omenti

communication

 

It's almost Christmas and the candles are coming out.

 

Candles.    And Michael Faraday's remarkable gift to young people.  He's way up on my own list of favorite scientists.  In addition to making fundamental contributions to physics (like field theory even though he was poorly schooled in math), he happened to be an excellent public speaker.  Every year there would be Christmas lectures for children.  A legendary set of six lectures on the chemistry and physics of candle flames was given in 1848. While a good deal of deeper understanding has taken place, much of the lecture is still relevant.  Watch a modern performance!¹  Here's a Project Gutenberg link to the text.

 

My advisor believed his students should be able to describe their Ph.D.thesis work to a group of smart high school students.  That proved to be one of the most difficult and poorly received talks I've given.  (I've improved over the years:-)  This sort of challenge is becoming more common ..  Alan Alda's Flame Challenge is wonderful..  A question is presented every year and people attempt to explain it to groups of eleven year old students from around the world who then select a winner.    There is the five level challenge..  try explain your work to a grade school, high school, undergrad, and graduate students along with having a meaningful chat with another expert in the field.  My favorite is Neville Sanjana talking about CRISPR.  I think Faraday would have been thrilled.

And finally there's the Dance your Ph.D. competition open to STEM Ph.D.s...  This year's winner was Nancy Scherich with a focus on braid theory - a brach of topology that looks at knots in higher dimensional spaces.  Hula hoops, linear algebra and murder! 

I'm a terrible dancer, but I guess something could have been done with infrared freedom and ultraviolet slavery and the production of charm quarks...  Then again...

 

Now a few questions:

 

How important is it to communicate the beauty of what you are interested in to non-specialists?  How is it usually done and how would you improve it?  And how do you spark and sustain an interest in some?  

 

By the way.  The Christmas Lectures have continued to this day.

 

Lessons and Carols

 

And a late (10^th of December) addition

Music

 

I think songs would be great for science communication.  Although They Might Be Giants have a few good ones, pickings are sparse.  Sadly most scientists are not good singer songwriters and coming up with lyrics that communicate real science is not easy.  

 

There are exceptions.  Henry Reich put some nice lyrics to Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star that are sound and current.  They work across ages and levels of astronomy experience.  The first time I heard it I thought I found something wrong, but another listen and some physics told me it was ok.²

 

twinkle twinkle little star
you look small cause you are far
lightyears out from here to there
your light is distorted by the air
so you twinkle twinkle little star
adaptive optics shows you as you are

twinkle twinkle little star
you must be a small pulsar
out away from earth you drift
this is known from you red shift
twinkle twinkle spinning star
degenerate neutrons are what you are

twinkle twinkle little star
supernova, au revoir
you got so big to big perhaps
electron capture core collapse
twinkle twinkle former star
a black holes all you now are

twinkle twinkle little star
wait actually no you’re a meteor
breaking up in the atmosphere
i wish id known you’d end up here
twinkle twinkle shooting star
became a meteorite that hit my car

 

Maybe it is enough to get people thinking and asking questions.    So in addition to dance your Ph.D., I'd love to see a sing your Ph.D. - or just sing your research.   Collaboration with a real singer is ok... witness this version of Howie Day's Collide sung by... Howie Day. The physics is quite up to date - get in touch if you want anything decoded.

 

Just don't get me started on the Big Bang Theory show...

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¹  The Faraday Candle Lectures

Introduction to Michael Faraday’s Chemical History of a Candle

Lecture One: A Candle: Sources of its Flame 

Lecture Two: Brightness of the Flame

Lecture Three: Products of Combustion

Lecture Four: The Nature of the Atmosphere

Lecture Five: Respiration & its Analogy to the Burning of a Candle

 

They've also produced a version with commentary if you want more after watching the remade lecture

Lecture One: A Candle: Sources of its Flame (Commentary version)

Lecture Two: Brightness of the Flame (Commentary version)

Lecture Three: Products of Combustion (Commentary version) 

Lecture Four: The Nature of the Atmosphere (Commentary version) 

Lecture Five: Respiration & its Analogy to the Burning of a Candle (Commentary version) 

 

²  Using redshift only works for distant galaxies and pulsars are observed in our galaxy (they're in other galaxies, but are too faint to measure a redshift, let alone detect).  Re-reading 

you must be a small pulsar
out away from earth you drift
this is known from you red shift

It is becomes clear that it is drifting away and we know that by it's redshift..  so the song is correct.  

it's stories all the way down

The phone rang on Sunday afternoon...

 

"Hi, Steve?  Syd has a question..."

(Syd is about ten)

"Hi Steve.  Why is the sky blue?"

 

She probably has heard a few explanations - most of us have over the years.  In fact the common explanation you are shown in high school and college isn't very good. We set up an iChat link for the sketches and facial expressions.  Words and sketches appeared that were a bit richer than the standard explanation.  No equations, but there was enough to branch off into color perception, colors that exist only in your mind, why the Sun looks yellowish and some experiments to try and so on until my battery was down to about ten percent. Her parents are probably annoyed.

 

We tend to describe reality as layers of stories.  Take your smartphone.  You push regions on it's screen and things happen.   A video chat with a dear friend thousands of miles away, a map, photos from Iceland, music from a huge library or directly from a concert, someone's heartbeat.  All of us know how to make these things happen - the incantations we make with our fingers and voices to interact with a real and virtual world.  But that's just one layer.

 

Far below is the fundamental physics of the atoms the phone is made of.  Quantum field theory provides a rich description of the subatomic particles and fields and we have general relativity to describe how it's mass interacts with spacetime and visa versa..  A story I know well - perhaps better than how to use my iPhone, but it's pretty useless when I'm trying to find directions on a map.

 

There are many layers in between.  The story of materials - metals, semiconductors, plastics, battery chemistries .. the things that make the physical device.  A bit deeper is how semiconductors work .. a bit above is how electrical circuits work.  And then there's the rich layer where artificial language meets circuitry - the programming of the device.  This story is told in code at a variety of levels.  I know some of these stories well and can use them creatively and author in their language.  And above it all are human interactions - an area we all know a bit about. There are many layers where I'm clueless.  That's probably true of most of us, but I've noticed telling stories at one level while thinking about another can lead to new ideas.    

 

It is quite possible to deeply understand how to use an iPhone or Android phone and think the Earth is flat and riding on elephants on the back of huge turtles.  In a rich real world each of these layers must be locally valid and the layers must be constant with each other.  Fake science -  global warming denial, anti-vaxing, homeopathy and so on are modern versions of the flat earth.

