Eph Planet

= the awesome name josh came up with for my cookthrough project (my attempt to make all of the recipes in martha's everyday food: great food fast). since i'm waiting for the cookbook to come in the mail from amazon, i'm off to a bit of a slow start, but i am excited.

some ground rules for my cook-through:

1. i do not have to go in any specific order, except to stay within 'season', since the book is organized that way.
2. i am allowed to alter recipes to make them healthier as long as my alterations do not significantly change the character of the recipe (ie, no subbing tofu for cornish hens. that would just be silly).
3. each recipe experience will be documented via photo and there will be some sort of critical review (grades? ratings?). unfortunately, i cannot post recipes since that would be illegal (and martha wouldn't like that! HA!).

this should be a fun project. i thought about waiting until 2009 to start, but i'm too eager to get going, so the start is just going to be whenever the book comes. and the finish? who knows, but i am going to get through it. martha isn't julia child and i am no julie powell, so my project is much less of an undertaking, but it should still be an interesting experience.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

and i'm off to start a new rotation (allergy/immunology elective) this morning! i'm about to head to the gym to restart my morning workout routine. i loved doing this so much when i was on my neuro rotation that my goal is to get back in that habit again this month. today = an interval run. i can't believe my half marathon is in 2 weeks!

* Catch the book nearest to you. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write this sentence here
* Don't look for your favorite book or your coolest but really the nearest.

I took it off Facebook; mine is

"At five o'clock, Kennedy and Rusk left to keep a previously scheduled meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko,"

from a book on the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In the 36,393 tracks that Last.fm has listened to me play since I originally signed up for the service four years ago yesterday, the Eels are the second most frequently played act. A distant second to Pearl Jam, it’s true, but still: to be the second most frequently played act in better than 35,000 selections [...]

It’s hard to recapture the feeling you get on returning to the office after a holiday. It’s easy to bemoan the momentary problems you see at work, especially on the cusp of a nice long holiday weekend. But then reality rears its ugly head. The events in Mumbai and the frightening tension in Thailand [...]

Tomorrow morning I am heading to Williamstown, Massachusetts, a place I called home for almost ten years. Today I called up my good friend Gina Coleman to let her know that I was coming to town. In the course of... bogenamp matthew@idiotsbooks.com Alden

Our 24 days of Christmas, courtesy of Aunt Suzy, began today with Oliver opening the first gift. It was a Curious George book with CD (great for long car trips) and he loved it.

I'll be documenting each gift daily, and all the photos will be collected in the 24 Days of Christmas set on Flickr.

Also fitting with the title, Oliver tried a new trick tonight. He tried to convince me that CD approved something when that was not the case at all. Don't let that innocent face fool you.

When I saw this episode of XKCD, I just had to remix it to give it a more personally-relevant context. Enjoy.

Thanks to Randall Munroe for XKCD and for publishing it under a Creative Commons license, allowing me to remix and share like this. This is what the future of culture looks like.

Has anyone transferred into Williams? How have you found the experience? Did you feel like you limited yourself at all by transferring (as far as study abroad opportunities, socially, academically) or have you been happy with the decision?

Taking control — The Hardball Times "To close out, let's try to answer our questions about the dartboard of the opening paragraph. Based on the PITCHf/x results it appears that a fastball thrown at a dartboard placed over home plate will hit the bulls-eye with some part of the ball a little less than 1.5 percent [...]

• Groklaw - An Amicus Brief: Issues in the Cyberbullying Case That Affect You - Updated disturbing: appears to imply that violating a website's terms of service is a crime, which would let websites define criminal law. not good. (tags: legal)

Sophie reads, ignoring me. If I try to leave, she gets mad. So I lie beside her, trying not to get tangled in her glow-in-the-dark pink butterfly canopy (read: mosquito netting).

I clear my throat. Perhaps this is A Good Time. One never knows.

She continues to ignore me.

“So,” I try again. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Uh-huh,” she says, still reading. But she could be listening. She is sneaky like that.

“You’re going to hear—well, you’ve BEEN hearing a lot about Mommy’s medicines,” I continue. “I want to tell you about that because I know you always want me to tell you what’s going on. I know you like to know things.”

“I do,” she says, nose still planted in book. But she is listening now.

“So…remember when I went to the hospital? I have a brain thing, an illness—”

She drops the book. “AN ILLNESS??? ARE YOU GOING TO DIE?” she shrieks.

