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food & drink
The whole of nature is a conjugation of the verb to eat,
in the active and in the passive.
-William Inge
10/12
Radioactive snail alert: If you're dining by candlelight in a romantic little restaurant in the south of Spain and the server brings you snails, block the candle with your menu so you can see if the snails glow in the dark. If they do, don't eat them. Don't eat there. Get up and go.
10/4
Michelin comes to San Francisco! (If your first thought was of tires, you may not be the target audience for this item.) What one restaurant gets three stars? Hint: think 'no starch.' 
Oregon vineyards embrace technology. The news is not that growers are using GPS; that's fairly common. The news is that Oregon vineyard growers are.
9/25
The Java One: I posted this on my DDJ Java blog earlier this year, but thought it deserved posting here more.
- In a cocktail shaker, dissolve 1/2 teaspoon of sugar in the juice of half a lemon.
- Add ice, 1-1/2 ounces Gosling's Black Rum, 1/2 ounce triple sec, and 1/4 ounce Kahlua.
- Shake it till your hands freeze to the shaker, strain into a chilled cocktail glass, and drop in a single coffee bean.
I call it a JavaOne and I have served it to raves at Summer Jo's, where I tend bar on weekends. It's a variation on a rum-based sidecar developed by Thad Vogler at The Slanted Door in San Francisco.
9/19
Food films: I'm starting a list. I guess it's food and wine films. Anyway, here are the first few:
I'm envisioning a film festival. I'm getting hungry....
Math and spinach: Accidental Hedonist does the math on your chance of getting sick from eating tainted spinach.
The Ethical Gourmet is a new book. 'More and more of us want to ensure that what we eat doesn't deplete resources, cause animal or human suffering, or lead to pollution. And, at the same time, we also want delicious food!'
Tea’s Got a Brand New Bag 'They want long leaf tea, but they can be intimidated by buying and brewing it. We saw an opportunity to simplify it, making it convenient and accessible....'
8/30
Non Appetit: This article by Karen Gaudette in the Seattle Times underscores how hard it is to plan a group dinner with all the dietarty restrictions you have to think about.
Claret becoming signature blend: This article from the Oregonian discusses how Southern Oregon is starting to establish a wine identity.
science & technology
Memory is like an orgasm.
It's a lot better if you don't have to fake it.
-Seymour Cray
10/30
It's all whattayacallit to me: Some revolting customers want a word with Apple, and Greece is the word.
10/19
Not what you think: "Apple files for 'selective reencoding for GOP conformity' patent."
The Beagle has landed: A Darwin scholar is placing all of Darwin's works online. Color originals, searchable text versions, all the major works plus over 150 supplemental texts, multiple language versions, pictures, maps, audio files... all free to everyone. Maybe I can retire that battered, coverless copy of Origin now. My favorite book about Darwin: Janet Browne's Voyaging. My self-inflicted and ongoing Darwin project: wading through Stephen Jay Gould's fat and dense The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Interesting connections: Darwin and Dickens were both members of the Athaneum Club; Darwin was invited to Charles Babbage's soirees. February 12 is Darwin Day; February 12, 2009 will be Darwin's 200th birthday. February 11, 2007 is Evolution Sunday. And here is an eye-opener for those who don't know how Darwin's views on religion evolved.
10/18
Virus and virtuality: Apple experiences the pain of living in Bill's world -- and inflicts some of that pain on Windows users: it seems that some video iPods have a Windows virus or worm. It doesn't affect the iPod itself, nor presumably a connected Mac, but it does affect connected Windows computers. Apple rather cheekily used the occasion of its screw-up to take a shot at Microsoft. Tsk, tsk. Not that it's unwarranted, but the low pot/kettle contrast here reduces the impact. You might think of it this way: Apple opened the door to the rapist; all Microsoft did was wear a short skirt. Or you might not.
Moving right along, we learn today that Microsoft is forbidding the use of Vista Home version (Basic or Premium) in any virtualized or emulated hardware system. So no Vista Home (or Vista Home viruses) on Intel Macs, then.
But how does that square up with Microsoft's recent promise to the European Commission that it will give away software to let computers run multiple OSes at the same time? Inquiring minds want to know.
Plenty of fish in the sea? Harvard and the Institute of Medicine both published studies defending eating fish. Even for children and pregnant women, the benefits outweight the dangers, they say. Benefits outweigh dangers: I don't think we'll put that on the menu at Summer Jo's. Just doesn't quite sell the product, you know? The WaPo story also points out that there aren't enough fish in the sea for everyone to eat seafood twice a week. I'm sure that's correct from a pragmatic ecological point of view, but technically, there are a lot of fish down there. I can hardly wait till we start fishing the abyss.
