It's getting cold around here. Yesterday, for the first time, I lit the woodstove during the day when it became clear that the sun would not emerge to warm up the house. And we're now down to a pitifully small selection of remaining ripe tomatoes from the garden. Later today I think I'll go down and gather the reasonable sized green ones. I expect we'll be getting our first frost any day now. There's also a picking of Swiss Chard down there.
I'm happy to report that the good guys appear to have triumphed once and for all over the naysayers at Wikipedia. The entry for Xenopus now correctly states that African Clawed Frogs can live into their twenties. There was a period a few years ago when I went back and forth several times with a denier at the site who refused to let my editing of that page stand. In the course of checking on the matter recently I found that at least two others have reported on their own long lived Xenopuses (Xenopi?) on the web.
Assuming those web sites are to be believed, William the Frog lived to be 21 years old and the unnamed frog at Downend School lived to 30 years old before dying in 2001. My Xenopus is now about 23 or 24 years old so he (or she - I remain too lazy to check on the matter) may now be the oldest in the world. At the least my frog appears to be the oldest one in the world that is memorialized on the web.
For the record he's still quite spry and active over there in his bowl, still quite capable of moving the rocks around and splashing noisily to get attention when he hasn't been fed for a while. And he's still possessed of plenty of energy and will to present a problem when it's time to put him back into the bowl after I change his water. One of these days I need to give him the run of the house again to see how high and far he can jump.
On to other business. I've been rereading Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin novels over the past few weeks. And the other day I came across his assertion that Admiral William Mitchell of the Royal Navy had not only started his career as an enlisted man but had moreover managed to rise in rank after having been flogged around the fleet for desertion. According to the words O'Brian puts into the mouth of Captain Aubrey, Mitchell was an impressed man at the beginning of his career and he deserted his ship multiple times in order to continue a liaison with a young lady ashore. After having been several times been recaptured and punished with moderate floggings by his captain he decided to go the sea lawyer route and demand, as was his right, a court martial. Big mistake! The court martial board turned out to be a bloody minded one that decided to make an example of him in order to deter others. He was sentenced to receive five hundred lashes in a boat that was rowed from ship to ship so the sailors of the whole fleet could view his punishment.
The Wikipedia entry confirms that Vice Admiral Mitchell originally joined the Royal Navy as an able seaman; but it casts doubt on the flogging around the fleet story, saying that no official records exist of that event and that it's only provenance is a story told several years after his death. It remains potentially true however, because according to Wiki a whole chunk of Royal Navy records covering the early years of Mitchell's career are missing.
This interested me because when I served in USS Enterprise from 1970 to 1972 my boss was Lieutenant Commander Jack Henrizi, who said he was (at that time) the most senior unrestricted line officer in the navy who had started his career as an enlisted man. As I recall Commander Henrizi was careful to mention that he had worked his way up to Chief Petty Officer before becoming a commissioned officer; so it may be that there was a more senior grade officer who had started as seaman and then had immediately (more or less) been recommended for Officer Candidate School on the basis of test scores or such.
Jack Henrizi was nn interesting man with quite an extensive and colorful vocabulary. I vivedly remember the chewing out he gave me and the Fourth Division officer after the party pavilion at Subic Bay Naval Base somehow came to be burned to the ground during a joint party we had convinced him to let us hold for the nearly one hundred men of our two deck divisions, much against his better judgement. That was some party. And Commander Henrizi was some stand up guy. He took the whole brunt of reporting the incident to Captain Peterson, who never mentioned the matter to me or Mike Murphy even though he saw us every day on the bridge when we stood OOD watches.
Shortly after he retired from the navy in about 1974 or so Commander Henrizi was killed by a drunk driver who lost control of his car and came across the center lane of an expressway in California.
Update: I'm not the only one in the world with too much time on his hands. Behold - sheep fireworks - The nighttime sheep game of pong is neat, but you have to watch to the end to see the fireworks.
Showing posts with label Patrick O'Brian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Patrick O'Brian. Show all posts
Friday, October 15, 2010
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Withdrawal
I just put the Plum Duff on to steam for this afternoon's dinner with Dory and Phil. I'm making it in honor of Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin. It's their favorite ending to a meal. Linda rejected my suggestion of Lobscouse as the main course for today's dinner or we would have a complete old British Navy feast. I suspect that Linda will be getting Lobscouse for dinner one night this week or next week.