Oops. Backtrack. Fast backtrack. “NO no no! No! It’s something to take seriously, but it’s not like that. I would tell you.”

“You would tell me.”

“Yes. Don’t I always tell you about the hard stuff?”

She thinks. She nods. She does not pick up the book again. She is watching me.

“So…this thing I have…it’s called bipolar illness.”

“Like polar bears? Like you belong in the Arctic?” She cracks herself up. She cracks me up.

“Um, that would be way better. No, this is about how fast my brain goes.”

She studies me. “What’s it like?”

Huh. “Well…okay…did you ever feel like something you drew or wrote was the best thing ever and you couldn’t wait to stay up three days in a row to make more incredibly genius things?”

She wrinkles her nose. “I never felt like that.”

“Okay, well, good! Because my brain sometimes goes too fast, and it decides to take over, and tells me things that aren’t quite true.”

“I did a really good cat drawing,” she says.

“Okay, well,” I say, “imagine that feeling, and times it by 100, and imagine you feel like you can’t sleep again until, you know, you do whatever it takes to get your cat drawing in a museum. And your brain won’t slow down, and you start freaking out. Because it’s spinning like this—” I zip my finger in rapid revolutions in front of her.

“Did you think that?” she asks. “About a drawing?”

“Um, well, not exactly. But I sort of, well, one time my brain told me that if I put together a sculpture of family secrets, it would totally go to the Louvre.”

“The Looov?”

“The Louvre. Yeah, it’s a very, very, very famous museum in Paris, and, like, almost NOBODY gets their work in the Louvre.”

She considers all of this and starts laughing. “That’s funny. That you thought that. That your work could go in the LOOV.”

“It’s kind of funny, considering, you know, I have no idea how to make sculpture. But it’s not funny exactly, because there’s another side to it. BIPOLAR means two ends. So there’s the high wild fast-spinning end, and then there’s a crash. Boom. Suddenly, you’re down at the other end.”

“Then what happens?”

“You know how I’ve been crying a lot? And I couldn’t stop?”

She nods.

“That’s why I had to go to the hospital. So they could fix my medicine, because my brain was stuck on the other end, and who wants to be crying on the floor next to the washing machine, right? My brain is a little different than some people’s, because my brain needs help to keep it from spinning too fast and too slow.”

“I didn’t know that’s why you had to go to the hospital.” She looks worried for a moment.

“Well, I figured it was time to get things straightened out, right? Because you and your sister don’t need a mom crying on the bathroom floor every day of your life.”

She brightens. “Yeah,” she says. “I guess that would make it pretty boring to tell MY kids about. ‘Oh, gosh, well, my childhood? Well, MY MOM CRIED ON THE BATHROOM FLOOR EVERY SINGLE DAY.’”

She slays me. She slays herself. “Exactly,” I say. “The interesting thing about my brain is that a lot of creative people—writers, artists—have this illness.”

She sits bolt upright. “YOU MEAN YOU HAVE WHAT VINCENT VAN GOGH HAD???”

“UH—” Crap. What did he have? “I don’t know. I hope not. I think he had schizophrenia. He saw swirls. That’s why he painted like that. He cut his ear off, did Ms. E tell you?”

“WHAT?????”

“Oops. They didn’t mention that…at school?”

“NOooooo.”

“Well, I’m okay, see? Two ears. No problem. Poor Vincent Van Gogh didn’t have a lot of help. But I have good docs, medicine,” I reassure here. “I just want you to know it’s okay. A lot of grownups we know already know. You can tell whoever you want. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, I can answer any questions—”

She grabs a piece of paper and a pen. “Do you know his body-part drawing? Van Gogh. It’s famous.”

She draws, scribbles. She draws me the body-part drawing, her rendition. “It’s got body parts. Three of each. Floating around here and here and here.”

I ask if she’s sure it’s not Michelangelo or DaVinci.

“No. It’s Van Gogh. You’ve really never seen the body part painting?”

I study it closely.

“Uh, no.”

“Seriously?”

“No.”

Sophie shakes her head and puts the drawing down. “That’s weird. It’s FAMOUS.”

I say, “I’m weird. And NOT famous.”

“Yeah. The LOOOV. That’s so funny.”

“And you know, kid, I can be happy, I can be funny, I can be silly. That’s all me. And I can cry and get frustrated and angry. And that’s me too. It’s just when the highs get too high and fast and the lows get too low and stuck that I need some help.”

