Ach, Mein Herz!

This weekend I started my exploration of German cuisine und mein Herz tut mir weh. I made Schnitzel Huhn – schnitzel made of chicken instead of veal, as is the standard bit of flesh. To go with it, I whipped up some Spätzle. For dessert I baked a Schokoladen-Kartoffeltorte or Chocolate Potato Torte. Since the torte would take the longest, I began making it before all else. But first I had to set the mood correctly with some music and beer.



Next I got a few potatoes boiling.



And then I melted some chocolate in a double boiler.



From there, I separated some eggs and sifted flour. Notice the cherry brandy in the background…



I was feeling too lazy to go get my mixer so I just did everything by hand. Instead of adding vanilla extract, I gave the batter a liberal douche of the cherry brandy. I bought it months ago for a recipe and only used a couple tablespoons then so it's gotta get used up somehow. Besides, it was just sitting there tempting me. In addition, we have a bit of chocolate liqueur about too so I put some of that in there. Here's the batter just before the eggs whites got folded into it.



When all was mixed, I poured the batter into a springform pan and threw it in the oven. I then began on the next item – the spätzle. I decided to cook it ahead of time and reheat it in hot water just before serving. This would make things easier. I made the batter and headed down to the basement to grab the spätzle hoolie I inherited from my father when he passed.



It was the first time I'd used it and memories of helping him make spätzle a few years ago came to mind as I ran the funnel across the grater. Here they are cooking to light, fluffy perfection.



The Dulcinea was supposed to have come over at 7:30 but was nowhere to be found. I called her cell and left a message. And so I continued to make a big mess and prep the schnitzel. The breasts were pounded; the egg wash and breading were laid; and I brought out my largest frying pan. Oh, and I had another brew.





During the wait, the torte had cooled sufficiently and I cut it in half. I'd decided to do a cherry and whipped cream filling. Again I was too lazy to grab my mixer from the basement so I whipped the cream by hand. For the cherry bit, I decided to use some of this cherry jam I'd bought at Alex Polish American Deli. While not German, it was close enough. I mean, Poland was occupied by the Germans, right?.



Perhaps jam isn't correct – more like preserves. It was full of whole cherries. It's really good stuff and isn't very sweet, which I liked. The batter had almost a pound of butter in it and sugar plus there'd be more sugar in the whipped cream. I didn't want it to be a massively sweet thing so I tried to get it so that each part of the torte was only slightly sweet so, when they were put together, you'd get something that was moderately sweet but wouldn't instantly cause a cavity. In addition, I threw some of the cherries that I had preserved in brandy into the mix for a little sumpin' extra.



I threw the torte together and put it in the refrigerator. The Dulcinea finally called, saying that she had lost track of time and was on her way. When she arrived, I melted the lard and started a-fryin'!



There was a recipe in the new German cookbook for Schnitzel a la Holstein which involved putting a fried egg on top of the schnitzel along with a couple anchovies as well as capers. I didn't have any anchovies and I don't particularly care for them so I did my own variation. I laid a slice of spiced bacon roll atop the schnitzel and then the egg followed by capers. Like the preserves, the bacon also came from Alex Polish American Deli. I'm not really sure if the stuff is strictly Polish or not. I can say that the little sign next to it in the deli case didn't give a Polish name, just the English one. Still, it's pork and Germans & Poles both have a predilection for all things porcine. To round things out, I buttered sourdough rye bread and embellished the plate with some of the bread & butter pickled squash that I canned last summer. Here's The Dulcinea's plate:



Here's mine along with some beer in a stein that my dad got when he was stationed in Germany in the late 1950s:



I thought that everything turned out well. The spätzle was all light'n'fluffy as it should be. The schnitzel was quite tasty and I loved how the lemon just added that little something extra and different to the rest of the flavors. Admittedly, I ate my fill but The Dulcinea went that extra mile. She'd drunk too much coffee during the day and had an upset tummy but, trooper she is, she kept at it and ate even when he gullet cried "No!". With my plate cleared, I dug into the torte.



I know it's not a great picture but it's the only one I have, at the moment. It turned out really great! My sugar rationing did the trick as it wasn't too sweet but remained very flavorful and rich. The marriage of the chocolate and cherries was consummated in my mouth. My slice had a bit of brandied cherry and biting into it, I was greeted with a bit of a bite. They're potent, alright!

This morning I thumbed through the cookbook once again looking for breakfast fare. The Kaiserschmarren (Emperor's Pancakes) sounded tasty so I went with them, much to my arteries' chagrin.

The first thing I did was to get some dried cherries soaking in brandy.



Next, I whipped up the batter and made the cakes. They are supposed to be very thin – like crepes.



Once they were done, I cut them into small rectangles and kept them warm in the oven. I then melted a whole stick of margarine. I know, I know – what the fuck was I doing with margarine? Well, I was out of butter so it had to suffice. With it melted, I drained the cherries and added them as well as some cinnamon.



I then added the pancakes pieces. From here, one is supposed to dump a whole cup of sugar on it and toss. However, I only used about half a cup. I tossed it so that everything was coated in a gooey mixture of buttery, cinammony, cherry goodness and then served.



Now, when I had come down to start making breakfast, Becca was just beginning to serve pancakes and bacon for herself and Stevie. But when they The Dulcinea's and my plates, they were intrigued. I let them sample it and they were impressed enough that Stevie gleefully went into the kitchen and got a plateful for he and Becca to share.

I think that these two meals provided enough calories to sustain a draft horse. At least my arteries are now well lubricated. I'm not sure what German fare I'll make next but The Dulcinea is itchin' for some Hasenpfeffer. In the meantime, I'm gonna have to eat a country ton of granola.

Word of the Week

The Dulcinea and I watched The Name of the Rose last week so this week I have chosen:

tonsure (tŏn' shƏr) n. The part of a monk's or priest's head that has been shaved.

IA!!

(via Sivacracy)

Private Parts and Pieces

While the Supreme Court has read a right to privacy into the Constiution, the business world sure couldn't give a flying fuck about it.

Weekend in Review

Today Charles and I went to Maharaja, our local purveyors of Indian cuisine for lunch and ate ourselves silly. The buffet there is a trap like the Tree of Knowledge. It just sits there with its Chicken Tikka Masala goodness steaming at you in the face. Although I ate too much, I did try several dishes that I'd never had before, the names of which I cannot recall. One was this cabbage and cashew thingy which was mild but very tasty. And then there was the something-or-other that had yogurt in the sauce that was very tasty as well. Plus I tried those little brown balls in syrup. They were luscious balls of sweetened cottage cheese fried to perfection. Rich, but not overly so. The daily special was a chicken something-or-other that was OK. It was very mild and pulled back from the precipice of blandness, but only just. And then there were these fried slices of eggplant and some kind of pancake hooile with vegetables in them that made perfect folding devices when a glob of onion chutney was applied.

Surprisingly, the meal didn't make me all soporific. Then again, we did stop at Escape Java Joint and I got me a nice cuppa joe. I stopped in there for the first time a couple weeks ago and was pleased to find that one of the proprietors was someone I recognized as a former barista from the Ancora just off the Square. He even remembered me. I've only ever stopped there on my way to work but it looks like a pretty nice space, especially with the big furnished room at the front. I shall have to go there and actually sit my ass down and spend some time soaking up the atmosphere. Writing these words makes me miss Toad Hill. It was just a couple blocks from my house and I knew all the baristas, who were wonderful folk. A great spot for doing the crossword puzzle and good chat. R.I.P.

This weekend was mellow but wonderfully varied. On Saturday, I trekked out to Bavaria Sausage and got me some good German comestibles including some soft pretzels (to go with my chocolate fudge mustard), smoked pork chops, sweet & sour cabbage, Black Forest ham, et al. Is it me or does German cuisine center around pork? There were about 80 different types of hams and even more variations on the pig including wurst, chops, and the like. Although I have designated 2006 as the year that I delve into German cooking, my venture there was more along the lines of just having food for this week than a concerted effort to learn a country's cuisine. From there I went to Alex Polish-American deli. Now, when I got to Bavaria Sausage, mine was the only car in the lot. When I left, I found that half a dozen cars had joined mine. The deli was a different matter. The lot of the little mall in which it resides was almost full when I got there yet I found myself to be the only customer. There were a couple guys in there speaking in Polish to one of the women behind the counter but they left shortly after I arrived. As I had no particular recipe in mind, I stood there looking around and running potential meals through my head. The younger woman behind the counter asked me if I was looking for anything in particular with her stunning Polish accent. I told her that I wasn't and proceeded to grab some bread – a loaf of chleb babuni or "Grandma's bread". The stuff is really good. It has a very spongy texture and sticks to your ribs like glue. It was one of three loaves left so I think I ought to frequent the joint more often so as to find out when they get their stuff in. A lot, if not most, of the stuff they carry comes from Chicago, including the bread which is from Ideal Bakery, a joint just a few blocks from my mom's place in Jefferson Park. I also grabbed a bag of German potato chips which were seasoned with paprika. While good, Jay's makes the same thing down in Chicago. Perusing the shelves, I decided to make kolacky again and so bought some dzem wi?niowy, which I think translates to "cherry preserves" because that's sure what it looks like. Turning my attention to the deli case, I bought some garlic ham, a couple links of a sausage whose name I cannot recall but begins with "p", and some spiced bacon roll. (Again, the pig dominates.) The bacon roll turned out to be quite a score. Take a slab of bacon, wrap it around a pork loin, and then spice & tie. I fried some for breakfast the next morning and The Dulcinea and I both were in fits about how tasty it is. In the cooler I spied a Polish sernik or cheesecake also from Ideal. The stuff is heaven on a plate, lemme tell ya. Unlike American cheesecake, the stuff is very light with a much drier texture yet it is mighty moist.

