February Drink of the Month

by boegiboe on February 4, 2012

When I attended the National Institute of Applied Sciences in Lyon, France, in the 1994-95 school year, I had a Tunisian roommate named Samir. We got along pretty well–despite being an observant Muslim, he forgave me the incident when, as a result of my friends’ “Get Scott Drunk Party,” I made the room uninhabitable to him for a day. His cousin, Hatem, was a student of the Koran as well as engineering, and he visited us often. They liked to chat about Islam and the Koran with me, an American who knew nothing more than it was written by a guy named Mohammed. At first, they were very defensive, but once they figured out I had no preconceptions, it was fun. It helped that I was fascinated by Arabic, and Samir taught me the alphabet and a few words and phrases. It turns out the Arabic greeting Samir taught me–”As-sliama”–is specific to Tunisia. (Sorry if I mistransliterated, but I can’t find the right way online.)

After a trip back to Tunisia, Samir shared with me some special pastries made by his grandmother. They were out of this world…well, out of my world, anyway. I’d never had so much as halvah, so I’d never experienced anything like these tiny cakes that were bone dry, delicate and crumbly, but permeated with flavor. Sesame was at the fore, of course, but there was pistachio, date, rose, clove, cinnamon, and I’m sure more that I just can’t remember. It was a wonderful gift for him to share his family’s traditions with me.

When the uprisings occurred in Tunisia in 2010, I tried to use the Internet to find Samir, but to no avail; his family name was just too common. I found someone with the exact same name as his cousin, and I wrote him, hoping it might be the same one. I wished them well, explaining why I was writing to someone who was probably a complete stranger (I just couldn’t imagine how Hatem could have aged into the person in the picture I found), and wishing this Hatem well in his new Tunisia.

So, a year ago, Tunisia had its first freely elected president ever, and a wave of Arab protests sparked by the Tunisian uprising would become known as the Arab Spring. You may think me callous to feel celebratory when the Bahraini rebellion was so mercilessly crushed and the Syrian rebellion escalates to full civil war. I tend to think we should celebrate freedom when and where we can, and so my February drink of the month is called the Arab Spring. If you don’t like it, call it some other damn thing.

The Arab Spring

  • 1 oz rose syrup
  • seltzer
  • ice
  • cinnamon stick

Pour the rose syrup over the ice in a rocks glass, fill with seltzer, and stir and garnish with the cinnamon stick. Don’t ditch the cinnamon. I found rose syrup in an Arab foods store, which you may or may not have in your area. If you find rose water instead (I couldn’t find any), that might be more authentic, so go for it and tell me how it tastes!

Note that this is our first non-alcoholic “cocktail” of the month, out of respect for the fellows–Samir and Hatem–who connected me, however tenuously, with Tunisia. It’s sooooo worth it–it is absolutely delicious. Plus, it’s a lovely pink-to-red color if you use rose syrup, which makes it perfect for Valentine’s Day! Double plus, any of our Leaguers who don’t drink can enjoy it with reckless abandon.

For those who couldn’t care less about sipping something non-alcoholic, I understand. So, I’ve tried some variations. You can add a splash of cinnamon schnapps, and that works very well. You can add a shot of vodka before filling with seltzer, and that also works, and of course combining that with the schnapps is good, too. I thought I was brilliant for the idea of replacing the seltzer with champagne, but this fails, as the fruity flavors of the champagne completely cover the rose flavor. Finally, and I haven’t tried this yet, but I know it would work, you can steep homegrown (or organic) rose petals in vodka for a week or so and use that plus red food coloring in place of the rose syrup.

Sorry if it’s too exotic to get all the ingredients, but if you can find them, it’s totally worth trying. Happy Valentine’s Day, and happy anniversary of the beginning of the end of American Imperialism!

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Happy New Year Cocktail

by boegiboe on January 4, 2012

When I started this feature, I looked forward to this being the first 2012 addition:

The Aztec Martini

  • 1 part tequila (gold preferred)
  • 1 part creme de cacao
  • 1 part chile pepper infused vodka (Absolut Peppar works)

Shake ingredients with ice and serve.

