A Double R.I.P.

What a day of departures.  I heard on the radio this morning that two of my favourite entertainers have shuffled off this mortal coil.

We've lost George Shearing, the fabulous jazz pianist, composer of Lullaby of Birdland, to congestive heart failure.  George lived a long, fruitful life of 91 years, and produced a great body of work, both compositions and performances, many of which are readily available to us on CD, download, and all that good stuff.  He accomplished all this despite the fact that (to steal a great line) he was born blind and English - the latter being a bigger handicap to a jazz pianist.

In addition, we've lost Kenneth Mars, just shy of his 75th birthday. Most notices have mentioned his great roles in The Producers and Young Frankenstein, but I remember him most fondly for his recurring role as William W. D. "Bud" Prize on the old Fernwood 2night shows.  He usually was wearing a chinodontic device invented by his chinodontist, Cletus Emmet Wheelwelker.  This was one of the finest comedy programmes ever to grace network television, and it's a shame that it seems to be unavailable on DVD - or even in reruns.

Both of these gentlemen brought joy into the lives of many people, and both will be sorely missed.
Rest In Peace.

Carnage du Jour - 11 February 2011

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

At last - we finally broke out the Thai red curry lamb stew that my trusty crock pot had so ably cooked.
I had come across a jar of Thai red curry paste while shopping a couple weeks ago, and as there was a lamb roast in the refrigerator waiting to be cooked, it seemed like a great purchase.  It was.
Along with the lamb (cubed, salted, peppered, and seared in a skillet) went an acorn squash (also cubed), some onions and bok choy (the onions and stem pieces were sautéed a bit) and a whole bunch of that tasty red curry paste.

While it was not as hot and spicy as might be imagined (or feared), there was a ton of flavour, and the lamb was as tender as any meat I can remember ever eating.

Wow, this was really good, served on a bed of rice cooked in a bit of vegetable stock.

Electric Cars?

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

I'm all for new tech and gadgets and toys and all that - probably more than I should be - but this drive for electric cars has me puzzled.

What we have is "a fledgling industry" that needs help to get its products out to the buying public.  Once the benefits of this new tech is out there for all to see, there won't be a need for tax breaks or government co-pays and the like.  At least that's what I heard an analyst tell us the other morning on the radio.
   I guess it's just like when CDs came out to replace LPs.  We all got rebates on the players and disks to help move the transition along ... oh, wait, that's not what happened.  We all got to pay for these things ourselves.
   OK, it must be more like when TV was coming out to (at least partially) supplant radio.  The government paid folks to get TVs in their houses so they could all watch MIlton Berle or whatever ... nope.  It didn't happen that way that time either.

What we really have is an industry making a product that doesn't really meet consumers' needs, and isn't really affordable.  No wonder it needs help to sell. 
   Granted, the environmental benefits of moving the emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack somewhere else may well be worth something - at least until we have to dispose of the toxic waste in the battery packs.
   Still, who wouldn't want to pay that extra $10,000 or so for a car that can't handle the typical Detroit commute if it's cold out?  (Try running the lights and heater the whole way on your batteries in the cold - batteries really don't like constant drains or low temperatures.) 
   On a good day, I might just make it back home from work, but then I'd have to stay there until it's time to go to work again while the car was plugged in to recharge the batteries, so it's clearly not a reasonable option as the sole car for anyone.

As an extra car, it has some appeal.  It might be fine for shopping at a local store.  It might be fine for quick local trips.  It might.
However, I certainly wouldn't count on it to get me somewhere important when it takes four times as long to charge as the time it will drive.
Let's see, I can spend about four minutes filling my tank and drive 400 miles, or I can spend four hours charging my batteries (on a 220 custom charger) to drive 40 to 100 miles.

Doesn't make sense yet.  Maybe some day, but not yet.

At Last, a Good Game at the Super Bowl

I wonder how many others of you thought it looked like a Grey Cup game between the Edmonton Eskimos and the Hamilton Tiger Cats?
I know I did.

I'm glad it wasn't, though, as the wrong colours won for a Grey Cup, but I was quite content with the NFL outcome.

A Christmas Carol (Yes, I know it's January)

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

Likely we've all seen multiple film versions of the holiday classic, from Mister Magoo to Bill Murray to the Muppets.  I know I have seen all of those and many more. I wondered, though, what was in the Dickens original, and what was the fancy of various filmmakers.
What to do?  Aha!  Read the book! and so I did.

Frankly, it was a good read.  It's not terribly long, and it's not so Dickensian as to put off those who fled from both of the Cities in that Tale.

I was pleased to find just how true to the original most of the films have been (Muppets included), and to find a (very) few scenes which hadn't made it to any screen I've viewed.

It's available all over the place, (including free versions at Project Gutenberg) so I think - in spite of the calendar - that you'd be well served to find it and read it.

Enjoy!

Carnage du Jour - 12 January 2011

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

As we have noted here in prior posts, there is no more versatile cut of meat than a pork tenderloin, and that was proved once again in this dish.

Having noted a delicious looking salad (here) of roasted root vegetables, I found myself buying a nice bunch of radishes with roasting in mind.  They took very little cleaning: I just trimmed the ends and cut most of them in half.  Into a skillet with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper, then into the oven at 425F for 10 minutes or so.
In the meantime, I got some frozen brussels sprouts mostly cooked in the microwave (what a great way to cook frozen vegetables) and the mostly roasted radishes were dumped into the bowl with them to wait for the right time to join the pork.

Into the now-vacated skillet went a tenderloin cut into medallions, seasoned with salt and beau monde (mmm!) to be seared on each of the flat sides.
Back into the skillet came the radishes, accompanied by the brussels sprouts, and all went back into the 425 oven.
 
They all roasted happily away as the now boiling water received its dose of egg noodles.  They took their fairly typical seven minutes or so, and then were drained and a bit of oil dropped in to keep them separated.

A little bit of leftover roasted garlic alfredo sauce was added to the pork and vegetables, and then that mixture topped the noodles on our plates.
 
Very tasty indeed.

Privacy? What Privacy? - Updated

from grandteuton.blogspot.com

(update: Here's another treatment of the same topic from boing boing.)

I was asked about a site called spokeo.com the other day: apparently it poses as an online white pages on steroids.
What it really seems to be is a spam engine.
 
The basic idea is that they go out and scrape websites for any public information with a name attached, and then let everyone on the web search all that stuff to find their friends or acquaintances.  There's nothing there that wasn't already made public by someone - whether it's the person in question or not.  Any notes or tagged pictures that are there for everyone on facebook (or myspace or linkedin or whatever) can be scraped by these guys - regardless of who tagged you in them.

Not to worry, though. There's a privacy link at the bottom of the page where you can request that they not make those things about you public.  Of course, in order to do so, you have to give them your email address.  Oh, and they'd really prefer it if you'd give them your email and password as well, just because it makes it more secure (?!) that way.  No one will have access to it - not even spokeo employees! (So, what's it for again?)
 
Hmm.  So, I go into their system and find my data.
Then I tell them the email address that goes with that data.
Then I'm sure that no extraneous, unsolicited emails will appear in my inbox, right?
Oh, and they want me to pay them a monthly membership fee in order to see all this great data.
Good grief.

The regular journalists I noticed said they had no real luck in getting stuff get turned non-public, and that the data on them tended to be both incomplete and inaccurate.

Sounds like a moderately elaborate way of gathering probably real email addresses along with a bunch of data to flesh out the recipients.

I recommend that you stay away.