sequesters fragrant and unforgettable pockets of salted caramel.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Monday, March 30, 2009
trappings
In prewar years, red-blooded Iraqis lusted after the Mercedes, especially the costly Ghost sedan, which only the best-heeled Baathists could afford. During the early war years, it was the nimble little BMW 3 Series, until that car got a bad rap as the insurgents’ favorite getaway car. (At one time, black BMWs were actually banned from the roads.) “Now Iraqis are obsessed with the Hummer,” Dhafir al-Hilli said.
Iraqis Snap Up Hummers as Icons of Power in today's New York Times.
Dhafir al-Hill sells on average one hummer every ten days through his dealership in Iraq.
In other news: by tomorrow, GM may announce that they're done with the Hummer »
And no post on the Hummer is complete without a link to FUH2.com »
Sunday, March 29, 2009
brief interviews with hideous men
David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, has been adapted for the screen and premiered recently at Sundance »
still others of rocky lands
Plants, like human beings, have their own individuality.
Some plants to be at their best need association in a small colony or group; others love the company of multitudes, forming a carpet on the forest floor or in the open.
Some speak much more forcefully alone, as, for instance, the cottonwood with its gray branches stretching up into the heavens as a landmark on the plains.
Some plants express their beauty in a lowland landscape and some on the rocky cliffs.
Some fulfill their mission in the rolling hilly country, and some belong to the vast prairies of Mid-America.
Others sing the song of sand dunes, still others of rocky lands.
A grove of crab-apple trees on the edge of the open prairie landscape gives a distinct note to the plains.
The timid violet sings its song and fits into a different composition from that of the robust aster.
To try to force plants to grow in soil or climate unfitted for them and against nature’s methods will sooner or later spell ruin.
From Siftings by Jens Jensen, landscape architect and contemporary of the Olmsted Brothers.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
hot tomatoes, cold rice and the promise of summer to come
2 large, ripe, firm tomatoes
sea salt
peppercorns at the ready (you will grind them fresh when it’s time)
1.5 cups Arborio rice
8 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, divided + some more for drizzling
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsp chopped Italian parsley leaves
2 tbsp chopped mint leaves (oh yes. stay with me.)
2 tbsp chopped basil leaves
4 anchovies, coarsely chopped (still here?)
3 tbsp bread crumbs (homemade are best, of course) toasted
Halve the tomatoes horizontally and, using your fingers, gently remove some of the seeds to create a series of hollow impressions. Salt the tomatoes and turn them upside down on paper towels to drain for 20 minutes.
Cook the rice in abundant salted boiling water, like pasta, until al dente. Drain well. (I usually strain it in a fine sieve and rinse it under cold water). Transfer the rice to a bowl. Toss the rice in 4 tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Let cool.
In a small bowl combine the garlic, herbs, and anchovies. Moisten with the remaining 4 tablespoons of olive oil. Lightly oil a baking dish large enough to contain the tomatoes without crowding them. Arrange the tomatoes in the baking dish. Stuff the herb mixture into the cavities of the tomatoes. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the bread crumbs and drizzle with a few drops of olive oil. Bake in a preheated 450 oven for 12 minutes, or until the tomatoes begin to soften but well before they lose their shape.
Divide the rice among 4 dinner plates, smoothing the rice so that it forms a bed for each tomato half. Remove the tomatoes from the oven and center a tomato half on each plate of rice.
Take a bite that mingles the hot tomato and the cold rice. Be delighted and amazed.
Serves 4. Unless you get greedy.
Freely adapted from the incomparable Viana La Place’s Verdura.
Friday, March 27, 2009
mono no aware
Mono no aware (物の哀れ, mono no aware, lit. "the pathos of things"), also translated as "an empathy toward things," or "a sensitivity of ephemera," is a Japanese term used to describe the awareness of mujo or the transience of things and a bittersweet sadness at their passing.
From Wikipedia.
