December in a warm climate

10 Large Eggplants

Az der Rebbe schlof...

ill-considered newspaper headlines gathered by readers of the Columbia Journalism Review:

MILK DRINKERS TURN TO POWDER (Detroit Free Press, Nov. 12, 1974)
COLUMNIST GETS UROLOGIST IN TROUBLE WITH HIS PEERS (Lewiston, Idaho, Morning Tribune, March 17, 1975)
STUD TIRES OUT (Ridgewood, N.J., News, March 30, 1978)
ALBANY TURNS TO GARBAGE (New York Daily News, Oct. 3, 1977)
PASTOR AGHAST AT FIRST LADY SEX POSITION (Alamogordo, N.M., Daily News, Aug. 13, 1975)
TIME FOR FOOTBALL AND MEATBALL STEW (Detroit Free Press, Oct. 19, 1977)
CHILD’S STOOL GREAT FOR USE IN GARDEN (Buffalo Courier-Express, June 23, 1977)
FARMER BILL DIES IN HOUSE (Atlanta Constitution, April 13, 1978)
DEAD EXPECTED TO RISE (Macon, Ga., News, Aug. 11, 1976)
CARIBBEAN ISLANDS DRIFT TO LEFT (Cleveland Plain Dealer, July 26, 1976)
NEW CHURCH PANNED (Albuquerque News, July 22, 1978)
CARTER TICKS OFF BLACK HELP (San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 1978)
DEER KILL 130,000 (Minneapolis Tribune, Dec. 7, 1967)
DRUNK GETS NINE MONTHS IN VIOLIN CASE (Lethbridge Herald, Oct. 30, 1976)
POLICE KILL MAN WITH AX (Charlotte Observer, Nov. 27, 1976)
YOUNG MAKES ZANZIBAR STOP (Wisconsin State Journal, Feb. 4, 1977)
CHESTER MORRILL, 92, WAS FED SECRETARY (Washington Post, April 21, 1978)
PROSTITUTES APPEAL TO POPE (Eugene, Ore., Register-Guard, Dec. 18, 1975)

When the Carmichael, Calif., chamber of commerce received relatively few applications for its 1975 beauty pageant, the local Courier ran the headline FEW HAVE ENTERED MISS CARMICHAEL.

AppSec USA 2012

I attended AppSec USA 2012 in Austin this past Thursday and Friday. It's a conference devoted to Application Security (Web Application Security mostly), but I learned how to pick handcuffs, open combination locks with a simple lock pick, open formerly high-security locks with a bic pen, purchased a lock pick set for practice, and learned a lot about HTML5, cryptography, and Javascript.

More pictures will come soon.

Austin on Thursday

Dusk over Lady Bird Lake

Pipedreams Episode 1235

http://pipedreams.publicradio.org/listings/2012/1235/

With especial attention to Astor Piazolla's 'Oblivion', performed on the 2003 Ruffatti in the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, Kansas City, MO by Hector Olivera. I performed this piece at American Festival for the Arts, reformulated for piano, violin, and cello, five years or so ago. 

Being an alumnus

Things I miss: The variety of people, the imagined feeling that everyone bustling past are students, the shared camaraderie. Also, the multitude of people. When on campus now it feels somewhat alien, and for good reason: once again I'm like a freshman, staring at the buildings going up left and right.

Pros: Alumni Parking pass for just 20 dollars. Also coming to an organization you founded and seeing it continue to thrive.

This year's Sukkoth pic

Yes those are unripe wild persimmons

To the left is the car covered with branches for the hut/booth/sukkah (which in Russian means female dog :)). Incidentally this is post #300.

End of Shabbos and Erev Sukkot

Well, that was an interesting end to Shabbat. Rain dripping just hard enough to soak the adventurous, hying to synagogue to pray with a quorum. The sisters chanting the name of an ancient, fictional Russian prostitute, just for laughs. "Babba".... "Alla"..... "BABBA".... "Alla"... A sound somewhat primeval and filled with the boredom of two people addicted to their phones and instant connectivity, suffering classic withdrawal symptoms for the 25 hours of the Sabbath, afraid to be by themselves for even a few moments.

Baba Alla stems from a video, bits of which have been floating around the 'net for years, ostensibly made by a Yaacov Levi, featuring an old Russian prostitute on the beach, or standing next to a dumpster offering discounts for kids. If it was really made by a Jew then it's as bad as a Jew making the "Innocence of Muslims" video, except that this one does not insult a major world religion. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to find the full six minute video (hint: it's Russian with subtitles, and very unsafe for all environments).

In other news, it's the eve of Sukkot, where Jews build booths outside and eat their meals en plein air. Also my favorite holiday. We'll be eating bharta made from the following eggplants, the plants of which put on a burst of growth come the slight cool-down of late September.

