Satisfying Hunger and Other Related Pursuits: December 2010

Sunday, December 26, 2010

That Button Just Makes You Feel Better

Ever wonder why the elevator doors don't close right away when you push that "Close Door" button? Because it does nothing. Here is a great post about this and other non-functioning buttons in your life:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/02/10/placebo-buttons/

Enjoy!

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Shifting Educational Paradigms or Are Our Kids Learned Much?

So, Western education. How is that going for us? Well, the U.S. consistently falls way behind in tests given internationally. And, generally, many parents must rely on expensive private schooling. That shouldn't be. Maybe, instead of enacting legislation that assumes all kids are the same and patting oneself on the back for that crippling maneuver, we should change the way in which we teach. Maybe we should spend less on war and more on arts and education. I know, it sounds crazy. Check out this video. It is not only entertaining but informative.

Feel free to leave comments.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Writing 50,000 Words in a Month

So, for the month of November, I wrote. I wrote a lot. I wrote about 55,000 words in total. The event was the National Novel Writing Month, or for those in the know, NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words in a month (30 days) equals out to about 1,667 words a day on average. This means about an hour to two a day for a month. I must say, it was difficult. At first. But, after doing it for awhile and foregoing social events, I felt inspired by my own abilities and I wrote with relish most days following the initial ten or so. This was what I was engaged in while I was leaving this blog to disuse. So, now I have spent the day logging posts for the possible enjoyment of my small crowd. The novel in question is a ramshackle affair whose parts may be stronger than its whole. A rubric of ideas from which I may pull, if you will. I will share a small section and cease my bloggish rambling.

"The bus was an experience which truly showed the heart of the city and which varied depending on the part of the city the bus was in. In this section, the University District to Ballard, it tended to be quiet weirdos, loud weirdos, totally middle of the road new generation business men (who read the Seattle Times and tried not to look uncomfortable in their suits), or students. His experience on the bus was mostly one of scholarship, or rather he would read vigorously, shutting out the world around him and occasionally peeking his head out of the words to check his location. To be able to read on a moving vehicle, he had had to train himself, tune certain parts of his brain into not reacting to the movement of the bus and rather focusing on the movement of the eyes across the landscape of words. He was very pleased with himself whenever he thought of it. The bus allowed certain opportunities such as this which were not an option on the bike. This made him feel less guilty about leaving his spry little bike hiding in the bike room, gathering dust. He read and sometimes wrote. When he wrote he would look out in front of him into the infinite cave of thought, or observe his neighbors for inspiration. At this moment, on this day of his riding, just in front of him, in the seat before him, were two young men, students it seemed, who thought everything was funny and whose laughs were an awkward ordeal that couldn’t hide their own uncomfortableness with their own man bodies and man voices and man to man relationships.
One of the two man-boys was a small giant with knobby sausage fingers, whose nails looked like small square plates pushed deep into putty. These fingers were the outlet of his insecurities and his uncomfortableness. He grabbed the purple plastic handle on the seat in front of him like he was grabbing the ears of a small child, big putty hands on each side of the thing, and he began to thumb at the middle for no reason at all, his oily thumb tips massaging the hard plastic. He would do this and also use his thumb-looking fore fingers to roughly stroke the thing with outward motions. The third and grossest of the activities with this poor plastic handle was a right handed twisting and stroking, some unconscious masturbatory gesture he hadn’t yet excelled from expressing. Henry’s face twisted up in disgust. This was not the morning image that he wanted. He couldn’t stop watching though. The man-boy couldn’t stop molesting the thing either, like there was still some un-oiled surfaces he had to cover with the sick ritualistic gestures of a pastor with his altar boy. Henry began to express his feelings of disgust on the page, describing the display very much similarly as this narrator has done above, his script jarred often by the bumps.
When he was reading on the bus, he always got the feeling like something was going on that he needed to see, some scenery or event, something he couldn’t see just anytime. He could have gone without the man-boy event. But, when he was not reading, just staring, and nothing happened, as it was apt to, he felt as though he should be productive and read. He couldn’t win, even with himself. There were always at least two books to read, and two notebooks in which to write. Besides that he kept a camera. He liked to take pictures and didn’t care if they turned out to be anything or spent an eternity catching byte dust on his computer. The act itself was enjoyable. He knew nothing about framing, technically, or really what many of the settings did. He just took the pictures how he thought they looked good. It wasn’t an analogue for experience though as it is for many these days, the Asian tourists and the Hipsters in particular. He felt that they never actually lived life but rather made proof of a life lived. They weren’t there for any of it, personally, just their human forms. There were all the Asian tourists with their factory smiles giving the V for Victory sign with their hands in every single shot, waiting until they could get home and put it on their social networking site. The Hipsters as well just made evidence of life in order for it to be posted online, going further though into that sickly realm of irony. The ironic mustaches and poses, the ironic mimicry of Asian tourists even possibly, creating some facsimile of reality that seemed labyrinthine and inescapable."

