Poetry is a good reason

today is the day

2011-04-17T18:00:43Z

To every Tel Avivian, there comes a day where one says to oneself, “I shall never be cold again^*”. This is it.

^* At least until October, that is.

Projection distortion

2011-04-08T09:34:09Z

The Mercator projection is named after... Gerard de Kremer. “Mercator” is the Latinized version of his name, not the one he was born with.

seeing Jesus in things

2011-04-02T20:52:31Z

Yet another story about someone thinking they saw the face of Jesus... this time on a pizza.

Folks, why do you assume you know what Jesus (or the Virgin Mary) looked like?

IDT is here

2011-04-02T16:11:51Z

Yay for light at 7pm!

oh, oh!

2011-04-02T15:24:40Z

There’s often an obvious explanation for things. The strange tack in vocal style apparent in the third book was actually not a tack at all, but a different ship, so to say. That audiobook was read by someone else! Back to Patrick Tull in book 4, The Mauritius Command, and all’s well.

displaced

2011-03-25T20:46:34Z

The solar system barycenter can sometimes be outside the body of the Sun, up to about a solar diameter from its center.

Dan Shechtman

2011-03-25T10:20:02Z

Pretty interesting piece in HaAretz about Danny Shechtman, who nearly thirty years ago discovered a form of crystal that was believed to be impossible at the time. For a while he was thought to be a crank and his career was in danger; Linus Pauling at a conference reportedly harshly attacked his research with “there are no quasi-crystals, only quasi-scientists”. There’s a funny understated anecdote there, though: the article claims that despite this attack, Pauling and Shechtman were on cordial terms and that this was the only thing they disagreed on. They were both strong supporters of vitamin C, which is something that gave Pauling himself and iffy aspect of reputation (though I don’t know that anyone said this to his face).

Perhaps the article is guilty of a little bit of hype (there are mentions of a deserved Nobel prize sprinkled here and there) but it has some worthwhile notions and reportage. Shechtman describes receiving a copy of Thomas Kuhn’s book and having strong feelings of personal recognition. This is refreshing for me because although Kuhn thought of himself as a sociologist of science his work has overwhelmingly been appropriated for more total relativist epistemological / cultural purposes, and this instance sort of brings it back to topic.

Anyway, good read for a Friday morning, too bad it wasn’t translated to the English edition.

Patrick x2

2011-03-19T19:48:48Z

I’m “rereading” the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brian. The quotes are there because this time, I’m using the audiobook version, narrated by Patrick Tull. This rendition has received praises, and I thought it just the thing for a long plane ride (I was right). I’ve reached book three, H.M.S. Surprise, and noticed something peculiar.

For the first two volumes, Tull didn’t do a lot of voice acting. He used a slight Irish accent for Steven, and a little bit of the cockney where it was needed, but the entire thing was understated, yet wonderfully successful at carrying the nuance of the original text. If I had any complaint at all, it was that the reading was a little bit slow, not that I was in any hurry. But other people apparently were, because in this book, the narration is sped up significantly, really quite rushed, to the degree where pregnant pauses sometimes miscarry. Also, there’s a lot more voice acting, which wouldn’t bother me much except he changed Jack’s accent—after two books! That’s like, I don’t know, watching a show on TV and have them switch the guy who plays a main character while pretending nothing ever happened. This is a bit disappointing, and if book 4 is in this style too I might continue “on foot”, i.e., reading the rest myself.

By the way, if you haven’t read any of this series, you should give it a try, it’s fantastic. It begins with Master and Commander and goes on a ways.

judging a book by its cover

2011-03-09T02:53:20Z

Japanese books are bound differently depending on how the text inside them is laid out. Horizontal layout books are bound on the left; vertical layout books are bound on the right.

look on the bright side

2011-02-10T21:21:33Z

Can't all be fascists, I tell myself after the kid asks where Tel Hee street is.

longer

2011-02-01T17:11:31Z

(words to describe foo++)
(See also.)

coin

2011-01-05T22:19:41Z

slurpscribe, verb - to add a feed to your reader and then read all the entries that already existed.

foo: chaircapturing

new crush

2011-01-04T20:23:10Z

(Check out her other stuff too.)

halva

2011-01-03T19:38:13Z

I just had a sugar crave but there was no chocolate in the house. Serendipitously, though, just today I heard how to make halva, and there’s really no simpler recipe for anything in the world. Take a couple of spoonfuls of raw tahini, and mix with equal parts honey. That’s it!

(I don’t think this is the traditional way to do it around here, but hey, whatever works.)

covered and discovered

2010-12-23T17:05:48Z

Almost invariably, if there’s a cover version of a song, I prefer the version I knew first (usually the original, but not always).

I don’t know why this is so. But here’s my favorite exception:

(Thanks, Yuval.)

What’s yours?

hummus msabaha recipe

2010-12-22T20:26:13Z

I’ve made hummus several more times now and am getting consistently good results. Recipe time!

Hummus Msabaha
2 large plates

Hardware:
This assumes you have a pressure cooker. If not, cooking time is about 3 hours instead of 1.

