Catching up

I have been remiss in posting the usual rubbish here, so this is a quick catch up summary of the world, in and beyond Joseph Street.

• The goddam Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment, one of our better examples of refusenik stonewalling on just about any issue you can name, is slowly being dragged kicking and screaming into admitting that, yes, Michigan does have a wild population of Cougars. Tracks, scat, multiple sightings, and now a blurry trap-camera photo from the UP make it increasingly clear that the big cats are back. Congratulations, Catamounts! With any luck, large predators will continue to repopulate the state, especially since housing costs have fallen to the point where even the average polar bear can get financing for a house in Bloomfield Hills.
  
• Not too long ago, President Obama made a comment about seeking expert opinion on issues, so that he'd know "whose ass to kick." Some people may have objected to the crude turn of phrase and others to the apparent ineffectiveness of any kickage so far meted out, but it does offer an opportunity to provide input. When he called me, I offered my short list:
  
  
  
  • Rupert Murdoch
    
  • Benjamin Netanyahu
    
  • South Carolina State Senator Jake Knotts
    
  • The wonderful people who are calling the offshore drilling moratorium "worse" than the oil spill
    
  • Rod Blagojevich
    
  • Rupert Murdoch, again
    
  
  
• Burke Breathed, the now-retired creator of Bloom County et seq, once had a character say, "Today on Wall Street, they busted everybody but the wiener vendors." An apt description of Detroit, 2010, where the ex-Mayor is in jail; the former city council member, Monica Conyers, has been convicted and is awaiting jail (same goes for her former consultant and bag man;) the current school board president is under pressure to resign after allegedly "fondling himself" in front of a superintendent; the police are being fined $1000 a day for essentially ignoring a consent decree; and almost daily, it seems, somebody is arrested for shooting a child either by mistake or on purpose. There is a debate (if you can call it that) over what should be done with Detroit, with these suggestions running at the top of the list:
  
  
  
  • Shrink the city by demolishing abandoned buildings and relocating people
    
  • Just demolish the buildings
    
  • Demolish the people
    
  • Demolish the city council, school board, and police department
    
  • Use open land for urban farming
    
  • Use open land for opium farming
    
  • Create a sixth great lake, Lake Kwame, as a home for displaced Asian Carp
    
  
  

I think that's quite enough of this, for now.

Librarians gone wild!

Shush!

Another dish

Orecchiette con due formaggi, pancetta, spinaci, e fungi
1/2 lb orecchiette (or other shaped pasta)
1/4 lb pancetta, diced
1 cup crimini (or other) mushrooms sliced
1 spring onion (or scallion) chopped
1 cup fresh spinach, stemmed and torn
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 clove garlic, peeled and halved
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tsp beef bouillon concentrate
1/2 cup reggiano and compté, grated
2 -3 tbsp chicken stock
Preparation
Boil water for pasta. Dice the meat. Chop the onions. Grate the cheese. Slice the mushrooms. Wash and tear the spinach.
Add cream, garlic, and beef stock concentrate to a sauce pan and simmer, gently.
Firing
Add pasta to the boiling water and cook for the recommended time on the package -- 12 - 13 minutes.
Heat oil in a small sauteuse over medium flame; add the onion and sweat until softened. Add the pancetta, and cook until it renders most of its fat. Add the mushrooms and more oil. Cook until the mushrooms are tender.
Toward the end of the pasta's cooking time, add cheese to the cream sauce and stir to blend. Remove and discard garlic.
Top the pancetta and mushroom mixture with the spinach, add the chicken stock, and cover. Reduce heat to very low.
Drain the pasta and add to a serving bowl. Add the cream sauce and toss to coat. Add the spinach, pancetta, and mushrooms, and toss. Season with black pepper and serve.
Notes
An Italian or Californian Arneis is a perfect match with this. Use any combo of cheeses you happen to have around, as long as one of them is parmesan.

Come on, natural selection ...