The Dulcinea came over that night and we went to the rollerderby! It was the Mad Rollin' Dolls' season opener. Although we'd seen them play an exhibition game last month, this was much better. There were more elbows thrown, hips checked, and more fights! I don't know what it is, but the sight of two hotties coming to fisticuffs just sets off part of the reptilian section of my brain. The matches were good and I've decided that I'm an Unholy Rollers fan. I just have a thing for Jewel of Denile and all things unholy. Before the Resevoir Dolls match, one of their mascots led one unholy sight around by a chain. Marty, a local bartender of some reknown, had volunteered his services for the night. Marty is fairly short and rotund with a long beard ala the boys in ZZ Top and long hair. Plus he wears prescription sunglass all the time. So Marty is paraded about while wearing only hip-hugger shorts and this leather harness. And I thought watching him dance to Nine Inch Nails while standing on a barstool was funny. Uff da! Later on I saw Ryan, a former co-worker of mine. He was clad in bowling shirt and with a beer in hand, if I recall correctly. PBR silos are $3.50. Is PBR still a hip beer? I managed to drink 16 oz. of the stuff before cutting myself off from the horrid stuff. How in the fuck did PBR become fashionable? I mean, what kind of statement is it to drink that crap intentionally? "I drink crappy beer." I've been at a couple fancy joints and seen some well-heeled gentlemen quaffing it down. I mean, these are the kind of guys who would wear a tuxedo to their own vasectomy and they're drinking PBR. Wow. If drinking shite beer is what it takes to be a hipster, I'll just stay uncool, thanks. I'll stick with New Glarus. Next time I'm not driving and I'm bringing a hip flask.

On Sunday we resumed gaming after a multi-month layoff. Marv, Christopher, Pete, and I convened at Dogger's for the occasion. When I got there, Miss Regan (now in her Terrible Twos) was sitting on Dogger's lap in the basement while he played music and waited for folks to arrive. There was some Porcupine Tree playing and Regan started dancing to it at one point. Poor kid – she's been tainted by progressive rock. People eventually filed in and we began. Pete was DMing and we played a sci-fi adventure of his which was vaguely Fireflyish. We just transposed D&D's D20 rules over to the scenario. We play a bunch of young prospector types who get Shanghai'd by a trader. So we're on this ship carrying an unknown cargo getting attacked by various bad guys. My character is an engineer so I'm basically Scotty (from Star Trek) diverting power from the propulsion units to the shields or the lasers and back. At the beginning of the game, Pete explained the game world. On the outer planets, the de facto police is a group known as The Orphans. A few hours later when we were playing, I had completely forgotten this. We land on a planet and the captain tells us not to go to the Orphanage, i.e. – their headquarters. I, having the mind that I do, took this statement a different way and nearly spit Coke through my nose laughing which caused Marv to laugh and so we spiraled down into a vicious circle of belly laughs. Just as we calmed down, Pete described the inhabitants of the planet who were mostly miners. He said they were very short and had no hair. Being all smart-alecky, I said, "At least not on their heads" which caused Marv to make a hand gesture indicating that, if their pants were unzipped, a whole forest of pubic hair would spring out. I started laughing uncontrollably and so did he. Things were not helped much when a whole conversation ensued about getting lost in the hair, finding pubic lice the size of squirrels inside and, well you get the gist.

Luckily Miss Regan wasn't around for all of this but she did wander down shortly thereafter, much to Mel's chagrin. You see, role playing is about role playing; about being your character. While Regan was coveting some dice, Marv really got into character. We're a bunch of young punks out in the depths of space fighting for our lives so of course this involves profanity. He said "bullshit" at one point and Regan mimed him with "booshit!" This was quite funny and so was watching Marv get yelled at by Mel.

I'm looking forward to continuing the adventure next weekend, especially now that we've gotten all the preliminary crap out of the way.

Also this past weekend, I went to the bookstore. I bought the second Discworld book, The Light Fantastic, for my mom, a cheapie CD of the music of Oktoberfest, and a couple of tomes for myself. To get my German cooking venture off the ground, I bought a German cookbook. Although there were 80 Indian cookbooks and a million different ones for Chinese cooking, I grabbed the only general cookbook for German cuisine. Presumably it's not too hip these days. You know, considering that over half of the people in this state have German ancestry, there sure is a paucity of German culture outside of beer and brats. Schnitzel should be served at every corner tavern, for fuck's sake. Corner restaurants should be serving liverwurst on rye with a big slab of raw onion on top. Considering the preponderance of people of northern European stock around here, you sure can't tell by the local culture. But that's a rant for another time. I also bought Breweries of Wisconsin by a professor here at the university. (There's that German thing again.) It's interesting to read about how great of a part of people's lives beer and the brewing industry was. Firstly there was the economic aspect of it but there was also the element of community in the whole deal. For example, some small towns would get together to pick hops and make a celebration of it with food, musicians, and dancing.

This week…this week I need to get my arse in gear and pay some bills. Work has been work. Tomorrow I have lunch with my contracting company boss. Since I don’t work at their office, I am out of the loop. My company sued to be the help desk for many state agencies but they lost the contract to an Illinois company. They weren't able to get Steve back to DHFS with me and now another of us is leaving to take a job closer to home with a different company. And then there were two. I highly suspect that contracts with the state are quite lucrative so someone has to be in trouble.

New(ish) MC Hawking Video

Yo! Check out some phat beats!

Nerdcore superstar MC Hawking has a new video out for his song, "What We Need More of Is Science". It is quite humourous but may not be safe for work as it contains depictions of Christian fundamentalists.

On the Gramophone

I chose this week's entry as I'm looking forward to the performance by Madison's progressive rock cover band, PROG next month and have been listening to Rush quite a bit lately. And so point your browswer here to hear PROG doing Rush's "Subdivisions". (It's a .wma file - sorry.)

Cold Calling for Country

Has anyone else gotten an annoying call out of the blue imploring you to listen to some new country station like 96.3? They want me to listen to their crappy music and call them to let them know what I think. Oh, I'll let them know what I think alright...

Local Vernacular

On the same day last week, someone sent me an e-mail with one of those "You May Be From Wisconsin If…" lists like this one. Later that day I was surfing the Net and came across the site Chicago Vocabulary!. Having grown up in Chicago and moved to rural Wisconsin at age 14, I could appreciate both sites. I have an obvious Midwestern accent that, I'm told, varies between the Wisconsin and Chicago varieties. For instance, every native Wisconsonian I've ever met pronounces "Chicago" as "shi-kah-go". Now, most of my family pronounces it as "shi-kaw-go" and so do I. This is a dead giveaway as to my origins.

Beginning with site about Chicago vernacular, I found that I recognized most of the entries. For instance, "beef" as in "Gimme a beef!" is short for an Italian beef sandwich or that "a Polish" means a Polish sausage. Plus I knew the names given to the various expressways such as the Kennedy or the Eisenhower. It was funny to see various businesses listed such as Empire Carpet and Victory Autowreckers because of their ubiquitous television commercials that I remember well from my youth. However, there are some entries that I either don't recall ever having heard or were created after I left the city. For example, I don't remember ever hearing the top of the John Hancock referred to as "The Top of the Cock" but this could just be my memory at fault here. Then there's the Allstate Arena which was the Rosemont Horizon when I lived there. Of course the list wouldn't be complete without the dig at we Wisconsinites and so "cheesehead" makes the list.

In addition to terms specific to Chicago, there was the odd term for something that's universal but has a different name depending on location. Take for example the ATM – the Automated Teller Machine. In Chicago they seem to be known as "cash stations" as per the name of the largest ATM network in the city. Amongst my crowd here in Wisconsin, they're known as TYME machines, after the ATM network TYME – Take Your Money Everywhere. Upon moving to Wisconsin, I noticed that many people pronounced "creek" like "krik" as in one of guys that discovered DNA. Chicagoans strictly say it as "kreek" – like seek with the long e sound and most definitely not with the short i sound. I also found a "You May Be From Chicago If…" list and it includes these:

Grocery stores have bags, not sacks.
You drink pop.

The use of "sacks" tends to be more of a rural thing, from my experience and I know I always use "pop" and never "soda". In fact, I think pop is pretty standard in Wisconsin. Still, I guess that a short drive up or down I-90 can produce a profound effect on speech.