“The LOOV.” She is still chuckling. She picks up her book.

Ah. We Are Through for the night. I snuggle down beside her and close my eyes while she reads.

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200811271760.htm

So, last night, I was in Cambridge, MA, and stayed at the home of two Williams alums, classes of 73 and 74. After dinner, I went out for a drink with two more Williams alums, '06s, both of whom got their first jobs through yet more Williams alums. Then, as I was walking back up Brattle street, I saw a car with a Williams College 06-07 parking sticker. You can't escape!

Anyone know who to email to sign up for IM B-ball this winter?

Thanks,
Rob

Courtesy of this guy comes the heads up about a blistering Jason Whitlock column in which the Big sexy takes square aim at ESPN and fires repeatedly. Now Whitlock has more than his share of sour grapes about ESPN, and his hook into the column, the (he believes overlooked and dismissed) success of Ball State's football team comes with the caveat that Whitlock not only is an alum of Ball State, he played football for them. That said, many of his criticisms hold true.

Whitlock's column once again reminds us of the problematic nature of how the NCAA decides its postseason in college football. In every other sport, indeed in every other division of college football, championships are decided by players on the floor, field, track, pool, court, pitch, or what have you. But not big time college football, where these things are decided (the passive voice is intentional) by an unwieldy agglomeration of polls of journalists and coaches and a secretive computer program. And yet every week during the season the pollsters get it wrong, then blithely go back on tv or in their columns and explain why this time they have it right and how dare you question their judgment. the computers don't have a much better success rate.

And as we've seen this year, with three undefeated teams from non-BCS conferences, two of which are almost certain to be shut out of the BCS bowls, even an 8-team playoff would not do the trick. I still advocate, as I have in the past, a 16 team playoff whereby every conference winner gets a bid to the tournament, with remaining spots chosen at-large by a committee very much like the one that chooses the Big Dance for college basketball. One of the main arguments in favor of the current system is that every week there is a de facto playoff, and the regular season means so much. Which is hogwash. Otherwise the three undefeated teams from non-BCS schools would populate those top four spots with Alabama, Texas would rank ahead of Oklahoma, having beaten the Sooners when the two teams played on a neutral field, and USC and Penn State would have every opportunity to compete for the national championship with their one-loss teams, rather than almost certainly be relegated to also-ran status because people have decided that a one-loss team from the SEC or Big Twelve is better than other one-loss teams.

A (minimum) 16-team playoff is the only plausible and legitimate solution. Too bad we are years away from sanity prevailing.

I really hate to say it, but I think I am starting to like the Giants.

It has absolutely nothing to do with last year's Super Bowl - if anything I usually prefer to root against the previous winners, regardless of who they are (with an exception at all times for any team New England based, since I'm a local fan in a very weak way) - but instead has to do with two other things:
1) I have Brandon Jacobs on my fantasy football team, which has caused me to watch all of the Giants games, and I am really starting to enjoy them. Also, Brandon Jacobs is completely and totally awesome.

2) The Giants have Plaxico Burress

Plaxico Burress starts out strong simply due to having a fantastic name.

Then he takes it that much further into being awesome by constantly talking smack while being completely unable to play more than a few minutes at best this season, and totally sucking in those few minutes.
And gets paid a shit ton.

This represents all things American.

Additionally, there is the fact that he refers to himself in the third person, which for some reason always strikes me as hilarious (in a bad way) when anyone does it. I instantly want to watch the person more and hope they trip and fall, proverbially or literally - either works for me.

And then there is the recent blessing that Plaxico Glock Legged himself on Friday at a nightclub and thankfully only hurt his own bad self and nobody else (although Pierce may get caught up in this, but I meant hurt as in he didn't physically shoot anyone other than himself, literally).

Who knew that drinking and gun handling didn't go hand-in-hand? We all learned a lot from this.

Therefore, the Giants are turning into my favorite team to watch.

I want to see Brandon Jacobs run for 20 yards at a time with defenders hanging off his neck.

But even more I want to tune in to see how retarded Plaxico can look in public.

Keep in mind that were the Giants not playing so well, I would have to watch the Cowboys instead, since Pac Man is really trying to do his part - in terms of train-wreck-ness. But Plaxico clearly saw this and pushed all his chips into the center, leaned back, and announced "All In".

Your move Pac Man.

