But, on the positive side, we shall have purified, updated systems for the New Year. I do love starting clean on a new hard drive.
A few notes between hardware housekeeping:
Some people say "happy holidays" with cookies, some with cards, and some with vulture links! It's so nice when fellow bloggers, like Jonathan, take the trouble to add that personal touch to the season's greetings. I was particularly interested in the way the biologists use a vulture carcass pour encourager les autres. I didn't think they'd notice.
In return, Jonathan got a pic of some weather we had in our neighborhood last month, which he suggested I blog.
This was our local autumn excitement.
This picture was taken, not by us, but by another denizen of the neighborhood, a few blocks west. We had the good sense to be down in our basement.
I'll sign off with a recommendation for a cold, gloomy December afternoon or evening in the Upper Midwest - red Anjou pears, a chunk o' Maytag blue (an Iowa cheese), and a glass of Iron Horse brut rosé. We tried this for the cheese course of our Christmas feast, and pronounced it good. I may have to test it out for teatime before the holidays end.
Speaking of the end of holidays, am I the last person in Christendom who keeps the tree and accompanying idolatrous displays up 'til Epiphany? It was such a melancholy sight to see the neighbors' tree, stripped and sacked, sitting on their lawn for disposal on the 26th. Doesn't decency decree that one let that poor sacrificed conifer maintain its prestige at least through New Year's? Then again, if you put your tree up before the Thanksgiving leftovers are disposed of, fire code prudence probably demands that you chuck it as soon as the presents are unwrapped. Still, the haste and ornamental barrenness does give that "dark teatime of the soul" flavor to the time between Christmas and Three Kings' Day. I'm a bit of a purist, myself - if it were up to me the tree would not go up until Christmas Eve. But children will rebel at this, and I relent. It can go up up to a week before. This year it went up on the 21st. It will stay up 'til the 6th.
Toodles, two.
Toodles-
The adult sex ratio (ASR) is a key parameter of the demography of human and other animal populations, yet the causes of variation in ASR, how individuals respond to this variation, and how their response feeds back into population dynamics remain poorly understood. A prevalent hypothesis is that ASR is regulated by intrasexual competition, which would cause more mortality or emigration in the sex of increasing frequency. Our experimental manipulation of populations of the common lizard (Lacerta vivipara) shows the opposite effect. Male mortality and emigration are not higher under male-biased ASR. Rather, an excess of adult males begets aggression toward adult females, whose survival and fecundity drop, along with their emigration rate. The ensuing prediction that adult male skew should be amplified and total population size should decline is supported by long-term data. Numerical projections show that this amplifying effect causes a major risk of population extinction. In general, such an "evolutionary trap" toward extinction threatens populations in which there is a substantial mating cost for females, and environmental changes or management practices skew the ASR toward males.
Lizards are interesting.
US researchers said for the first time yesterday there was a clear link between advertising and young children's appetite for junk food, as they called on government to force food companies to stop the practice if voluntary efforts fail....
"[We] found strong evidence that television advertising influences the food and beverage preferences and purchase requests of children aged two through 11 years old and affects their consumption habits, at least over the short term", the report said.(Emphasis added.) Hmmm... ages 2 through 11... now who, exactly, would be responsible for purchasing food for children that age? — wait, wait, it'll come to me... I'm sure there's a word for them, begins with P; if I read the article closely, I'm sure it will be there and jog my memory... funny, the word's not in the article, not even once....
Admittedly, perusing the NAS's full press release does reveal the use of the magic word:
And this is an 'all hands on deck' issue. Parents have a central role in the turnaround required, but so do the food, beverage, and restaurant industries."Well, I'm glad the Academy is willing to give me co-top billing in the raising of my child.
I just don't understand this. While our daughter was of the age of the studied group here, M. and I controlled how much and what TV the kid watched, and also what foods were purchased. Requests for junk food were indulged in, on rare occasions, but more generally politely-but-firmly turned down. It wasn't that hard.