The "You May Be From Wisconsin If…" list is pretty humorous. We have "You can identify an Illinois accent" and "You know what a bubbler is". I don't think I encountered the term "bubbler" until I moved to Madison. It means a water fountain and, from my understanding, the word comes from Milwaukee. The gulf between Wisconsonians and our Illinois neighbors is evident in "Down South to you means Chicago" and "You know what a FIB is". (FIB = Fucking Illinois Bastard.) One of the things not on the above list which should be is that folks in Wisconsin measure distance by hours and time generally. I know that the list for Chicago says the same thing but my experience was always that people in Chicago would refer to a location within the city by the nearest intersection of major streets or nearest landmark like a ballpark, museum, or something similar. If a location was in the 'burbs, they'd refer to it as being beyond a particular side of town if it were in an inner suburb and, if it were in an outer 'burb, they'd describe it in relation to an inner one. I mean, travel times vary so much depending on the time of day, which route you take, if there's an accident on the expressway, if there's a sporting event that day, etc. In Wisconsin, we almost always refer to a location, especially outside of town, by driving time. The answer to "Where is Small Town X?" will almost always be phrased something like, "About 4 hours north". At this point one might add something like "About 30 miles outside of Rhinelander" or wherever the location happens to be. Another thing that Wisconsonians refer to in these cases which Chicagoites don't when referring to location is county. As I said, folks in Chicago tend to describe locations by their relation to the city whereas we here in Wisconsin love to refer to which county a location is in. E.g. -

"What are you up to this weekend?"
"Me and my dad are going fishing up in Bayfield county"

I would also say that, if someone asks where a particular town is, that it's also fairly common for someone to begin by stating in which county the town resides.

My friend, Old Man Standiford, pointed out another bit of vernacular to me recently. He was speaking with someone from California, I think, and the woman asked what he was going to do over the weekend. He casually replied that he was going to "go drinking". She told him that only people from Wisconsin use drinking as a destination. Apparently the rest of the country would say something like "I'm going to Louie's Tavern for drinks". Who knew?

As I wrote this, I began wondering if there is such a thing as a Madison vocabulary or vernacular. Along the lines of the Chicago Vocabulary site above, there are certainly various locations that could make the list. The Square, State Street, Willy Street, and Miffland come to mind. I suppose you could at "The Co-Op" to the list as Madisonians use this to refer to the Willy Street Cooperative. Let's see…"The Union" for Memorial Union. Although there are a billion farmer's markets in and around town, when we say "the farmer's market", we usually mean the Dane County Farmer's Market. Another could be "Halloween". I think that, in recent years, the term has come to be used to signify the riots on State Street on that day as much as the day itself. "The Funky Drummer" refers to Clyde Stubblefield, former with James Brown's backing band. I suppose we could also throw in "TYME machine" and "FIB" from above while we're at it. Should the Beltline be included? I don't know about any of my fellow Madisonians, but I still use "the Coliseum" instead of the Alliant Energy Center. (I can't remember when the name changed happened.) Does anyone call the art museum on campus by its proper name? It's still the Elvehjem to me. Is Chadborne Hall still referred to as the "Virgin Vault"? I think someone told me that the dorm is co-ed now. Doesn't the Humanities building have a peculiar nickname too? Since we're talking about the UW, we'd have to include the phrase "Ogg sucks". "Frat row". To be inclusive, I'd add Bucky and Paul Bunyan's Axe. And let's not forget "the Rathskeller". "The Bou" as referring to The Caribou, a tavern. The nicknames "Madtown" and "Madcity". How about "The Ban" referring to the smoking ban?

Any locals out there that can add to the list?

Prost Gotvins Geometri – Part 14

This is Prost Gotvins geometri by Gert Nygårdshaug. The translation was done by Roy Johansen. Nygårdshaug is a Norwegian author and the text has not yet been published in English. Roy is a friend of mine who recently moved back to his native Norway. He has translated a good part of the novel and I'm trying to convince him to finish it.

Here’s Part 13.

Father Gotvin's First Journey (continued)

We had wine and cheese and bread while talking quietly. She told me about herself cadidly and solemnly. There had been three men in her life but the relationships had been utter misunderstandings. She had certain demands but some of these demands could not be expressed verbally. However, she could feel; she knew when something was right or wrong; she felt that what had just happened was right but what was to happen next? Her intuition was strong. She had to take some chances despite not knowing me at all and despite how quickly this had developed. She too was surprised and she was only twenty-eight. I nodded in agreement, but where was my God? Gone – he was not with us then and there. I could feel only her presence and the inexpressible joy of being a man. I munched on some cheese and followed the movements of her lips. She had opened up to me. I too was open and could speak without embarrassment. There had not been any other women in my life. She had gathered as much and appreciated it but how come I had made such a skillful performance? "Skillful"? I giggled and looked down. I didn't want to understand what she had meant nor could I give her an answer. Our soft, almost whispering, voices and the cicadas melded in the balmy darkness under the jasmine bushes, beyond time.

"Why did you really come here?"
"To confirm that I don't believe in miracles."
"Don't you believe in Mary's appearance?"
"No, do you?"
"No, but are you a believer?"
"Yes, I am a believer. I am a minister, as you know."
"Do you believe in me?"
"Yes, I believe in you, Lucienne."
"But I am not a Catholic woman. I would be a whore if I were."
"You are an honest person."
"In your eyes I'm an infidel, a lost soul."
"Don't talk like that. What do you believe?"
"In what I see in you. In your inquisitive nature. In truth."
"Truth is God. I am merely his instrument."
"But you still seek to understand."

I held back for a moment. Being this close to her made clear, rational arguments impossible. For my Christian point of view, my reservation with respect to Catholic miracles – God was not present except as a notion and for this I was sorry. Yes, I was still seeking and she must know what for, surely? The way we were looking at each other, the depth of our gazes, our hands intertwined, all the smells…

"Will you promise me something?" she asked.
"Promise?"
"Yes. Promise me that you will believe in me."
""Of course I'll believe in you."

She looked down. There was something she wanted to say, something she didn't say. She looked solemn and squeezed my hand as if her life depended on it. I knew it had something to do with the promise I had given her but she had said as much as she was going to and I felt no urgent need to know. She started to talk about her profession, about archaeology. Her specialty was settlements – remnants, traces of a time far, far from our own. She was a paleoarchaeologist which meant that she concentrated on settlements and cultures from before the last ice age, a period fifty to a hundred thousand years back in time – the Quarternary Period. Could it be possible? I listened with interest as she explained that, at the time, our ancestors the Neanderthals were still around and that they were not all that different from us. As a matter of fact, the brain volume of homo sapiens neanderthalis was actually larger than ours and one must assume that they had formed communities and settlement structures from which one might still find traces. This was her speciality; a largely unexplored branch of archaeology and one that she was rarely given the opportunity to pursue. But theories too were important and the theories seemed to indicate that the Neanderthals had been particularly numerous in Northern Europe, especially in Scandinavia. Consequently there might well be remnants, although much had been destroyed by the glaciers. It made me happy to hear this. Maybe it might attract her to my own area; perhaps she would be able to find traces of them in the mountains around Vanndal? I did not tell her this, of course. I listened and nodded. What were my own particular professional areas? Christ's suffering on the Cross and the daily suffering facing all of us, spiritual guidance, marriage counseling, weddings and burials – these were my areas. This she knew, of course, but did I sense something in her eyes, something impish? Something teasing when I talked about this? I bit the tip of her finger softly and she threw herself around my neck. Again we held each other tightly and she laid down on her back, pulling me with her. My desire, my inscrutable lust sent hot pulses through my body as I felt her soft, moist womanhood receive me, and again we were one rhythm, one body. How long could it last? Long, long, long.

Again we lay silently.
It was night.
We were lying on the Fields of Stars, watching a sky of stars.
Tomorrow I would leave.
Today. It was almost dawn.
"You have to go?"
I nodded.
"I'll go also. We're going on an excursion to the caves at Mondonedo. I and my seven students. Can't you come with us?"
"No," I said quietly.
"No," she rejoined.
"You cannot call or write to me."

I startled, froze, for a moment. It was as though everything collapsed around me. The night turned cold and painful, but then she was there in front of me on her knees. She put her arms around my neck while tilting her head and smiling mischievously.

"You cannot contact me until you have solved the riddle."
"The riddle?" Then I remembered.
"You must find out, you understand?"
"No," I replied. "I don't understand."
"You will understand. That is one of my demands."
"Absolutely?"
"Absolutely."
"And if I'm not able to?"
"Then I shall cry. Cry so long and loud that you'll hear me and then you'll be able to."

I laughed – relieved – and kissed her gently. We got up and packed our things together, walked up to the pool, and got dressed. She locked the place up. I got into her uncle's car, a red Fiesta, and she drove slowly through empty streets very slowly. She too knew that a goodbye remained to be said, a goodbye that neither of us wanted, that neither of us knew what it might entail. That's how it was, but had not these hours forged a bond, a tie, a connection too strong to ever break? That's how I felt. Still, I felt like crying because I didn't know and she didn't know. Slowly she pulled up to Hotel Gabriel and stopped. We turned to each other and just looked without touching.

"Gotvin."
"Lucienne."

"All freemen who are opposed to being made slaves or slave-catchers turn out to a meeting in the courthouse square at 2 o'clock!"

