Category — General

Actual terror found.

I just read there's a war going on in Cote d'Ivoire. Twenty-five hundred French troops on the ground (does anybody call it an invasion?) while peace talkers convene in Paris.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

2500 does not an invasion make. there is historical precident here too..

Some things I have learned about cooking over the years. The secret to cooking really good food lies in the quality of your ingredients. I've heard this many times, but I have finally come to believe its absolute truth with my purchase of good quality balsamic vinager ($8 bottle from Buon Italia at the Chelsea Market). It's like I never understood vinaigrette until now. Thank God the movers wouldn't allow me to lug that cheapo balsamic vinager from San Francisco.

Fresh. Always. Fresh ground pepper. Fresh herbs. Fresh seasonings and spices. Have you ever grated fresh nutmeg (it looks like a funny nut) on top of creamy fettucine? It's magical.

Kosher salt for seasoning your water before adding veggies or pasta. Thomas Keller says you should cook veggies in water so briney its salt content resembles that of the ocean. After much experimentation, I concur.

Homemade stock. There is simply no substitute. And homemade veggie stock takes less than an hour to prepare and freezes beautifully. On Sundays I like to make a batch and freeze it in 2 cup quantities.

You'd think I'd have more to share, but that's it, those are my secrets. Quality, seasonal ingredients, as fresh as you can get. That's the difference between so-so food and “Wow! That's the best carmalized onion I've ever tasted!” meals. [megnut]

megnut has got the bug, and is getting it right

Radical cheer. LA dispatch: Who are, who are, who are we? Cheerleaders against the war, that's who, writes Duncan Campbell. [Guardian Unlimited]
ra ra ra, shishkoombah or whatever. war is bad people, even if you will probably manage to leverage it to break the opec cartel and thus give the suv users cheap gas for a few more years.

The new Alpha EV7 systems look impressive. [Hack the Planet]

mmm, alpha, mmmm, these are great.. much bteer than intel, always have been. what i've always wanted was what i term commodity computers, where things like processors would come in little blocks that one could slid into a slot the size of a hd that would plug into a backplane that would recognize it as a processor of type y, or a drive of type y or an io interface type z. then the backplane would reconfigure its bus to drive that commodity part at its optimum given the rest of the systems. then! , then we'd see how various parts are not equal. now there is a barrier, a barrier of installation between the haves and havenots of the knowledge/comfort sphere. what if, unlike those big green boards, and rises we just had things that looked like drive bays, things would be different and processors like alpha would rule. as would say a bank of 10 486's in the same enclosure, etc.

This is part of my weekly Irish Times column today on the excellent, now-annual 'E-Cities Report' from a team headed by Iona chairman Chris Horn:

Dublin has now slumped to second-last position in a list of potential “e-cities” when benchmarked against 13 cities of similar ambition, the Dublin Chamber of Commerce's e-city working group revealed this week…

…The only city to rank lower than Dublin was Prague. We come in just behind Dubai and Tel Aviv. And we trail all the other European cities evaluated: Copenhagen, London, Helsinki, even Milan – all cities in countries whose rate of economic growth we have trumped for years.

To say the results this year are worrying is tepid. They aren't even, in that favourite cliché of column-writers, “a wake-up call”. Quite simply, they are downright scandalous. For this State and this city, full of possibility in this area only a few years ago, this report is a tale of good opportunities squandered. We did once have a very good shot at being a model state in this regard, but dithering has led to a state of digital entropy that grows more difficult to redress with each passing month.

You can read the full column for free here, and download the full report and recommendations  here. As the report benchmarks Dublin against cities like London, Helsinki, San Jose, Milan, Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Dubai, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo and Washington, it might be of interest to people from those regions, too (BTW San Jose is surprisingly low in the rankings — a poorer showing than Washington).

[[ t e c h n o \ c u l t u r e ]]

intersting, especially given the work in the u.s. of late

White teachers flee black schools. Some see exodus in South as a new form of segregation. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories]

i saw this story last week, but it is just as shocking today as it was last week. the article where it originates from demonstrates such prejudice on all sides that i just had to click off.

Public School Teach-Ins: Education Or Indoctrination?. Plastic::Etcetera::School: “Anti-war activists and pacifists spoke to between 5,000 and 10,000 students in sessions that replaced the normal class schedule for 30 schools in Oakland, California. ” [Plastic: Most Recent]

all education is some form of indoctrination, i wish people would just get off their high horse on this one and move on. Just because you don't agree with what is being said, does not make it indoctrination, nor does it make it anything else. If you want to see indoctrination go to marine boot, everything else is moot.

New Desktop/Tablet PC Combo.

Live From Gadget Central

“Let the record show that CES 2003 finally put the CRT monitor in the grave. Flat panels practically wallpapered the place. Samsung and Philips continue to dominate in LCD industrial design. What stood out for me were Philips's DesXcape wireless touchscreen monitor and keyboard that turn any desktop into a portable tablet PC (out in February for $1,500), and what may be the industry's first home-theater-in-a-box, also from the Dutch electronics giant, with a DVD recorder that will launch this fall for $1,300. Samsung had so many gorgeous new displays, I just stood there with my jaw on the ground. But stay alert: More than one major brand will be introducing liquid-crystal-on-silicon screens and next-generation HDTVs this year.” [Business 2.0]

[The Shifted Librarian]

this is nifty…

Stones Self-Organize into Circles [Scientific American]

wow so do people…. same process too, metaphorically.

Civil liberties in gamespace [bOing bOing]

well i'm happy someone is doing this work, though i don't know why…