Mono no aware figures largely in The Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a Japanese language documentary that contemplates the Japanese fascination -- and market for -- bugs and beetles of all kinds.
Seen at the SxSW 2009 Film Festival. Recommended with a caveat: the film is largely impressionistic. It doesn't attempt to a strict linear progression; it doesn't arrive at a foregone conclusion.
But it does leave a lingering impression of the impermanence of all things; the importance of looking closely anyway, marveling at the beauty of it, and a permitting the emotion that comes when that beauty fades.
p.s. dear beetle queen filmmakers: please add your movie title to the <title> tag on your web site. it'll be better for everyone, I promise.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
both the same
Dark and stormy may come the weather;
I join this he-male and this she-male together.
Let none but Him that makes the thunder,
Put this he-male and she-male asunder.
I therefore pronounce you both the same.
Be good, go along, and keep up your name.
The broomstick's jumped, the world's not wide.
She's now your own. Salute your bride!
"Slave Marriage Ceremony Supplement" from Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing, which I pulled off the shelf this morning when I learned the historian John Hope Williams, author of From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, had passed.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
turn turn turn
Artist and medical student Satre Stuelke captures images using "an older four-slice CT scanner". More of Steulke's work can be seen at radiologyart.com »
overexposed
It was not authorised to be on display and the Garda are investigating.
A spokesperson for The National Gallery of Ireland commenting in the Guardian regarding the unscheduled appearance of a portrait of Ireland's Taoiseach Brian Cowen at the Royal Hibernian Academy. The image is described as "nearly nude ... resting on the toilet ... holding his underpants".
A similar oil painting materialized at the National Gallery.
On Twitter: #picturegate
the candyman can
Cadbury reported a 30 percent rise in profits for 2008 while Nestle’s profits grew by 10.9 percent, according to public filings. Hershey, which struggled for much of 2008, saw profits jump by 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter.
From When Economy Sours, Tootsie Rolls Soothe Souls in yesterday's New York Times.
According to the Times, the same was true during the Depression: "Snickers started in 1930. Tootsie Pops appeared in 1931. Mars bars with almonds and Three Musketeers bars followed in 1932."
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
the wait
It's not the waiting I mind: it's the wondering if they'll ever come. It's almost certainly residue from a rough patch of my childhood when the grownups were trying to corral the chaos of their lives like water overrunning the tub and they forgot to come for us. After the buses were gone and the other parents had ushered their brood home to warm nests and dinner, I would shrink myself down to invisible in the early evening chill where lonely thoughts ricocheted off the far dome of heaven.
And wait.
Monday, March 23, 2009
pirkle jones is dead
From the series Death of a Valley, 1956, printed 1960
His photography is not flamboyant, does not depend upon the superficial excitements. His pictures will live with you, and with the world, as long as there are people to observe and appreciate.
Ansel Adams speaking of his friend, photographer Pirkle Jones, who passed away on 15 March. As cited in the New York Times »
SFMOMA has some of Pirkle Jones' photographs cached online, including a handful from his series Death of a Valley, which documents the Berryessa Valley before it disappeared underwater after the completion of the Monticello Dam.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
robofish
[The robotic fish] will be able to detect changes in environmental conditions in the port and pick up on early signs of pollution spreading, for example by locating a small leak in a vessel. The hope is that this will prevent potentially hazardous discharges at sea, as the leak would undoubtedly get worse over time if not located.
Professor Huosheng Hu of Essex university in the Financial Times speaking of self-piloting robotic fish that will be released into the waters of the port of Gijon to monitor conditions and report back to their base station via Wifi.
Reuters also reported the story »
Thursday, March 19, 2009
hardiness happens
The revised National Arbor Day Foundation 2006 Hardiness Zone Map
In 2006 the National Arbor Day Foundation published its own revised map using data that showed winter lows increasing as much as eight degrees warmer in some places. According to the foundation, the old zones have marched alarmingly northward.
