Let’s treat today in several parts, one of which is narrative, one of which is merely descriptive, and one of which is abstracts from actions to pop culture.
I. Food
Back to the oven for me!
As background: in October I bought a pumpkin for baking but haven’t yet used it, a few weeks ago I found a good deal on delicata squash and had two to cook, and before Thanksgiving I bought a medium-small butternut squash in case I wanted to make soup or similar. I can’t have them all sitting around on the counter forever.
1. Preheat oven to 350-365F, depending on how well yours heats. Prepare a baking sheet. Use a sharp knife to cut one delicata lengthwise in half, and use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and such. Dry. Add about half a teaspoon of brown sugar per half and rub into flesh with fingers. Sprinkle flesh with cinnamon and paprika, salt lightly, and oil inside and out. Place on sheet. To fill it out — not waste space — take 150-200g of small red potatoes, clean, cut into halves or thirds depending on size, dry, salt-pepper-paprika, sprinkle with rosemary, and lightly oil before putting on sheet. Bake for about an hour. Eat squash, skin and all; potatoes are helped by a little dijon mustard on the side.
2. The next day repeat dinner for lunch, but add on the range: a skillet, heated to medium, with a teaspoon of butter; to that add about 100g button mushrooms, slightly trimmed and cut in halves or thirds depending on size; then salt and add about a teaspoon of olive oil and brown generously (20 minutes is not too much) before adding one small onion coarsely chopped. Yum.
3. Core a medium to large apple. Preheat oven to 350-365F. In a Pyrex mixing cup add 14g rolled oats and enough water (ca. 1/4 cup) along with desired spices (e.g. cinnamon, dash of ginger, nutmeg, even cloves), and microwave 1:30 before stirring, then adding about 1.5 to 2 tsp. brown sugar and microwaving another 30 seconds. Add vanilla if you wish. Fill cored apple. Place in a ramekin or similar, lining the greased bottom with any remaining oatmeal. Bake 45 minutes to an hour until the proper doneness is achieved.
II. Fun
Ms. S. spent the afternoon out holiday shopping with her mother; upon her return I got to observe some of the non-gift purchases. It was also pick-up-the-paycheck day, so, flush with cash, Ms. S. was only too happy to shop.
In the evening we had time together; time to watch some television, time for her to knit. We’ve got the joy that this week’s episode of ‘Top Chef’ brought to the table. This season they are no longer following a tried and true formula: if you get ‘narrative’ during the episode (family photos, a sob story, a call home, etc.) you’re either winning or going home. Eliza? She had little story presented to us. We also had no Whole Foods shopping trip on camera and no discussion of what the cheftestants were preparing for the elimination challenge.
But that was just the appetizer, as we finished off season one of ‘The X-Files’ this evening. As a commentary on the series as a whole and this season in particular, rather than on any given episode, I think a concise structural analysis is: (1) except for the weirdness of Scully trying to get a dating life that one episode with the Jersey Devil, the show so far eschews the A-and-B-story convention for a single narrative; and (2) so far what differentiates ‘The X-Files’ from almost all its imitators or close cousins is that our protagonists are always playing catchup, they’re always behind with more ‘crimes’ ahead of them that they can’t stop. This differs greatly from a standard procedural, which even when it features a serial killer tends to have a focus on one, already-completed deed that needs to be unraveled and explained.
Then Ms. S. took a pre-work nap and I put an apple in the oven.
III. Stupid Quote of the Day
Earlier in the day I was browsing my daily supply of news and entertainment sites, and eventually I made my way to NPR; it’s amusing that I spend more time reading their stories and listening to them these days. And along the way I found a good science blog post; at first I was a bit surprised, as nuanced or even just plain accurate science reporting is beyond most journalistic outlets, but then I recalled I was not reading an ‘article’ but rather a ‘blog post.’ This one might have been the one on fruit flies and the supposed promiscuity of males and choosiness of females.[1]
Short version: the original research (from the 1940s) that has been used for decades to perpetuate sexist and essentialist notions about men and women has been found wanting and is worth throwing out. The research of mating strategies across species is still a worthwhile project.
And I think from here I clicked on a link to another ‘Cosmos and Culture’ post at NPR, this time on “A Pledge for Science,” but this time my attention was caught by a somewhat non sequitur of a comment by Sam Lowry in which Sam went off about ‘Elementary Wave Theory’ as “as a scientific revolution that hasn’t quite yet been allowed to happen,” and furthermore that it’s not a crackpot theory but rather an empirically valid alternative interpretation of the evidence (my words, not his this time). I was intrigued, as I’d never heard of this ‘EWT’ of which he spoke, but my B.S.-meter was getting a strong reading.
So I googled and found nothing under the the TLA ‘EWT,’ but under ‘Elementary Wave Theory’ a web site for it showed up and so on.[2]
And yes, it’s wonderful crackpottery, but as this is 2012 rather than 1999, the promoters of alternate ‘theories’ that solve all of our problems have access to better than Tripod or GeoCities … their sense of design no longer has to be as crazy as they are. Plus they get Vimeo and YouTube now.
But I digress.
More interesting and fun was “Lewis Little’s Theory of Elementary Waves” as reviewed on the ‘Objectivism Online Forum.'[3]
This, too, is a form of craziness as far as I’m concerned. That having been said, the book review was relatively solid and the discussion that followed rather tame and on-topic. And so I kept reading. Until I got to the following, which is probably only of amusement and interest to me:
“If they have shape, they can be visualized just fine. There is no reason to believe, either empirically or within the philosophy of objectivism, that humans are somehow prohibited from imagining the structure of fundamental objects. This is the stance only a Kantian would assume.”
For those who are not or have not had to deal greatly with Randians/Randites … whatever you want to call them (Objectivists, even) … you may not be aware of the irrational hatred they tend to direct toward Immanuel Kant.
But only on the IntarWebs could you come across such an unintentionally funny line as “This is the stance only a Kantian would assume.”
Indeed.
IV. Footnotes
[3] http://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?showtopic=15560
V. Appendix
A. Evidently we now have Ms. S.’s mother hooked on ‘Sherlock.’ Which means that among other things she’ll get B. Cumberbatch’s name right from now on.
B. “A Sweet Bread, A Wash Basin And A Shot of Whiskey” … um, yes?
C. Tomorrow I’ll return to German grammar, as the topic I covered Wednesday (whether there is an implied ‘es’ in ‘mir ist langweilig’ and similar) can stay on topic yet go off in other directions, especially as regards such topics ‘subject ellipsis’ and ‘pro-drop’.
D. Ms. S. and I both saw the really rather absurd ‘Yahoo! Education’ “article” (it’s generous to call it that … it looks more like an extended advertisement for things like University of Phoenix and ITT) entitled “Don’t Bother Earning These Five Degrees.” Little context was provided except for a vague notions of “employers.” There was little to unify the critiques. That having been said, there were a few good points made, and Ms. S. and I discussed that article for a while … though quickly I went off on a tangent or two (dealing mainly with education and nursing). It’s a topic and article I may return to — to write about? — later (if I remember to).
E. Other than that I spent a good portion of my day reading and writing about (a) structuralism, (b) structuralist linguistics in particular, and (c) different kinds of formal grammars.