 

Most of these layers have incomplete stories - works in progress.  Our understanding needs improvement and that is wonderful.   As an aside it is remarkable that the lowest layer .. basic physics .. turns out to be completely understood in the part of the Universe humans inhabit.¹

 

The poet said the world is made of stories..  At least the real world can be described by them.  It makes me think of the upcoming scientist's march on Washington.  I'm torn about attending.  It probably won't have much impact and will be ridiculed an misreported by the those who need to hear it's message.  At the same time science is incredibly import to society - more now than ever in the past - and it's under direct attack.  Unfortunately scientists are mostly lousy story tellers ..  I know I am.  Scientists live in a world of coded jargon.  We don't take the time to talk about the astonishing surprise and beauty of Nature often enough.  

 

I have serious shortcomings as a storyteller. Writers, musicians, poets, artists, actors and athletes are much better.  I'm trying to get better and think it is important for more people to develop skills.  Some of them are showing real promise.   Alan Alda set up an excellent program at Stony Brook that is slowly spreading.  A bit of hope.

 

a line I offered to Syd  

 

The sky is mostly transparent and colorless, but it happens to be the stage on which the colors dance... 

 

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¹ We know this to a very high confidence level .. much deeper than in most of science.  You can even write down an expression for it ...  here's a very compact dense form.  Some call it Core Theory .. basically it's just the Standard Model with General Relativity nailed on.  You can imagine places and situations where it breaks down .. in some collisions in particle accelerators and in some of the most violent events in the Universe.  Then you need to unify gravity and quantum mechanics and more,  but we don't directly interact with them as humans.  This is probably one of the deepest advances in science and it really has only come together with a high degree of certainty in the past decade.

Just because we know what the interactions are and how they work, the details of real world problems can make them too difficult to calculate. We just know, to an astonishing level of confidence, there isn't anything other type of interaction that impacts our world.

(this may look like gibberish, but it describes the physics that we experience on Earth and most of the Universe.    Not often seen on tshirts outside the boundaries of Caltech, but one of the great intellectual achievements.  It is a capstone on a small corner of understanding Nature, but it just marks a beginning.)

 

 

getting over wack-a-mole

This past Monday Randall Munroe posted a beautifully done timeline of the Earth's average temperature since the last glaciation on xkcd.   It's beautifully crafted, but...  

scroll down and enjoy and I'll pick up on the other side..

 

 

I first became aware of global warming in the mid 80s.  Back then I was interested in the climatic impact of limited to mid-sized nuclear exchanges.  Many physicists were pushing for large stockpile reductions when Star Wars was taken up by Ronald Reagan.  Computation had advanced to the point where non-trivial climate models were possible.  Some folks at NASA and elsewhere started using them to study human caused - anthropomorphic - global warming with James Hansen testifying before Congress in 1987.  I started following it, but the science wasn't well settled in my mind for another decade.  By 2000 it was becoming very clear the effect was real and more alarming than Hansen had predicted.   For me it had become one of two preventable existential level threats.  I had to do something.  

 

Talking to people and looking at television, newspapers and magazines I saw the subject was very muddled with some organizations pumping out misinformation.  Most of the energy we command comes from fossil fuels and their combustion was the major source of the greenhouse gases that were tipping the scale.  Physicists are heavily focused on energy so I thought a clear soup to nuts discussion of energy on a non-technical level would be valuable.  I had a chance to give a serious of talks to some non-technical audiences and found a good deal of interest...  the talks would run an hour, but the Q&A sessions were longer.  I looked around for good books and found anything useful to be too technical for most readers.  That started me on a book project in my spare time.

 

There were problems I didn't recognize at the time.  I like to think that I can drill deeply into a problem and understand it deeply enough to gain a bit of insight.  Of course that isn't always true.  I had assumed that education was a useful path and that the focus should be on energy.  Both were mistakes caused by a poor understanding of the problem.  And so my education began...

 

I wasted a lot of time and that of a friend who was helping as the concerned non-technical person.  Writing to the right level and covering the right ground wasn't working with painful rewrites combined a sense of failure  At the same time the talks were well received and the Q&As were becoming learning experiences for me.  I was building toward an epiphany.  

 

During the session following a talk before a few hundred animators in Burbank someone identified himself as Blackfoot .. a fellow Montanan.  I had been talking about climate cycles with very long periods ..  explanations for ice ages and the like.  a medicine wheel ...  he went on to explain that the tradition he was from believed in cycles of many things dictated by the turning of medicine wheels and how he was struck by the similarity of what I was saying.  We had very different explanations for something in Nature.  Mine was empirical - his not, but the impact through our eyes was similar.  We were talking about something that might be a source of friction if approached as I would be tempted... but this was a breakthrough for me - a reason for conversation.

 

I watched as he talked...  several hundred people - people who tell stories - giving him full attention for ten minutes.  We are indeed narravores.  He finished and I decided to kill the rest of my talk...  They were the story tellers and should have been teaching me.  I told them I probably couldn't make a difference, but maybe they could.  They were the reason why I was a vegetarian.. not a bad trick considering where I was from.   They made Bambi and that raised some questions that changed my worldview.  

 

What followed was a real education into the social problem of global warming.   I still have a deep interest in the science and technology component but I'm not a technosolutionist.  I could talk for days on the subject now, but just a few points.  

 

Shortly after this I came across an interesting piece of work out of Yale - the Six Americas Project.¹ The population is segmented into six groups based on their level of global warming concern:  the alarmed, the concerned, the cautious, the unconcerned, the doubtful and the dismissive.  The alarmed believe this is of fundamental importance, but none of the other groups would raise it to a level demanding immediate attention.  Furthermore the doubtful and dismissive are so fixated in disbelief that the presentation of fact only hardens their view.  The hardening is largely independent of their education level.  Similar work has been done for many other areas.  It is not a liberal vs conservative thing, although conservatives tend to be doubters and dismissive as their party has hitched its fortune to burning fossil fuels.  Some liberals  take evidence conflicting positions in areas like vaccinations and GMO safety..  Of course these unscientific positions are distributions.

 

I'm naturally disturbed by the amount of global warming disinformation and it is in my nature to debunk it.  Unfortunately this turns into a game of whack-a-mole.  You can spend a lot of time debunking, but the doubtfuls and dismissives don't buy what you've said and through up several new bits of pseudo-science.  It is a losing game I've wasted too much time on.  It turns out the concerned group is the largest single segment of the population.  Combined with the alarmed it is now a slight majority.  A better use of time is to ignore the doubters and focus on the concerned.  

 

Another epiphany came from a conversation with a businessman from Texas.  Early on I could tell I had to hold my cards closely - he was ranting on the nanny state and know-nothing scientists and their atheist ways continuing on to racist comments about our President.  But he was focused on wind energy and power transmission.  He had been in the business of connecting bits of the electric grid to bring the economy of scale to parts of Texas and Oklahoma .. at first with coal fired plants.  Now he was into wind turbines and was ecstatic about the potential money to be had in transmission and interconnection.  He told me he was doing eight figure a year business with a staff of ten.  Both of us want to see more efficient power transmission and the connection of alternate energy sources like wind and solar.  Our positions on global warming are diametrically opposed, but both approaches lower carbon emissions.  I could only wish him great success.