I'm about one week into withdrawal after finishing all 6,528 pages of Patrick O"Brian's twenty-One novel series. It's hard to believ that I averaged almost 200 pages per day; but the novels were very gripping. Taken as a whole they are very arguably the "best historical novels ever written," as that one reviewer asserted. Reading them in sequence was a rare treat and one day I'll return to them with a good world map at hand. They're well worth rereading.
But now I'm suffering withdrawal pangs. Over the past few days I read The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey; but it was a poor substitute. And now I've started Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; but it doesn't have the same gripping quality as the Aubrey/Maturin series. I may pull out some of the old standbys and reread them as a palliative. I haven't read Shogun or The Winds of War or Shibumi for quite a while.
I'm also beginning to suffer withdrawal pangs as a result of my new and final smoking cessation plan. I'll only have seven cigarettes today. Tomorrow I get six cigarettes. By this time next week I'll be smoke free. I'll go on the patch at that point; but it would be a good idea to keep your distance from me for a while.
Linda should probably hold her tongue if she doesn't like the Lobscouse.
Update: The Plum Duff came out very good, especially with the Amber Sauce that Betty Crocker helpfully suggested. Betty's looking pretty good, even sexy, if you haven't noticed. Back when I was a kid she looked motherly. It's surprising how one's perspective changes over the years.
Anyway, the Plum Duff and the Amber Sauce were actually pretty easy to make. The main hassle is the three hours that the pudding has to steam. I used the recipe you can find by searching for Plum Pudding on the Gold Medal Flour website, mostly because all the British recipes called for Suet and the only place I could find Suet in the supermarket was in the bird seed cakes in the pet aisle. I briefly considered melting down one of the bird seed cakes and straining out the seeds but decided not to go there.
Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin ate Plum Duff that was made with "slush" that the ship's cook skimmed from the cauldron where he cooked the crew's Salt Pork in the galley. He was required to turn over some of the slush to the crew, who used the slush to grease blocks; but the cook was protective of it because he got to sell the saved up barrels of slush at the end of a cruise.
I'm about one week into withdrawal after finishing all 6,528 pages of Patrick O"Brian's twenty-One novel series. It's hard to believ that I averaged almost 200 pages per day; but the novels were very gripping. Taken as a whole they are very arguably the "best historical novels ever written," as that one reviewer asserted. Reading them in sequence was a rare treat and one day I'll return to them with a good world map at hand. They're well worth rereading.
But now I'm suffering withdrawal pangs. Over the past few days I read The Island of Lost Maps by Miles Harvey; but it was a poor substitute. And now I've started Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg; but it doesn't have the same gripping quality as the Aubrey/Maturin series. I may pull out some of the old standbys and reread them as a palliative. I haven't read Shogun or The Winds of War or Shibumi for quite a while.
I'm also beginning to suffer withdrawal pangs as a result of my new and final smoking cessation plan. I'll only have seven cigarettes today. Tomorrow I get six cigarettes. By this time next week I'll be smoke free. I'll go on the patch at that point; but it would be a good idea to keep your distance from me for a while.
Linda should probably hold her tongue if she doesn't like the Lobscouse.
Update: The Plum Duff came out very good, especially with the Amber Sauce that Betty Crocker helpfully suggested. Betty's looking pretty good, even sexy, if you haven't noticed. Back when I was a kid she looked motherly. It's surprising how one's perspective changes over the years.
Anyway, the Plum Duff and the Amber Sauce were actually pretty easy to make. The main hassle is the three hours that the pudding has to steam. I used the recipe you can find by searching for Plum Pudding on the Gold Medal Flour website, mostly because all the British recipes called for Suet and the only place I could find Suet in the supermarket was in the bird seed cakes in the pet aisle. I briefly considered melting down one of the bird seed cakes and straining out the seeds but decided not to go there.
Captain Aubrey and Doctor Maturin ate Plum Duff that was made with "slush" that the ship's cook skimmed from the cauldron where he cooked the crew's Salt Pork in the galley. He was required to turn over some of the slush to the crew, who used the slush to grease blocks; but the cook was protective of it because he got to sell the saved up barrels of slush at the end of a cruise.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Serving Man
Those of you who remember the old Twilight Zone know, of course, that Serving Man was revealed to be an alien cookbook at the very end of one of the best episodes. That ending was a cultural shocker even to us old folks who grew up in the era of cannibal and missionary jokes like this one.
