OccupyEggs1
Why
she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd
loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and
mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked
Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from
school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys
she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in
college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to
do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds.
Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her
brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way
rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.
She'd learned Rutherford's analysis
and explanation of rainbows in her third year in college, in a new
physics class she'd taken as an elective, after her women's studies
phase and after she'd gone back to her geek roots. Her artsy friends
spoke as if science and understanding ruined one's love of nature,
but Rutherford had not ruined her appreciation of the beauty of
rainbows. Like Hemingway had increased her appreciation of fried egg
sandwiches, after Rutherford she now gazed at rainbows for longer,
observed them in all their nuances, in their environment, looking for
all the features they could have but only sometimes displayed, and
always just-so, the order of the colors, the geometry, the
astronomical atmospheric effects. What Rutherford had ruined for her
was her appreciation of “rainbow art” - the meaningless paeans to
the “beauty of the rainbow”, telling without showing, without
knowing, and the landscapes with fanciful rainbows, most of which got
wrong the most elementary observational facts about rainbows and
which, to her, indicated a disdain towards nature on the part of the
artists. But Hemingway had not analogously ruined fried eggs for her,
nor even art, perhaps because artists didn't take on fried eggs on a
plate in the way they took on fruit in a bowl or fish skeletons on a
plate or a rainbow in the sky.
OccupyEggs3
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
OccupyEggs1
OccupyEggs0
She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. It handily beat the fried-egg sandwich Hemingway ate over the course of a paragraph in a bar in Florida. She couldn't fish, couldn't play a bull, and her mountaineering days were long past, but she'd outdone him, Old Hem, at last. If she could only avoid sticking a double barreled shotgun in her mouth, she would outdo him forever, outlast.
She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil, but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way – unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid. It handily beat the fried-egg sandwich Hemingway ate over the course of a paragraph in a bar in Florida. She couldn't fish, couldn't play a bull, and her mountaineering days were long past, but she'd outdone him, Old Hem, at last. If she could only avoid sticking a double barreled shotgun in her mouth, she would outdo him forever, outlast.
Why
she liked Hemingway, DWM, misogynist because of all the women he'd
loved who hadn't loved him back the way the rivers and seas and
mountains did, she couldn't even begin to explain why she liked
Hemingway. She'd never read him in school, none of the girls from
school had, only certain and very few geeky and wannabe macho guys
she knew had read him in school. In the Women's Studies course in
college, he was their first assignment, and it was painfully easy to
do a feminist deconstruction, and it was all over in a few seconds.
Yet there were certain passages that had become ingrained in her
brain, and fried eggs were forever associated with Hemingway the way
rainbows were forever associated with Rutherford.
OccupyEggs2
OccupyEggs0
OccupyEggs = Insemination? Would only a
guy have thought of that? Why had she thought of it then?
Reluctant to put her book down for even
a few seconds, holding it in her left hand while the BookEasel © lay
unused within easy reach, she tried to cut into the deep-fried egg
with the fork in her right hand, using its edge to press the egg
down, but the fork couldn't cut through the crusty, brown parchment
like egg-white. The roasted bell peppers –she'd marinaded them
overnight in olive oil, salt and garlic– squeezed out from between
the egg and the holy numbered 9-grain X 12-nut bread, the bread
itself crumbled pastily and finally she had the browned egg-white
with its back to the plate, and still the fork wouldn't cut through
it. She grabbed the kitchen scissors which happened to be on the
table from cutting open the packet of “lonely” seaweed soup –if
she'd had company, she would have served dal
or squash soup or clam chowder, not seaweed soup– and used
them to cut the thin leathery egg crust. Now she could scoop up part
of the warm yolk, the egg-white, the bread and the peppers.
As she mashed the yolk against the
roof of her mouth, and felt that sunny explosion of salt fat sticky
coagulating tooth coating creamy yellow in the inside of her mouth,
she was reminded of afternoon sex during the early days with …, and
of Old Hem, of course, always Old Hem. Fried eggs and Hemingway like
rainbows and Rutherford. Then she wondered if she would die of
salmonella poisoning from
eating free range, organic, cage-free, all-natural, vegetarian fed,
family farmed eggs. Her concern arose not from any of the above, but
from the fact that they were past their expiry date. She smiled at
herself, she'd been about to think “due date”, had in fact
thought “due date” before correcting herself –as she'd been
doing with the date on egg cartons ever since she'd become pregnant
with her first child.
She
ate the two eggs she'd deep-fried sunny-side up like her soon2BX
husband used to like them until he started worrying about his high
cholesterol and its effect on their non-existent sex-life, and turned
to her experiment. She'd cracked the first egg on the edge of the
frying pan, but as she'd held it over the oil it had fallen out of
her hands when she'd tried to pry it apart. It had been a bitch to
get all the pieces of shell out of the hot oil, but it had been worth
it just for the idea that had occurred to her – to deep-fry the
egg, whole, in its shell. Of course it had cracked in the hot oil,
but what oozed out of the crack coagulated and sealed the rest of the
egg. She'd let it fry, rolling it around for about a minute before
taking it out. Now, with the shell cool enough to touch, she tried to
peel it, but that pesky inner membrane stuck fast to both the shell
and the egg. So she lopped off the top and scooped the egg out with a
spoon, holding the egg in her hand, just as she used to do with soft
boiled eggs as a school child. Of course, she'd known even before
tasting it that the white would be rubbery, egg proteins have to cook
slowly to avoid that texture. But she liked her eggs best that way –
unevenly cooked, the outer part of the white rubbery, the inner part
runny and the yolk warmed but silkily fluid.