 

Finally one needs hope.  A good deal of warming is baked into the next several decades and that is and will be a disaster. It would have been nice if we had taken serious steps twenty years ago.  Mitigation is much less expensive than adaptation.  While it is still important to  make dramatic carbon emission cuts rather than just throwing in the towel, some brilliant approaches to adaptation are emerging.  I'm running out of time, but carefully controlled underbrush and new growth burns can lead to greater carbon sequestration and much better water control.  This is beginning to work in parts of the West.

 

So much more around storytelling and empathy ..  Alan Alda's empathy approach using tools of story telling and the theater vs the NSF's sound-biteable news releases ...  guess which one I like?

 

I'm beginning so see more of the problem now. Several new questions have emerged and dealing with them brings great intellectual satisfaction.  Hopefully there will be a modest contribution to a solution, but the experience reminds me of the importance of deeply understanding a problem.  Sometimes the only way to see a larger picture is to make a serious of mistakes as you forge ahead with your early ideas even though they're wrong.

 

And Randall's beautiful graphic?  It is just a sermon, a rather lovely sermon, to the converted...  And for those who can trust the nearly universal consensus result of researchers this graphic put together by NASA is good.

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¹ A good deal of research has been published by the Yale group as well as a few other organizations.  A nice high level overview is Global Warmings 'Six Americas' (pdf)

the black hole that terrorized a city

Someone asked if I liked to watch horror/scifi movies.  It depends...

 

A few years ago I was trapped on a cross country flight and saw The Black Hole - one of those scripts that is so bad it is almost, but not quite, worth watching.  Check out the trailer...

 

Most special effects and animated movies take liberties with physics.  Starting with Disney many of the classic animation films created increasingly more interesting variations on physics to improve the storytelling physical worlds.  There were any number of tricks to trick the viewer to better immerse them in the story.¹

 

Special effects tend to suffer.  I'm able to enjoy films like Guardians of the Galaxy, but poor scripts and acting break the story telling and I find myself spending most of my time thinking about the physics.  

 

With that a mini-analysis of The Black Hole - (no plot is spoiled as I didn't notice one)

 

Somehow an there is an accident in a secret physics lab a hundred feet below St Louis.  Physicists have managed to create a tiny black hole that escapes and trolls around under the city coming up for buildings like the great white shark in Jaws.   At this point I'm completely out of story space and am thinking about small black holes.

 

Hmmm... about 30 meters underground and buildings on the surface are collapsing.  I'll make the assumption it is a miniature classical black hole, more on that later, and suggest that the gravitational force from it at the surface is about ten times Earth's gravity - that should be enough to flatten a building.  I could have picked other numbers, but we're just doing a little thought experiment and don't need to accurately understand how strong buildings are.  With this you can work out its mass - roughly about twenty trillionths the mass of the Earth - a bit over 100 trillion kilograms.  Now we're getting into interesting territory..

 

The event horizon of a black hole that mass is roughly a tenth of a trillionth of a meter -  about ten thousand times smaller than a hydrogen atom.²  Put it on the ground and it won't feel any resistance to any material on or in the Earth.  As soon as its created it will fall toward the center of the Earth picking up speed as it goes.  It whizzes through the center at about eight kilometers a second and starts slowing down as it heads towards a point, judging from my globe, on the surface of the Indian Ocean well off the Australian coast. Maybe it dines on a fish before reversing direction and heading back about 42 minutes later.³  Back and forth, back and forth - we have an odd sort of clock.

 

Games like this turn out to be a central part of play in physics.  You make a non-physical assumption -  assume a miniature black hole is created just under St Louis - and follow what happens using established physics.  In the process you can quickly deal with many questions and decide on those that are the best candidates for serious study.  Now that we have our black hole tic-tocking between St Louis and the Indian Ocean, let's look at smaller black holes.

 

I mentioned this was a classical black hole.  In 1974 Stephen Hawking proposed black holes can evaporate. The time required for one formed from a collapsed star is extremely long - it would take about 10⁶⁷ years for one with our Sun's mass ... approximately forever when you consider the age of the universe is 13.8 billion years.  But the rate of evaporation has a strong dependence on the black hole's mass and lighter black holes evaporate faster.   The little St Louis black hole would last about a hundred times longer than the current age of the Universe.

 

Smaller black holes can have lifetimes small even on time scales we're used to.  One with the same mass as a small car - about 1,000 kg - would evaporate in a billionth of a second and would be about 200 times as bright as the Sun.  These super tiny black holes would make a very powerful and completely impractical doomsday devices - even more impractical than antimatter.  In other words the perfect plot device for a movie.

 

I'll end with a problem for those who like to work things out.  Send mail if you'd like hints.

 

The Master from Dr Who or a slightly annoyed Vogon captain approaches the Earth with a super slicer beam that instantly makes a cut through the Earth.  What happens if the cut is through the equator and is  one centimeter wide?  What happens with a one meter cut?  How about ten meters?   Now work the problem with the same three cuts, but this time slicing from pole to pole.  How does humanity make out in each scenario?  

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¹ If you have the slightest interest in animation The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Olie Johnson and Frank Thomas is just wonderful.  Go for the hard cover and treasure it.  Disney did amazing groundbreaking work, and other expanded wrote new rules.   Chuck Jones created an animation for roadrunners and coyotes that is an art form.  Even today the tricksters are still at it.

² the Schwarzschild radius is proportional to mass r_s = 2GM/c².  The point is it only goes linearly with mass while the mass of a star goes as the cube of the radius - the event horizon get small very quickly as mass drops.  The Sun has an event horizon of about 3 kilometers ... far too small to contain it.  r_s for the Earth is 0.9 centimeters.  

³ 42 minutes through a frictionless tunnel is the result everyone calculates in physics 101, but that assumes the Earth's interior has a uniform density.  Recent work giving a better understanding of the Earth's density distribution cuts a few minutes off the transit time.

 

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Recipe corner

 

I grilled some asparagus and used a homemade olive based dressing.  Ideally the trick would be to layer pieces of tomato on a bed of the grilled asparagus before adding the dressing, but it isn't good tomato season (yet).  Here's the dressing...

 

Olive dressing

 

Ingredients

 

° 3 tbl finely chopped kalamata olives

° 3 tbl extra virgin olive oil - a good one pays off

° 3 tbl red wine vinegar

° 3 tbl crumbled feta (leave off if you want it to be vegan)

° 2 tbl finely chopped red onion

° 1 clove garlic - very finely chopped or grated

° 1 tbl honey

° 1 tbl dijon mustard

° 1 tsp oregano

° salt and pepper to taste

 

 

Technique:-)

 

° mix the ingredients

 

all mixed up

With their wonderful noses, how does the world appear to a dog? Does a bat's echolocation augment their vision or does it create a separate model of their world?  Does your perception of reality differ from mine?