"Two cannibals meet one day...The first cannibal says, "You know, I just can't seem to get a tender Missionary. I've baked them, I've roasted them, I've stewed them, I've barbecued them, I've tried every sort of marinade. Just can't seem to get them tender."
The second cannibal asks, "What kind of Missionary do you use?"
The reply, "You know, the ones that hang out at that place at the bend of the river. They have those brown cloaks with a rope around their waist and they're sort of bald on top with a funny ring of hair on their heads."
"Ah, Ha!" the second cannibal replies, "No wonder--those are fryers!"
As it turns out the cannibals in the joke were pretty ignorant, or perhaps they didn't live in Fiji. For yesterday I came across a reference at about page 4,800 of the continuing Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin saga I've been reading that provided a perfect solution for their dilemma when Dr. Maturin mentioned a plant the British naturalists named Solanum Anthropophagorum which sent me to the internet to do a few clicks.
We think of cannibals as primitives. But it turns out they were pretty sophisticated, at least in Fiji, where they had special recipes, special utensils and even maintained a special plant for their occasional feasts on so called "long pig". Solanum Anthropophagorum turns out to be a real plant which was purposely cultivated near the special long houses where Fijians ate their battle prizes. The leaves were exclusively used as wrappers for roasting and the tomato like berries were used to make a special sauce. Google helpfully digitized the botanical volume where you can see it's picture if you page up after going to the link below; and you can read a lot more in English about the plant's uses if you page down to below the Latin. If you spend a while trying to puzzle out the Latin, using the English translation as a sort of Rosetta Stone, you have much too much time on your hands.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tOIWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5424&lpg=PA5424&dq=solanum+anthropophagorum&source=bl&ots=lPDb4HSzzz&sig=EgWOw2TrAksWe-E4CGU2hm4UbjA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA5423-IA3,M1
Why I was moved to post on this matter is a very good question. Why you should not google "long pig" and then click on the link to The Church of Euthanasia is one very good answer to that question. The universe has been said to be not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine. That goes double or triple for the internet. There's a lot of stuff way out there that you just don't want to know.
Meanwhile, back on real planet Earth and still on the subject of why I came to write about cannibalism, I don't yet fully have my mind around the fact that National Review, which is supposed to be a conservative magazine, has suddenly changed its comfortably musty look and feel by adding color photos. As is my custom I opened the latest issue to the last page to read Mark Steyn's Happy Warrior column and was greeted by a color picture of Frank Sinatra in the middle of the page. Curiously, Steyn's column, adorned with an unwanted color photo, is in some measure a rant against change. After reading the Steyn piece I turned to Richard Brookhiser's City Desk column, next to last at the back of the magazine, and found a photo of a palm tree, again in color. That got me thinking about botany and Doctor Maturin. And that led me by a roundabout route to The Church of Euthanasia, to which I now wish I had never gone, for now I will always know that the author of that website is out there, somewhere.
"Two cannibals meet one day...The first cannibal says, "You know, I just can't seem to get a tender Missionary. I've baked them, I've roasted them, I've stewed them, I've barbecued them, I've tried every sort of marinade. Just can't seem to get them tender."
The second cannibal asks, "What kind of Missionary do you use?"
The reply, "You know, the ones that hang out at that place at the bend of the river. They have those brown cloaks with a rope around their waist and they're sort of bald on top with a funny ring of hair on their heads."
"Ah, Ha!" the second cannibal replies, "No wonder--those are fryers!"
As it turns out the cannibals in the joke were pretty ignorant, or perhaps they didn't live in Fiji. For yesterday I came across a reference at about page 4,800 of the continuing Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin saga I've been reading that provided a perfect solution for their dilemma when Dr. Maturin mentioned a plant the British naturalists named Solanum Anthropophagorum which sent me to the internet to do a few clicks.