One bush on the left, another on the right

The eve of Sukkot

The above picture is from 2007, as evidenced by a young citron tree to the right of the cozy setting. 

Fresh Pecans just in time for the New Year

Smack off tree, crack nuts, eat.

Bon voyeur!! (heh heh)

A bit of politics

"While President Morsi has made some lukewarm statements about the responsibility of the Egyptian government to protect diplomatic missions, he has issued much stronger words denouncing the film.

Indeed, he has demanded the United States take "all possible legal action" against the producers of the movie, an indication he does not fully understand our First Amendment. "

From this: http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/12/opinion/coleman-egypt-libya/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

Normally I wouldn't stick the usual inflammatory politics in this blog, but why is it that Muslims worldwide protest so much when someone somewhere insults Muhammad? Is Allah not all-powerful that he can not punish the perpetrator himself? Why must Muhammad and thus Allah be defended by the puny people on Earth?

If someone creates a video lampooning God, Abraham, or Moses, that's their problem. A chillul Hashem, certainly, but not something I should protest by disturbing others. God the Omnipotent can surely deal with this. Why, oh why is Allah any different?

Houston - the town of smog

Houston's smog season runs from March through October or November. Here are two pictures, on two successive days in August, of the sunset as viewed from the seventh-story floor of an office building. They were both taken at about 5 minutes to sunset.

Strange Dinosaur of the day

Therizinosaurs

More information

Dolly Basil really is awesome

So it's confirmed. Dolly Basil is definitely more productive than Genovese Basil. Not by 50% perhaps, but certainly at least 30%. One medium-sized bush made 4 cups of pesto! As soon as we have pine nuts, (I confess - Mom makes it) we'll see about making pesto from three types of basil - Medinette, Spicy Globe, and Dolly basils. This promises to be great.

Also in the works - Cheddar Cheese bread. Stay tuned.

Deli-Style Rye

This was made about two weeks ago. There are between 1 and 2 tablespoons of caraway seeds in it. Three loaves were gobbled up at work in no time at all.

Another Friday funny

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261392/

Making Ciabatta

Ciabatta is made with the same dough as for boule, except handled with wet hands instead of flour. It is also placed on flour and flattened to the thickness of 3/4 inch before baking. 

First the dough is mixed, producing a wet dough that conforms to the container.

Two hours' worth of rising. 

Refrigerate for a day, during which time a hint of sourdough flavor will develop, more so for longer times. Then shape and flatten.

After baking in a humid oven at 450 F for 20 minutes or so, the bread is ready. At work these were demolished in about an hour.

Effects of Gibberellic acid on garden plants

Barely a week ago, I decided to make use of my 20 grams of gibberellic acid, and mixed up what hopefully was a 200 ppm solution. GA increases plant internode lengths, and is commonly used to roughly double commercial grape and sugarcane yields.

To test the solution, I sprayed it on one Ichiban Eggplant, one wide pot of five Spicy Globe Basil plants, one Mentha spicata plant, and one sorrel plant. Here are the results, one week in:

It appears that only one or two basil plants have begun to show any signs of increasing height. The plants were growing vigorously as it is.

Here is where the difference is most noticeable, and especially in the picture below. The eggplant has doubled in height and growth in one week, especially in the top half. 

Notice how tall the plant has gotten. It's not necessarily spindly (though it definitely could use fertilizer),  it is simply being stretched, so that normal growth becomes elongated, like taffy.

Most of the top four inches of growth on the stalks of this mint occurred over the week. 

Updates will continue, especially as the eggplant begins to produce on very elongated stems.

How time flies

My, has it really been nearly a month since the last post? Amazing. And so it's another Friday at the office, where we're watching three movies in a row. Last week was Pineapple Express, God Bless America, and Wanderlust. God Bless America was the best, with Pineapple Express ("stoner movie) a middling second. This week it's Men in Tights, some TV show movie, and now Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

About the last one I've realized just now that shorts of Monty Python are hilarious, just not the whole movie consecutively. So now the sound of David Oistrakh playing Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with Gennady Rozhdestvensky and the USSR State Symphony Orchestra plays in surround sound around me.

This is my Holy Grail - First recipe down, many more to come.

Decameron - Ninth Day - Third Story

Master Simone, at the instance of Bruno and Buffalmacco and Nello, makes Calandrino believe that he is pregnant. Calandrino, accordingly, gives them capons and money for medicines, and is cured without being delivered.

Anthropomorphic turtles

Shut-up, woman!

Ray Bradbury has passed away

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18345350

One of my favorite science fiction authors passed away yesterday evening. Chapter 9 of the Martian Chronicles, "The Green Morning", is possibly the most meaningful science fiction pieces ever for me, which I read multiple times over during youth. The specter of thousands of trees growing overnight thoroughly enchants the imagination.