It’s three classic flavors from our neighbors down south, back five hundred years. The chile was the Aztec’s chil (their roasted pepper was the chil potl), and they thought it an excellent adjunct to their most treasured chocolatl. I don’t know the history of tequila as well, but since I’ve listed it two months’ running, I guess I’d better learn. I do think tequila is woefully underappreciated as a mixer, something I learned when I first had a real Long Island Iced Tea.

The Aztec has been a favorite party drink in our house since I first made it in 2006, and I almost destroyed my boss with it this New Year, despite my being nowhere near him.

Though not required, I like to garnish with cacao nibs. They float on top and sneak into every other sip. This drink is a great night-starter because of the caffeine-sugar-alcohol mix (so long, Four Loko), and even if you don’t have the ingredients in your own home, it’s easy to remember for the next time you’re in a bar and looking for something new.

Cheers!

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Gin is a Sometime Drink

by boegiboe on December 4, 2011

I enjoy what is often thought of as the classic gin martini. I don’t want a third of the drink to be vermouth, but neither do I wave the bottle of vermouth over the shaker à la Churchill. In the end, though, I drink gin often, and it is important to me to be not a liquor glutton, but a gourmet. Thus we come to the December cocktail of the month: The Three Fathers

  • 1/2 oz Frangelico
  • 1 oz tequila
  • 2 oz akvavit

Mix the ingredients in a rocks glass. Add rocks. (I like simple recipes.)

So, that’s it. The hardest part about this cocktail was the name. I had to do some research to come up with a name that would stick in my memory. Akvavit is a Scandinavian “water of life” (cf French eau de vie, Irish uisce beatha [whisky], Fremen worm puke, &c). I used Aalborg Akvavit for this recipe, which I learned began with 3 aquavit fathers, and the akvavit definitely makes this drink work. Besides that, the Frangelico, of course, pours out of the head of a little glass friar, sort of like Mrs. Butterworth. I can squeeze the tequila in under the name of Tres Generaciónes.

Note that there is a lot of room for playing around here if we are willing to stray from the patriarchy, so to speak. I tried substituting amaretto for Frangelico, and the result was nice, but not as nice as with Frangelico (which I actually usually hate in most drinks). The tequila I used was an inexpensive silver, but one could use gold just as well (the nut liqueur colors the drink anyway, if you care about presentation). If you are in a part of the world that affords you a choice of akvavits, I can’t speak for what this would do to the drink. The caraway flavor mixing with the earthy hazelnut and agave flavors is what is so nice about the Three Fathers, but there may be any number of variations that come out nice as well. I’m a pluralista on such matters. Just let us know if you find a nice twist.

Altogether we have three venerable tonics, mixed judiciously, which give us a lovely holiday cocktail. I’ll see you all around New Year’s if not before. Cheers!

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Cocktail of the Month

by boegiboe on November 10, 2011

I have few valuable social skills, but I’m decent at concocting new, well, concoctions. As a new Slow Tuesday Night feature, each month I’ll post an original drink recipe of mine. I start the feature off this month with a recipe I made just yesterday, the Opium Martini.

  • 3 oz vodka
  • 1 oz Canton Ginger Liqueur
  • scotch

The vodka should have a clean taste, and the scotch should be a smoky one; I like Dewar’s for other things, but I don’t think it’d work here. Wash a cold martini glass with scotch, leaving a few drops at the bottom. Shake the vodka and liqueur vigorously with ice and pour into the glass. Garnish as you please; a lime twist wouldn’t be out of place, but I like it clean and unspoilt.

In the future, I’ll aim at posting the monthly recipe in the first few days of the month.

Cheers!

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Sound and Vision

by boegiboe on October 19, 2011

Our daughter, Alice, had her first school field trip this past Friday. As parents we were asked to get the kids excited for the trip to a nearby petting farm by talking about farm animals and the sounds they make. That kind of preparation will be good for her eventually, I guess, but she’s only recently turned two and the ways that thoughts and memories interact for her are inchoate and mysterious, not something I feel capable of guiding over several days. Still, I complied; part of the reason Alice is in day care is because these people are professional educators, so I try to remind myself they often may know more about what is going on in Alice’s blossoming mind than I do.