We think of cannibals as primitives. But it turns out they were pretty sophisticated, at least in Fiji, where they had special recipes, special utensils and even maintained a special plant for their occasional feasts on so called "long pig". Solanum Anthropophagorum turns out to be a real plant which was purposely cultivated near the special long houses where Fijians ate their battle prizes. The leaves were exclusively used as wrappers for roasting and the tomato like berries were used to make a special sauce. Google helpfully digitized the botanical volume where you can see it's picture if you page up after going to the link below; and you can read a lot more in English about the plant's uses if you page down to below the Latin. If you spend a while trying to puzzle out the Latin, using the English translation as a sort of Rosetta Stone, you have much too much time on your hands.
http://books.google.com/books?id=tOIWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA5424&lpg=PA5424&dq=solanum+anthropophagorum&source=bl&ots=lPDb4HSzzz&sig=EgWOw2TrAksWe-E4CGU2hm4UbjA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA5423-IA3,M1
Why I was moved to post on this matter is a very good question. Why you should not google "long pig" and then click on the link to The Church of Euthanasia is one very good answer to that question. The universe has been said to be not only stranger than we imagine but stranger than we can imagine. That goes double or triple for the internet. There's a lot of stuff way out there that you just don't want to know.
Meanwhile, back on real planet Earth and still on the subject of why I came to write about cannibalism, I don't yet fully have my mind around the fact that National Review, which is supposed to be a conservative magazine, has suddenly changed its comfortably musty look and feel by adding color photos. As is my custom I opened the latest issue to the last page to read Mark Steyn's Happy Warrior column and was greeted by a color picture of Frank Sinatra in the middle of the page. Curiously, Steyn's column, adorned with an unwanted color photo, is in some measure a rant against change. After reading the Steyn piece I turned to Richard Brookhiser's City Desk column, next to last at the back of the magazine, and found a photo of a palm tree, again in color. That got me thinking about botany and Doctor Maturin. And that led me by a roundabout route to The Church of Euthanasia, to which I now wish I had never gone, for now I will always know that the author of that website is out there, somewhere.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
A blast from the past made real
Newspaper opinion columns don't get any more timely than this.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
Meanwhile, the reason I've been so lazy about posting to this blog lately is that since Christmas I've been spending a lot of time reading much lighter fare than Atlas Shrugged.
First off, I owe somewhat of an apology to Mark Weingardner for the unkind comment I made about him a few days ago after I read the first couple of pages of The Godfather Returns. I stand by my opinion that Weingardner is nowhere near the elegant paragraph by paragraph writer that Mario Puzo was; but the truth is that The Godfather Returns is an excellent novel. It's true to the original characters and it carries forward the original story as portrayed in the novel and movies very darn well. Weingardner presents interesting plot twists that make sense and comport with the motivations of the characters. A very good read.
Talk about a wealth of excuses for not posting blog entries. After finishing that book I started on Patrick O'Brian's collossal twenty-one novel compendium of Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin stories. Linda gave me the five volume set for Christmas. I've read or listened to several of the novels before; but Linda's gift gave me an excellent excuse to start at the beginning with Master and Commander and read the novels in succession, which is the way O'Brian wrote them. So far I've read seven, totalling 2557 pages in all - Master and Commander, Post Captain, H.M.S. Surprise, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and The Surgeon's Mate. What a treat! Each book stands alone; but reading them in succession is stunning.
A New York Times book reviewer called these "The best historical novels ever written," which I think is a bit over the top given that it puts them above I, Claudius, to pick one example; but they certainly rank among the best historical novels ever written. They're especially neat because O'Brian seeded them with archaic uses and sailing ship naval jargon for atmosphere. These never detract from the stories; but they did apparently detract from the self confidence of the copy editor at the publishing house. And O'Brian himself must never have closely reviewed the typeset books before they were published. The novels are delightfully sprinkled with little gems of error. Coming across a spelling or usage error in a book is even better than coming across one in a newspaper.
Speaking of newspapers, according to The Norristown Times Herald a young fellow robbed a bank up in Limerick the other day. He apparently did a professional job of actually robbing the bank; but he hadn't thought to bring a getaway car with him. Even if he mostly gets around by bus out of concern for the planet that's pretty unprofessional. Anyway, after the robbery he selected a Prius to carjack for his getaway. It's good to see that the young are concerned about their CO2 emissions; but I really think the fellow should bring his own Prius to his next bank robbery. He would have been in a heck of a situation vis a vis the environment if all there was to carjack was a Hummer. He can probably get a deal on a Prius of his own right now because sales of hybrids are way down what with gas down to $1.70 or so a gallon.
In other local news, a muslim woman was convicted of killing her husband after she found out he was planning to go to Morocco to marry a second wife. Thumbs up to her. And thumbs down to the judge who just sentenced her to eight years in jail for a perfectly justifiable homicide.
