Ramen Review

going very quickly any time now.
There will, of course, always be a week or two of warning time, when you can stock up on legumes and grains. But the whole mess — call it Capitalism or The System or whatnot — is dangerously close to the edge.
It may fracture in 2012 or it may shatter in 2014.
Any case, in one year one week and a day’s time people will look back on the 13th b’ak’tun and surmise this or that. … read more

All this is severely shocking for das deutsche Volk of course, given that it has been less than one week since the dead of not-at-all-Good Friday were buried. But that’s life in Afghanistan for you, and it is not like the locals would be given much of a respite by any party in this disgusting war splendid little thing that colloquially might be called “war” by some either. And if you think: “at least it has been going for a … read more

Last Saturday’s mass protests in Germany were not like this:

T. rex vs. Big Bad Bank Building
I was in Bankfurt, where around 20k ppl gathered, take a few thou, give a few thou; the official figures ran mostly between 15k and 30k. More — closer to around 30k, perhaps as much as 35k protested in Berlin.
The demonstrations were generally peaceful, to the point of being boring. In Berlin there was some aggro at the very end, when police charged into some … read more

Ah, the eternal challenge to actually discuss cooking on a weblog originally intended to be about the culinary only. So… what did I make for Hanukkah? Searching for something similar but not alike to latkes (which I had been advised to prepare), I came across some pakora-style concoction incorporating peas; I figured that given the fact that this would not be unknown to the Bene Israel, it would be adequate. Being probably as goy as goy can be, what would … read more

As staple rice, I prefer the nondescript parboiled rice you get in kilo packs in the supermarkets over here. I have no idea where it comes from, what cultivar it is, and so on. It has a good combination of keeping fresh and being healthy (for a carb staple). I sometimes don’t like rice, so I eat something else as carb staple, taters or pasta or whatnot. Brown rice would start to spoil under such conditions ever so often, so … read more

Some mixed odds’n’ends…
“No police officers will be prosecuted over the death of Jean Charles de Menezes, Crown prosecutors Service say.”(BBC, February 13th 2009)
Those were strange days, back in 2005. For a conspi take that is at the same time kooky and rather interesting in an unJonesian way, try 7/7: The Ripple Effect. It seems certain from the weight of evidence that some MetPol honchos were investigating rumours of an upcoming attack on some Israeli interest, although the question of whether … read more

At present, I am reading Mayr’s Konzepte (What makes biology unique?, etc). He probably was the last naturalist; he certainly was one of the dozen or so people who defined what we (scientists) think of as evolution today.
The general understanding of evolution is somewhat backwards and weaker than it need be — for the stuff is literally everywhere in your daily surroundings if you are a member of a human civilization — ; the cre-guys in particular have little … read more