Louise Ducote writing in the March | April 2009 issue of Orion Magazine about the USDA's resistance to replacing their 1990 hardiness zone map, drawn from data gathered from 1974 to 1986, with one that relies on more recent data regarding temperatures in the U.S.
location, location, location
Planners, lenders, and most consumers traditionally measure housing affordability as 30 percent or less of income. The Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, in contrast, takes into account not just the cost of housing, but also the intrinsic value of place, as quantified through transportation costs.
From the Housing + Transportation Affordability Index, developed by CNT and the Center for Transit Oriented Development (CTOD), in an effort to accurately measure the true affordability of housing.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
kids these days
When we launched at 9.10am on that morning the critical point for the experiment was to see if the balloon would make it past 10,000m, or 30,000ft, which is the altitude that commercial airliners fly at.
We took readings as the balloon rose and mapped its progress using Google Earth and the onboard radio receiver. At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth.
We travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions.
Eighteen-year old Gerard Marull Paretas whose science project, conducted with his pals Sergi Saballs Vila, Marta Gasull Morcillo and Jaume Puigmiquel Casamort, went really really well -- as reported in Teens capture images of space with £56 camera and balloon in the Telegraph.
Boys after my own heart -- they've posted a Flickr slideshow of the project »
what are you deliberating?
So Johnathan, what did you do today? Oh nothing really, I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money.
@johnathan tweeting post-trial in a case for which he sat on the jury, as cited today in the New York Times piece As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
Monday, March 16, 2009
tonight's tweets that got cached in summize but disappeared in the core stream
Weird: more tweets that post and then evaporate. Plus two other tweets tonight from folks who are experiencing the same thing. Can't imagine that content on hal holbrook or seth rogen would be moderated as offensive content -- beginning to believe that Twitter has a funky bug in their system.
Here's what went missing:
Here's what went missing:
suttonhoo: just touched hal holbrook's tweedy elbow in the dark and whispered in his ear (he didn't hear me)
about 3 hours ago from txt
suttonhoo: no surprise that I would incur a contact high in line for a seth rogin movie
about 3 hours ago from txt
suttonhoo: munchies now.
about 3 hours ago from txt
suttonhoo: http://twitpic.com/266nu - anna feris somewhere in there (observe & report at #sxsw)
about 3 hours ago from TwitPic
yay! more movies!
Up next: That Evening Sun
Posting by cameraphone from the Alamo Ritz 1
SxSW
Austin, TX
Posting by cameraphone from the Alamo Ritz 1
SxSW
Austin, TX
without name
Just hit the halfway mark at SXSW where the question
presents itself: can the human brain sustain all this
stimulation?
Shot = the director of Sin Nombre last night at the
Paramount. Heading off for another block of Interactive
sessions.
So much to blog. So little time to blog it.
Posting by cameraphone from Austin, TX
presents itself: can the human brain sustain all this
stimulation?
Shot = the director of Sin Nombre last night at the
Paramount. Heading off for another block of Interactive
sessions.
So much to blog. So little time to blog it.
Posting by cameraphone from Austin, TX
Saturday, March 14, 2009
jeremy simons, director of the last beekeeper
Synopsis: the bees are dying & we're screwed.
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
sweethearts of the prison rodeo
Bloggage to follow. Put this documentary on
your to see list: It nails it.
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
Austin, TX
your to see list: It nails it.
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
Austin, TX
conference room chandelier resembling a dung beetle #sxsw
I feel it's my responsibility to share these
chandeliers. For whatever reason.
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
chandeliers. For whatever reason.
Posting by cameraphone from SXSW
Friday, March 13, 2009
filmmakers of the documentary new world order + alex jones
faved
[Niebuhr] is one of my favorite philosophers. I take away [from his works] the compelling idea that there's serious evil in the world, and hardship and pain. And we should be humble and modest in our belief we can eliminate those things. But we shouldn't use that as an excuse for cynicism and inaction.
Blurb by Senator Barack Obama on the back jacket of the recently reissued The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr as cited in the New York Review of Books.