Re International news, I keep thinking about writing about the Israelis and the Palestinians; but I find that I have little to say. The Israelis are justifiably kicking the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza after putting up with the hundreds of missile attacks that Hamas has launched at Israeli towns from there over the past couple of years. I don't bear any special ill-will toward the Palestinians because they're as entitled to free speech as anyone; but ever since they celebrated in the streets in the days after 9/11 I really don't give a damn about them either.
And anyway, along with believing in free speech I also believe that serious speech should honored by being taken at face value. The Palestinians in Gaza freely elected Hamas. Hamas openly and repeatedly says that it intends nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel. Given that, I don't believe it's possible for Israel to attack Hamas and the Palestinians who elected it in a "disproportionate" manner.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123146363567166677.html
Meanwhile, the reason I've been so lazy about posting to this blog lately is that since Christmas I've been spending a lot of time reading much lighter fare than Atlas Shrugged.
First off, I owe somewhat of an apology to Mark Weingardner for the unkind comment I made about him a few days ago after I read the first couple of pages of The Godfather Returns. I stand by my opinion that Weingardner is nowhere near the elegant paragraph by paragraph writer that Mario Puzo was; but the truth is that The Godfather Returns is an excellent novel. It's true to the original characters and it carries forward the original story as portrayed in the novel and movies very darn well. Weingardner presents interesting plot twists that make sense and comport with the motivations of the characters. A very good read.
Talk about a wealth of excuses for not posting blog entries. After finishing that book I started on Patrick O'Brian's collossal twenty-one novel compendium of Jack Aubrey/Stephen Maturin stories. Linda gave me the five volume set for Christmas. I've read or listened to several of the novels before; but Linda's gift gave me an excellent excuse to start at the beginning with Master and Commander and read the novels in succession, which is the way O'Brian wrote them. So far I've read seven, totalling 2557 pages in all - Master and Commander, Post Captain, H.M.S. Surprise, Desolation Island, The Fortune of War and The Surgeon's Mate. What a treat! Each book stands alone; but reading them in succession is stunning.
A New York Times book reviewer called these "The best historical novels ever written," which I think is a bit over the top given that it puts them above I, Claudius, to pick one example; but they certainly rank among the best historical novels ever written. They're especially neat because O'Brian seeded them with archaic uses and sailing ship naval jargon for atmosphere. These never detract from the stories; but they did apparently detract from the self confidence of the copy editor at the publishing house. And O'Brian himself must never have closely reviewed the typeset books before they were published. The novels are delightfully sprinkled with little gems of error. Coming across a spelling or usage error in a book is even better than coming across one in a newspaper.
Speaking of newspapers, according to The Norristown Times Herald a young fellow robbed a bank up in Limerick the other day. He apparently did a professional job of actually robbing the bank; but he hadn't thought to bring a getaway car with him. Even if he mostly gets around by bus out of concern for the planet that's pretty unprofessional. Anyway, after the robbery he selected a Prius to carjack for his getaway. It's good to see that the young are concerned about their CO2 emissions; but I really think the fellow should bring his own Prius to his next bank robbery. He would have been in a heck of a situation vis a vis the environment if all there was to carjack was a Hummer. He can probably get a deal on a Prius of his own right now because sales of hybrids are way down what with gas down to $1.70 or so a gallon.
In other local news, a muslim woman was convicted of killing her husband after she found out he was planning to go to Morocco to marry a second wife. Thumbs up to her. And thumbs down to the judge who just sentenced her to eight years in jail for a perfectly justifiable homicide.
Re International news, I keep thinking about writing about the Israelis and the Palestinians; but I find that I have little to say. The Israelis are justifiably kicking the crap out of the Palestinians in Gaza after putting up with the hundreds of missile attacks that Hamas has launched at Israeli towns from there over the past couple of years. I don't bear any special ill-will toward the Palestinians because they're as entitled to free speech as anyone; but ever since they celebrated in the streets in the days after 9/11 I really don't give a damn about them either.
And anyway, along with believing in free speech I also believe that serious speech should honored by being taken at face value. The Palestinians in Gaza freely elected Hamas. Hamas openly and repeatedly says that it intends nothing less than the complete destruction of Israel. Given that, I don't believe it's possible for Israel to attack Hamas and the Palestinians who elected it in a "disproportionate" manner.
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