Happy Martin Luther King, Jr. Day to one and all! Perhaps you aren't an American - Happy MLK Day to you anyway. As you can imagine, the web is filled with information about the man. A good spot to start when looking for information about him is The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute whose webpage is here. Even those who know very little about King generally know about his "I Have a Dream" speech which he delivered on 28 August 1963. (See above pic.) It is truly a fantastic piece of speaking and you can listen to it and watch part of it at the American Rhetoric webpage.

But King was just one person in a great movement that started long before him and continues today. The Library of Congress has an exhibition called "The African-American Odyssey" which examines the lives and contributions of African-Americans throughout the history of our country from Slavery to Civil Rights. I found this site which gives a broad history of the Civil Rights Movement starting with the Dred Scott case in 1857 continuing through the mid 1970s and school integration. The National Park Service has put many sites on the National Register of Historic Places relating to the modern Civil Rights Movement and they're detailed at the NPS webpage.

On a more personal note, I found out a few years ago I was told that there was a stop on the Underground Railroad in the Chicago neighborhood where I grew up. Closer to my current home here in Madison, WI is the town of Milton which featured a stop on the Underground Railroad. It is Joseph Goodrich's Milton House.



Prior to the Civil War, runaway slaves were given safe haven in the basement of the Milton House. Runaways entered through the cabin to the rear of the inn and then through a trap door in the cabin's floor to the dirt tunnel that led to the basement of the inn. In 1864, Mary Schackelmann Meyer was worked in the dining room of the Milton House and took runaways in through the cabin, through the trap door and the tunnel to their hiding place in the basement (L. Lukas, unpublished term paper, 1981).

"Milton's underground tunnel which is also unique in the nation for being the only segment of the Underground Railroad that was actually underground and has retained its identity and is open to the public. There are rumors of others but none of them are available for inspections (Dr. Rachel Salisbury, unpublished notes, 1972)."

...Mr. Goodrich who was operating an inn a few miles away [from Janesville] had no such security. He had no idea whether the people who came and signed their names in his register were Abolitionists or non-Abolitionists, whether he could trust them or whether he could not trust them. And so he had to devise an entirely different method of helping the slaves to escape. . . . He cared for them quietly in the basement [of the inn] where they could eat and rest and get ready for the next stage of their journey. But if the alarm were sounded here, his method of helping the slaves to escape was to have them crawl through his tunnel which came up under the log cabin at the back of the house through the trap door in the floor and then they could get away down to Storrs Lake and go on up through bowers lake to the Otter Creek area and get out to Lake Koshkonong and keep on their northward journey to Fort Atkinson or where they were going next. He could not, under any circumstances, bring them through the inn because he did not know whether he could trust his patrons or not (Dr. Rachel Salisbury, unpublished notes, 1972)."

More info on the Underground Railroad here in Wisconsin can be found here with more here. Also from the pages of Wisconsin history is the story of this man:



He is Joshua Glover, a runaway slave who sought asylum in Racine in 1854.

The Glover episode became a celebrated case elsewhere than in Wisconsin; here it stirred public excitement to fever pitch and profoundly affected the course of future events in politics. Joshua Glover was a runaway slave, who sought asylum in Racine in the early part of the year 1854. Racine was a way station on the route of the underground railway, and the abolition sentiment had made considerable headway among its people. The colored slave found employment in a mill. Learning his whereabouts, the Missouri master of the slave, one B. S. Garland, procured a process in the United States District court and proceeded to Glover's shanty in company with two deputy United States marshals...Sherman M. Booth, editor of The Free Democrat, who took a leading part in the courthouse meeting, according to popular account of the affair rode up and down the streets on a white horse summoning the people to gather, shouting the rallying cry: "Freemen, to the rescue!" Mr. Booth, in a recent address, denied many of the statements that have remained unchallenged for more than forty years. He said that he did not shout "Freemen, to the rescue!" and that he never advised the forcible rescue of Glover. What he did say was: "All freemen who are opposed to being made slaves or slave-catchers turn out to a meeting in the courthouse square at 2 o'clock!" Ringing resolutions were adopted insisting on the slave's right to a writ of habeas corpus and a trial by jury. A local judge issued such a writ, but the refusal of the federal officers to recognize its validity led to the battering in of the jail doors..."

You can read about Glover's story at this page at the UW-Madison Libraries website.

Country Boys

For anyone like myself who missed the epic Frontline episode, "Country Boys", on television, I've got good news. The profile of "Chris Johnson and Cody Perkins, two boys coming of age in the Appalachian hills of Floyd Country in eastern Kentucky" is now available online.

When You Talk About Destruction, You Can Count Me...

If you're a peace-loving, dope-smoking, tree-hugging, liberal dove then at some point you and your ideology is going to have to come to terms with this:

Man: May the hands of the infidels be chopped off.

Crowd: May the hands of the infidels be chopped off.

Man: (Chopped off) from the land of the believers.

Crowd: From the land of the believers.

Man: The Audience will now split into two groups: One group will settle the score with America, and the other will settle the score with Israel. This group now: Death to America!

Crowd: Death to America!

Man: Death to Israel!

Crowd: Death to Israel! Death to America!

Man: Death to America!

Crowd: Death to America!

Man: Death to America!

Crowd: Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!

Man: All together now: Death to America! Death to Israel!

Crowd: Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel! Death to America! Death to Israel!

Yes, during the hadj, Iranian television is showing a bunch of people gathered together shouting "Death to America". You can watch it yourself by going here and viewing program #991. The man at the podium says at one point to the crowd, "...will accomplish America's goals of arrogance, and first and foremost stopping the spread of Islam, and removing the Islamic values from the scene." OK, hands up - who thinks that if the United States suddenly became Mr. Nice Guy on the block, this kind of thing would just come grinding to a halt? Well, if Islamic values include chopping the hands off of infidels, desiring the death of America, desiring the death of Israel, taking civilians hostage & slitting their throats, strapping explosives to one's Islamic body & setting them off while standing next to children, etc., then you can count me in on the whole removal of Islamic values from the scene thing.

Now it's quiz time: Which of the following is a picture of an asshole?

A)



B)


I know this was a toughie and I'm sure most folks would choose B. But they'd be wrong. B is, in fact, an anus.

The asshole, a.k.a. – Yousef Al-Khattab, was interviewed by Richard Dawkins in the first part of his show on the BBC, The Root of All Evil?. You can see the interview at this page. He hates me because I'm an atheist and thinks that we American men dress our women like whores. Bubba, I don't dress anyone but myself. No woman in her right mind would let me determine her wardrobe. In addition, he wants and is confident that Islam will spread over the entire earth, presumably wiping out us infidels along the way. While I can't say how many Muslims share Mr. Al-Khattab's views, watching the above excerpt from Iranian television leads me to believe that, not only is Al-Khattab is not alone, but that he has quite a bit of company. Al-Khattab and I would probably not be particularly good neighbors. Additionally, states run by his ilk would probably not be good neighbors to Western states. How can we co-exist peacefully with people like him? How can the United States peacefully co-exist with countries run by people like him, if at all? His views and those of his ilk are completely antithetical to ours here in the West. What should we do if the Al-Khattabs of the world get their hands on nuclear weapons?

While we may not have to worry about that last scenario at the moment, we do have to worry about people like Ted Haggard. At the same page above is an interview Dawkins did with him. It is funny to hear Haggard tell Dawkins that some (significant) number of scientists somewhere and at some time said that the eye evolved by accident. Here's the exchange:

Haggard: We fully embrace the scientific method, as American evangelicals - and we think, as time goes along, as we discover more and more facts, that we'll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the earth -

Dawkins points out that the evidence shows the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, Haggard says You know what you're doing?' and explains that he's paying attention to just part of the scientific community, and that maybe in a hundred years 'your grandchildren will laugh at you.

Dawkins: You want to bet?

Ted Haggard: Sometimes it's hard for a human being to study the ear or study the eye and think that happened by accident.

Dawkins: I beg your pardon, did you say "by accident"?

Haggard: Yeah.

Dawkins: What do you mean "by accident"?

Haggard: That the eye just formed itself somehow.

Dawkins: Who says it did?

Haggard: Well, some evolutionists say it.

Dawkins: Not a single one that I've ever met.

Haggard: Really?!

Dawkins: Really.

Haggard: Ohh.

Dawkins: You obviously know nothing about evolution.

Haggard: Or maybe you haven't met the people I have. But you see - you do understand - you do understand that this issue right here, of intellectual arrogance, is the reason why, people like you, have a difficult problem with people of faith -

"Intellectual arrogance" is not the reason why people like Dawkins and myself have problems with people of faith - it's faith-based arrogance. Holding up a fictional book full of contradictions and proclaiming it to be true is arrogance. Selectively choosing which proclamations to force others to adhere to goes beyond arrogance into the territory of tyranny.

As the site also points out, this evangelical is consulted by George Bush.

Uff da!

Getting All Cassandra-y

On a more serious note than gaming, I found that the debate between Scott Ritter and Christopher Hitchens held on 20 December of last year is available online. I haven't listened to it all yet but, so far, it's very interesting and quite a bit of fun to boot.