 

Brookhaven National Labs was a large enough reserve that it had its own wildlife. Deer, raccoons, weasels, owls ... even a family of beavers that descended from zoo escapees decades before.  In the Summer I'd take a break at dusk to watch the show that would develop in the formal garden the particle physics building wrapped around.  A bright light attracted insects which, in turn, brought in up to a dozen little brown bats.  They were using sound and vision, but their echolocation calls were far removed from my hearing.  You could try to characterize how good their echolocation must be but, as I learned after talking to a few experts, too many of the important parameters were unknown at the time.  

 

We may feel we have a good sense of what the world must look like, but our senses only sample small bits of reality. We live slightly in the past.  Our perception of the present - our sense of 'now' - is a window about three seconds long.  Our eyes send signals that are very different from images to the brain where a three dimensional model is created.  Some of that visual information is averaged over periods as long as fifteen seconds to make our model appear smooth.  We build three dimensional models of our surroundings with acoustic signals, but vision is a dominant sense so we usually don't 'see' that model as a solid reality. A dog's world would be very different as smell is a major sense for them.

 

We can easily be fooled by our senses, but mostly we're good enough at model building to survive and find great richness in the world that surrounds us.  We can get into trouble assessing abstract risk as we're wired with some rather strong model and survival biases.  Proper risk assessment often demands analysis and that turns out to be problematic  - but another subject.  

 

We extend our senses and build microscopes and telescopes and shift the signal to something we can grok.  We record nature at great resolution over short periods or over long periods and adjust the data so we can understand it.  We've created a tool called science that creates objectivity over the long term.  This tool building has extended our senses and we're beginning to integrate these extensions making us something different.

 

Places like Brookhaven are dedicated to moving the frontiers of our perceptions.  Physicists have a odd method to build microscopes to see the very small.  The trick is to slam objects together and sift through the fantastically small and the collisions play out over periods of time that can be more than fifteen orders of magnitude removed from the world we normally perceive.    When you study them they seem very real.  You develop a useful visualization that allows play and new questions.  

 

Paul would do quantum electrodynamic and chromodynamic calculation with his fingertips.  Feynman diagrams were a beautiful shorthand for thinking about the collisions of particle physics.  They are very visual, but Paul's sense of vision and touch were mixed. He could feel what they looked like and he would stare  into space doing his back of the envelope calculations - calculations that would normally create clouds of chalk dust around a blackboard - with his exquisite sense of touch.  Of course we didn't think anything about it.  

 

I had never heard about synesthesia.   It sounded crazy - people that had crossed senses.  A neurologist and his students came out from Columbia with a hypothesis that this synesthesia was common in physicists and mathematicians.   They explained some people would see certain letters or numbers in color, someone might taste a musical note, ... someone might mix sound and vision.  You could imagine crossing any pair of senses and perhaps even more. 

 

About fifty of us were tested.  Paul had a synesthesia that mixed touch and vision. Several people saw letters and numbers in colors.  I turn out to have a form of chromosynesthia - sounds get mixed with colors.  It never occurred to me that my perception of nature might be different from someone else's, but parts of my vision and sound are mixed - I build a world model that is an admixture of the two rather than one with crisp distinctions.  I kept quiet about it for years - it wasn't well accepted at the time and people would treat me as if I was crazy and/or ask questions that I couldn't answer.   

 

There are many types of synesthesia.  There is some evidence that we're born with a lot of this sort of wiring, but a great pruning takes place in the first few months that leaves us with orthogonal senses.  One can imagine evolutionary reasons for this.  The type of synesthesia I have is rare, but almost unknown in very coordinated people.  Other synesthesias would have been undetectable until writing was invented.  It may result from a problem during the great neural pruning in a baby's brain, but it may be so harmless that it isn't weeded out by selection.¹

 

I know one person, a composer, who can taste sound and another who can feel sight.  There are subcategories and some are - well - remarkable.  This morning I caught the latest episode of NPR's new Invisibilia podcast. The first segment features mirror-touch synesthesia - an extremely rare flavor that impacts the way a person lives.  (The second segment is fun too)  If you have the chance I recommend the audio rather than the transcript.  Invisibilia has great production values.

 

Does a bat build something like color in the echolocation model in their mind?  

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¹ There is some evidence that it is useful for abstract thinking - it is much more common among physicists, mathematicians and musicians than in the general population.

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Recipe Corner

 

Excellent on a cold Winter morning.  This makes enough for two or three people.  Nuts and fruit are great on top.

 

Quinoa breakfast

 

Ingredients

 

° 1 cup quinoa

° 2 cups water

° 2 cups soy milk or almond milk

° 2 or 3 tbl chopped walnuts or pecans

° 2 tsp ground cinnamon

° 1/4 cup maple syrup

 

Technique

 

° toast the quinoa for a medium hot pan for about 30 second and add the water. Bring it to a boil and reduce to a simmer with a lid partly covering.  Cook for about 15 minutes until it is fluffy - don't let it dry out.  

° transfer the quinoa to a blender and blend to smooth with the milk , maple syrup and cinnamon.  Test and see if it is sweet enough

° pour into bowls and sprinkle on the nuts and some fruit if you like.

 

 

training wheels

My first bike arrived on my seventh birthday.  It was red, a bit too large and familiar.  My Dad put on new tires and a rack on a bike a neighbor had grown out of making it nearly new in my eyes.  As if that mattered - it was now mine and a bike spelled freedom.  Learning to ride it endangered a few posts and trees over the course of a few days, but finally balance and steering sorted out and my world expanded.

 

I was lucky. My parents were very busy and, as long as my chores and homework were under control, I could do nearly anything as long as I didn't injure anyone else or myself (at least not too badly).  They allowed me to focus on my interests.  We went through our share of first aid supplies and there were some broken bones along the way,  but I still have all of my fingers and toes and a reasonable amount of my hearing.  

 

I've seen kids ride bikes with training wheels for months learning poor habits that need to be unlearned when the wheels come off.  The same may hold for education.  Science and math are sometimes considered hard and are watered down.  Proficiency is measured by rote memory or by the ability to plug numbers into memorized formula that are only remembered for the test.  No real education occurs.  Too much caution and protection...

 

I could ramble on for a long time - heaven knows I've spent hours on these subjects with a few of you =  but I'll keep it short and link two items.

 

First is a teaching review of a close friend.  Bjarne spent a few years in academia recently and agreed to teach a CS 101 level class. I wasn't suprised that he turned out to be an excellent teacher.  Here's one of the reviews.  It is worth reading even if you don't know anything about the subject.  What comes through is excellent technique along with respect for the student.   I'm familiar with how he worked out some of his lesson plans - hours and hours of thought.

 

The second link is wonderful.  An episode from npr's new Invisibilia podcast  - How to become batman.  Listen to the full show - trust me.  Training wheels, expectation, and human potential.  

