Happy Holidays from all of us
A rare moment: all of us dressed up, no one with visible catsup stains.
When you point your finger…
Here’s an excerpt from a recipe site I was at, looking for pancake recipes (emphasis mine).
Here’s the original recipe:
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 1 1/4 cups milk
- 1 egg
- 3 tablespoons butter, melted
- In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center and pour in the milk, egg and melted butter; mix until smooth.
- Heat a lightly oiled griddle or frying pan over medium high heat. Pour or scoop the batter onto the griddle, using approximately 1/4 cup for each pancake. Brown on both sides and serve hot.
Now here is a comment left by someone apparently furious with all the “alterations” people were suggesting:
It kills me how people go in and mutilate a perfectly good recipe. Then you have bad reviews and more mutilations. I read these reviews and decided I’d make the recipe just as it calls and I recommend not changing a thing (except maybe adding 1/2 tsp of vanilla to your egg mixture). I DO recommend sifting the flour, twice. That makes for a fluffier pancake. Let your egg and milk set at room tempurature and use unsalted butter. Beat your egg, add the melted butter and beat lightly until blended, then lightly beat in your milk (careful not to overbeat your egg). Add to your dry mixture. Your result is a fluffy, delicious, good old fashion [sic] pancake. This is one is a keeper!
This made Marti and I laugh and laugh…”When you point your finger, three fingers point back at you.”
I LOVE XKCD
Yeah, this is pretty much how it happens.
Quote of the Day:
“Cash is king; I just wish the king was bigger.’’ The Boston Globe ran a story on the number of people giving cash this holiday season rather than purchasing gifts; notably, a credit union in New Hampshire offered a “Black Friday” 3-month CD with a 10% return and sold 20 times the normal daily amount in about 4 hours.
I always enjoyed the cash/gift culture of Japan, where people give cash in beautifully decorated envelopes for weddings, funerals or for the New Year. I find it interesting that so many people are turning to thrift and saving right now — I wonder if it will last?
Photographs of a planet
I cannot emphasize how cool HiRISE stuff is or how amazing the photographs of Mars are; it makes me wonder how it would feel to step onto another planet; to see the sun and the stars in a completely different way; to live without our moon. I read a lot of fantasy/science fiction and I think that anyone who works with science or technology eventually has to think about these things (which could be why fantasy/science fiction is a stereotypical geek obsession). Thinking about walking on other planets, or there being life in another galaxy shakes up my world view; I once had a teacher ask me, what would aliens from another planet think of human sports like boxing? Would they stand, amazed, that humans would stand around and cheer people hitting each other? (He was a boxing fan) That idea got imprinted in my brain, and now I look at a lot of things that way — like hair. How would a being without hair see our occupation with hairstyles? Thinking about stuff like that can go on forever — it’s like going down a rabbit hole (Marti often regrets asking me what I’m thinking; the first time he asked, I said, “I’m thinking that if I could remake the world…” Who says he didn’t know what he was getting when he married me?).
Anyway, I love getting to work around the world of space and astronomy, and I thought I would give the PR guy a lift and post the YouTube video of recent stereo photographs of Mars on this site. It’s a fun video, complete with cheesy “space” music (if only they were playing tracks from Star Wars…oh, copyrights, how difficult you can make life sometimes!). You might not think seeing the mountains and valleys of Mars up close is quite as exciting as I do — which is why I’ve got this job, and you haven’t, it would seem — but on the other hand, it might give your spine a tingle. And who doesn’t like a little spine tingle now and again?
Socks
I found these babies @ Target and I bought them without knowing they hit the thigh so sexily. NOW FOR A SANTA OUTFIT TO MATCH — I’M LOOKING AT YOU, ANDRES HECTOR.
Humor takes the edge off
While I know I just went through several rants, I also know that most of them are just my extremely biased opinions. After all, there is not much I can do about changing the world — only about changing myself. I try to remember that, along with the Serenity Prayer, when I feel frustrated:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
The courage to change the things that I can change;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
The other thing I do is laugh, and when Marti sent this to me — well, I laughed. And it made things better.
Spider Silk Textile
A couple of crackpots textile makers decided to try to weave a tapestry of spider silk, using over a million spiders (and a half million dollars of their own money — which means each spider was paid .50 for their work) (okay, okay — they didn’t pay the spiders).
I remember these golden orb weavers from Yoron, and my dear friend Mike, partner of Beth, one of my roommates in college, walked into one of their giant webs on an outing into the jungle/cemetery area of Yoron while visiting me. Since Beth had just picked up the lid of a curiously large pot buried in the ground — a pot that was, incidentally, full of human remains — and Mike started shrieking and running toward us, we all sat around and screamed for a few minutes. The spider, luckily, exited the scene, to all of our relief, and Beth re-consecrated the poor guy buried there by putting his lid back on, but seriously? Those are some freaking huge spiders.