What with the snowstorm and its leavings, and long days at work and bitter cold and night, I haven't taken a good constitutional since last Saturday, I think (no postman I, nor Persian royal messenger); but today's so nice, and I'm so not needing to do any last-minute Xmas shopping, I went and took a good 'un this afternoon. Snow has been cleared from sidewalks almost all 'round (bits of 129 still messy) which helped a lot. Couldn't help but notice large numbers of UPS vans prowling the greater Shawsheen neighborhood--but their time is almost over.

Which reminds me, sister-in-law S had had a Cunning Plan for getting her presents to us: she ordered them from Amazon and had them mailed to our address in C's name. So all I needed to do, she explained to me, was to watch for certain packages from Amazon addressed to C and just intercept them. Clever, huh? I tried to convey to her the sheer number of packages from Amazon that arrive here addressed to C--sometimes two or three a day this season--and how this was not going to be quite as easy a trick for me as she had thought. But it didn't go too badly: 2 out of 3 successfully intercepted, and the third C says she didn't get a good look at; still, try to be just a bit cleverer next year, S. (My mom, in similar situations, sends packages to her name at the recipient's address, which works wonderfully well.)

Tree is up and decorated (and remarkably thirsty, BTW), all the presents I have in hand have been wrapped, kids are upstairs busy with Gears of War; I think we're pretty well prepared. Whatever you call your solstice-season holiday, I hope you have a good one--Merry Christmas, God Jul, wishes all around. Peace.

We have smelts instead of anchovies. We have white rice instead of wild. The buckwheat flour has some baking powder and salt in it. Other than that, it's all good.

I knew it intellectually, but it was still interesting to see up close and personal - one can get an itty-bitty jar of decent caviar for the same price one can get a whole suckling pig and three pheasants.

On most topics, I like reading articles and posts that I don't agree with. I'm interested in health care, and want to read articles in support of a variety of health care systems. Even if I disagree with the author, I may learn something interesting, and reasonable people can certainly disagree about the merits of the French health care system.

There are topics, however, on which reasonable people should not disagree. Take marital rape, for example. If you post a non-critical link to an article endorsing marital rape, I don't care whether you agree with the author or not. You are treating it as a topic on which reasonable people can reasonably disagree, and by doing so, you are effectively endorsing marital rape as valid, even if you don't personally agree with the it.

If you you consider rape (or any other topic) to be beyond the realm of reasonable disagreement, don't treat it as a legitimate topic for discussion. (At the very least, if you still think the author has some reasonable points, make it very clear which parts unacceptable.)

Context for the confused and curious: this LJ post, and the ensuing discussion about Robin Hanson's misogynistic pile of crap.

I finally managed to do some *actual* writing. Only 400 words, but it's the beginning of a new story, damn it. My intent is to finish a draft before the end of the month.

Boritt, Gabor. The Gettysburg Gospel: the Lincoln speech that nobody knows. (Simon & Schuster, 2006)

The title is somewhat misleading, in that imprimis, this really is the same address that everybody knows—generations of schoolchildren have felt the cruel irony of being required to memorize a speech containing the phrase "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here"—and secundus, it suggests a spiritual theme that is not actually part of the book. A more accurate subtitle would be the story that nobody knows behind the Gettysburg Address, but Simon & Schuster didn't ask me. This is the story of the town of Gettysburg in the months after the battle, of how Lincoln came to go there and to give his famous speech, and of the surprising amount of time that had to pass before the Gettysburg Address became the greatest piece of American short oratory.

The scholarly apparatus is impressive: the text is positively stiff with quotations from contemporary sources (Boritt distrusts reminiscences, and doesn't count memoirs as primary sources), and the backmatter—appendices, notes, index, etc.—comprises exactly half the book (208 pages out of 415). Appendices include a clause by clause comparison of Lincoln's five holograph versions of the speech, and a statistical comparison of his two drafts against the two most reliable on-the-spot reporters' transcriptions, again clause by clause; also, the full text of Everett's two-hour oration. There's so much documentation that it starts rather to get in the way of the story—cut the quotations to just a corroborative sprinkle, and I think the story would only be about as long as a long New Yorker article.

Much of that story was indeed news to me, and with pruning would have been an interesting and engaging read. As it stands, I can really only recommend it to completist fans of Lincoln, or to zealous students of rhetoric who want to untwist every strand of the Address. One woof.

Among Christmas presents we're in the process of wrapping up are a few bottled of spices from Auntie Arwen. Ever since he caught sight of the bottles, Vir has been underfoot yammering -- evidently, he recognized the bottles as the same kind his catnip comes in.

Alas, he's doomed to disappointment for now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUjz_eiIX8k

seen on Neal Krawetz's HackerFactor blog.

This very short chapter deals with drawbacks.  I’d have had an easier time of it if I knew what drawbacks are.  Next chapter is about bounties, and the same applies.  As near as I can tell, a drawback is a refund of a portion of whatever duty is charged on export.

Page 389: “They tend not to overturn that balance which naturally establishes itself among all the various employments of society.”  My problem here is that it doesn’t make sense to me to speak of some sort of natural balance of employments and then see interference by the State as external to this; the State is an integral, inevitable part of capitalism, and when it interferes in the market, it is (to the extent it does so successfully from the point of view of the capitalists) doing exactly what it is supposed to do.  It is like trying to understand the movement of an orbiting body by examining the centrifugal force, but seeing gravity as an unnatural interference.

Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.

So, we all know that nothing in the song "Isn't it Ironic" is actually ironic (though the meeting the man of your dreams could be argued).

The question is...did she know that when she wrote it? If so, does that make the song _itself_ ironic? (and if so, does that make Morisette a genius?)

This question courtesy of a conversation with a warcraft guildmate of mine. Yay guild chat.

Last year, Eletarius and Cat gave me The Nero Wolfe Cookbook for Christmas, and so this year's Christmas dinner will be cooked from recipes in that book.

There's an obvious menu: in Poison a la Carte, Fritz serves up a dinner for the Ten for Aristology's celebration of Brillat-Savarin's birthday. That menu is as follows:

blinis with sour cream
green turtle soup
flounder poached in white wine
mussel with mushroom sauce
roast pheasant
suckling pig
chestnut croquettes
salad with devil's rain dressing
cheese

There's several problems with this menu. First, I think that some of my guests would squig at eating turtle, even if I could find turtle meat. Second, "cheese" is actually a blended cheese pot construction that I should've started last week sometime if I wanted to serve it Friday. Third, Meredith wants cassoulet, and so Meredith gets cassoulet. Fourth, we have some vegetarians, and so need to beef up that part of the menu. :) And last, given that there are two big ticket items that I have never prepared before, trying a finicky fish dish is akin to wearing metal armor on a mountaintop during a lightning storm screaming out "All gods are bastards!". That sort of trouble I do not need on Christmas Day.

So I'm going to substitute an onion soup for green turtle, cassoulet and anchovies fritters for the flounder, and if I can find fresh figs, figs and cream for dessert. In addition, I'm going to add in a cucumber mousse, and artichokes drigante. And Marian is going to make bread.

If I'm feeling ambitious, I might also assay some walnut pudding. We'll see.

I am finally getting around to reading the Lord Peter Wimsey books by Dorothy L. Sayers. The main character endeared himself to me in the first few pages, and for a reason that I think would apply to very few other people. Many of my friends would appreciate the fact that Lord Peter is a lover of and collector of antiquarian books. But I was tickled that he was *particularly* interested in "The Four Sons of Aymon".

"The Four Sons of Aymon" is a little-known entry in "The Matter of France", the tales of Charlemagne and his knights. It dates from the late 12th century, and was quite influential on the later entries in the cycle, such as the "Orlando Furioso". It was translated to English and published by William Caxton in the late 15th century, but its influence in this language has been slight. I xeroxed a copy from microfilm many years ago, and quite enjoyed it. It's more primitive than the later Orlando material, but quite powerful for all that. The anecdote of "death by chessboard" has entered my standard repertoire :-) Recommended to fans of that sort of thing, tamarinne, especially.

After Caxton, it appears to have gone out of print for centuries. There were two Early English Text Society reprints, in 1884-5 and 1975. If you're affiliated with a subscribing college, you can find Caxton's version at Early English Books Online. Google Books has PDFs of the 19th century reprint here and here.

Hmmm... must poke around a bit more in Google Books... Here's the EETS reprint of Huon of Bordeaux (here's my review of a retelling). And here's an EETS reprint of "Sir Ferumbras", of which I know nothing (yet). Yay Google Books! I hope they get more of this series on-line over time.

http://kotaku.com/5432577/with-a-corncob-pipe-and-a-drill-made-out-of-snow-



I especially like the Christmas Tree / Drill Hand :-)

New toy: Many years ago I won a little Palm PDA at a drawing at work. it had very limited functionality, but served me faithfully as an address book and calendar for quite a long time. Sadly, it gave up the ghost this week. Happily new_man had a Palm Tungsten that he never used. And now it's mine. It's so, so much better. I'm still figuring out all the capability.

Sewing: I forget how soothing the needle going through the cloth is, whether by hand or machine. I love the rhythm, the moment when a pile of fabric becomes an article of clothing, the pride of "I made this".

Bob Fosse: I was watching "All That Jazz" (again) the other day. I love his dancers. I know I will never, ever be able to dance like that, but watching them inspires me to be better than I am. The power of the pause, the single subtle movement, the sudden change from angular to flowing, those now-stereotypical contractions and splayed fingers that look fresh because he owns them.

Golden Age Hollywood costumes: Ah, Adrian, Banton, Orry-Kelly, Edith Head, Walter Plunkett. My God, the gowns they made. I'm slowly nibbling my way through Those Glorious Glamour Years: Classic Hollywood Costume Design of the 1930's. Every page is a delight and worth drooling over.

Duke Ellington: Even after months of rehearsing to "Sugar Rum Cherry" I still enjoy listening to it. I need to get the entire Jazz Nutcracker on my iPod.

http://unusual-architecture.com/

Many unusual buildings, 3 pages of thumbnails with links to larger images.

http://mt.wiglaf.org/aaronm/2009/12/maison-de-loutil.html

During a recent trip to Paris I took a side-trip to the town of Troyes, in Champagne.  One of the things to visit there is the Maison de l'Outil et de la Pensée Ouvrière, that is the museum of tools and works.  I've finally posted the pictures I took inside the museum, and will give just a sample here.


A specialized nail-making tool

Diane, the YA editor, says invoices should be in by Wednesday to close the books on 2009, so I'm assuming the same goes for Rose.