... let's get cracking. Besides those lovable people who made pets out of pythons(1), then let 'em go in the Everglades, and the civic-minded individual who cost his German municipality 100,000 Euros to find his cobra when it escaped, there are the wonderful folks who run the National Rattlesnake Sacking Championship in (where else?) Texas. I love the fact that, in addition to organized messing with extremely venomous reptiles, the event also features a "petting zoo." Doesn't say what gets petted.

Just so you understand clearly what this event involves, here's what the web site has to say:

"The Catcher has a tool called a pinner consisting of a rod at least 24" long with a hook on the end. The catcher must first immobilize the head of the snake with the pinner. He then places the snake in the sack. The Sacker is literally left "holding the bag". His job is to hold the sack in a position to allow the Catcher to quickly toss the snakes into the bag without allowing the others to escape or bite him in the process."

There is a five-second penalty for getting bitten, by the way, and disqualification for intentionally harming a snake.

This, as an NPR story this morning reminded us, comes in the same month in which the WHO kicked off a web site, centered on the cost, worldwide, of snake bite. As WHO points out, "Snake bite is a neglected public health issue in many tropical and subtropical countries. About 5 million snake bites occur each year, resulting in up to 2.5 million envenomings (poisoning from snake bites), at least 100 000 deaths and around three times as many amputations and other permanent disabilities."

WHO goes on to note that the bulk of these snake bites take place in Africa and Asia, but it's nice to see Texas doing its part to get America back into the competition.

---

(1) - yes, I know pythons aren't venomous.

How long ...

... before this becomes a consumer item from Honda or Polaris?

Except for the two-stroke engine noise, I'd drive one of these to work.

Don't pet the tiger

One of my colleagues is fond of that phrase, with reference to asking the executives anything, for fear of getting an answer. However, a film maker in Singapore seems to have learned a much harder lesson, by petting the tiger of the Indonesian Government.

A film about pretty boys on the beaches at Bali, making a tenuous living by having flings with women tourists, has started a pogrom against "tanned, muscular" guys. Have a look at the article; I especially liked the note near the end about how Bali has more than just gigolos to offer; they have "...Hindu temples, volcanoes, and terraced rice fields..." too!

Truly Nuts

I don't think I can say anything at all about this that the article doesn't already say. Strongly recommended reading.

Oh, come on ...

... it's just a typo. Would you do the publishing equivalent of a recall if you'd slipped up and spelled "pepper" as "people?" Would you if the publication in question was a cook book and the phrase in question was "... freshly ground black people?" This in a book called the Pasta Bible. (First published in 1642, in Florence, by Geraldus Irresponsibilus, a monk who later reigned briefly as Pope Noninnocenza the Third, and who specialized in variant readings of holy scripture, including the infamous Wicked Bible, which left the word "not" out of the admonition "thou shalt not commit adultery (true: look it up);" the Silly Bible, which included a thirteenth commandment, "Thou shalt not fling gnocchi at thy mother's brother's concubine;" and the bible d'accent indigne, which although based on English, renders everything in a spurious French accent.)

Apparently, the Pasta Bible's publisher is adopting the Toyota approach to public relations: "... if anyone is small-minded enough to complain about this ... "

Not ready for prime time

Or any other time:

North Korean Comedy! And now, Live from Pyongyang, it's Saturday Night!

Diversity, diversity ...

Here in Michigan, we have the full range of human experience, and our state's parenting skills are a good example. Last week's news carried two stories, demonstrating the scope of our population's abilities in child care-giving.

First: bad parent! A dad and an uncle spent two days driving around, drinking, bowling, and generally partying, with Dad's two young children in the car, frequently locked in the car, out in a variety of parking lots. Mom says she's "as shocked as anybody."

Next: good parent! A man (whose identity is not yet known) took his child to work, presumably to teach the 7-year-old valuable career skills. True, Dad's work was holding up retail establishments, child in tow, but still ...

Midwest family values, folks.