I've been listening to bits of the Alito hearings and reading about them as well. His deference to the Presidency is scary. And knowing that Bush is the President makes it all the more so. I've gone back and re-read Federalist Paper No. 69. It's a strange juxtaposition - Bush's grabs for power & his rejection of oversight vs. Alexander Hamilton's elucidation on "The Real Character of the Executive". I don't doubt that Hamilton saw the President as being a prime mover in politics and, having been an officer through the Revolutionary War, thought that the Executive Branch would have to be a tough son of a bitch to get the country through times of conflict. But he bends over backwards in Federal No. 69 to demonstrate how the President of the United States wouldn't be like a monarch. Plus he shows how certain powers of the President would be equal to that of the governor or New York. He contrasts the absolute powers of a king with that of the qualified powers of the president. An able and strong Executive Branch is one thing, but Bush's disregard for checks on power and his arrogance is despotic. Being a fan of Jefferson's, I think that the dislocation of the House of Representatives and its ability to check Executive power from the situation today is a catastrophe. Congress generally but the House more specifically is the people's in to the government. If there's to be a government for the people, it certainly isn't going to come from Bush. He ran every business his father gave him into the ground and now look at our national debt. (Ooh! It came down a little over a billion dollars since yesterday! We're down to 8,159,084,910,068.58!) Does any plebe like me really have a say with this guy? Does any plebe really think that he shares our concerns? Our best link to the federal government is via Congress and most directly through the House of Representatives. We'd better take advantage of this and soon.

OK, I think I'm gonna go get some chili.

Friday the 13th Geek-Out

Welcome to the Friday edition, my little paraskavedekatriaphobes! Today is the annual chili cookoff here at work. Ed has a crock pot at his desk with his entry simmering. It's a bit too thin for his taste so he's mulling over thickening options. Where the hell do you find arrowroot around the Square? I would have concocted an entry for the cookoff myself but my chili is shite. It's just plain old garden-variety chili and nothing to write home about. A couple years ago I experimented with actually making a good chili which involved beer and mole sauce. I made some progress but abandoned the experiment in media res for reasons I can't recall.

I've started playing The Temple of Elemental Evil again and I'm at the point of making my full-frontal assault on Lareth's hideout in the moathouse dungeon. I did some reading on the game and found out something pretty neat.

This:




Is becoming this:





Yes, a group of geeks is making a Keep on the Borderlands mod for TOEE! Keep is a very early Dungeons & Dragons adventure that all D&D players around my age or older have gone through. It's a friggin' classic! I played it a few years ago with Marv, et al. We had his roommate Ben with us and it was his first time playing D&D. That boy had no common sense; he'd just barge into rooms willy nilly. And he'd drink from any phial that happened to by lying around. For instance, we went into a room and killed the koblads inside. Ben's character finds a potion. He looks at Marv (our DM) and declares, "I drink the potion." Marv looks at Ben. I look at Marv. Marv looks at me and says with an evil DM grin, "It tastes like bitter almonds..." I nearly fell on the floor laughing. (The taste of cyanide is said to be like bitter almonds.)

OK, enough dorkiness for the moment.

Doctor Who To Be Shown in US

The BBC is reporting that the new Doctor Who adventures have been picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel here in the States! The first season of the new series starring Billie Piper & Christopher Eccelston will be shown on Fridays at 9PM - EST, presumably.

The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Earlier this week I went to see Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It was fucking awesome!! If you haven't seen it, rush to your local cinema right now! Otherwise, it'll be out on DVD on 7 Februrary.

W&G are a couple claymation characters invented by Nick Park over in the UK. The Curse of the Were-Rabbit is their first feature-length film. Prior to this, they starred in three 30-minute shorts: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and A Close Shave. Wallace is an old fashioned English everyman who likes to invent and build various contraptions. In addition, he is a hard-core turophile. Gromit is his dog. Unlike Wallace, Gromit never speaks and instead he communicates via his facial expressions. It is he who is forced to save Wallace while he is on his flights of fancy or when his contraptions run amok.



In Curse of the Were-Rabbit, W&G are the proprietors of the Anti-Pesto humane pest control service and it is mere days before the town's Giant Vegetable Contest sponsored by the local gentry in the form of Lady Tottington. W&G rid her estate of some pesky rabbits and it is revealed that Lady Tottington has some affection for Wallace. This incident also introduces us to Victor Quartermaine who seeks Lady Tottington's hand in marriage. victor sought to shoot the rabbits but was upstaged by Wallace and his humane vacuum system. With captured rabbits piling up in the basement, Wallace tries out one of his inventions on a test case. This invention messes with a subject's mind and Wallace seeks to rid the rabbits of their desire for produce. He connects his own mind to that of the test rabbit and switches on the power. Well, his little Clockwork Orange conditioning goes awry and soon the town finds a giant were-rabbit pillaging its gardens. Hillarity ensues.

SPOILER ALERT!











It turns out that Wallace is the giant were-rabbit. One of the funniest scenes in the film takes place after Gromit makes this discovery. He drives Wallace out into the woods hoping to keep him far from the veg gardens of the townspeople when he becomes the were-rabbit. The country road is blocked by a fallen tree and so Wallace tries to move it. Then Quartermaine appears followed by a full moon. Gromit locks himself inside the lorry Quartermaine is thrown onto the bonnet as Wallace is transmogrifying into the were-rabbit and he looks at Gromit through the windscreen in terror. Gromit just looks back at him and shrugs.











END SPOILERS











Personally, I just found the whole movie to be really funny. There were the little sight gags like the names of the books on shelves; light-hearted bits of naughtiness when Lady Tottington would hold a couple veggies up to her chest and ask Wallace what he thought of them; plus lots of goofy expressions. Part of the reason I like W&G so much is that the characters just look cool. Certain features are caricatured or exaggerated. For instance, the eyes of the characters are set very close together. And Gromit just looks cool with no mouth, big floppy ears, big, black round nose, and his arching eyebrows. Plus I just adore the claymation. Nothing against CGI flicks like Shrek, but there's just something about claymation which CGI work cannot replicate. It's the organic looks and not-quite smooth motion. Plus I caught the odd fingerprint on the clay in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. It has such a neat homespun look to it.

I want to admit here that I'm a sensitive 80s kinda guy and that my eyes welled up with tears when Gromit's did at the end. And being from Wisconsin, I appreciate the prominent role of cheese in W&G.

By all means, see this movie!

Object

I think it was the bomb squad truck that left the Doty and Broom Street area about 5 minutes ago. Presumably the "suspicious object" they found was just an object and not a bomb. Meanwhile, traffic on Wilson Street is a mess. You'd think it was Chicago.

EDIT: I had no idea about the other bomb that went off.

Oh the Humanities!

The Center for the Humanities at the UW has some interesting programs coming up in the next few months. Well, interesting to me, at any rate. Most of them relate to things culinary.

On 22 February we have:

Cooking Philosophies: A Chefs Debate
Forum with Harold McGee and Chef's Roundtable

A roundtable discussion with Harold McGee and Madison chefs at the Wisconsin Historical Society Auditorium.

The following day the theme continues with:

Playing With Food: Three Centuries of Science in the Kitchen
Humanities Without Boundaries Lecture by Harold McGee

Harold McGee will recount some of the little-known history of food preparation and its influence on the development of science, and report on his own research into such questions as: Why do French cooks insist on whipping egg whites in copper bowls? How many liters of mayonnaise can you make with one egg yolk? Can thermocouples and computers help you cook a better hamburger? And w hy does the spatter from a frying pan end up on the inside of a cook's eyeglasses?

Rounding out the topic of comestibles is a panel discussion on 25 April:

Eat Locally, Think Globally: Cosmopolitan Taste in Madison and Beyond
Rooted Cosmopolitans Forum with Rebecca Walkowitz and respondent panel

This discussion will examine the conjunction of regionalism and internationalism by focusing on matters of taste in the context of food. Professor Walkowitz will talk about how cosmopolitan culture can be both less than national (regional) and more than national (international), sometimes at the same time. We will also include a panel of respondents that will bring local restaurants, farming, and culture to the discussion.

Moving onto The Enlightenment, we have this lecture on 22 March:

How Secular Was the Enlightenment: Six Faces of Reasonable Belief, 1689-1789
Focus on the Humanities Lecture by David Sorkin

Focusing on the myth of a secular Enlightenment, David Sorkin will re-examine the relationship of the Enlightenment to religion, departing from the conventional approach that considers the attitude of canonical Enlightenment thinkers (Locke and Hume, Voltaire and Diderot, Lessing and Kant) to religion, by instead asking how thinkers in the major religious traditions (Anglicanism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Judaism) dealt with the science (Newton) and philosophy of the Enlightenment (ideas of reason, natural religion, toleration). It will argue that if we wish to continue to see the Enlightenment as the fount of modern culture, then we must recognize that it was inextricably linked to religious belief.

For more info and the rest of the programs, head to the Center's calendar.