There has been a lot of talk recently on THE INTERNETS about NASA's "urine to water" converter:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081114/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_space_shuttle
(or a comedic take on it here: http://www.comedy.com/embed/that-s-not-tang)

This is of interest to me since when my dad worked for NASA, this was his project. The last time he worked on it was before 1999.

I can recall being weirded out by it back when he was working on it, and also making a reference to the opening scene in Waterworld where Kevin Costner's character filters his own urine to drink. I pointed out that he was surrounded by the ocean, why didn't he filter that instead.
My dad countered that it was actually much easier to clean urine to drinking water than it is to get ocean water to drinking water.

Water is 8lbs per gallon, and the space shuttle is how you get anything into space. The space shuttle has to expend a ridiculous amount of energy, at great monetary cost, to get even small amounts of weight into space - as a result, you have a relatively fixed amount of weight that can go up on each shuttle launch. So you want to reuse anything you take up. You sweat, it gets into the air, you excrete waste in the toilet sense, and then experiments on board as well (esp those using plants).
They run hundreds of experiments, that are setup in racks similar to a colo facility sets up servers for clients. Your project applies for rights to get up on a given launch, and if approved you are then given a fixed (tiny) amount of space and a weight limit for your project.

If they took more water up, then they would have less room/weight available for projects - and so less science gets done, and so you have wasted potential of the flight.

As a result, they were looking for a small, efficient, lightweight way to recycle the water on board (and his project was specifically for the space station, but it applies to the shuttle as well), entirely from the waste water on board.

I was horrified by this, but he pointed out that by the time they were done, the water that came out was very likely much cleaner than the water we drink down here.

I find it fascinating that the problem was largely solved as of around 1999, but it took until now for it to finally be made public and actually put into use. Probably something around patents, and the logistics of getting it reliable and small/light enough.

Too bad Dad's not around to see it.


One aside that I know Dad found hilarious is apparently astronauts are known for playing pranks on each other.
In order to capture all of the waste and not have it floating around the shuttle and/or space station, they made a *very* expensive toilet that has a keypad on it. You would enter a unique ID and the toilet would then conform to the shape associated with that ID - thus sealing off the waste collection area from the normal living quarters, and trapping the waste.
Initially the ID they used was the SSN of any given astronaut - but they had to change this because they were finding out that other astronauts would put in another astronaut's code, reprogram their toilet configuration, and hilarity would ensue.
This would lead to all sorts of problems, the first of which would be the toilet would usually poke and prod you in all of the wrong areas (as opposed to the "right" ones?).
Technically the "toilet" was built into their suits and the contraption I am referring to was the thing that would clean out their suit capture units - but the same basic concept overall.

During this time, Dad also applied to be an astronaut, less out of actual desire, but more just to see where/how he would fail.
His failure points were that he was too tall, too heavy (related to height), and had poor eyesight. He passed all of the other tests, written and otherwise, although I think they didn't even bother with the G-test given they knew he would fail due to his size.

"Tickets from Albany cost $20, while tickets from New York City cost $31 (the change in ticket price is due to increases in the price of gasoline)."

Isn't gas the cheapest it has been since forever? I don't mind the extra $2 to get to Albany to reach my relatively cheap flight home for the holidays, but isn't there a better excuse?

"The change in ticket price is due to the modifications to the bus driver training program that no longer allows them to use the 'shut up or the bunny dies' technique"?

This is cracking me up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igN36NZ1SMA

NSFW audio, but SFW visuals

Two figures whose performance in the lacrosse case left much to be desired are taking on-line questions:

• New York Times sports page editor Tom Jolly (the person who supervised Duff Wilson);

• NAACP head William Barber (the person whose organization posted the guilt-presuming 82-point "memorandum of law").

I invite DIW readers to submit questions at the links provided above. Jolly previously provided one, vague, comment on the lacrosse case:

As far as our coverage of the case itself, if the essence of your question is whether I feel good about it, the answer is that I very much regret my failure to recognize that we were dealing with a rogue prosecutor and that the university had compounded his bravado by overreacting to the initial reports about the case. I don't recall another instance of a university canceling the season of a team that was a contender for a national championship. Nor do I recall a similar example of a prosecutor launching such an aggressively wrongheaded investigation.

But the bottom line is that I'd do some things differently, and that knowledge gained by hindsight has informed our approach to other stories since then.

Jolly has never revealed what he would have done "differently," nor what specific changes resulted from the "knowledge gained."