Blaming the fish for being caught: Speaking of benefits outweighing the dangers.... Is it fair to blame illegal immigrants for coming here when we invited them? When the government turns a blind eye to those who provide the minimum-wage (or lower) jobs that draw these workers here, when the Republican candidate for Governor in Oregon may himself have been an employer of illegal immigrants, the United States is sending a clear message that we want them to come here. Blaming them for accepting the invitation is hypocrisy, no?
10/15
The game is afoot: My interview with Chris Crawford has been Slashdotted and BoingBoinged.
10/14
...but it just might work: 'Techdirt's trying to turn groups of bloggers into ad-hoc analyst firms....'
Java stuff: The Death of Yesterday's Datacenter is the title of Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's latest blog entry, wherein he challenges a basic assumption or two. Bruce Tate's Beyond Java is not new, but Joel Spolsky's review of it is. Joel manages to boil the objections to Java down to one: type declarations. Sun NetBeans Evangelist Roman Strobl interviews Jaroslav Tulach, who explains where NetBeans came from.
10/13
Free Gifs: The Software Freedom Law Center announces that the Gif format is now free of any annoying patent claims. Now if there were only agreement on how to pronounce it. By which I mean agreement on my way of pronouncing it: like gift without the t, not like Jif.
10/9
Gootube? Google announces that, yes, it is buying YouTube. For a billion six fitty. The acquisition raises the temperature in the Yahoo/Facebook meme pool, and along with News Corp's purchase of MySpace last year, you gotta figure Steve Ballmer is abusing the enamel on his molars something awful.
10/8
If you're a CEO of a major corporation, you may have more to blog about than your Mom's latest tatoo. Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz demonstrates this in his blog, where a recent posting includes these nuggets:
- Sun's systems are so energy efficient that PG&E offers rebates for Sun's systems in California, and
- 'Whoever said 'tape is dead' has never spoken to a customer that produces a terabyte of data every couple of minutes.
In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Al Ries and Jack Trout call it 'the law of the opposite.' You define yourself by defining the market leader, hanging the albatross of its greatest vulnerability around its neck, and saying, in effect, 'You know you don't like that. Well, we're the alternative to that.' When Listerine was the leading mouthwash, Scope used the phrase 'medicine breath' to tag its competitor and present itself as the one alternative to 'medicine breath' mouthwash. But sometimes the competition isn't a company or product, but a technology. And so we see Sun's software honcho Rich Green talking about the unnecessary complexity of service oriented architectures (SOA). And the press release from Mulesource is singing a similar-sounding tune: 'Typically, when you turn to a proprietary vendor for integration, they try to push a complex SOA / ESB / WS-* stack at you that costs big money and is tremendously complex...' Service oriented architectures: the Dennis Hastert of enterprise development?
10/6
Will Google buy YouTube?
Steve Jobs is not in the clear yet, legal analysts say.
Speculation continues that Apple will implement Fast OS Switching in the style of its Fast User Switching. The idea is that a keystroke would cause that sexy cube-rotating effect to occur, but instead of suddenly being in another user space, you'll suddenly be running a Windows PC. Architosh is either confused or sloppy in suggesting that 'the same Expose technology' could be used; what goes on under the hood would surely be quite different. But it could look the same, and I love the idea that the cube rotates horizontally to change user spaces and vertically to change OS spaces.
10/5
Google announces code search. You can construct regular expressions and search for code by language and by license type.
10/4
Apple's former CFO Fred Anderson resigned from Apple's board as an independent investigation in to stock irregularities absolves current executives of guilt. I guess absolves. Steve Jobs, the investigation reports, knew about but didn't understand the legal implications of the 'favorable dating' of the options. And he didn't benefit from them.
Patricia Dunn, the (former) chairperson of Hewlett-Packard, has been indicted in the spying case that has gone a long way toward destroying the already tattered reputation of this once-honorable company. Maybe she didn't understand the legal implications of breaking the law.
Nobel Prizes were awarded to Stanford researchers for discoveries regarding the Big Bang and the tiny transcriber this week. Science hasn't quite been outlawed in the US yet.
9/30
The largest event ever dedicated exclusively to the cluster of technologies known as AJAX is going on from 10/2 to 10/4 in Santa Clara. Sun Microsoystems will be there talking about the ways in which Java is opening up to AJAX.
The 10th Annual JAOO conference is taking place 10/1 to 10/6 in Aarhus, Denmark. JAOO is a highly-thought-of non-commercial, non-academic conference for Java and Object Oriented developers.