 

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Recipe corner

 

It doesn't get simpler.  Fantastic for watching a blizzard.  There are any number of variations

 

Rosemary Almonds

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 cups raw almonds with skin

° 1 tbl olive oil

° 1 tbl chopped rosemary

° some garlic powder

° 1 tsp sea salt

 

Technique

 

° oven to 350°F

° mix the ingredients in a blow and spread out on a tray 

° bake 15 to 20 minutes

° cool to room temperature and see how many people eat

 

531

I'm really enjoying Om's new pi.co project.  His latest piece is an interview with Frank Clegg - a guy who found his life's passion designing and making high quality leather goods.  You really must go over to the site and read it.

 

As I get older I find myself more and more interested in design and materials - particularly the esthetic qualities of materials and designs that are timeless.  With so much written about Jony Ive and other industrial designers, it is important to step back and look at that those special people who focus on causing that ideal in their mind to become physical.  While some bemoan the flight of craftsman ship from America I find pockets everywhere and in unexpected places.  

  

I have an interest in human powered vehicles - bicycles in particular.  High stakes racing has produced a progression in technology punctuated by iconic leaps along the way.  Rather than getting lost in the past a few special points, inspired by history and tradition,  stand out as a source of inspiration, memory and delight.  I own one.  One of my most important objects, and I would only claim to have a few, is my 1973 Raleigh Pro.  

 

Raleigh had a division that hand-crafted bikes for road racing and serious riding. Expensive, beautiful.    I saw one and couldn't get it out of my mind.  I wanted to ride one.

 

I was just an undergrad and $525 was an astronomical price in the day.  The bike shop had just ordered one that was to be delivered in about six months.  I asked the size.   Fifty nine centimeters.  The sweet spot for me - a bit of normal fitting would make it perfect.  My checking account had about one hundred dollars.  The deposit check nearly emptied the account and I now had to live with the problem of not knowing where the rest of the money would come from.

 

A few details were finalized with the builder via air mail.  A single person would make the frame, another would paint it and a third would build the wheels and mount the group set..  I opted for a special paint and detailing scheme for about two weeks worth of meals.  The letters their project manager sent weren't exactly regular business letters and exuded enthusiasm.  They only increased my sense of expectation and excitement.

 

It struck me that I was wasting money on a room.  If I gave up having a place to live the money would come together in about seven months.  So clear and obvious - I went homeless.  It wasn’t terribly difficult. I made a gym key for showering and a friendly postdoc let me use his couch for a few months in return for a bit of house repair.  It seems some theoreticians have no idea what a hammer is, so from his vantage point I had a useful super power.

 

The Raleigh arrived and the regular customers stopped by to admire the English beauty as it hung in the window for a few weeks as I came up with the last bit of money.  

 

A gloriously beautiful lugged fame  fashioned from Reynolds 531 tubing.  The group set was all top shelf Campagnolo. Sewups, Brooks seat ... everything.   She is beautiful to this day and has a wonderful ride quality - the signature of a Reynolds lugged frame from the 70s or 80s.  Riding a bike of this caliber is such a delight. I rode with the cycling club mostly on Saturdays and Sundays.  There were regular centuries - round trips between Pasadena and Irvine.  

 

The rides led to me crossing paths with a few people driven by their dreams - Paul MacCready and his take on a human powered vehicle, the Duo Tones and their surf music, and much more.  My little Raleigh was acquiring a patina of the experiences it catalyzed.  

 

There are faster bikes. Lighter bikes. More exotic bikes with carbon fiber everywhere.  Electronically controlled derailleurs, disk brakes, power meters, exotic wheels, and weights half that of my 19 pound Raleigh.  

 

Mine feels better on the road and none of the newer bikes can recall what we’ve been through together.  A few years ago I had some restoration work done by a craftsman who builds steel framed bikes for a living.  He took one look at it and said ‘damn - the frame is three cm too tall for me.  I’ll still give you $4,000 for it if you’d sell it.  That’s the most beautiful 70s Raleigh I’ve ever seen’

 

No sale.  

The roads around here are awful, so the Raleigh rarely gets ridden.  So sad - if I had sense I'd move.  If the roads were better I'd ride her more, but only on perfect days.  I'd have a nice bespoke bike made for other times.  

 

Bespoke is an abused term these days, but it is appropriate in the bike world.  There are about fifty fantastic frame builders in North America - a half dozen have waiting lists deeper than five years.  They create beautiful mounts that will give their owners a lifetime of service and perhaps discovery.  But my roads are bad and a bespoke Reynolds 953 frame properly kitted out would be north of $10k.  Titanium is an alternative and there are a few guys who understand the material.  One of them learned his craft in Lockheed's Skunk Works.  

 

Perhaps some day...

 

Building something wonderful is an exercise in constraint, experience and imagination.  I've designed and built a few things, but this is not a core strength.  Still - I've had a taste and have a bit of an understanding of some basic issues.  

 

Though an accidental meeting I was able to interest Trek in building a bike for a friend in recognition of some of her work.  Colleen is too tall for most bikes - those that sort of  fit have to be adjusted to the point where too many compromises are made.¹  The engineering staff at Trek had done a few special bikes for basketball players and this gave them an opportunity to experiment with a new material and create something that was also more environmentally friendly to construct than most current bikes. 

 

Her bike, other than its custom paint job, was designed to look almost like a normal commuter bike and make her look like an average rider.   The materials and geometry turn out to be special - the sort of thing that comes with enormous skill and experience.  The brazing work on the lugs is beautiful and I'm told it feels wonderful to ride (I have to take her word on that - my feet would be a good distance from the pedals).  Now it is building its own patina of experiences with her.  Hopefully they'll have decades together.

 

That patina of experiences.  My rides have taken me over Going-to-the-Sun Road in Glacier Park (with ice patches on a July morning coming off the pass), across Washington state, from Banff to Jasper in Alberta and many other places.  The long distances allow a certain detachment from whatever work I've been doing.  Sometimes it sneaks back in the form of new insight out of the blue.  I don't consider myself a particularly creative person, but my best moments rarely come when I'm pushing myself.   While the hard work is essential, it is during these breaks that welcome the muse.

 

There are so many threads I'm not touching.  Om's new project exposes a few types of being original and creativity.  I want to spend some time writing about that - particularly that of the artist and craftsperson.  But my hour has evaporated and I'm going on too long...  

__________

 ¹ Bikes have a variety of geometries to meet different needs, but sizing to the rider is, or at least should be, centrally important.  Most people - probably 90% - will find a fit within a standard range of frames.  You may not be able to find a fit in a particular make, but a good shop can find something.  Once a close enough fit is found adjustments are made.  This may involve changing handlebars, moving seat posts and handlebars, changing seats and break levels and so on...  A good reason to stay away from big box stores or mail order firms where no care is taken.