Ingredients:
250gr chickpeas (small peas are better)
3 large spoons raw tahini (I use whole-seed)
2 cloves garlic, crushed, then minced.
1 tbsp olive oil
2-4 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
Dash of cumin (do not overdo)
Dash of nutmeg

Wash dry chickpeas until water is clear. Soak overnight in fresh water — at least 12 hours, more’s good too.

Wash soaked chickpeas once more, again until water is clear and discard it. Put peas in cooker and cover with fresh water + 2cm. Add the crushed garlic. Bring to boil. As the water heats a white goo will begin to appear on the surface: discard it. Let boil for a minute, then seal the cooker and reduce heat once it reaches working pressure.

Cook for 1 hour. (If you don’t have a pressure cooker, it’s 3 hours as noted above, during which you should occasionally skim the goo and check there’s enough water.)

Stop heat and release pressure. Check peas are sufficiently soft: the bran should separate from the rest of the grain with a gentle pinch, and the entire pea should crush fairly easy in your fingers. Be careful when you do this, it’s very hot! Run some water over the test pea first.

Strain out the cooking water form the peas, keeping the valuable hummus water. Run some water over the peas but not too much: msabaha likes to be warm. Return the peas to the pot or place in a large bowl.

Add rest of ingredients. Using a wooden spoon, ladle, or mixer, crush peas into a paste. Add hummus water as necessary (probably a ladleful or two). The desired consistency is about half light paste, half semi-crushed peas.

Enjoy fresh! Serve with pita bread and your favorite spicy sauce*.

Keeps for about three days in the fridge if you use a tupperware-style sealed container, but it’ll dry out some, in which case use some of the hummus water to revivify (the water also makes great stock for many soups).

This is very healthy (halve everything you see there) and very, very tasty. If you try it, tell me what you think!

* Bonus experimental hot sauce: mix some very thinly chopped hot pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil. Bonus bonus: add 1 tsp honey. This isn’t quite right yet, but isn’t too far off.

happy solstice

2010-12-20T22:37:56Z

I’m an hour early, if you want to get technical, but happy solstice everybody! I’m going to bed, it’s been a, uh, short day.

thread safety

2010-12-14T14:42:18Z

Picked up a set of sewing needles at the dollar store, since I had a button I needed to tighten up and I can’t find my old sewing set. The pack was cheap, but contained this delightful little device titled “threader”:

Do you see how it works? Took me a minute to figure it out!

The set is otherwise pretty crappy: the needle snapped when I was tightening the button. When I get a chance I’ll venture to the Singer shop (closed past 3pm), located on the south end of King George street, which is abluster with happy people amarket, carrying large bags, on unicycles, sporting terrific rastas.

Why I didn't sail to Cyprus

2010-12-12T14:24:32Z

A Haifa wave buoy showed max height of 10m. Winds are SW 25 knots with gusts up to 55 knots.

ya gotta do what ya gotta do

2010-12-10T10:39:08Z

There’s a commotion out my window: a large mover’s truck is trying to get through my narrow street. Some cars are parked a little far from the curb and are blocking it — so the movers are moving them. By hand.

All Day

2010-12-05T18:21:40Z

Much love to evan who taught me about All Day by Girl Talk. It’s a post-mashup mashup: an entire album exquisitely curated out of samples from hundreds of tracks, some of which already use samples themselves. Unlike Evan there was a lot of the original music that I didn’t know: much of it isn’t my style.

But Girl Talk makes it better: at first I liked the parts that augmented stuff I knew the best (Portishead, Radiohead, Iggy Pop). But now I’m positively excited by things I would never have even liked otherwise. With the help of some rocky punk, Rihanna is turned somehow from sleazy into sexy; and old school ambient, glam, and double rap are put together to form a thermomusical device that makes me unable to stop listening.

There’s a useful player online if you help pulling this apart.

third time's a charm

2010-11-18T17:04:49Z

Okay, I am seriously considering flying through Jordan next time I need to get on a plane. What. The. Hell.

homemade hummus

2010-11-14T15:58:53Z

For my day off I treated myself to some hummus that I made myself. This is the first time this works out well for me, probably because this time I actually used a recipe! Here’s one by Haim Cohen, a leading Israeli chef. I didn’t follow it to the letter (no coriander seeds in the house, which is probably what adds his twist. Next time!). But mmm, yummy.

Did you know that both חומוס and כוסברה are Arabic words that completely took over their Hebrew counterparts? I think I’d heard about חמצה but have didn’t have a clue about גד השדה.

What

2010-11-14T08:15:19Z

שני מטוסים של אל על התנגשו אתמול על הקרקע בנתב“ג. [...] אל על הקימה כמקובל צוות מיוחד לחקירת האירוע. — HaAretz. Seriously, WTF? This crap scares me a lot more than terror attacks. How come nobody ever gets fired for these repeated safety violations in Ben Gurion airport?

yum

2010-11-05T18:23:33Z

Perfect almonds >> imperfect almonds