The school bus ride was along the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. For those who haven’t driven that corridor, its lush canopy of trees is always a pleasant respite from the metropolitan concrete jungle we usually travel and work in around here. As we watched the trees go by, I asked Alice to tell me what colors she saw. I demonstrated by pointing out some yellow leaves, and she quickly reciprocated with “orange”! Then came green, which though it was something of a gimme, was unquestionably correct, since the autumn change is only just starting in our area. Then I was surprised by “Black!” shouted firmly and delightedly, but there it was—a tree that had died in some way that turned its leaves all a crisp, charcoal black. The rush of color was unyielding, and we’d seen everything in the Crayola 8-pack palette but blue by the time we left the parkway.

We arrived at the petting farm just in time to have to run for shelter as a huge thunderstorm hit. Lightning, wind, and rain kept us away from the animals for half an hour, but we got off lucky compared to the Virginians who received the first blows from this round of storms. Alice has always considered rain to be a good thing. She loves to get wet, and I suspect that inside the black box of her mind, water coming down from the sky, all over the place, might be just about the best thing imaginable.

Next hour or so saw us slogging through a muddy, swampy field to look at and pet live farm animals for Alice’s first time. She knew that cows said “moo” but before this had no idea how big they were. Reality must come screaming at her wildly at times of discovery like this. She always loves to pet the furry patches on the cows in her books, but was completely unable to bring herself to touch any of the cows. She did better with the Shetland pony that was her size. The piglets were surrounded by so much mud and water that the pull of puddle-jumping was stronger than their oinking allure. We petted guinea pigs (they say “oink,” too, by the way, just at a much higher pitch), chicks and ducklings, and rabbits.

There was a sheep a bit taller than Alice who calmly watched us approach, and after she and Alice checked one another out, I asked the requisite “What does a sheep say?” “Baa-baa,” was the dutiful and comfortable reply from Alice. This time, though, it was followed shortly by the sheep demonstrating how badly we had butchered its native tongue by offering a commanding “Baa!” of its own. This sound froze Alice. She was visibly disturbed—not merely frightened, but troubled somehow by the power of the animal in front of her. It struck me how much courage it must take for Alice to approach something so much larger than herself, something so alien (sheep have creepy eyes, don’t they?) despite there being cute, homogeneously woolly versions of them in her books. She finally did approach a bit, and from there fell upon the baby goats. She loved the goats; she almost immediately gave one a sweet, gentle hug. At times like these I can’t help but fall more in love with this brave and loving person.

From there we took a gander at the geese, dallied with the ducks, and chased the chickens. We had our lunch, and as we finished that up, the rain began again, giving us enough warning to get under cover without getting too wet. Under the roof the farm’s minstrel was singing children’s songs to his guitar’s accompaniment. Alice launched herself into a whirling dance with the other children, all of them bigger and older than she. As the rain picked up, more kids joined the fray. I was torn between leaving her unfettered and protecting her from the other kids, and in those situations I generally try to restrain my helicopter self. The kids kept coming, and they got rowdier and rowdier, egged on by the guitar-playing ringmaster, and eventually I took a step back and realized—my daughter is in her very first mosh pit. She did well against the older kids, making it through 5 songs before I finally felt I had to remove her. Ending such a great day with a mashed finger would’ve been a tragedy.

Alice protested her removal from the kinder-bacchanalia, but soon we were at another entry to the shelter where the heavy rain, driven by the wind, was encroaching on the dry interior. Alice stood at the front edge of the rain’s advance jumping and shrieking ecstatically. I just let her go at it; after the falls into the mud and the trekking through streams of water, she really couldn’t be made more dirty by the rain. The emotion of the moment was strong; in the face of this storm, this powerful force of nature, which was so much bigger than the cows that had worried her, Alice wanted to throw herself into the whipping wind and rain. She was overcome with glee at the thought of embracing something that clearly terrified even some of the adults in our midst. To perceive with a mind so sharply aware, so intensely focused as to see the color on every leaf that passed through her vision, she was more, not less, in love with the storm than the rest of us who were either afraid of its lightning or even just annoyed by its wet. Those of us who perceive the world so dimly that little of its detail enters our consciousness. Even if it’s a good adaptation for living and breeding successfully in the wild, the blindness of the adult senses to so much of our reality is still a loss we should recognize. Thank goodness we have children to remind us, and to perceive things as we cannot.

