass media. Previously, the calls were obscure, rarely drawing major media coverage, let alone sustained criticism. Now they can be recorded, uploaded and dissected in a single news cycle. Sites like TalkingPointsMemo and Daily Kos use crowd-sourcing by readers to track the attacks and pin them squarely on John McCain. Insider political sites, like Ben Smith’s Politico blog, also disseminate the audio recordings to media and political elites, converting a “targeted” message into a mass broadcast. And organized campaigns like the National Political Do Not Call Registry use the web, Twitter and e-mail to track and map every call.

As a hub for intelligence, the web can enlist people in “bubbling up reports” of everything from robo-calls to US attorney firings, explains TechPresident co-founder Micah Sifry, a web activism expert who heralds the trend as a new era of “crowd-scouring” the presidency. He argues that information can whip around online with or without a political agenda. “Even without central direction, the crowd is scouring the world for interesting news and sharing tidbits constantly.”

Once exposed, …

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John Dean speaks on how Republicans govern badly

John Dean, of the Nixon White House, speaks about the problems of Republicans governing:

Occasionally, during the past eight years of writing this column, I have addressed the remarkably dangerous manner in which Republican Party officials rule the nation when they control one or more of the three branches of the federal government. Over the same period, I’ve also made this argument, even more directly and loudly, in three books on the subject.

In this column, I will be more pointed on this subject than I have ever been, while also repeating a few key facts that I have raised earlier – because Election Day 2008 now provides the only clear remedy for the ills of Republican rule.

The Republican Approach to Government: Authoritarian Rule

Republicans rule, rather than govern, when they are in power by imposing their authoritarian conservative philosophy on everyone, as their answer for everything. This works for them because their interest is in power, and in what it can do for those who think as they do. Ruling, of course, must be distinguished from governing, which is a more nuanced process that entails give-and-take and the kind of compromises that are often necessary to find a consensus and solutions that will best serve the interests of all Americans.

Republicans’ authoritarian rule can also be characterized by its striking incivility and intolerance toward those who do not view the world as Republicans do. Their insufferable attitude is not dangerous in itself, but it is employed to accomplish what they want, which is to take care of themselves and those who work to keep them in power.

Authoritarian conservatives are primarily anti-government, except where they believe the government can be useful to impose moral or social order (for example, with respect to matters like abortion, prayer in schools, or prohibiting sexually-explicit information from public view). Similarly, Republicans’ limited-government attitude does not apply regarding national security, where they feel there can never be too much government activity – nor are the rights and liberties of individuals respected when national security is involved. Authoritarian Republicans do oppose the government interfering with markets and the economy, however – and generally oppose the government’s doing anything to help anyone they feel should be able to help themselves.

In my book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches, I set forth the facts regarding the consequences of the Republicans’ controlling government for too many years. No Republican – nor anyone else, for that matter – has refuted these facts, and for good reason: They are irrefutable.

The McCain/Palin Ticket Perfectly Fits the Authoritarian Conservative Mold

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin, the Republican candidates, have shown themselves to be unapologetic and archetypical authoritarian conservatives. Indeed, their campaign has warmed the hearts of fellow authoritarians, who applaud them for their negativity, nastiness, and dishonest ploys and only criticize them for not offering more of the same.

The McCain/Palin campaign has assumed a typical authoritarian posture: The candidates provide …

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Useful reminder

Rice and beans, a good combination for healthful eating that’s inexpensive. This post collects quite a few ideas on variations. Kim Carlson’s introduction (and warning):

Personally, I was late to the R&B party — the rice-and-beans party, that is. I’m not sure when I first discovered the pleasure of this simple combination, but I’ve put away mountains of it in recent years — originally because my children would eat it with no fuss, and now because it’s such a versatile base for whatever else I feel like having.

In fact, there are many reasons to love this dish:

1. Usually, it’s fast and easy to prepare (especially if you have that awesome appliance, a rice cooker).
2. Often it’s meatless, which helps if you are trying to scale back on the amount of meat you eat.
3. It’s inexpensive, which is particularly nice just now.
4. It makes great leftovers (see no. 3).
5. And it’s simple: Dinner can be served in a single bowl, with a glass of zinfandel and candlelight if you wish.

So what’s not to appreciate? Plenty, it turns out. If you’re not careful, as Culinate columnist Kelly Myers advises, R&B can be downright punitive — or at least an unappetizing bowl of starch. Which is a shame, because with just a little attention, a plate of rice and beans can be as satisfying to eat as just about anything.