Obama's blurb is unremarkable: It colors carefully within the lines with a moral prescription that the writer is advocating for us, that he wants us to believe he adheres to himself. "One of my favorites" gushes like a schoolgirl claiming a BFF (or more accurately, a BPhF) and doesn't go anywhere interesting or insightful from there. It doesn't say anything about Niebuhr that we all haven't already agreed Niebuhr is all about.
Obama's blurb is all about Obama.
"Look at me: I read Niebuhr. You should too."
That, of course, is why I'm posting it. Because I'm still in the honeymoon stage; still picking out things that I love about my dreamy new boyfriend. I love discovering that my president reads Niebuhr. (*You* love Niebuhr? *I* love Niebuhr!!!)
And speaking of Niebuhr (because I read Niebuhr: do you read Niebuhr? Did you know *Barack Obama* reads Niebuhr? OMG BFF!): Speaking of Faith ran a great panel on Niebuhr not too long ago »
Posting by cameraphone enroute to Austin.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
another conference, another conference room, another mother of a chandelier
another conference, another conference room, another mother of a chandelier
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
thank God we have a government
Jonathan Dillon April 13- 1861 Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels on the above date. J Dillon April 13- 1861 Washington thank God we have a government Jonth Dillon.
The inscription left behind within the inner workings of Abraham Lincoln's gold watch when, on April 13, 1861, the watchmaker who was repairing it received word of the first shots being fired at Fort Sumter, as reported by this morning's New York Times.
Lincoln's watch was opened yesterday in a public ceremony at the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. to verify whether the story, related across generations, was true.
Like a game of Operator, the original inscription turned out to be quite different than the one related, which collective memory recalled more eloquently as:
The first gun is fired. Slavery is dead. Thank God we have a President who at least will try.
The actual inscription burns half of its character count relating the inscriber's name -- three times -- and the date twice. (The first shots of the Civil War were in truth fired on April 12th, but it took time for news to travel in 1861.)
Incidentally, if the inscriber's name and date had been handled as metadata, the way they would be in a digital context, the same way blog posts are stamped with the time they're created and the identity of the blogger, then Jonathan Dillon's inscription would fit neatly within the 140 character count limitations of a tweet.
Importantly, he carved what he had to say into an artifact that he could reasonably expect would endure and would be carried to places of importance in Lincoln's pocket. Hidden, perhaps, from its owner, but the story didn't remain buried: he told the story to whomever would listen; to his family, to his friends and even to the New York Times in 1906.
In the NPR segment on the event you can hear the awed pride in the voice of Dillon's great great grandson, Douglas Stiles, as he acknowledges the impertinence of his ancestor's action, saying: "My goodness that's Lincoln's watch. My ancestor put graffiti on it."
The story goes that Dillon was the only Union sympathizer working in the watch shop, which gives his inscription even more poignance: unable to voice his emotion to his immediate community, he broadcast his sentiment to the larger world.
This bears all the hallmarks of a tweet -- or perhaps a tweet bears all the hallmarks of a furtive inscription inside Lincoln's watch. Or of graffiti scribbled on an historical monument; or a petroglyph carved into a rock face. Each of these is a brief declaration that simply states: "I am here, right now, inside this larger landscape where these things are happening -- and this is what I think. This is how I feel."
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
quantifiable
Beware of geeks bearing formulas.
Warren Buffett on “The Charlie Rose Show” speaking of Quants -- quantitative finance guys -- and quoted in this morning's New York Times piece They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street.
(Confession: I didn't have a spare hour to watch the entire Warren Buffet clip -- I hope it's the right one. Apologies if I got it wrong -- I'll screen it later today.)
shakespeare was a hottie
It is the face of a good listener, as well as of someone who exercised a natural restraint.
From the brochure accompanying the Shakespeare Found exhibit at Stratford-upon-Avon, cited in this morning's New York Times, describing the Cobbes portrait, recently identified as the only portrait of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime.