Laughing at the Storm

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The End of Gerrymandering

by boegiboe on October 17, 2011

So, gerrymandering keeps popping up as a problem in politics this year-after-the-census. It was a good idea for a little while (at least) to help get minority representation in Congress. That is probably the only legitimate reason to keep the practice now, and even if the current crop of gerrymanders doesn’t move toward that goal, maybe there will need to be some help in that direction in 2020.

All that aside, what interests me here is: What would be a totally fair, nonpartisan process for establishing congressional districts? Should we grid the entire nation into squares of a certain not-too-big/not-too-small size, and the squares must be assigned so that they are contiguous? What’s the right grid resolution?

Should each district be required to have an area centroid that has a direct, unbroken path to every point in the district? This one is geometrically appealing, but could get very, very difficult to execute.

For any given, small enough area, political party probably closely pairs with another variable: race, income, property value, age, students vs non-students, etc. Our ability to analyze census data now would look like telepathy to the authors of the Constitution. Had they known what solidity could be guaranteed in voting patterns with our technology, would they have chosen a different method of apportionment?

I’m curious here: I’ve always thought “There MUST be a better way to determine district borders.” Yet, it’s hard to think of one. Anyone got any ideas?

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Esoteric Nerd Humor

by boegiboe on October 11, 2011

I think I’m really funny. I try to hide this fact most of the time, because I’ve learned that most of the rest of the world disagrees with me. However, now that I am a part of a blog team, I’ve realized that if I subject the readership to my humor, the negative conditioning signals, such as weird looks or rolling eyes, or stunned silence, will be invisible to me. Especially if I don’t read the comments…

The gottfried (Go) is the SI unit of annoyingness.

Exposure to one Go of annoyingness will cause the average adult human’s blood pressure to rise 1 pascal per second. Since “jerk” is the time derivative of acceleration, dimensional analysis tells us that annoyingness is equivalent to mass times jerks per unit area, which is nicely intuitive. Exposure to 500 Go for one minute is generally fatal to most people. OSHA regulations set a maximum of 300 mGo for most workplaces, but that limit is waived for all Federal workers (except OSHA inspectors) and air travelers.

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The Tale of Böegiböe

by boegiboe on October 8, 2011

The following story is from The Goblin Companion, by Brian Froud and Terry Jones. I read it at our wedding in Ontario in 2003.

Böegiböe travelled over the High Hills. He carried his staff in one hand and in the other hand he carried nothing.
“Where are you going so wild and free, Böegiböe?” asked Aksark the Gypsy.
“I am going to fill my other hand,” replied Böegiböe.
“I can tell you where you can find fennel flowers and willow herbs, forget-me-do’s and baby’s beard, plants to make you well, plants to make you sleep, plants to heal the wounds of your mind. Those will fill your other hand.”
“No,” said Böegiböe. “That’s not good enough for me.” And he went on his way.
Some time later he came to the Great Howling Gulf, and beside the Great Howling Gulf he came across Lod the Conjurer.
“Böegiböe!” cried Lod the Conjurer. “Where are you going so free and fast?”
“I am going to fill my other hand,” replied Böegiböe.
“Stay here with me,” said Lod the Conjurer, “and I will give you dice and cards, disappearing rabbits and magic snakes, multiplying handkerchieves and clever hoops—they’ll fill your other hand.”
“No,” said Böegiböe. “That’s not good enough for me.” And he went on his way.
Some time later he came to the goblin castle that stands by the rich red lake. And there he met Haza, the fat maid, who is forever carried about by her servant.
“Böegiböe!” cried Haza. “Where are you going so free and furious?”
“I am going to fill my other hand,” replied Böegiböe.
“Stay here with me,” replied Haza, “and I will give you rubies and riches, gold and silver, pearls and amethysts, pleasures and purchases…. They’ll fill your other hand for you.”
“No,” said Böegiböe. “That’s not good enough for me.” And he turned to go, but as he did so, he heard a splash followed by a crash, and there was Alger Öt struggling in the castle moat.
“Help!” cried Alger Öt. “I can’t swim!”
Böegiböe rushed down to the moatside and stretched out his hand. Alger Öt grabbed it just as he was about to sink for the third time, and Böegiböe pulled him to safety. Then a crowd gathered around them and told Alger Öt that Lætherlêggs the Lofty had been hit by an Amåm Pherrüginüs and was now Lætherlêggs the Löw. Then they all cheered and Alger Öt shook Böegiböe by the hand, and as he did so, Böegiböe looked down at his hand and said: “That’s good enough for me,” and Böegiböe and Alger Öt became friends for the rest of their lives. As I say, goblins like pointless stories.