Sun's CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, has been talking with Robert Scoble again.
It's no Y2K crisis, but there is a little time-change issue that'll raise its head next year. As Sun points out, US DST is changing in 2007.
9/23
Rabblerousing: I created a page to hold some important anti-censorship links: AgainstCensorship
...and then there's this provocative Google trick: NotForDistribution
9/20
Spaced out: Now, really. If you're creating a spaceport for space tourism, do you really want to build it in a place named Burns Flat?
Why do you use Java? Eric Bruno asks in a new post today in the DDJ Java blog.
9/19
Schwartzwatch: Sun's CEO has things to say about the opacity in transparency... while InfoWorld columnist John Udell's readers sound off on lucidity about translucency.
Brown tunes don't make it? On the heels of Apple's preannounced foray into media management in the living room, Microsoft grabs press with Zune and Soapbox, Warner Music opened its catalog to YouTube users, Buyers of some SanDisk media players will get RealNetworks' Rhapsody music and software preloaded, and then there's that device that pioneers the untapped market for belt-buckle broadcasting.
I lost a friend today. RayBorrill
Experts say the darndest things: Time to Move the Mississippi, Experts Say
(I initially misread that as 'move TO Mississippi,' which would be radical.)
8/30
Can you live one more day without one of these?
9/16
Eweek's Deborah Rothberg was so bold as to make a list of the top ten languages every programmer should know. She provides job availability numbers for each language, but with Ruby/Rails ranking above Java, she definitely didn't base her ranking on the number of jobs waiting for you if you know a language.
Last week Sun hired two key JRuby developers. There seems to have been some controversy about what they are going to be doing at Sun. Maybe it's settled now.
The 10th Annual Jini Community Meeting was held in Brussels last week. What a boring name. Shouldn't it be called a Gathering of the Djinns or something? The photo gallery gives clues as to why Brussels.
9/1
Mac does (without) Windows
Now there's another way to run Windows apps, and unlike Apple's BootCamp and other recently-announced tools, this one doesn't require you to buy a copy of Microsoft Windows. It's called CrossOver Mac and it's based on WINE.
InfoWorld
8/30
Eric Schmidt saves Apple
Google CEO Eric Schmidt just joined Apple's board of directors. Schmidt was formerly Sun's CTO. (I pass over delicately his adventure at Novell.) What does it mean that Microsoft's most feared enemy is now sitting at Steve Jobs' elbow? Personally, I agree with the blogger who says 'not much.' After all, it's the job of a director to advise and supervise the CEO, and when your CEO is Steve Jobs isn't that sort of like being a bodyguard to a pro wrestler? I mean, how much advice and supervision would you say Steve accepts?
hue & cry
I don't care what Congress does, as long as they don't do it in the streets and frighten the horses.
-Victor Hugo
11/19
On this day in history
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
-Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863
Audio Bible features Samuel L. Jackson as God
Which of these lines will you hear Jackson say:
And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
And Walter begat John, and John begat Anjelica, who lay with Jack, but then who didn't?
I have had it with these motherfucking snakes in this motherfucking garden!
It's number one at Wal-Mart.
11/5
Will Joe Lieberman caucus with the Republicans if reelected?
No.
Consider:
Why is Joe taking money and support from Republicans?
Because he's running against the Democratic nominee. Where else is he going to get it?
Because they're willing to give it to him.
Because he has no principles.
Why are Republican leaders supporting him?
Because they prefer him to Lamont. Duh.
Why would he switch parties after the election?
Because he is closer in his voting to an R than a D?
Nope; check his record. It's just not true.
Because he owes them and he is an honorable man?
Please.
So he can support Bush's war?
Obviously he can do that as a Democrat; he has been.
Because it will help his political future?
How, in a Democratic state?
Because Republicans are getting stronger?
Just the opposite is true. If Democrats don't take the Senate in 2006, they will in 2008, when twice as many Republicans as Democrats are up for reelection in the Senate. If Joe switches parties to give Republicans the majority now, he goes back in the minority in two years.
Because they can offer him something that the Democratic leadership can't?
What, leadership positions? There's nothing the Republicans can offer him that the Democrats can't, and he has no more leverage over Republicans than he has over Democrats.
Because switching allows him to be in the majority?
Then so does sticking with the Democrats. There is no scenario where switching puts him in the majority and not switching doesn't. In fact, the only scenario where he has leverage -- 50 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and Joe -- puts him in position either to give Democrats a genuine majority or to put Republicans in a hanging-on-by-their-fingernails position where they can't let Cheney go into the hospital if a big vote is coming up.