Wealth Accumulation and Comprehension

Noted gadfly Greg Palast has a new article up at his webpage about a test for the third graders of New York that is a part of Dubya's No Child Left Behind initiative. Palast provides a couple of the questions from the practice test:

"The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena won her first pro singles championship. In March, the sisters met for the first time in a tournament final. Venus won. And at doubles tennis, the Williams girls could not seem to lose that year." And here's one of the four questions: "The story says that in 1999, the sisters could not seem to lose at doubles tennis. This probably means when they played:
A) two matches in one day
B) against each other
C) with two balls at once
D) as partners"

The practice test continued with the tennis theme.

"Most young tennis stars learn the game from coaches at private clubs. In this sentence, a club is probably a

F) baseball bat
G) tennis racquet
H) tennis court
J) country club"

Palast continues:

My kids go to a New York City school in which more than half the students live below the poverty line. There is no tennis court. There are no tennis courts in the elementary schools of Bed-Stuy or East Harlem. But out in the Hamptons, every school has a tennis court. In Forest Hills, Westchester and Long Island's North Shore, the schools have nearly as many tennis courts as the school kids have live-in maids. Now, you tell me, class, which kids are best prepared to answer the question about "doubles tennis"? The 8-year-olds in Harlem who've never played a set of doubles or the kids whose mommies disappear for two hours every Wednesday with Enrique the tennis pro? Is this test a measure of "reading comprehension" -- or a measure of wealth accumulation?

Helpfully, for the kids in our 'hood, it explains that a "country club" is a, "place where people meet." Yes, but which people? President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when schools are not performing." But there are no "better options." In the delicious double-speak of class war, when the tests have winnowed out the chaff and kids stamped failed, No Child Left results in that child being left behind in the same grade to repeat the failure another year. I can't say that Mr. Bush doesn't offer better options to the kids stamped failed. Under No Child Left, if enough kids flunk the tests, their school is marked a failure and its students win the right, under the law, to transfer to any successful school in their district. You can't provide more opportunity than that. But they don't provide it, the law promises it, without a single penny to make it happen. In New York in 2004, a third of a million students earned the right to transfer to better schools -- in which there were only 8,000 places open. New York is typical. Nationwide, only one out of two-hundred students eligible to transfer manage to do it. Well, there's always the Army. (That option did not go unnoticed: No Child has a special provision requiring schools to open their doors to military recruiters.) Hint: When de-coding politicians' babble, to get to the real agenda, don't read their lips, read their budgets. And in his last budget, our President couldn't spare one thin dime for education, not ten cents. Mr. Big Spender provided for a derisory 8.4 cents on the dollar of the cost of primary and secondary schools. Congress appropriated a half penny of the nation's income -- just one-half of one-percent of America's twelve trillion dollar GDP -- for primary and secondary education. President Bush actually requested less.

Wow! Standardized tests have sure changed since I was in the 3rd grade. What happened to the Iowa tests? We never got questions about Arthur Ashe or Martina Navratilova.

Ussher's Bulldogs At It Again

As a follow-up to my post from yesterday on Richard Dawkins, I would like to direct readers to a scary situation in California. PZ over at Pharyngula has weighed in. Now that "Intelligent Design" has been thrown out of biology classrooms, Ussher's Bulldogs are now trying to get their bullshit taught in philosophy courses. As PZ remarks:

Oh. So "philosophy" is the new dumping ground, the subject with no serious content, the one where you can safely present any ol' garbage and it still fits? Like the colloquial definition of "theory" (any guess), I suppose the new definition of "philosophy" is "idiots babbling".

The kicker here is that the course will be taught by a teacher who has no qualifications in biology, geology, nor philosophy. Instead, she has B.A.s in Physical Education and, Social Science. The obligatory lawsuit has been filed.

This is exactly why people like Dawkins who will not take shit and will shove truth down the throats of bullshitters are needed. Sitting around in your drawing room writing articles on fossils will not stop the relentless assaults by IDiots seeking to inculcate children with their superstitious crap.

I also want to to point out that there's another good interview with Darwin's Rottweiler up Beliefnet entitled "The Problem With God". In addition to the text of the interview, there's links to some audio clips from a speech of his.

Word of the Week

In honor of The Dulcinea's new putty tat:

ailurophile (ī-loorƏ-fīl) n. a lover of cats

Darwin's Canine Friend

I found a couple interesting ditties relating to biologist Richard Dawkins over at Pharyngula. The first was a reference to a feature about Dawkins at Discover magazine's site called "Darwin's Rottweiler". While I found it interesting because I find the subject interesting, it was also notable for another reason. The writer was critical of his subject for what he saw as Dawkins' "aggressiveness" and for the fact that Dawkins does not suffer fools gladly. Here is the description of an incident from a panel discussion which which Dawkins took part:

Dawkins, at the far end of the table, almost levitated out of his seat with indignation. “But what does that mean?” he demanded, voice rising. The audience rewarded his indignation with combustive applause. “Is it a caricature for me to ask you, since you are a Roman Catholic, do you believe Jesus had an earthly father?”

The author of the piece, Stephen Hall, chides Dawkins for such outbursts.

The other thing that struck me was the tone of the debate—Dawkins, in his undeniably civil manner, was so aggressive, so relentless, and so pitiless toward his intellectual adversaries that it almost detracted from the quality of his argument.

And he reaches his conclusion:

This recusal underlines the most obvious contradiction about Richard Dawkins and the cultural war in which he has so much to contribute: You can be the world’s greatest apostle of scientific rationalism, but if you come across as a rottweiler, Darwin’s or anybody else’s, when you enter that marketplace, it’s very hard to make the sale.

While Hall quotes a friend or two of Dawkins' who basically say they wish he'd tone things down, there is nothing in the article to lend credence to the notion that coming across as a rottweiler makes for a hard sale. No evidence is provided to bolster the case that Dawkins and his ideas are rejected because of his ethos. Indeed, towards the beginning of the article, Dawkins is labeled "the best-known popularizer of science". I get the impression that Hall thinks that Dawkins and his ilk would be better off sitting back in their offices and writing relatively painless and non-offensive pieces to promote their ideas and agenda. While there are many religious folks who accept evolution and see the benefits of a secular society to believers and non-believers alike, they are not as vocal as their stricter, more fundamentalist kin. There is a very vocal minority who deny the validity of evolution. And they not only want creationism taught in school, they actively work towards that goal. There is also a very vocal minority that actively and loudly denounce homosexuals. While the tolerant majority disagrees with their position, it is the minority that gets amendments to state constiutions banning gay marriage/unions on ballots. These people are vocal, loudly, and active. Their agenda sits at the forefront of our political culture today. I, for one, am glad that there are people like Richard Dawkins who are willing to shout back at them and fight fire with fire. He may be mild-mannered and civil but his stentorian voice for reason and justice is a welcome and necessary antidote to the constant stream of bullshit that religion directs at us.

Also at Pharyngula is a post about a TV show produced by the BBC that features Dawkins called The Root of All Evil.

Professor Richard Dawkins, the world-renowned evolutionary biologist, whose atheism has earned him the nickname of 'Darwin’s Rottweiler', takes a personal journey through the world’s three great monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Dawkins thinks it is time for science to stop sitting on the fence. In the light of overwhelming scientific evidence that, he believes, shows a supreme being cannot exist, and in a world in which religious conflict and bigotry are increasingly centre stage, Dawkins argues that for the good of humanity, religion needs to be challenged and disproved. Never one to shy away from a debate, Dawkins meets leaders from the Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions to find out how their beliefs fit with modern science's extraordinary knowledge of our world and the wider universe.

In The Root of All Evil Dawkins accuses the religious establishment of preying on people’s desire to believe in a greater being; abusing reason and humanity in the process. Ultimately he asks how they can defend what religion has done, and is doing to us?

PZ also directs readers to The Proper Study of Mankind where a lucky viewer in the UK actually got to see the first episode.

It is for moments like these that God invented Usenet and BitTorrent.

On the Gramophone

Most of us remember Richard Dawson as the host of Family Feud or as Newkirk from Hogan's Heroes. What most of us don't know is that he tried his hand at singing. In 1967, he released a single, "His Children's Parade". Well, this week I present the B-side, "Apples and Oranges", because we all need a good laugh now and again.

Trivia Notes

This is the trivia team of which I am a member, the Flying Zupans. It was taken last spring at Bucky's Trivia Extravaganza which the Zupans won. (Unfortunately, I was not present.) In anticipation of this year's event, we're going to be on the radio! The Zupans will be on the Badger Sports Show broadcasting from the Badgerland Bar and Grill at 7PM on 16 January. Here's some more pictures from the contest.

This is the team hard at work




This is Dumb Donald in a typical pose.




And here's Chuck fraternizing. (Hands NOT photoshopped.)




In sad news, the WISS trivia contest is not going to be held this year.

However, we still have the 37th Annual UW-Stevens Point contest in April. If you're fired up for it, you can see the countdown here.

Our team runs the Deerfield Public Library Trivia Contest which is coming up. And on April 1, we'll be hosting a trivia contest in Rio to raise funds for a new gym floor for the school. Plus there's the Cambridge contest as well.

Oooh, brain's gonna be hurting this spring...

A Nice Day

Today ended up being a rather nice day.