I’ve eaten many bowls of basmati rice and black beans tossed with cilantro, salsa, and Monterey Jack; that was, more or less, my gateway blend. Lately though, I’ve turned that combo on its head with white beans and black rice (or, most recently, fresh shell beans with Bhutanese red rice and braised greens).

Looking for further inspiration, I asked a virtual kitchen full of food people how they eat the humble, timeless R&B. …

Now read what those people said.

25 favorite posts on The Simple Dollar

Not my favorites, necessarily, but the author’s. Take a look—there’s useful information there.

Chocolate science

Interesting article in Science: (link fixed; apologies)

With Hallowe’en upon us, youngsters and adults alike will enjoy a night of regret-free chocolate bingeing. But how much do you really know about the sweet substance? If you’re Stefan Bernhard, you can safely say you’ve made a lifetime study of the elixir of the gods.

At a recent meeting of the Experimental Cuisine Collective(ECC) at New York University, Bernhard, professor of chemistry at Princeton, led a group of scholars, scientists, chefs, chocolatiers, food historians, journalists, performance artists, and foodies through the intricacies of chocolate production. He covered everything from chocolate’s unique chemical properties to the ways in which those properties affect its manufacture.

Bernhard spent three teenage years as an intern at Suchard-Tobler in Bern, Switzerland and has never lost his interest in chocolate. It came in handy when he was asked to teach a freshman seminar at Princeton which he titled The Chemistry of Chocolate. It was, he says, a good way to introduce liberal arts students to science. He gave the ECC a distillation of that semester’s course.

The key to chocolate’s taste is an alkaloid called theobromine (theobromine translates as food of the gods, which is what the Aztecs believed it to be). Theobromine contains some fifty molecules that interact to influence tongue-bound taste receptors. Bernhard put up a slide showing all fifty molecules. Pointing to one of them – described as having a buttery, popcorn-like taste – he said, “When you go to the movies and order buttered popcorn, you think you’re getting butter but you’re not, you’re getting some kind of oil infused with this molecule.” Grinning he added, “Which is why chemists should be kept away from our food.”

Chocolate has some similarities to coffee; …

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Friday cat-blogging

This was taken yesterday. Not a great photo, but at least Megs seems comfortable:

Megs in Hammock, Thinking

A lynx and a housecat: BFF

Very pleasant photos. Thanks, Liz.

Regular faucets and lead in the drinking water

Janet Raloff reports in Science News on how some faucets contribute lead to your drinking water:

Caroline Elfland began receiving complaints soon after researchers started occupying one of a pair of brand new buildings on the University of North Carolina campus, almost 2 years ago. People said the water tasted funny — as in bad. To ferret out the source of the noxious taste, this associate vice chancellor directed all sort of probes into the new facilities’ construction, into water entering the buildings from mains in the street, and of course into plumbing materials.

Within several months, these investigations uncovered a nasty surprise — one that would ultimately prove unrelated to the taste problem. Faucets in both buildings in the $100 million science complex — along with all of those in an equally new building elsewhere on campus — were dispensing water heavily contaminated with lead, a toxic heavy metal.

“These were brand new buildings,” Elfland emphasizes. “They had no lead solder. No lead pipes. How could this be?” The water utility couldn’t be blamed; its supplies were leadfree.

The investigations Elfland triggered would ultimately indict new “leadfree” faucets. These weren’t weird faucets. Or foreign counterfeit fixtures. Or in any way unusual. They’re the same types and brands of faucets used throughout American homes, businesses and schools.

Elfland is coauthoring a paper describing this nightmarish case study …

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Trouble the Water, a movie to see

Thanks to The Eldest for pointing out this movie:

Trouble the Water, a documentary about Hurricane Katrina fashioned partly from footage shot inside New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward before, during and after the storm, is enraging and inspiring. It boasts the miraculous quality of finding a letter in a bottle and discovering that its authors are alive.

Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband, Scott, longtime residents of the 9th Ward, found themselves facing disaster on their own after Mayor Ray Nagin put evacuation orders into effect without providing sufficient transportation or information to citizens who lacked cars. Roberts decided she would document her plight on a camcorder she bought for $20 on the street. She recorded indelible images of the catastrophe that destroyed her neighborhood.

Yardley today

Yardley and Sabini

The ebony-handled Sabini created a wonderful lather from the vintage bowl of Yardley shaving soap. The massive Vision 2000 with a Swedish Gillette blade delivered a very easy and very smooth shave: exceptional, in a word. The Paul Sebastian aftershave seemed particularly nice this morning: a warm and spicy fragrance. The vendor description is “aromatic spices, hints of sweet florals, citrus plus the richness of soft woods and musk.” Extremely alluring.