It was a green morning.
As far as he could see, the trees were standing up against the sky. Not one tree,
not two, not a dozen, but the thousands he had planted in seed and sprout. And not little
trees, no, not saplings, not little tender shoots, but great trees, huge trees, trees as tall as
ten men, green and green and huge and round and full, trees shimmering their metallic
leaves, trees whispering, trees in a line over hills, lemon-trees, redwoods and mimosas
and oaks and elms and aspens, cherry, maple, ash, apple, orange, eucalyptus, stung by a
tumultuous rain, nourished by alien and magical soil and, even as he watched, throwing
out new branches, popping open new buds.
"Impossible!" cried Mr. Benjamin Driscoll.
But the valley and the morning were green.
And the air!
All about, like a moving current, a mountain river, came the new air, the oxygen
blowing from the green trees. You could see it shimmer high in crystal billows. Oxygen,
fresh, pure, green, cold oxygen turning the valley into a river delta. In a moment the town
doors would flip wide, people would run through the new miracle of oxygen, sniffing,
gusting in lungfuls of it, cheeks pinking with it, noses frozen with it, lungs revivified,
hearts leaping, and worn bodies lifted into a dance.
Mr. Benjamin Driscoll took one long deep drink of green water air and fainted.
Before he woke again five thousand new trees had climbed up into the yellow
sun.

The Green Morning

Requiescat in pace

Trees of Houston

After writing the post on the Trees of Austin, I fell to thinking. Houston does have some trees of great age, and many beautiful tree-lined streets. However, the trees on those streets are no more than 60 or 70 years old. Where are the trees aged between 70 and 150 years? It's as if there is a danger zone there, when the neighborhood around the trees is considered to need re-development, so the trees are chopped down to make way for sprightly new trees. Moreover, big trees might be an eyesore, so out they go.

Here's an example. The area in front of the Old Science Building at the University of Houston had several large trees in the '80s, but by the toddler years of the noughties they were gone, replaced by crape myrtles. 

In the eighties, perhaps the '70s

June 2012

Now, there are a few great examples of old trees in Houston. One was mentioned in the last post (the large tree in the middle). Another is this great example of an ancient magnolia, that venerable species of the South with its enormous, heady-smelling flowers. Its trunk is probably five feet in diameter, if not more.

Another wonderful tree is this one, located on the site of a former stockyard, now a field used for intramural sports. It used to have a fence around it, but that's been removed (probably no one wants to go near a tree as well-guarded by high grass, cacti, and probably snakes). It is supposed to be the oldest mesquite tree in Harris County, as a result of efforts of grounds supervisors who have maintained it for the past three decades (source). 

Most of the tree sprawls out over the ground.

Who has defiled the tree with a cable spool?

But let's be honest. The reason most such trees are preserved are at least indirectly because of local governments that recognize their worth and retain them. Beautiful neighborhoods might not stay that way for long.

The Trees of Austin

One of the things that struck me most about Austin when I was there was the respect given to its trees. Although Houston has many trees, more than many other cities in fact, the trees are treated like disposables. They are planted to fill in spaces on newly-developed properties, then when they get too big are chopped down, or all the limbs are lopped off in the worst kind of tree pruning possible. Thus, there are nearly no trees older than 60-70 years anywhere in Houston. This tree is a rare exception.

Austin, perhaps because it's a much smaller city, has more trees and respects them. Old trees are built around, not chopped up. This makes finding hundred-year-old trees a common and beautiful occurrence. Here are pictures of various oaks and yews(?). Some of them were taken on the campus of St. Edward's University, a small private university located on a hill out in the boonies, even though it's just 3-4 miles from downtown, visible from campus. (Some of these pictures were taken with a 1.3 MP phone camera.)

This three to four-hundred-year-old tree, called Sorin Oak (named after the founder of St. Edwards's,  is the largest tree in Austin. 

A stand of oak and yew trees near St. Edward's.

The Great Outdoors Nursery, to which a whole post will be dedicated to later, is built around this oak, estimated at 400 years old.

The branches of this oak, and others like it, are wonderfully convoluted and twisted.

Trees on an apartment building/hotel, seen when lost along the lake.

Another ancient oak tree on the State Capitol Grounds.

On the grounds of the State Capitol complex.

Bell Tower of UT.

Near the primary greenhouse of UT

These trees are planted all over Austin. The flowers smell like beer. 

More trees by St. Edwards.

Twisted tree near the library on St. Edward's campus.

An experiment with setting the white color manually. The tree was too mysterious not to pass up, and the usual settings didn't capture its aura, as seen below.