As I was walking back inside from having a smoky treat this afternoon, I ran into Steve, whom I hadn't seen since returning to DHFS. We shook hands and chatted a bit. It was my lucky day because he proceeded to offer me his last jar of raspberry-habanera jam. Greedily, I gave him a greenback and eyed the jar of deep red goo lasciviously as I returned to my desk. Shortly after that, I received an e-mail from Julia, the Russian hottie at the regional office. Her missive claimed that the chocolate I had given her last time I was out there had saved her life today. We exchanged a few messages until 5 when I left so that helped pass a very slow time.

On the way home, I stopped at the co-op to buy some good coffee. Walking down the aisle, I ran into Miss Jolene. It had been months since I'd seen her and she still looked as beautiful as I remember. Jolene used to work at a local coffeehouse but now works as a receptionist at an acupuncture joint where she is much happier. While chatting with her, I spied Jimmy Downtown, who works there at the co-op. I grabbed a bag of tasty Ethiopian and briefly chastized Downtown for not coming to my New Year's party before hastily finalizing my purchase. I really had to get home and use the bathroom!

Before venturing for coffee, Charles and I headed to a local comic book store as I was keen on the new issues of Revelations and Y: The Last Man. While there, I also grabbed the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. As Charles was still browsing, I too poked around some more. Unsurprisingly, I ended up buying a couple more titles to try out to see if I liked them. Firstly was the first issue of Silent Hill: Dead/Alive. Apparently it's based on a horror video game but it was the vaguely impressionist artwork that captured my attention. The second was the first issue of, Exile, a Forgotten Realms (read: Dungeons & Dragons) comic. I figured I'd try out a D&D comic and see if it's any good. It looks interesting with all its dark elfy goodness. We'll see.

Right now, I'm eating dinner which consists of leftovers from my New Year's party. First there's some Hoppin' John that The Dulcinea made on New Year's Day. HJ is a mix of corn, rice, and black-eyed peas. Next to the bowl on my plate is a pile of celery and carrot sticks. A pile of cheese and venison sausage (from a deer that Old Man Standiford killed) lies easily next to it. Finally, I have a couple hunks of some bread that Standiford baked for the party. And I'm washing it all down with some Rhoades' Scholar Stout. I really like how the yeasty flavor of the bread combines with the beer to give a very full bitter grainy experience.

I don't think I've written much about the party. I invited pretty much everyone I know in Madison as well as a friend in Minneapolis, a trio from Milwaukee, and several from Chicago. My brother came up from Chitown on NYE. He got here as I was cooking my second batch of gumbo. We shot the shit as I cooked and chopped and prepared my spread. Shortly after he got there, Miss Rosie and Mindy stopped by for a spell. I haven't seen Miss Rosie in months so it was really nice to see her again. We caught up on each other's lives and then, after a bourbon & sour, she started in on The Pollack and his situation. His dad, Mr. Z, has moved in with him. His son, JZ is now 18 and high school graduation can't come soon enough for him. Basically it was business as usual for The Pollack. Working JZ too hard on weekends, drinking too much bourbon, etc. I had hoped that he'd show up but he didn't. Buddy, one of The Pollack's hounds seems to have canine dementia, I'm sorry to say. Buddy is the cool dog whereas Pesto, an Airedale, is a beeotch. No one other than The Pollack himself likes that dog. She eats her own shit and then tries to lick you and is just annoying all around.

After Rosie and Mindy left, my brother and I continued BSing until guests started arriving at the appointed time. Marv showed up and then Old Man Standiford with the Newtons in tow. The Dulcinea arrived as did several others including Dogger, Mel, and Miss Regan. Spike, Julie, and children showed up too. All in all, about 15-17 people were there at any one time. It was funny to watch Spike's kids follow Regan around the den and in circles around the coffeetable. They followed her wherever she did go.



Pete showed up fashionably late bearing Red Bull and Jaegermeister and so Jaeger Bombs dropped at odd intervals throughout the night. It was the first time The Dulcinea had spent any length time in the company of my friends and she met several of them for the first time. As the drinks flowed, so did stories of my checkered past. Pete was quite funny and The Dulcinea remarked that he was totally unlike her impressions of him that she garnered while Pete was still living here. Since he moved out, he's been much happier and despite whatever grumpy facade he puts up, he is one funny dude. WE listened to some music and watched a couple concert videos. Midnight rolled around and I busted out a couple bottles of cheap champagne. Note to self: your friends are beer drinkers. Don't bother with champagne next year. We didn't even manage to empty one of them.

The Dulcinea and I went to bed around 3 and I think that the party was a success. My gumbo went over well and the house didn't burn down so what more could I ask for? Well, there were a few people who were supposed to show up but didn't. Ce la vie.

On New Year's Day, The Dulcinea and I greeted 2006 by fornicating. We then made our way downstairs. I started cleaning and making coffee while she began making Hoppin' John. My brother was awoken by the bacon frying. Marv too woke up and joined us. While we were drinking coffee and chatting, Miss Pamela called. She and Bill soon came over and I cooked breakfast for everyone. Bill had stayed up til 5:30 and was out on the overhang. Miss Pamela, being pregnant, had abstained from the hard stuff and so she was quite perky by comparison. She looked very well at 4 months. The whole reproduction thing was going well after a scare last month in which she was led to believe there was a 1 in 8 chance of the child have Down Syndrome. After more testing, her fears were laid to rest. Pregnant women generally have this vivacious glow to them with their round bellies and all and Pam certainly had that. Sitting next to her, I noticed some small wrinkles on her face. She is 34, after all. I don't mean this in a bad way – I still think she looked extremely beautiful – but rather it served as another reminder of how time marches on. Had it really been 18 years since we first met? Where did the time go? She's going to have a baby?! It seems not that long ago that we met and she was a cheerleader while I was a nerd on the academic teams that got no cheers. (OK – I still am a nerd.) After they left, Marv got all curious about my copy of The Temple of Elemental Evil and loaded it up on his laptop. He spent the rest of the day playing it while my brother and I were backseat players. It was quite humorous. Holy bejeebus, are we gaming dorks! My bro left on Monday afternoon and I finished cleaning.

It was a great way to ring in the new year. I got to spend time with several of my friends, including some that I hadn't done so with in ages, see some of the next generation of nerds running around having a good time, eat good food, drink tasty brews, and just simply have a great time in the company of many people who bring joy and meaning to my life.

More Maddie!

Etymologic

If you're dorky like me and also like me can sit around thumbing through a dictionary for hours because they are so cool, then check out Etymologic, the self-proclaimed "Toughest Word Game on the Web". I can personally vouch that it's a beeotch.

Tolerance

I want to urge my fellow Wisconsonians to check out No on the Amendment webpage which is dedicated to preventing our state constitution from being amended to ban gay marriage and further codify ignorance, prejuice, and fear. (Yes, I've been listening to Rush lately.) There are links to various articles at the site including one to a piece by Jim Stingl at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel called "Let's keep Wisconsin tolerant in 2006". All the articles I read had similiar jingoistic tones - "let's make history by rejecting the amendment!" or "let's show the world just how tolerant we are!" But voting against the amendment is not about making history by showing tolerance, it's about apologizing to all of the homosexual people in this state for this crap ever making it to the polls in the first place. If Wisconsin were truly tolerant, we wouldn't be voting on this amendment and gay & lesbian residents could be united civilly. Perhaps it's about too much tolerance - too much tolerance for fearmongers like Julaine Appling who ought to be run out of town with brickbats.

The mere fact that we're going to the polls to vote on this is appalling and indicative that tolerance has already been lost.

Naughty Bits on Celluloid

I found a neat site for folks like myself who like sex and cinema. It's called Sex in Cinema: The Greatest and Most Influential Erotic/Sexual Films and Scenes. Although films from around the world are listed, the introduction addresses eroticism and sexuality in American cinema and in American culture.

It's funny to hear of how scandalous certain things were decades ago that are considered tame, if not "normal" today. For instance, Night Nurse (1931) was deemed salacious because it featured stars Barbara Stanwyck and Joan Blondell "frequently undressing to their silky underwear". Women shown in undergarments is as common as a cold nowadays. Then there's the supposedly awful The Brown Bunny which has a genuine blowjob shown in all its gory detail. We've come (ahem) a long way, for better or for worse.

The list features some favorite films of mine such as Secretary, Mulholland Drive, and The Dreamers. And of course there's several films mentioned that I've never seen or even heard of that look intriguing such as 9 Songs and Battle in Heaven.

Subsidizing the Idiot Box

2006 heralds a new round of tax cuts for the wealthy. Budget cuts are devastating our libraries. (You know, those fanastic repositories of information, learning, and culture.) Yet the federal government is going to spend $1.5 billion to make sure people having working televisions come 2009 when we (finally) go digital so every American can continue to go stupid.

The difficulty, of course, is that the analog broadcast system will then be shut down -- which will leave most of today's TV sets unable to receive a signal over the air.

Roughly 20 million of those soon-to-be-obsolete sets are in homes where people don't subscribe to cable or satellite. The other 50 million or so are in pay TV homes, and used as second, third or fourth sets. Sets hooked up to cable or satellite services should work fine no matter what.