I must say that I have done no editing and would be so very fine with anyone telling me if something sounded weird or was just outright wrong. It is very possible that both things have occurred, possibly simultaneously. Anyway, that's all I got. Plus this cartoon which identifies my situation near perfectly:

That Whole Wikileaks Thing...

So, unless you are a cave-dweller (in which case you wouldn't be reading this right now), you know about Julian Assange and his secretive assemblage of super-hackers. In the last few months, several thousands of documents have been released, some of which have shown the public things they assumed but didn't have proof of directly (like say, from the horse's very own mouth where the horse is the government or the Pentagon). People have been stunned and appalled by the relish with which innocent people were mown down with helicopter super-machine guns (whose bullets are made to pierce tank armor). Yes, we all know that war is hell, but we all hope that the mindset which made the Third Reich possible wouldn't seep so easily into the skulls of our supposed protectors. From "Collateral Murder" to the more recent slow dissemination of diplomatic cables, Wikileaks has made a name for itself.

Ridiculous calls to action by certain entertainers/politicians, calling Assange a traitor (which he isn't, obviously, not being a U.S. citizen or acting within the U.S.), a terrorist (again silly and ignorant), and targeting him for assassination, show that this has stirred some pots and some people are scared about the implications (not to the structure of foreign relations, I'll say, but to their own exposition possibly). Wikileaks has so far put out more leaked documents than have all the news organizations combined over the years. This is significant. That the current leaks, the cables, haven't turned out to be shocking or game-changers exactly, doesn't mean that they don't have huge implications to not only government transparency but also the meaning of free speech and the function of an increasingly impotent journalism. These leaks reveal something of all shades of government, throughout the whole world, no matter what ideology is at work. Therefore this has the amazing ability to surpass political identity within the public and let them see exactly in what their representative government has been engaged, be it bad or good.

Already, those who didn't agree with the secrecy of the transparency-obsessed Wikileaks have split off to create Openleaks, which will launch tomorrow. The basis of this more transparent organization would be to act as a protected go-between for leakers and publications, where they themselves publish nothing at all. This is a good thing. And this is not to say that I don't agree with the secretive workings of Wikileaks, but it means that the ideas are finding footing in which to evolve this beneficial process of stopping illegalities on the governmental level. Julian Assange, the media doll, has added mystery-novel flourishes to the story with the news of his insurance file (his "poison pill"), a 256-bit encrypted file (called "nearly impossible to crack" by a major cyber security expert) which includes 1.4 gigabytes of leaked material which may include information leaked from Bank of America and BP and the convenience of the Interpol warrant's timing on spurious charges. The key to the encryption lies with him and will be released to the thousands who have downloaded the archived file from the site in the event of his indictment or murder. That is, I have to say, pretty cool. Since his arrest, so called "hacktivists" have attacked the sites of Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa for pulling their services from Wikileaks. It looks like an effort by a small and mobilized group representing goals antithetical to the overly secretive governments. This I can applaud, no matter how little it will really affect those companies' abilities to make money.