I’ve copied the story in its entirety because anyone who has children or who has ever been a child should already own the source book, and so I’m only pointing out something that is already laying under a soft layer of dust in your basement or on your bookshelf. If you don’t own it, go buy it. If the authors or publishers happen to notice and think they will lose more than they will gain by this posting, they may let me know and I’ll take it down.

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Introduction

by boegiboe on October 7, 2011

Hi folks!

This introductory post marks the first time I am a member of a blog; I thank you for the opportunity. I’ll be writing here under my usual commenter name “boegiboe,” but I’ll shed any anonymity; my name is Scott Starin, and I’m Jason Kuznicki’s husband and a long time blogosphere addict. In my professional life, I’m an aerospace engineer with a specialty in spacecraft dynamics and control. I work at NASA, but of course I won’t be speaking for NASA or the Federal Government in any way on this blog. Given that I probably won’t be writing here about anything I’m even remotely qualified to discuss, there’s no reason for you to expect you’ll find reading my stuff enjoyable or thought-provoking. But then, there’s no reason that the Moon subtends almost exactly the same angle in the sky as the Sun.

Beautiful things can arise from chaos.

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Utopia’s Natives

by Jason Kuznicki on August 1, 2011

[I]t being my intention to write a thing which shall be useful to him who apprehends it, it appears to me more appropriate to follow up the real truth of a matter than the imagination of it; for many have pictured republics and principalities which in fact have never been known or seen, because how one lives is so far distant from how one ought to live, that he who neglects what is done for what ought to be done, sooner effects his ruin than his preservation; for a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil. — Machiavelli

If you found yourself in Utopia, would you know it? How long do you think it would take before the recognition dawned? By what signs or tokens would you recognize it? What if the streets weren’t paved with gold?

What about Utopia’s natives? Would they know better than you? Or would you gain something from an outsider’s perspective? Would you go around saying “This is Utopia” while they laughed behind their gold-embroidered sleeves, convinced that their homeland, while fortunate, certainly couldn’t be the best? Or would they believe, correctly, that it really was Utopia — and would you disagree — and who would do the laughing then?

Even in Utopia, there might remain insoluble problems — problems not answered by any application of the political arts, or even by any social technology. Or by any virtuous act of will. A society could have optimized all three, and yet problems could remain.

Indeed, they would remain. The nature of man is to have unfulfilled desires. Is it not? Would Utopia not be populated by humans? Could it only be populated by gods? If there are humans in Utopia, then which desires go unfulfilled? To posit a New Man for the New Society is to beg the question. Would the New Man not need… anything? Would he still be a man?

It is one thing to have many of one’s desires fulfilled. It is another thing not to desire in the first place. (Would a place without desires be Nirvana rather than Utopia?)

It is a third, clearly impossible thing, beyond having no desires, beyond having most of one’s desires fulfilled, to have all of one’s desires fulfilled. In Utopia, does your stomach fill the moment it empties? But then how would you feel the exquisite and indeed pleasurable hunger that comes before an excellent meal? What if you desired that? Yes, we desire to desire. At least those of us who haven’t reached Nirvana.

Now imagine that you were set down in 99% Utopia. Would you know that it wasn’t Utopia? Would you know that the 1% of remaining difference represented a failure of politics, or technology, or will — and would you be able to differentiate these failures from the merely insoluble problems of human desiring?

These are silly questions. Their point is not that we might live in Utopia without knowing it. Nor is it that an ideality of politics, technology, or will is impossible. It is that we do not necessarily know what such an ideality would look like. And yet much political thought is premised on just the opposite.

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