Hello

Hello

No mention of the product in this ad, except for an image of it -- a result of all that effective hype a few weeks ago for a product not available for a few months yet.

Deconstructing the Food Network

Anthony Bourdain, bad boy of the kitchen and of the Travel Channel, guest blogs at ruhlman.com with a serious exercise of deconstructing the current state of his former cable home, the Food Network. In his typically "frank and honest" style he runs through the major personalities of the network.

Alton Brown:

How did Alton slip inside the wire--and stay there all these years? He must have something on them. He's smart. You actually learn something from his commentary...

Emeril:

He's STILL there--the original Behemoth. And I STILL find him unwatchable. As much mileage as I've gotten over the years, making fun of Emeril; he deserves a lot more respect than I've given him...

Bobby Flay:

They seem to have noticed Bobby's strong "negatives" among some viewer responses during focus groups--and decided to respond by subjecting poor Bobby to THROWDOWN...And whatever I might have thought of Flay's previous TV efforts, I find the network's misuse of one of their founding chefs to be nauseatingly cynical...

Mario:

Oh, Mario! Oh great one! They shut down Molto Mario--only the smartest and best of the stand-up cooking shows. Is there any more egregiously under-used, criminally mishandled, dismissively treated chef on television?...

The Ace of Cakes Guy:

...I have no idea if the stuff actually TASTES good...

Giada:

...Giada can actually cook! She was robbed in her bout versus Rachael Ray on ICA. ROBBED! And Food Net seems more interested in her enormous head (big head equals big ratings. Really!) and her cleavage--than the fact that she's likeable, knows what she's doing in an Italian kitchen--and makes food you'd actually want to eat...

Rachel Ray:

...We KNOW she can't cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She's selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough...

Paula Deen:

I'm reluctant to bash what seems to be a nice old lady. Even if her supporting cast is beginning to look like the Hills Have Eyes--and her food a True Buffet of Horrors...

Sandra Lee:

Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained...

Pure Bourdain.

And these are only the highlights that registered most strongly with me, but then, I miss Alton's cerebral predecessor, David Rosengarten.

The Year of Barbeque

Acquaintance Randall, the Big White Guy in Hong Kong, points out that...

"According to Chinese astrology, the element tied to the coming Year of the Pig is fire."

Fire Pig...That makes this the year of barbeque.

Yum.

Skeptical scrutiny

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep insights can be winnowed from deep nonsense.
- Carl Sagan

Now It's Salami

Dean Landsman, in Hiding The Salamis, asks:

"Why now, after 119 years, does some Health Inspector declare the hanging salamis to be a hazard?"

I grew up on hanging salamis and kielbasas. I'm still here. And adding insult to injury is that the bureaucrat responsible for this silliness turned the hanging salamis into poisonous waste.
 

Terrorists 1, Boston (and Common Sense) 0

From Boing Boing, Boston LED terror scare: a message to the media:

"If the last six years needed a punchline, it was delivered in Boston yesterday."

(Graphic from bunnie's blog)

[Later: David Weinberger - ROTFLMAO]
 

Zbigniew Brzezinski on Iraq

The opening of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony...

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity. Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America's global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America's moral credentials. Driven by Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by false claims about WMD's in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the "decisive ideological struggle" of our time, reminiscent of the earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack which precipitated America's involvement in World War II.

This simplistic and demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of the industrially most advanced European state; and that Stalinism was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, most Muslims are not embracing Islamic fundamentalism; al Qaeda is an isolated fundamentalist Islamist aberration; most Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq destroyed the Iraqi state; while Iran -- though gaining in regional influence -- is itself politically divided, economically and militarily weak. To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy...

Got to remember to re-read this 6 months from now.

(via The Washington Note)
 

Infrared Digital Photography

12 Miles West

All photos were shot with a 3.34mp Nikon Coolpix 995 modified internally to capture only near-Infrared light. The RGB glass that filters away IR light was removed and replaced with a regular piece of glass covered with a Wratten IR filter and placed back over the sensor. This allows the Coolpix camera to show you a preview of your shot on the LCD screen with only about a 5-stop loss of light.

Much sharper than the old IR film. Cool.

(via Doc)