A few people fall outside the normal range. Women are more impacted than men as relative dimensions are different and often ignored in countries where most riders are male.  Colleen has exceptionally long legs and arms. Normal bikes like the one shown have to be adjusted past their limits producing a bike that is uncomfortable with poor or even dangerous handling characteristics.  

If you are outside the range the trick is a made to measure frame. Not cheap, but worth it.  Made to measure or bespoke may be the way to go if you are after that bike of a lifetime.

 __________

 Recipe Corner

 

No recipe this time, but a neat way to pack a healthy lunch.  Use a mason jar!  I've made one of my own design (eg.  just throw things that look tasty together) and recommend the approach. 

 

 

 

moving heat

Our Winter has been impressive.  The ice on the local pond is nearly strong enough to support a person.  Yesterday an epic storm gave an excuse to enjoy the season.  I ended up getting very wet and cold, but for whatever reason you learn to love the Winter if you grow up in a place like Montana.  The season is a good time to sit back and read.  Last night as I tried to see if I could still remember a favorite poem by Robert W. Service, I remembered a great short story by Ambrose Bierce.¹

 

In 1933 the Tuscany tied up at a dock in Calcutta with a most unusual cargo.  Financed by Frederic Tudor, it was a dramatic proof of concept of an idea that seemed daft when originally proposed.

 

A few decades earlier Tudor had one of those consuming ideas.  He didn't have any experience in science or engineering, but he became fascinated by the New England practice of cutting pond and lake ice during the Winter and storing it for months in straw insulated underground ice houses. Often the ice would hold out as long as July and be sold at a profit.  He reasoned that ice could be insulted and put on fast boats to the Caribbean and sold to the landed gentry to chill their drinks.  Armed with an enthusiasm that others considered a lack of common sense, Tudor bought a brig and hired a crew to cut ice from a place near Walden Pond.  

 

The Favorite set sail on February 10, 1806 from Boston to Martinique with its cargo of frozen water insulated with straw.  Much of the ice survived the 1,500 mile journey, but he had neglected to build an insulated ice house on the receiving end and most of the cargo melted resulting in a big loss.

 

The papers caught wind of the loss and Tudor became a laughing stock.  The whole notion created cause for story telling.  Decades later Ambrose Bierce got into the act:

 

 

The Failure of Hope and Wandel

by Ambrose Bierce

 

From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, December 2, 1877.

 

I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a relay of noses and ears will have reason to regret his mistaken economy in arranging his outfit.

To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff. Fancy, O child of a torrid clime, a sheet of anybody's ice, three hundred miles long, forty broad, and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie, Pikey dear, but your partner in the firm of Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes, New Orleans, is never known to fib. My plan is to collar that ice. Wind up the present business and send on the money at once. I'll put up a warehouse as big as the Capitol at Washington, store it full and ship to your orders as the Southern market may require. I can send it in planks for skating floors, in statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for juleps, or in solution for ice cream and general purposes. It is a big thing!

I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you ever see such charming ice?

From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, December 24, 1877.

Your letter was so abominably defaced by blotting and blurring that it was entirely illegible. It must have come all the way by water. By the aid of chemicals and photography, however, I have made it out. But you forgot to inclose the sample of ice.

I have sold off everything (at an alarming sacrifice, I am sorry to say) and inclose draft for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders at once. I trust everything to you--but, I say, has anybody tried to grow ice in _this_ vicinity? There is Lake Ponchartrain, you know.

From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, February 27, 1878.

Wannie dear, it would do you good to see our new warehouse for the ice. Though made of boards, and run up rather hastily, it is as pretty as a picture, and cost a deal of money, though I pay no ground rent. It is about as big as the Capitol at Washington. Do you think it ought to have a steeple? I have it nearly filled--fifty men cutting and storing, day and night--awful cold work! By the way, the ice, which when I wrote you last was ten feet thick, is now thinner. But don't you worry; there is plenty.

Our warehouse is eight or ten miles out of town, so I am not much bothered by visitors, which is a relief. Such a giggling, sniggering lot you never saw!

It seems almost too absurdly incredible, Wannie, but do you know I believe this ice of ours gains in coldness as the warm weather comes on! I do, indeed, and you may mention the fact in the advertisements.

From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, March 7, 1878.

All goes well. I get hundreds of orders. We shall do a roaring trade as "The New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company." But you have not told me whether the ice is fresh or salt. If it is fresh it won't do for cooking, and if it is salt it will spoil the mint juleps.

Is it as cold in the middle as the outside cuts are?

From Mr. Jebez Hope, from Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, April 3, 1878.

Navigation on the Lakes is now open, and ships are thick as ducks. I'm afloat, en route for Buffalo, with the assets of the New Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Company in my vest pocket. We are busted out, my poor Pikey--we are to fortune and to fame unknown. Arrange a meeting of the creditors and don't attend.

Last night a schooner from Milwaukee was smashed into match-wood on an enormous mass of floating ice--the first berg ever seen in these waters. It is described by the survivors as being about as big as the Capital at Washington. One-half of that iceberg belongs to you, Pikey.

The melancholy fact is, I built our warehouse on an unfavorable site, about a mile out from the shore (on the ice, you understand), and when the thaw came--O my God, Wannie, it was the saddest thing you ever saw in all your life! You will be so glad to know I was not in it at the time.

What a ridiculous question you ask me. My poor partner, you don't seem to know very much about the ice business.

 

Most people would abandon the ice shipping business, but Tudor pushed ahead and secured a monopoly in Cuba and built an ice house in Havana.  The first trip to Cuba was still a loss, but close enough to success that he was encouraged.  He gave away ice samples in bars hoping to create a demand and tried again.  And again.  And again.  In six years he had lost enough to land in debtor's prison.  

 

A normal person might give up hope, but Tudor was learning with each failure.  He became something of an expert in practical thermodynamics and realized heat flows from warm to cold regions rather than the other way around and that he needed to be concerned with conduction and convection.  He worked out that sawdust was a much better insulator and that there was a need for cutting the ice smoothly so it could be packed tightly in the ship's hold. He began to turn a profit. 

 

By the time the Tuscany made it to Calcutta Tudor was a wealthy man. Shipping ice had become practical, but a disruptive invention appeared about the same time and was perfected enough in the next several decades to mostly eliminate seasonal ice storage and long distance shipments.  

 

Short distance shipments were still needed through the 1930s as businesses and people had ice boxes to chill their food. Refrigeration at the home scale began to become practical in the 20s and 30s.²  My mother remembered deliveries from the ice man during the depression when they could afford it but a home refrigerator was well beyond their means.  She knew she wanted one and it was a future she was counting on.  

 

Fortunately the family couldn't afford an early model as the units used toxic refrigerants.³  DuPont introduced Freon in the late 20s and over the next decade home refrigerators became much safer - at least within the home.

 

The development of refrigeration has a curious history if you are inclined to reading about emerging technologies.  A guy named Clarence Birdseye was another one of those curious people who made a dent in the way we live.  Mark Kurlansky's recent biography is a more than fun read.

