Oh no... It's Chemical!

Sometimes chefs, food critics and journalist loose their reality connect. As it happens in this piece: The point of which is that it is a chocking practice to add chemicals to food in order to make it taste better!
“Food should not be chemistry” says Claus Mayer, Danish celebrity chef.
Mmm… Actually?
Cooking - and the preparation of food in general - can be described as a collection of processes that includes the addition of various chemicals and flavors like sodium chloride* and various ethanol** based solutions, not to mention a multitude of dried plants and colorful colorings. We eat fungi, bacteria, dead insects and other animals, unfertilized eggs, rotten milk and regurgitated nectar,
Modern cooking involves strange processes like (cryogenic) freezing, boiling, frying, burial, fermentation, smoking and long term dehydration.
But somehow the addition of a small amount of monosodium glutamate*** to make stuff taste better is morally wrong? I thought that cooking was about improving the experience of eating?
*Kitchen Salt
**Alcohol or Wine
***MSG also known as "the third spice"

Trying to post

Testing
Arrrh! Been trying to revive these old blog posts. Giving them a fresh look among other things.
These new templates are a bit harder to figure out than expected....
Onwards christian soldiers to boldly go where angels fear to put their things.
:o}

There can be only one

DARPA is at it again. Though their homepage doesn't show it DARPA is simultaneously the most interesting and most scary part of America's armed forces.
As the name suggests "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency" is about military applications of science. Previous projects include such illustrious successes as the Internet and the famous "gay bomb"
Their latest project (that we know of) seems to be a bio-engineered immortal organism.
Seriously!
Follow this link to The Wired.com article and check out the DARPA homepage lists of ongoing research programs. That's some scary stuff. - And remember that a large part of their activities is probably classified.

Light them up!

I turned 50 yesterday.
Thanks to all for greetings and kind thoughts. But I got to tell you: that was a h*** of a lot of candles!

How the brain works....

It's all very delimpified as explained by a true expert.

50 and a new leaf

I'm turning 50 today which is something of a strange feeling. I have a terrible tooth-ache and I have had a rotten year which started by me having a heart attack last january.
So all in all: f**k that!
Did you know, by the way, that alcohol is a very good dental pain extensifier?
Anyways here is a link to a greeting card that says it all: link to greating card that says it all.
At noon today I will be turning over a new leaf....

Apple tablet revealed (again)

From Boing Boing: This is what it looks like! - It really is. Except that this design prototype is from the (19)eighties and designed by the Frog Design company which did a lot of early work for Apple.
As far as I can figure out the screen might have been monochrome and not touch-sensitive if it wasn't complete nonfunctional. Flat, touch-sensitive, full color screens haven't been around for that long!

Looking g.g.g cool!???

Rappers, Sexuality, bling and blunks.
:o)
Read all about it!
by following this link to Slate's interesting piece here...

sacred underwear

By now just about everybody knows what scotsmen wear under their kilts. I've just discovered that Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or mormons, as they are more commonly known, have a similar secret - only quite different. Having completed a initiation ritual, adult church members wear "temple garments" - a set of specially designed sacred underwear. The garments don't excactly look that fantastic and considering the climate in Utah, I guess it must be a dying custom. Follow this link for a closer look.

Just a little piece of important info I thought you'd like to know.

yes but celery?

It seems that Chelsea, top british soccer team, has banned celery from its home grounds. Enthusiastic Chelsea fans have been throwing celery for years, but now club management has issued a statement saying: "In future, if anyone is found attempting to bring celery into Stamford Bridge they could be refused entry and anyone caught throwing celery will face a ban," according to Guardian Unlimited.

Sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do - with or without celery.

computer therapy

Sunday, just before noon, my computer 'died'... It just stopped starting and after a couple of resets I realized that this was no ordinary glitch but a real disaster. It didn't exactly come as a surprise either. I had been ignoring the occasional you-should-do-a-surface-scan-of-your-disk warnings for a long time.
So I removed the hard disk from my machine and plugged it into our spare computer/printer server and started the surface scanning routine. No problem. Several hours later the scan was completed and I put the disk back in its rightful place. However the expected happy feeling didn't materialize: All I had achieved seemed to be to exchange the nothing that originally happened with an interesting combination of error messages.
Now I ain't exactly Einstein but I must be just a little smarter than the guy who once decided that it was a good idea to rename every file retrieved during a disk scan "file0001.chk, file0002.chk, file0003.chk". What had happened was that my entire windows directory had been transformed into 9999 numbered files. What the h... is one supposed to do with 9999 unidentified files? It should be technically possible to come up with a slightly more meaningful solution?
Yes I know I should have had a system back up ready. But I didn't. And I'm almost ashamed to admit that actually finding the Windows installation disk took me the better part of a day.
The good news is, that I didn't loose any important files and that my computer is up and running after a long session of open heart formatting and reinstalling windows (twice)...
The bad news is that my incredibly funny and intelligent piece on comic heroes in Hollywood lighting probably will have to be reconstructed from memory.