More Shakespeare at detritus »
Update 3/19: Others disagree »
Sunday, March 08, 2009
film manufacturing in chicago
We interrupt this Wright-o-Rama weekend to bring you a holga shot of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company in Uptown. According to Wikipedia:
The Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was an American motion picture studio founded on August 10, 1907 in the neighborhood of Uptown, Chicago, Illinois by George K. Spoor and Broncho Billy Anderson under the name Essanay ("S and A"). It is best known today for its series of Charlie Chaplin comedies of 1915.
Apparently Essanay produced 450 films before 1913 -- "at a time when four out of every five U.S. movies were produced in Chicago" [1]. Charlie Chaplin endured Essanay for a year, made them a great deal of money, and then left over disputes regarding creative control. Louella Parsons worked here as a screenwriter before she got into gossip.
Ultimately, Chicago's ass-kicking weather persuaded the Essanay folks to move to California where, over time, film manufacturers became filmmakers.
[1] This is noted with the caveat: "citation needed".
pattern language
outside his Oak Park studio and again, later, in the
sconces at the Robie House (1909) in Hyde Park.
A square enclosing a circle intersected by a cross.
Posting by cameraphone.
dress rehearsal
Rockefeller Chapel around 3.30.
They're warming up for "A Lenten
Meditation: A Concert of Sacred Music
frm the 17th and 18th Centuries".
They're warming up for "A Lenten
Meditation: A Concert of Sacred Music
frm the 17th and 18th Centuries".
Curtain's at 5.
Posting by cameraphone from
Chicago's Hyde Park.
obama eats here
Fortifying at the Medici in Hyde Park before heading
over to the Robie House for more Wright.
BRING IT, BABY.
over to the Robie House for more Wright.
BRING IT, BABY.
Isabel Roberts' tree house
Isabel Roberts' house in River Forest, Illinois.
Roberts was a member of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural staff. Some say he and she were lovers. This was the house he designed for her.
That's a tree growing out of the roof. It's still alive.
Posting by cameraphone.
Getting my architecture geek on.
Roberts was a member of Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural staff. Some say he and she were lovers. This was the house he designed for her.
That's a tree growing out of the roof. It's still alive.
Posting by cameraphone.
Getting my architecture geek on.
Saturday, March 07, 2009
heurtley (so good)
Let’s get the recriminations out of the way: I didn’t bring my camera.
Not the big heavy tricked out every which way with all kinds of lenses Nikon; not the little Leica point-and-shoot whose battery went dry on me a couple of days ago that I haven’t recharged.
A situation which would have been perfectly acceptable if, when visiting Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1902 Arthur B. Heurtley House, things had proceeded according to the protocol generally observed when visiting a Wright, namely: No pictures of interior spaces. Along with: Do not stray off the shabby grey carpet runners. Don’t touch anything, and for the love of God, no food. No drink.
It became clear that all bets were off when Mr. H poured the wine.
Shortly after that he said “sure: I don’t mind if you take pictures.”
Mr. H, whose name is a matter of public record as the new owner of the Heurtley House, welcomed fifteen of us from class (the one with a name too silly to be repeated here) into the home he shares with his family in Oak Park this evening simply because, as far as I could tell, he’s just a nice guy, and was kind enough to return a phone call from a fellow in our class who works with a guy who knows a guy who used to play football with Mr. H.
So there you are.
He’s also deeply in love with the home he lives in, and deeply respectful of the architect who built it. All solid qualifications for this fan girl.
All I can give you are a few lousy cameraphone shots, and the abiding impression that the entire home -- from the music room on the ground floor that now houses a pool table and a Wii, to the upper story with its grand dining room and library and reconstructed inglenook -- glowed like an ember, radiating heat without ever scorching.
Birch wood was everywhere and may have contributed to the glow; as probably did the sight lines that flowed without effort or obstruction the entire span of the floor plan. The interior colors have been restored to their original warm earthy tones and plastered in concert with a fine sand (trucked up from Southern Illinois and sifted to ensure conformance with the original); which probably also contributed to the steady radiant heat that that place emits.