 

Refrigeration is usually accomplished by removing heat from a refrigerant and then allowing what you need chilled to come in thermal contact with that material.  The process is inefficient takes a lot of energy.  A great way to heat a room is to open the door of your refrigerator and freezer.  A heat pump cools the outdoor air (or water) with the "waste" heat being used for heating.  For those that live in an area with the right climate it can be a very efficient way to heat a house.

 

There are a number of neat ways to cause extract heat from a substance.  There isn't time to do anything but list a few:  ultrasonic freezers have been investigated - Ben and Jerry's even toyed with the concept with Penn State, thermoelectric refrigeration has seen some use and you may have one to take beer and sandwiches to the game,  laser cooling is used to reach extremely low temperatures and magnetic refrigeration has been a holy grail for some for about 130 years.  It always impresses me how the fundamental understanding of many physical processes precedes even early engineering attempts by a long time.  Scientists and their funders often have no idea what a fundamental discovery might be good for and even those who make early practical implementations often miss how their invention will be used.

 

The other trigger for this post was a video from GE on their current prototype of a magnetic refrigerator.  In theory this could be more efficient and environmentally benign than the compressor based units in your house and car.  Traditionally this required an expensive rare earth, but people have been focusing on less expensive alloys...  Perhaps you'll buy one in twenty years.

 

 

__________

¹ Robert W Service wrote poems that are particularly attractive to Middle School age kids.  Jeri and I can both recite The Cremation of Sam McGee - the quintessential 7^th grade poetry experience in parts of Montana and a great read during the Winter.

² One of the first refrigerators came from Frigidaire in the late teens.  In 1922 a home model with nine cubic feet of space sold for about twice the price of a Model T Ford - perhaps half a good middle class income.  It was temperamental and required special plumbing for its water cooled compressor as well as the availability of electricity - something that was rather expensive at the time for an appliance that was always running and using a lot of power.  

³ Most of the early refrigerators used sulphur dioxide as the refrigerant and leaks caused blindness and skin burns.  The other major refrigerant was methyl formate, which was even worse.    

 

__________

Recipe Corner

 

It turns out much of the quality of ice cream is determined by the size of the ice crystals that form in it during freezing.  Large crystals form if the churn-freeze phase is slow - you want to quickly and uniformly move as much heat as possible from the ice cream mixture.  I find getting a freeze in ten minutes or less works out fairly well and it is useful if you "season" the newly churned batch in the coldest possible temperature.  Unfortunately setting your freezer to -10°F or colder can cause expensive mechanical failure (guess how I learned?  I shoot for -5° to 5°F these days in interest of avoiding $500 repair bills).

The best home results are probably obtained with a fairly spendy dedicated ice cream freezer, but nothing under $1,000 will beat a conventional salt and ice churn.  I recommend White Mountain, having gone through three lessor freezers over the years.  If you have kids a hand crank is fun, but if you don't I recommend a motor.  There is some fun instrumentation hacking you can get into if you are so inclined.

I was interested in great ice cream and can't afford a commercial blast freezer.  The trick is to use a lot of liquid nitrogen (you can use dry ice, which is easier to obtain and somewhat safer, but if you are crazy enough for that you might as well go all the way). To do so you'll need a supply of LN₂ and a dewar.  Advanced cooks are beginning to use dewars as LN₂ is useful for other food preparation, but we're talking exotica and you can seriously injure yourself if you aren't careful.  So I'll just say I've had excellent results mixing by hand as well as pouring the LN₂ into a Kitchenaide.  A "home" LN₂ ice cream freezer a great engineering class project or even a Kickstarter idea (hint, hint - Jan and Jeff).  I use thick rubber gloves, goggles and a heavy long sleeved shirt when making the stuff.  I used to be able to get access to a dewar and LN₂ where I worked, but that was a long time ago.  Now I need to borrow a dewar elsewhere and find liquid nitrogen at a welding supply.  I generally try to have about 4 or 5 liters of LN₂ on hand for a liter of ice cream.  The process is very mad scientist and impressive.  No more detail as you really need to know what you're doing to go this route, but the ice cream is amazing.

Currently I use an old dedicated Italian freezer - a very small compartment and an oversized refrigeration unit.  It does almost as well as a White Mountain churn.  Guests get to lick the dasher.

 

This is  a very simple and good french vanilla - a good starting point for experimentation.  Of those that use eggs I tend to prefer the non-custards .. eg - raw eggs are used.  This is ok if you can pasteurize your own eggs or find a source.  I used to do it myself, but now use Safest Choice.  These are also useful if you sample cookie dough:-)

 

Simple French Vanilla Ice Cream

 

Ingredients

 

° two large pasteurized eggs (eggs are probably fairly safe, but I strongly recommend pasteurized eggs for anything raw or undercooked)

° 400 g white cane sugar

° 2 cups whipping cream - try to stay away from ultra-pasteurized cream as the flavor isn't as good

° 1 cup whole milk - also stay away from ultra-pasteurized

° 2 tsp high quality vanilla extract (you can also scrape vanilla beans)

 

Technique

 

° whisk the eggs in a bowl until they are light and fluffy

° whisk in the sugar a bit at a time until completely mixed

° pour in the liquids and whisk to blend the mixture

° churn freeze to the manufacturer's instructions

 

 

pete - a life that made a difference

The past half year has been a period of loss in my life.  These periods happen, of course, but it has been particularly concentrated and has forced a lot of thinking.  During one point last December a close friend called to see how I was doing and after listening for a few minutes she started to sing a familiar song that moved me from the shock I was experiencing to a point where I could finally cry:

 

To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn 
And a time to every purpose under heaven 
A time to be born a time to die, a time to plant, a time to reap 
A time to kill, a time to heal, a time to laugh, a time to weep 

To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn 
And a time for every purpose under heaven 
A time to build up a time to break down, a time to dance, a time to mourn 
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together 

To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn 
And a time to every purpose under heaven 
A time of love, a time of hate, a time of war a time of peace 
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing 

To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn 
And a time for every purpose under heaven 
A time to gain, a time to lose, a time to rend, a time to sew 
A time of love, a time of hate, a time of peace, I swear it's not too late 

To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven 
To everything turn turn turn there is a season turn turn turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

                                                                 Pete's words adapted from Ecclesiastes

 

Pete Seeger was one of those remarkable people who saw injustice and through force of will managed to find a way to bring change.  He fought with words and music - words and music that inspired others.   Enough that a difference was made.

 

I never really met him.  I did see him at a few concerts and was able to shake his hand a few times, but that's it.  On the other hand he was one of the people who helped me find my moral compass.  He is one of the forces that helped make me as a person.

 

Rather than write a post today I'll link to something much better - a video biography that appeared on the American Masters series and was shown on Public Broadcasting.  