What does it mean? What will happen in the long run? How will this affect the happenings in the worlds of government and journalism? This is not yet apparent. But, at the least, Wikileaks has garnered a response by the U.S. government and its allies which shows their disregard for transparency and how easily they can slip into tyrannical muscle flexing. Whatever happens, it will be something to watch.

Here are some articles and websites of note:

Beet Kvass and Other Fermented Goodness

About two weeks ago, I started something called beet kvass (it is the jar in the picture which looks like it has beets in it). The beets came into the kvass picture later in the game, as kvass was a fermented drink birthed out of Eastern Europe and Russia using mainly rye bread and water, with various other spices and fruits used as well. The point of the bread was that it had live cultures in it, like say, sourdough does. When soaked and left to ferment, those cultures are awakened and thrive. It was something often drank by the peasants after long days of work, as it was extremely nutritious and had a small amount of incidental alcohol. Lucky for them. Beet kvass uses a similar idea. It can include bread but many now prefer to use whey (as in the liquid stuff which pools in your container of yogurt). I myself, already steeped in a great deal of fermentation projects, have used just a couple tablespoons of the juice from one of my other pickles as starter. It needs a starter to begin its wonderful process.

Now to start this process I had to chop up the beets coarsely (after the strenuous act of peeling them), as you can see in the picture, and put them in my clean jar. This is three good sized beets, like softballs. It is ill-advised to shred the beets, as every site has warned me, since the beets then let off too much juice at once, sugar as well, and it turns into something more alcoholic. Not to say that it wouldn't be good, I just don't know. If anyone tries that method, let me know how it goes. So the beets are cut and in the jar, good. Now I add one tablespoon of salt and one or two tablespoons of starter (this can be your pooled liquid from yogurt or raw milk, or like me, some sauerkraut or pickle juice lounging around the fridge). You want to have spring water, void of that anti-bacterial chlorine which will destroy our wonderful bodily allies, and fill it up to about one inch from the top. My jar is two quarts. This space between the water and the top is where the excess CO2 created from fermentation will go. If you are using a mason jar, you might keep the lid just a little shy of tight, so as to allow for the escape of the CO2. With my clamp jar I haven't had any issues but do open it each day to release any pressure it builds. Wouldn't want a hole in my jar.

Beets are an extremely healthy vegetable, with implications for use in prevention and healing of cancers, the lowering of blood pressure, the increase of blood flow to brain, alkalization of blood, etc etc etc. It has many vitamins and minerals as well as antioxidants and other compounds of great benefit. Go here to see all the numerous benefits of this gorgeous vegetable. The fermentation of this concoction further increases the nutritional benefit, with the addition of probiotics which not only benefit digestion but help process the nutrients within for greater absorption. The tonic becomes red with time. It needs only three or so days outside of the fridge to be considered ready. The taste is salty and earthy sweet, like you are sucking down the very soul of the beet. If the taste is too salty, then the next batch should be prepared with that in mind, decreasing the salt to your taste. When the first batch is downed, the beets within can be given one more go, a little bit diluted from the first but still extremely beneficial and thirst-quenching.

The picture above includes the second chapter of my beet kvass (on the left, with golden beets this time), my newly fermented sauerkraut (middle, with the addition of organic Gala apples this time for sweetness) and a compendium of various vegetables set to ferment in a mason jar (right, the scraps of the moment are carrots, turnips, celery, brussel sprouts, red pepper and ginger). The last one is an ongoing experiment, which I pull from randomly and drop extra vegetables into. Fermentation is ridiculously easy, one just has to try it out. And let me know about it. Here are a few links to help you along:

I hope that this starts some on a fermentation frenzy. I can vouch for its enjoyment.