And if it's not 50/49/Joe, who cares what he does?
11/2
Shutout: Could the genius of Karl Rove lead to an unprecedented shutout of Republicans next Tuesday? Respected political analyst Larry Sabato says it's fifty-fifty that Republicans will not capture one Senate seat, one House seat, or one Governorship.
10/25
Courage: grace under pressure.
Watch the video.
That Googlebombing Experiment at MyDD:
AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl AZ-01: Rick Renzi AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth CA-04: John Doolittle
CA-11: Richard Pombo CA-50: Brian Bilbray CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave CO-05: Doug Lamborn
CO-07: Rick O'Donnell CT-04: Christopher Shays FL-13: Vernon Buchanan FL-16: Joe Negron
FL-22: Clay Shaw ID-01: Bill Sali IL-06: Peter Roskam IL-10: Mark Kirk
IL-14: Dennis Hastert IN-02: Chris Chocola IN-08: John Hostettler IA-01: Mike Whalen
KS-02: Jim Ryun KY-03: Anne Northup KY-04: Geoff Davis MD-Sen: Michael Steele
MN-01: Gil Gutknecht MN-06: Michele Bachmann MO-Sen: Jim Talent MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
NV-03: Jon Porter NH-02: Charlie Bass NJ-07: Mike Ferguson NM-01: Heather Wilson
NY-03: Peter King NY-20: John Sweeney NY-26: Tom Reynolds NY-29: Randy Kuhl
NC-08: Robin Hayes NC-11: Charles Taylor OH-01: Steve Chabot OH-02: Jean Schmidt
OH-15: Deborah Pryce OH-18: Joy Padgett PA-04: Melissa Hart PA-07: Curt Weldon
PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick PA-10: Don Sherwood RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee TN-Sen: Bob Corker
VA-Sen: George Allen VA-10: Frank Wolf WA-Sen: Mike Mcgavick WA-08: Dave Reichert
10/24
Godwin's Law has been rendered inoperative by Bush Signing Statements.
10/22
If you read one political essay between now and November 7, let it be Kevin Tillman's beautiful and moving After Pat's Birthday.
Fool me once...
The accusations againt Nixon were that he was conducting warrantless surveillance of American citizens, maintained secret political slush funds, lied to and misled investigators, and conducted a secret, illegal war in Cambodia. He was threatened with impeachment, but allowed to slink away in exchange for his resignation, and ultimately pardoned. Fifteen years later... Ronald Reagan's administration was maintaining secret political slush funds, was lying to and misleading investigators, and conducting a secret, illegal war in Central America. Although there were occasional hints that some Members of Congress were considering impeachment... Reagan was allowed to ride off into the sunset, and those convicted in Iran-Contra were ultimately pardoned. Fifteen years after that... George W. Bush's administration was conducting wholesale, nationwide and comprehensive warrantless surveillance of American citizens, is openly using the U.S. Treasury to maintain a vast network of outrageously inflated, no-bid contracts related to 'security' and the 'war on terror,' is lying to and misleading Congress, and conducting an open, illegal war in Iraq, and threatening to expand it to Iran. On top of which, he's managed to engineer for himself the power to order torture, indefinite detention of American citizens without charge, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the unilateral power to simply decline to enforce the expressed will of Congress. -from Daily Kos
10/19
Propositioning pages: The Oregonian has put its voter guide online. Good for the Oregonian. Good for us Oregonians.
10/14
Little Dumber Boy: The War on Christmas season started early this year. Time to start thinking about sending out the War on Christmas cards, I guess. But don't you miss the traditional War on Christmases of the past?
10/13
No you didunt: 'A man who couldn't find steady work came up with a plan to make it through the next few years until he could collect Social Security: He robbed a bank, then handed the money to a guard and waited for police.'
9/19
Today in history: George Washington issued his Farewell Address 210 years ago today. His advice on the Constitutional distribution of powers among the three branches of American government seems particularly apt just now:
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism. -George Washington, 9/19, 1796
9/16
Torture ended today -- 508 years ago. On this day in 1498, Tomas de Torquemada became food for worms, ending an impressive career as Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, a tenure that featured the torture and death of some two thousand people in an orgy of religious bigotry and horror.
The world didn't end, though. But those who predicted it went underground anyway.
this & that
10/5
Settle down: A new study shows that the Daily Show's coverage is as substantive as network news.
9/26
I finally realized what it is that bugs me about Willem Dafoe's face: He looks like he was drawn by George Wunder.
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