Last day!

Seven trumpets blowing.

Related posts:

• Six days of creation
• Five cups of wine
• Four forced confessions,  three henchmen, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11

One, two, seven

Related post:

• The tower that ate people

Two angels

Just a number?

3,000.

Deus ex machina — for Syd

Thanks for all the fish

Come in peace

Is my face on straight?

Tonight, yes?

World Contact Day

Hat-tip.

Update: Boing Boing links to video.

Here

Let me show you a miracle.

All things are a part

Look who wins election

Hat-tip egalia.

Murder, premeditated, first degree

Related post:

• Do not martyr prisoners

Six days of creation

Related post:

• Five cups of wine

Three monkeys

On the death of a president

Related post:

• Interregnum

Say hello

to Spare a thought…..

Games without frontiers

Olvlzl pointed me to a site with lots of good suggestions for non-competitive games for children, here’s an example:

Wizards: All close eyes while a wizard is chosen in secret. Open eyes and all move around or dance. Wizard tries to tig without being discovered by running hand down backs. Tigged freeze but can be untigged by a hug from the untigged..

Adults need to figure out our own versions of these games.

Fine herbs for bread making

As any decent person knows, hops had nothing whatsoever to do with sinful chemistry; they just kept bad company. They did not prevent, sustain, catalyze, or effect in any way the process of alcohol formation from various sugars, cellulose, starch, taters, beans, seaweed, or from whatever else human folk have attempted its secretion. Except that when hops are included in a bread recipe, the dough is, for some reason, the more ecstatic. Hop cones ground to a fine grayish powder, rendered then to a tea, this in turn stirred into bread yeast, caused the carbon dioxide that spewed forth from asexual torment to come off in the most exquisite bubbles. Not belching, gargantuan bubbles that lift the crust of the bread so horribly that the result is bread with gopher holes. Hops do for white bread what only an extra half hour of intensive hand-to-hand combat with the bread board could equally bestow. A fine-stranded gluten that gives farm bread an unblemished texture, almost silken smooth was the flesh of this oven varmint. Hops in my grandmother’s bread recipe brought about the same result as three rounds on the wrestling mat.

Excerpted from The Hop Pole, by Justin Isherwood. The whole story is well worth reading.

I haven’t yet tried adding hops to my starter.

Movie time

What’s going on in Madrid?

A poem that shows

The rose is a rose
and was always a rose;
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only knows
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose,
but were always a rose.

– Robert Frost, “The Rose Family”.

No more war between the roses, I say.

Taken from Wikipedia’s entry on Rosaceae, the order of which is called Rosales, of which it is said within,

In the APG classification, well-known members of Rosales include: roses; strawberries, blackberries and raspberries; apples and pears; plums, peaches and apricots; almonds; rowan and hawthorn; elms; figs; nettles; and hops and cannabis.

So there you have it, and enjoy them all.

From someone who goes, but comes in repose.

Does the People’s Republic of Berkeley recognize the Autonomous Community of Catalonia?

Just asking.

Related post:

• It’s log, it’s log, it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.

It’s log, it’s log, it’s big, it’s heavy, it’s wood.

Everyone loves a log.

For Christmas.

Hat-tip Buck Batard.

What have you done?

Tomorrow is Eid ul-Adha, the Islamic day of the sacrifice feast. And CNN is reporting that Saddam Hussein has been hanged on the very eve.

Where are you?

White meat

Do any of you call for the execution of the war criminals in Washington?

If not, then do not consent in this mock-judicial execution of Saddam Hussein.

Those who live by the gallows shall surely die by the gallows.

Let the truth be told, and let this travesty end.

Related post:

• Do not martyr prisoners

Just discard the peel

We got ourselves a DVR for Christmas

My wife is having a great time watching her show and being able to pause and skip commercials. The nicest thing that I noticed right off is that it effectively upgraded our cable service to digital, because all the program listings are nicely organized into categories and can be selected with the remote control. So unlike having to manually channel surf we can find what we want to watch when we had nothing in particular we were looking for.

Five cups of wine

I could keep going, really. Just drink the juice down half way and refill it as many times as you want, since the little yeasts (eukaryotes) will keep on multiplying if you don’t finish the whole thing, and fruit juice is food to them.

Related posts:

• More cooking and eating today
• Water into wine
• What’s next?

More cooking and eating today

The pancakes were made with starter, bananas and hemp protein, oil and honey, and added salt.

The wine is very fine and a portion was blended with some organic strawberry lemonade. Christmas punch indeed.

Bananas are a kind of herb. Who knew?

Water into wine

The starter which is used to make bread, may separate while refrigerated. The top layer is a liquid, in my case a mixture of water and oil with some suspended herbs, because I always feed my starter with flour, water, oil, honey, salt and fine herbs.

This is mead, a kind of beer.

Do not martyr prisoners

Saddam Hussein is no threat to anyone in the world now. Do not kill him.

This is my first commandment.

You connect the dots

What’s next?

Four forced confessions,  three henchmen, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11.

Dishonorable.

John McCain voted for torture.

Shakespeare’s Sister has more reasons not to respect him now, even if he was respectable at some time in the past.

Related post:

• Bush’s designated successor

Past is prologue

A fine eulogy

Gerald Ford was one of the last decent Republicans. He’s gone now. Rest in peace.

There should be no pardons for the administration this time, however.

For the third day of Christmas

Three hench men, two purple gloves, and a US body count higher than 9/11.

When the flood comes…

Lohachara island is no more. Submerged like the legends of Atlantis or Ys before, but this is real and historical and undoubted and it is happening now. 10,000 people lived there, 70,000 refugees are expected from other low-lying islands, and we’re just getting started if the seas continue to rise.

Hat-tip to Chris in Paris, via Ellroon.

How do virus writers win cash prizes?

Wouldn’t you like to know?

You might consider running GNU/Linux and/or using a Mac anyhow. They are safer than Windows.

About as American as they come

Keith Ellison.

Hat-tip to Ellroon.

Two purple gloves

and a US body count higher than 9/11.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done?

US deaths in Iraq exceeded 9/11 body count today. Isn’t that special?

Hat-tip BradBlog.

These little earthquakes

There was a third magnitude 3.5 earthquake in approximately the same place as the first two. My wife and I were heading out of town to visit family for Christmas, and were about a half an hour north in a moving car so we did not feel this one. Doug Stych has more, and so does the SF Chron.

It’s nice to admit mistakes

From Code Pink, via Danny Schechter,

Many thanks to those of you who took action this week to contact Senator Harry Reid about his remarks that he would support sending more troops to Iraq. His office was flooded with calls and emails on Tuesday! Below is a statement Senator Reid posted yesterday, saying that he does NOT support an escalation of the conflict and wants to bring out troops home.

Related post:

• No way, Harry

Presto abrigado tantamucho cake and eat it carousel

I don’t even want to give him a name.

Blue Texan (guest posting at Unclaimed Territory) has assembled some quotes to put in context this surge idea, of sending more troops, escalating the conflict in Iraq — against the combined and unanimous judgment of the joint chiefs of staff, the senior American commander in Iraq, George Casey, Jr., and the senior American commander in the Middle East, John Abizaid.

The good judgment of the commanders being what that man said he would follow above all political considerations.

“Here’s a lump of coal for your stocking, kids. We’re bringing back the draft, too.”

Happy holidays, and anyone who thinks I’m at war with Christmas for saying so is insane.

Fresh bread and smoked salmon