To avoid a consumer revolt, Congress has set aside about $1.5 billion to smooth the transition. Owners of outmoded TV sets will be eligible for two vouchers, worth $40 each, to help buy converter boxes that will enable today's analog TV sets to receive digital signals.

Yes, the very same federal government that is cutting back on college loans and food stamps will soon be issuing TV vouchers.

You know what, your radios will still work fine after the conversion. And, if you can work around their hours, libraries will still be offering (gasp!) books to read.

Sam Harris On BookTV

Noted proponent of rationality and spirituality, Sam Harris, will have his lecture from New York made last year re-broadcast on BookTV. Set your TiVos for Saturday, January 7 at 9:00 pm EST.

Java @ Olbrich Gardens

There's a trio of coffee-related events going on at Olbrich Botanical Gardens this month. To wit:

Bolz Conservatory Exhibit: Coffee Culture January 8 – March 25
Has any other beverage made such a global impact as coffee? The exhibit Coffee Culture at the Bolz Conservatory, takes on two aspects of culture; how coffee is grown and processed and the role it plays in human culture. Visit Olbrich's Bolz Conservatory and learn more about how this plant has made such a huge impact on civilizations around the world. What does a coffee tree look like? What are the impacts of this plant on world economy and the rain forest? How does coffee go from seed to coffee cup? Come learn the answers to these questions and immerse yourself in interactive activities designed for the whole family. Whether coffee is part of your daily regimen or not, come enjoy the rain forest and learn something new about how one tree affects so many lives on a global basis. For more information call 608-246-4550.

Informal Coffee Tasting - January 8 Saturday 1- 3 p.m. Try a variety of different coffees from around the world, provided by Just Coffee, fair trade coffee. Informal tasting in the Foyer. Free.

Coffee Talk & Tasting - January 29 Saturday 1 – 3 p.m. Learn about how to taste the subtle flavors in different coffees, coffee history, coffee roasting, and fair trade issues for small coffee growers around the world. Taste a variety of coffees. Presentations and tasting by Matthew Carlson of Dancing Grounds and Matt Earley of Just Coffee. Admission to the Conservatory to see the Coffee Culture exhibit included. $5 members/$7 nonmembers. Registration required, call 608-246-4550.

WTF?!

OK, go to this page up at Wal-Marts and then look at the "Similar Items". Hmmm...Has the KKK gone into webpage maintenance?

Meet the Boss

Ronaldo called yesterday evening to ask if I was going to be around if he stopped by. He was just leaving work and, since I was going to be around, he said that he'd be by shortly and, cryptically, that I could "meet the boss". You see I had a couple Paul McCartney shows for him. One was a nice-sounding soundboard from 1990 while the other was the show from Milwaukee last October that he and his daughter had attended. About a half an hour later my doorbell rang and I opened the door to see him standing there clutching a calendar and a brown paper bag. I let him inside and I gave him the CDs. He then presented me with a 2006 Peace Corps calendar and pulled a bottle out of bag.



I saw that by "boss" he meant Black Boss Porter, a very potent Polish brew. At 18.8 proof, I'm thinking that it'll keep me warm & cozy one night soon. We chatted for a bit but he had to get home. While we shot the bull out on the porch, Anders showed up to reclaim a batch of his CDs that have been in my possession for far too long. He'd lent me some Archie Shepp, Trane, and Roscoe Mitchell. Since I'd had them for so long, I burnt him a whole lotta live shows including Monk, Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers, Art Tatum, Miles, et al. Anders not only loves listening to jazz but he's also a practitioner – in the Tony Castañeda Latin Jazz Sextet. He said that a dream of his had come true last year when he flew to Munich, Germany to record an album with Roscoe Mitchell and Evan Parker. The city of Munich had commissioned Mitchell and Parker to compose and record two songs and Anders got invited to the session. (For anyone not in the know, Mitchell lives here in Madison. You can sample his music at my podcast.) Anders said that he had a blast. He got to hang in Germany and record an album with two of his musical heroes and the Transatlantic Art Ensemble. The album is being mixed right now and will be released by ECM Records later this year.

Today is going by fairly slowly. People can't remember passwords and a group of VPN users are having problems. The fun just never stops. Jason and I made our weekly trek to Mad City Music yesterday. I bought Nirvana's first album, Bleach, and Van der Graaf Generator's H to He Who Is the Only One. A bit of an odd combo, admittedly, but two great bands nonetheless. I've also been acquiring some new shows. A new Genesis soundboard recording was put into the trading arena on Christmas Day – 3 January 1977. It's quite a good recording and a spirited performance, Chester Thompson's third ever with the band. I also grabbed a show by the Warsaw Village Band. It's a performance from 2001 which was broadcast on Polish radio. Lemme tell ya, it rocks! Well, as much as Polish folk music can. Really good stuff. It'll find its way onto my podcast soon.

While I don't have any plans for the weekend carved into stone, I am supposed to make pierogi for Mel at some point and she sent me an e-mail demanding them a couple weeks ago and then gently reminded me of my obligations on New Year's eve. I should contact her to find out exactly what she wants me to make.

In addition, The Dulcinea and I will get together at some point. I am in media res of a period of abstention. No ejaculation for your humble narrator until the weekend. The last time I had the pleasure of release was on New Year's Day and it is getting very hard (ahem) to restrain myself. The Dulcinea and I had a date on Tuesday. We went to Maharaja for some carry-out and then rented a flick, Les Rivières pourpres (Crimson Rivers 2). Jean Reno kicks arse and the first installment was good fun. This second movie was vaguely The Da Vinci Codeish with its conspiracy involving an ancient holy relic and, to be honest, had a rather generic story. But I like Reno and Christopher Lee was the bad guy! While he didn't have much screentime, Lee made the most of it. Technically it was great too. The mise en scene was very stylized, especially in the use of color. Depending on the location, the shots had an overall tint to them. Plus light sources were overexposed. Thusly windows were really bright and glowed preternaturally. And the action sequences were shot with a small shutter giving them a hyper-realistic look and feel ala the battle sequences from Saving Private Ryan. For the shootout towards the end, bullet tracers were CGId in making the scene just look really cool and the action more intense. It was by no means an artsy film but it was great fun. Lying in bed with her afterwards was a difficult proposition but we managed to keep me on the straight and narrow. This weekend cannot come soon enough.

Word of the Week

I wrote yesterday about Cheap Monday jeans and so this week's word is in honor of this new icon of Swedish fashion.

sartorial (sar-tor'-ee-al) adj. of or relating to a tailor or tailored clothes; broadly: of or relating to clothes.

Miracles

Miracles really do happen!

Oh wait. No they don't.

No doubt Fred Phelps will picket the funeral of these miners with placards saying "God Hates Miners". After all, they bust their asses in crappy working conditions for us which seems to be cause enough for hatred by Phelps' deity.

Whoever is responsible for that false report owes the families and explanation and, more importantly, an apology although I won't hold my breath for one. Perhaps someday basic human decency will be good for bottom lines and poll numbers. Now THAT would be a miracle.

God ♥ Fags

Fred Phelps and his followers are assholes. Sorry about the tautology.

Sam Harris has a new screed up at The Huffington Post entitled "Science Must Destroy Religion". An excerpt:

The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science. It is time we conceded a basic fact of human discourse: either a person has good reasons for what he believes, or he does not. When a person has good reasons, his beliefs contribute to our growing understanding of the world. We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other evidence-based disciplines like history. There happen to be very good reasons to believe that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Consequently, the idea that the Egyptians actually did it lacks credibility. Every sane human being recognizes that to rely merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact would be both idiotic and grotesque — that is, until the conversation turns to the origin of books like the bible and the Koran, to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance.

Preach on, brutha! On the topic of sacred texts comes this ditty about the burning of many books, including the Qur'an, in Kashmir by survivors of the earthquake back in October. In the dark, rainy night after the quake, the Khursheed National Library was pillaged by folks seeking material to burn for warmth. Desperate to survive, people burned whatever they came across - whether it was the Islamic holy book or not. But Allah apparently has no tolerance for the desperate surviviors:

Nazir Durrani, a government official who frequently visited the library and loved to read books on literature, said people did not realize that copies of the Qur'an were going into the fire.

"The burning of these books was a tragedy. When I think of those who did it, they would never be forgotten by God," he said.

What a glorious notion. Hey, if your deity hadn't caused or let the earthquake happen in the first place, burning copies of the Qur'an that can easily be reprinted wouldn't be an issue.

Cheap Monday jeans are a hot seller in Sweden. With a logo consisting of a skull with an upside-down cross on it, they also reflect the views of the jean's designer:

"It is an active statement against Christianity," Bjorn Atldax told The Associated Press. "I'm not a Satanist myself, but I have a great dislike for organized religion."

Atldax insists he has a purpose beyond selling denim: to make young people question Christianity, which he called a "force of evil" that had sparked wars throughout history.

Finally! A fashion statement I can relate to. I'll have to talk to my haberdashers at Target about getting a pair.

On the Gramophone

For my New Year's party I played "What Made Milwaukee Famous" by local faves, the Cork'n'Bottle String Band, several times. Their version was influenced by Del McCoury's and so I'm putting Del McCoury on the gramophone.

Check out "Eyes That Won't Meet Mine".