stuff happens - to the best of them

Everybody loves a hero but even the best of the best sometimes meet their match. That is what seems to have happened to Steve Rogers perhaps better known as his shield wielding alter ego, Captain America.
It seems that sales have been declining and something needed to be done. It's to early to say for certain what happens to the captain. Maybe some other guy will take over the comstume and that famed indestructible shield.
According to this ABC News article Cap was the victim of the socalled War of Terror.
Its predicted that issue #25, in which the tragic demise of mr. Rogers unfolds, will soon become something of a collectors item.

stuff happens - rather quickly

As far as I can tell no one was seriously injured in this £800,000 ($1,700,000) car crash. Except the driver's pride and wallet.
The Bugatti Veyron claims the title as the fastest production car yet with a top speed of 407 kmh (257 mph) motivated by a 1001 hp 16 cylinder engine.
So: it turns out it crashes just like any normal car - only much, much faster...

Indian illusions?

Once in a while one has to have one's illusions shattered: I've always enjoyed spicy food. - Except of course my mothers famous meatballs in curry, a Danish specialty consisting mainly of glue and compacted rice.
I used to think that curry powder was an Indian spice but, as it turns out, that is not so. Curry powder - that yellow powder you buy at your local grocer's - was invented by the British. Indian food - actual real Indian food - is made using a mixture of spices, none of which are actually "curry powder", and which may or may not result in a taste like the familiar yellow stuff.
In Denmark many different brands and special mixtures are available. Like "hot exotic curry powder", "Thai curry powder" and so on.
I feel cheated.
Link to Wikipedia / curry powder...

bushiness as usual

Having just received what many lesser men than he might have seen as a clear message from his fellow Americans, my friend George W. has made some reassuring noises and booted his slightly less than popular minister of defence.
So that's a good thing?
Well: While nobody was paying attention he's been going through his old stuff with a fine tooth comb, and have found a number of initiatives he wants to have approved by lawmakers before the formal changeover takes place.
Some of the proposals are truly horrifying. So while some things never change others remain the same.

coming up next:

...or rather: going down.
Another member of the Bush administration who we've been repetedly told is absolutely untouchable is viceprecident Cheney. Question is will he be able to adjust as fluently to the new political realities as to not become a liability. Can you imagine Cheney being politically flexible towards a democratic majority?
I give Dick less than a month.

didn't think he'd do that

So much has changed in so few days. President Bush's fired Rumsfeld. A move that by all accounts seems to have been long overdue. I *really* didn't think he'd do that. Not because it wasn't the right thing to do. It was. But because he's repeatedly said that he wouldn't.
So that's a good thing?
Well yes. It may be the only way to reach som sort of Iraqi "closure". Problem is, it shows how the presidents mind works. Full speed ahead untill you reach a locked door. Then change the direction. That's no way to lead a country. Or a world for that matter.
Interesting times lie ahead.

how s.... happens

Everybody seems to agree that Stuart W. Bowen Jr. has been doing what could truly be called one heck of a job in Iraq. Is this one of those so called feel good stories then? One that would make you feel less unhappy about that whole Iraqi thing?
Nope.
Stuart W. Bowen Jr. is the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. An accountant (and a republican) whose office has unearthed scandals, failures of approbiate oversight, swindle and fraud in the use of American Tax payer money and Iraqi funds.
Now he's being fired which may not come as a big surprise to anyone. Follow the link below (to NYT.com) to find out how.
It's so unbelievably weird...

that's not funny - part V

So here's proving that Kerry was right after all.

don't do defence!

What's wrong with those democrats? Kerry's made that perfectly harmless - if unfunny - remark. And Now? He's busy apologizing and explaining! The question is: to whom?
The truth is that absolutely nobody could have found his remark offensive. Those who say they do, are either republican trained mud slingers or Rove's henchmen. It's all spin and every remotely sane American know it. (I hope!)
Here's what's happening: It's a well documented feature of Rove's political strategy to attack the opponent's strong points rather than their weaknesses. Furthermore they need a target that is big enough to 'damage' the entire democratic party team. To their line of thinking Kerry's the perfect man for the job. And - as we have seen - they have successfully mobilized the far right.
But the point here is that these people are not potential voters for the democrats so from a campaigning point of view they are totally unimportant. Democrats should focus their efforts on people whose views are centrist or moderate republicans. People who've found that Bush and/or republican lawmakers have let them down. That shouldn't be too hard!