The owners who came before spent a fortune on the restoration of the home -- there’s a documentary available online which I’ve never seen but will certainly watch now.
There were many details that made me giddy, but the one that captivated me was the tiny sink in the butler’s pantry with two irregular basins -- the left hand basin was a perfect square; the right hand basin was a rectangle that spanned the same width as the square and shared the same baseline. Snugged over the rectilinear sink was the faucet and fixtures. All original to the 1902 structure, and subtly expressing the simple geometric motif that ran through the entire house, complemented further by the appearance of a Sullivanesque arch over the main doorway and in the library hearth.
The position and proportion of the dining room suggests the Robie house and the restored veranda off the library (once boxed in by previous owners -- now opened wide to receive the breezes and allow for living) was everything a summer afternoon might ask for.
Apologies for the fractured write up -- I’m tired enough that I probably should have waited until the morning when I was fresh, but I wanted to capture the heat before the fire faded away.
coffee stains
Ivan Vakarelski at the Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences in Singapore was inspired by the rings left behind by spilled coffee to create a new way to make ultrathin coatings for LCD and plasma flat-screens.
In LCDs, transparent conductive coatings are used to form an electrode on the surface of the screen, while in plasma TVs they provide a shield that prevents electromagnetic fields from straying.
Traditionally to make such coatings it’s necessary to sputter a fine layer of highly conductive and transparent indium tin oxide onto the surface. This takes place in cost-intensive clean rooms and vacuum chambers.
Vakearelsk noted that when coffee is spilled, the evaporating liquid drives coffee particles to the edges of the spill -- which ultimately produces the circular stain. The coffee granules are being "assembled" by the varying evaporation and convection rates in the fluid.
Vakarelski and his colleagues figured that if they could mimic the process in a controlled fashion, they could create a pattern of granules of other materials to form a nanoscale conductive coating.
Instead of coffee they used a suspension of gold particles »
Shamelessly plagiarized and paraphrased from Anil Ananthaswamy’s Future TV screens seen in coffee stains in the 1 March issue of NewScientist.
Friday, March 06, 2009
pressing
The word specimen doesn't adequately convey the feel of these gorgeous plates by photographer Stephen J. Joseph. Each is elegantly rearranged on the page, caught in its moment of life, and a powerful connective zap moves from Muir to us through these photos of the plants he encountered, described, and collected.
Judith Larner Lowry writing in Orion Magazine about a new collection of the photographs of John Muir's plant specimens: Nature's Beloved Son: Rediscovering John Muir's Botanical Legacy, by Bonnie J. Gisel with images by Stephen J. Joseph; Foreword by David Rains Wallace.
We weren’t church goers when I was a kid, but we knew enough to revere Jesus and John Muir.
Which is almost certainly my father’s fault.
My dad wore thick wool socks that he called his John Muir socks. He taught us early that the woods and the mountains and the rocky shore that limned the Puget Sound were where the action was; that anything else (this house? these four walls?) was artificial; a compromise.
My father’s love of books is why I love books; is why the acoustics of every room in my home are impacted by the soft muffling of pages arrayed against the wall. My father’s love of books gave me always a soft place to fall, a universe that welcomed me, a place where I could sort through the crazies and understand what was sane. I read Mark Twain and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack London and big stacks of National Geographic just because they were there.
And John Muir.
When my father fell fast into a coma for reasons none of us understood while hiking through Utah’s red rock canyon country, my brothers and my sister and I took turns by his bedside, where we read John Muir to him through the tubes that snaked through every orifice, through the lids that danced from his dreams, through the edema that bloated his body beyond recall.
We read of mountain sides and rock slides and ravines. Of snowstorms and earthquakes and the cooling shade of conifer trees.
Scripture. Story. Salve.
Until he woke, we read.
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