The recommendations of the study:
Food, beverage, and restaurant companies, as well as the entertainment and marketing industries, should expand, strengthen, and enforce their standards for marketing practices. For example, licensed characters, such as popular cartoon characters, should be used only to promote products that support healthful diets, the committee said. The industries should work with health officials and consumer groups to develop an industrywide rating system and labeling that convey the nutritional quality of foods and beverages in a consistent and effective fashion. The Children's Advertising Review Unit – a group created and financed by the industry to monitor advertising directed toward children -- should expand and apply its voluntary guidelines to newer forms of marketing, such as Internet and wireless phone advertising and product placement. The media and entertainment industries should incorporate storylines that promote healthful eating into programs, films, and games. The government should consider the use of awards and tax incentives that encourage companies to develop and promote healthier products for young people.No government programs to give parents spines, however.
It was one of those, "what do you want for dinner?" "I dunno, what do you want for dinner?" kind of days, and while we went round and round on that, I looked in the refrigerator and saw vegetables in the crisper that had been around long enough that they were in imminent danger of no longer being crisp. So the challenge arose — how to make something tasty out of a pile of old carrots, onions, and celery, plus whatever else happened to be lying about the kitchen, with as few newly-bought ingredients as possible.
Celery... 3/4ths of a large onion... carrots... it must be a stew, I thought. But a meatless stew would be too thin, and would provoke great unhappiness from the household teenager population. So beef would have to be acquired; on M.'s recommendation, something called "chuck". So the meat would be the only ingredient bought specifically for the meal.
A quick trip to the store provided about 2 pounds of beef chuck. I chopped the beef into 1 - 1.5 in. cubes – small enough to not need further cutting when eaten. I mixed ~ 1/3 cup flour, 1 tsp. salt and 1 tsp pepper[1] together, and tossed the meat cubes in flour mix until coated, and then sautéed the cubes in hot olive oil[2] for about 10 minutes, which got them good and browned. While the browning progressed, I cleaned and very coarsely chopped the vegetables (celery, carrots, onions) into chunky yet bite-sized, uh, chunks.
Then the meat came out, and the chopped vegetables went in. I think I added a bit more olive oil as well, along with some chopped garlic. Sautéed the lot another 10 minutes. Removed. Lot of brown stuff stuck to the bottom... added a small amount of vegetable broth, poured myself a glass of cheap red wine[3] (found open in the fridge), added the remainder of the bottle to the pot, and scraped the brown goo off the bottom. Probably not enough wine... rummaged around in the cupboards, found an old bottle of something called "white port" (cheap, sugary, 19% alcohol, for cooking only). Added about a half cup of that. Dumped in some spices — sage, thyme, rosemary.
Added back the meat and vegetables, plus about 2 cups of vegetable broth[4], plus a can of diced tomatoes (the mixture looked kind of pale, and I thought about adding some tomato paste, but didn't want to deal with a can of half-used tomato paste afterwards). Also dumped in any remaining flour/salt/pepper mixture. There was some cooked bacon in the fridge, left over from some previous meal. Chopped that up into little pieces and threw it in. Got the whole mess boiling, then stuck it in the oven at 325°F for 2 hours.
Needed something carbohydrate-y to accompany it. Found some Yukon Gold potatoes in the cupboard – peeled, quartered, and boiled them. Added a teaspoon or two of an olive oil - minced garlic mixture that we made a while ago and happened to have in the fridge, and used the electric mixer to mash them, adding in milk until the consistency seemed right (thinner than spackle, but thicker than caulk[5]).
Verdict? Universally[6] acclaimed to be tasty. So I pass it along for what it's worth.
[1] All measures and times approximate; caveat lector.
[2] As it's being cooked, a low grade of oil will do just fine. We use as our household oil — until the can runs out, anyway — a Lebanese brand that we found at our local exotic-foods market which claims to be 'extra virgin' but is far from it. It's known in our house as "the Hezbollah oil".
[3] Beringer something-or-other zinfandel. M. informs me that it was not that cheap, just on sale.
[4] This stuff, without which our kitchen would shut down.
[5] "But fluffier than caulk," M. says.
[6]n = 3.
UPDATE. Not enough sparkling wine. Second bottle acquired, this one plain Brut. FYI - Mountain Dome's website FUBAR.
UPDATE II. Plain Brut not nearly as interesting as Brut Rosé.