UPDATE: I was curious, so I also checked Basenote.com and found this description of the fragrance:

Top Notes
Sage, Lavender.

Middle Notes
Armoise.

Base Notes
Sandalwood, Patchouli, Myrhh, Musk, Vanilla .

Do the right thing

Patrick Wyllie posts at the Brennan Center for Justice:

Over the last couple of months, there have been countless media reports of officials and partisan operatives erecting barriers to voting—many of questionable legality.  Less attention has been paid to the fact that multiple state and local officials have worked very hard to ensure that everybody who has the right to vote will be able to cast a ballot and have it count. Here’s our “honor roll” so far:

– Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Governor Crist, in an effort to stem the long lines caused by record numbers of early voters, issued an emergency executive order extending voting hours from eight to twelve hours aday.  Governor Crist’s action came despite calls from fellow Republicans urging him not to expand access to the polls.   As he explained, “It’s not apolitical decision.  It’s a people’sdecision.”

– Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The Ohio Republican Party and other partisans have made a series of attempts to gain access to a list of 200,000 Ohio voters whose information did not exactly match government databases because of typos, data-entry errors, misplaced hyphens and the like—with the apparent aim of having these voters purged from the registration rolls or forcing them to vote provisional ballots.  Fortunately, their efforts have been unsuccessful to date.  And on October 22nd, Secretary Brunner issued two directives, which ensure that (1) no voter may be challenged at the polls solely on the basis of a database mismatch; and (2) no absentee ballot may be rejected (or not counted) solely on the basis of a database mismatch.

– Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark, and other Florida supervisors of elections.  In Florida, where a dangerous “no match, no vote” policy has been adopted that threatens to disenfranchise more than 12,000 new voters because of typos and other trivial mistakes, a number of election supervisors have taken the initiative to develop novel solutions to avoid the harshest aspects of this process.  Deborah Clark, supervisor in Pinellas County, has taken the lead in implementing a solution that allows voters to resolve “matching” problems at the polling place on Election Day, so they can be sure their votes will be counted without taking additional steps.  Thankfully, numerous other supervisors are following suit.

– West Virginia Secretary of State Betty Ireland. Ireland took the lead by urging state election officials to recalibrate touch-screen voting machines each morning in order to avoid “vote-flipping.” We hope that election officials in other states that use similar voting machines will do the same.

– United States Department of Justice. Even the DOJ, which has come under so much criticism in recent years for partaking in partisan election activities, has demonstrated sound leadership in the last few weeks.  First, in a Georgia case that threatened the voting rights of thousands of naturalized citizens, the DOJ intervened and said that the practice should have been pre-cleared, leading a three-judge panel to rule that Georgia has to let these citizens vote.  Second, DOJ has refused to be drawn into the controversy in Ohio about unmatched voters, appropriately staying out of the partisan fray in spite of pressure from the White House.

This year, there are indications that record numbers of voters will turnout on November 4^th.  These citizens will only remain engaged—and enthusiastic—if they have reason to believe that every vote counts in a fair election system.  Our honor roll of election officials is leading the way in making sure that every citizen who wants to vote gets to vote.  With any luck, more election heroes will emerge in the coming days to make sure that this historic election is a success.

Lunch

I used plain domestic mushrooms, since they are as nutritious as any. And I used a butternut squash. I was making this recipe, using my Silpat baking sheet and a 450º. The photo shows the results after 13 minutes—probably 15 minutes would have been about right. I tried drizzling the olive oil, but my drizzling skills turn out to be mediocre, so I used my brush with silicone “bristles” and brushed first the mushrooms and then the squash with oil. A sprinkling of kosher salt and some freshly ground pepper, and then into the oven. It was pretty good, along with a glass of milk.

UPDATE: I should add that Shiitake mushrooms would work better. The domestic mushrooms release too much liquid when roasted.

The bad behavior of banks

So far it seems those banks and financial institutions fortunate enough to receive billions of dollars from the government are showing their gratitude by hoarding the money for their own purposes, spending it on parties and, now, using it to cover up for major accounting “irregularities,” as they say.

Makes you proud to be a capitalist, doesn’t it?

The New York Times reports today that insurance company AIG has already burned through $123 billion it got from the Federal Reserve. The company told the government it was solvent in September. The only explanation for running through that kind of money one month later would be hidden accounting problems, analysts say. The company could be taking the $85 billion line of credit from the Fed plus $38 billion in additional government help and using it to cover previously undisclosed losses. From the Times:

Converting recipes from Dutch oven to Slow cooker

And also converting from Slow cooker to Dutch oven (which is more often what I do). The latter is quite easy once you know “Low” on the Slow cooker is 200º and “High” is 300º, which I learned from The Eldest some time back. But here’s the newspaper answer:

Q:  Could you give some guidance on converting slow-cooker recipes for use in a Dutch oven and conversely, Dutch oven recipes for use in a slow cooker? Dennis Ziarko, via e-mail

A: Slow cookers seem to be making a comeback, and with colder weather upon us, many of us are ready for those all-day savory stews and chilies. Here’s what you need to know to adapt from one mode of cooking to another.