It is fascinating how important music and poetry were. Such a powerful form of participatory story telling.

 

__________

 Recipe Corner

 

Ben Cohen wrote a lovely remembrance and offered an image.  It reminded me of the first time I saw Pete live.  It was a small outdoor concert on a beach in Southern California with a few hundred people gathered around a large fire on a chilly January evening.  When I finally shook his hand, he made a comment on the excellent hot chocolate and offered it was good lubricant for conversation.  

 

Last night I made some hot chocolate and had it with stroopwafels.  The trick is to place the stroopwafel on top of the mug and let it steam for a minute or two.  There are so many ways to prepare hot chocolate, but this is one that works in the Winter.

 

Hot Chocolate

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 cups whole milk

° 1 tbl white cane sugar

° 1/2 cinnamon stick

° 1/4 vanilla bean scraped. This is roughly the equivalent of 1 tsp of a good vanilla extract if you don't have fresh vanilla beans

° 100g bar of 70% dark chocolate.  I usually use a Lindt 70% bar (3.5 oz)

° 1/8 tsp Ancho chili powder (a double pinch:-)

° pinch of salt

 

Technique

 

° Add everything but the chocolate, salt and chili powder to a medium sized sauce pan over low heat. Warm to a light simmer and remove from the heat for about ten minutes.  Remove the vanilla husk and the cinnamon stick.

° make a homemade double boiler and melt the chocolate over simmering water.  Better yet, use a bain-marie ...  recommended if you make hot chocolate on a regular basis.

° put the milk mixture over low heat and whisk in the melted chocolate

° add the salt and chili powder and serve in two mugs.

 

staying warm and celebration a common tradition

It is really chilly for about the first time this Winter and I found myself out in the cold without gloves and a cap for a bit too long.  In theory I shouldn't mind much - after all, I did grow up in Montana and remember taking walks in -40° weather and fierce blizzards. 

 

About a year ago I was fortunate enough to have made contact again with Jeri - a fellow classmate from Great Falls High.   In an email exchange a poem came up.  It turned out both of us had memorized it in different junior high schools and both of us have taken delight in reciting it over the years.  The poet was a Scottsman who spent most of his life in Canada, becoming famous for poems associated with the Yukon and the gold rush. 

 

A bit earlier I met Reggie Watts at a TEDx talk.  Both of us had "performed" and somehow found ourselves chatting afterwards.¹  In my talk I mentioned that I was from Montana and he told me he grew up there too.  Another minute of talking revealed we had lived within 500 feet of each other and went to the same high school albeit separated by a couple of decades.

 
It turned out Reggie knew the same poem and it was the introduction to the word moil for both of us.  

 

The world seemed very small as we talked that night.

 

 

By now you're probably curious ...  I'm afraid I couldn't get all of it from memory and had to cheat a bit.  I guess I'm out of practice.  My guess is Reggie and Jeri wouldn't have any difficulty.

 

Turn the lights down, light some candles and crack a window to the cold.Read it outloud armed with a cup of peppermint hot chocolate (recipe follows).

 

The Cremation of Sam McGee

by Robert W. Service

 

 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

 

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he'd often say in his homely way that "he'd sooner live in hell."

 

On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.

Talk of your cold! through the parka's fold it stabbed like a driven nail.

If our eyes we'd close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn't see;

It wasn't much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.

 

And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,

And the dogs were fed, and the stars o'erhead were dancing heel and toe,

He turned to me, and "Cap," says he, "I'll cash in this trip, I guess;

And if I do, I'm asking that you won't refuse my last request."

 

Well, he seemed so low that I couldn't say no; then he says with a sort of moan:

"It's the cursèd cold, and it's got right hold till I'm chilled clean through to the bone.

Yet 'tain't being dead—it's my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;

So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you'll cremate my last remains."

 

A pal's last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;

And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.

He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;

And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.

 

There wasn't a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,

With a corpse half hid that I couldn't get rid, because of a promise given;

It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: "You may tax your brawn and brains,

But you promised true, and it's up to you to cremate those last remains."

 

Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.

In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.

In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,

Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.

 

And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;

And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;

The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;

And I'd often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.

 

Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;

It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the "Alice May."

And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;

Then "Here," said I, with a sudden cry, "is my cre-ma-tor-eum."

 

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;

Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;

The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;

And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.

 

Then I made a hike, for I didn't like to hear him sizzle so;

And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.

It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don't know why;

And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.

 

I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;

But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;

I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: "I'll just take a peep inside.

I guess he's cooked, and it's time I looked"; ... then the door I opened wide.

 

And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;

And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: "Please close that door.

It's fine in here, but I greatly fear you'll let in the cold and storm—

Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm."

 

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

 

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¹ TEDx Gotham.  I'm afraid my talk wasn't great and was very much in the shadow of Regge's amazing performance.  Mine was followed by a wonderful talk architect Craig Dykers and then the electric Juliette Powell.  As a speaker it probably makes sense to stay away from events with such serious talent.

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Recipe Corner 

 

Somehow a nice warm soup seems appropriate.  This one makes good use of carrots - use a rich vegetable broth, water just won't work.  As always all amounts are approximate

 

Carrot Soup

 

Ingredients

 

° 2 tablespoons butter

° 1 large yellow onion chopped

° 450 g carrots, peeled and diced to about 1/2 inch

° 600g  vegetable stock stock

° 1-1/2 tsp cumin seeds

° 1 tbl honey

° 1 tbl lemon juice

° 1/8 tsp allspice

° Salt and pepper

° sour cream or plain yogurt for garnish

 

Technique

 

° Melt butter in a large sauce pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and saute for 2 minutes.

° Stir in carrots and broth and bring to boil. Now cover and cut the heat to a simmer until carrots are tender.  (20 - 25 minutes)

° In a small skillet stir and toast the cumin seeds over medium-high heat until you can smell them (about 5 minutes?) Now grind them in a spice mill.

°  Puree the soup with a stick blender until smooth.  

° Whisk in the honey, lemon juice and allspice and season with salt and pepper.

° Pour the  soup into bowls and sprinkle with toasted cumin.  Add a bit of sour cream or yogurt and serve.

_____

Peppermint Hot Chocolate

Ingredients

° one cup heavy cream chilled in the 'fridge (half is for topping and is optional)

° 2 tbl + 1 tsp white cane sugar

° 2 cups whole milk 

° 120g 60% chocolate chopped into chunks

° a small pinch of salt

° 1/4 tsp peppermint extract

° chocolate (85% is good) for shaving to use as garnish if you like

Technique

° Whip half of the cream and the tsp of sugar into whipped cream and put back in the 'fridge

° Whisk the other half cup of cream, the sugar and milk in a pan over medium high heat and bring to nearly a boil

° Remove from heat, whisk in the chocolate, salt and peppermint until it is smooth

° Pour into mugs, add a dollop of whipped cream and shave some chocolate onto the cream