• Slow-cooker recipes require less liquid, about 1/2 to 1 cup less than regular recipes. Conversely, add more liquid if you adapt a slow-cooker recipe to conventional cooking.

• For the slow cooker, use half the amount of dried herbs and spices. When using fresh herbs, salt and pepper, add them 1 hour before cooking is finished.

• Timing: A stew that takes one hour on the stove will take 6 to 8 hours on low heat in the slow cooker, or 4 to 4 1/2 hours on high.

Will your vote be counted?

Interesting interview:

America’s winner-takes-all system of counting votes per state makes for some unsettling stories of bungled polls and missing votes in important swing states (yes Florida, we’re looking at you.) Manhattanites needn’t sweat too much over their own votes in the upcoming presidential elections: Obama fans will simply add their numbers to the blue-state hordes; McCain devotees will nobly spit in the bucket.

Yet uncounted votes make for an insidious problem: according to an exposé in this month’s Rolling Stone by Greg Palast, an investigative journalist, and Robert Kennedy Jr, a lawyer, over 3m votes cast in the 2004 presidential election were never counted. The culprit, they suggest, was a piece of legislation called the Help America Vote Act, signed into law by George Bush in 2002. They also discovered that a black voter’s ballot is 900% more likely to get “lost” than a white person’s. But who’s counting.

About a week before election day Vote&Live!, political provocateurs in New York’s DJ music community, invited their Facebook fan base to a packed Monday-night screening of two alarming films about America’s missing votes: “Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections” and “Steal Back Your Vote”.

“Uncounted” grimly documents the now-familiar story of misread ballots, dodgy voting machines, long lines at polling stations and missing names of registered voters from the past two presidential elections. “Steal Back Your Vote”, made by Palast and Kennedy, is accompanied by a bristling tub-thumping comic book, featuring strips by Ted Rall, Lloyd Dangle and Lukas Ketner and edited by Zachary Roberts. Rachel Abrams caught up with Roberts after the Vote&Live! screening.

MIL: This exposé draws on eight years of  number-crunching lessons learned from 2000 and 2004. So why a comic strip? …

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Saving big bucks

With the financial crisis, one expects the nation as a whole to look at where money can be saved—big money. One place, as you know, is to legalize, regulate, and tax the sale of marijuana. Not only are billions and billions saved in law enforcement, legal, and prison expenses, the revenue from the tax will likely bring billions into government coffers—which right now desparately need it.

Another: save $700 billion PER YEAR by eliminating unneeded medical tests:

At a time of financial crisis and a soaring deficit, the amount of reckless spending in the health care system is astounding: $700 billion is wasted each year on unnecessary tests and procedures that do not improve patient outcome. That wasted money is enough to give over $15,000 towards care for every one of America’s 45.7 million uninsured. Hospitals spend almost half their budgets on unnecessary treatments, and the government programs which cap the costs for medical services have created an incentive for doctors to test more–regardless of necessity. The current system offers little hope or incentive for care that is both high quality and cost-effective.

The latest in the Progressive Policy Institute’s (PPI) Memos to the Next President series, “Improving Health Care — by ‘Spreading the Mayo’,” calls on the next president to lead a shift from the current system of managed healthcare to an integrated system, which would cost less and deliver better care. PPI Scholar David Kendall recommend that the next president issue a ‘Mayo Challenge’ to strive for patient care standards as good and economical as those of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, a successful example of the integrated health care model. You can read the whole Memo at at www.ppionline.org.

“Improving Health Care — by ‘Spreading the Mayo'” is the sixth in PPI’s ongoing Memos to the Next President, a series of policy prescriptions written directly to the next occupant of the White House so that he can hit the ground running on the problems facing Americans today. PPI experts will propose solutions on issues ranging from economic growth to national security, which the next president will confront as soon as he takes office.

In his Memo, Kendall lays out several steps the government can take to follow through on the ‘Mayo Challenge.’ Among Kendall’s suggestions: …

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Incredibly bad choice: ignorance? stupidity? or both?

Sometimes one is just amazed:

Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world.

How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.

“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”

Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.

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UPDATE: A story on the lab and the bad choices it represents in Scientific American.