OccupyEggs1
OccupyEggs1
Friday, March 9, 2012
GarbageInCompostOut
DOANSA INSPIRED HOUSEHOLD GRAYWATER RECOVERY PROJECT
For a while I have thought of trying to do something about the sheer absurdity of flushing huge amounts of water down the kitchen sink - perfectly usable water whether it is from rinsing vegetables, washing dal, washing dishes by hand or even water from the dishwasher - while at the same time using clean water to irrigate.
The right-wing American approach would be to send other people's children out to attack Canada in the name of liberating them, and then build a pipeline from Hudson Bay to LA. [Want an excuse? Canada produces almost all of the world's Co60 which is used for treating cancer. The source is supposedly under repair, but Canada refuses UN inspections and is suspected of trying to develop a Co60 dirty thermonuclear bio-weapon terrorist bomb. Diplomacy has not worked, 3 Israeli cancer patients may die soon so the Knesset may authorize Mossad to bomb the facility.] Just think of all the jobs that War and Peace would create, and finally water-independency for LA so that Orange County is no longer dependent on crazy-arse gay-rights advocating NorCal tin-pot mayors for their God-given right to water.
The ObuDemocratMama approach would be to develop "alternate water" - something that you could carry around with you and when needed just add water and hey! Presto! you get InstaWater (C)! This would be achieved by giving PanIndra half billion dollars to develop their idea of cylindrical glass tube water evaporators and to set up a evaporated water manufacturing facility in the South Bay. Unfortunately, the only thing that will evaporate is the money.
Note that there is discussion of conservation - banning alfalfa farming, golf, or lawns.
So here is something I thought I could do personally -as one of those ingenious middle class American private individuals, BUSH's thousand points of light, take initiative into your own hands- to avert global warming, save trees, reduce my carbon footprint, salve my conscience. (Breathlessly and earnestly in school child voice: "If every American household were to implement this scheme it would save THOUSANDS of gallons of fresh water!" Really? Save the Earth!)
For a while I have thought of trying to do something about the sheer absurdity of flushing huge amounts of water down the kitchen sink - perfectly usable water whether it is from rinsing vegetables, washing dal, washing dishes by hand or even water from the dishwasher - while at the same time using clean water to irrigate.
The right-wing American approach would be to send other people's children out to attack Canada in the name of liberating them, and then build a pipeline from Hudson Bay to LA. [Want an excuse? Canada produces almost all of the world's Co60 which is used for treating cancer. The source is supposedly under repair, but Canada refuses UN inspections and is suspected of trying to develop a Co60 dirty thermonuclear bio-weapon terrorist bomb. Diplomacy has not worked, 3 Israeli cancer patients may die soon so the Knesset may authorize Mossad to bomb the facility.] Just think of all the jobs that War and Peace would create, and finally water-independency for LA so that Orange County is no longer dependent on crazy-arse gay-rights advocating NorCal tin-pot mayors for their God-given right to water.
The ObuDemocratMama approach would be to develop "alternate water" - something that you could carry around with you and when needed just add water and hey! Presto! you get InstaWater (C)! This would be achieved by giving PanIndra half billion dollars to develop their idea of cylindrical glass tube water evaporators and to set up a evaporated water manufacturing facility in the South Bay. Unfortunately, the only thing that will evaporate is the money.
Note that there is discussion of conservation - banning alfalfa farming, golf, or lawns.
So here is something I thought I could do personally -as one of those ingenious middle class American private individuals, BUSH's thousand points of light, take initiative into your own hands- to avert global warming, save trees, reduce my carbon footprint, salve my conscience. (Breathlessly and earnestly in school child voice: "If every American household were to implement this scheme it would save THOUSANDS of gallons of fresh water!" Really? Save the Earth!)
 |
| Coffee, banana peel, grapefruit peel and broccoli stems. |
 |
| Banana peel down the hatch. |
 |
| Broccoli stems down! |
 |
| Coffee grounds gone. |
 |
| Grapefruit peel down the food disposal. |
 |
| The plumbing, the transparent hose takes it outside ... |
 |
| ... to PVC tube ... |
 |
| which carries it across the patio ... |
 |
| ... and into the vegetable garden. |
 |
| Next I tried a small bucket load of food scraps ... |
 |
| Minor snafu ... |
 |
| MAJOR fail! |
 |
| Finally got it all working, and learned: no egg shells, more water flow, less food scraps flux. |
 |
| But, it is not solved until it is all cleaned up. |
LiveArtCinequest2012
On our way out from the Shorts3 collection, we saw 3 artists in the act. Both Maya and Elsa wanted to stay and watch, so we went in to see them.
Joe had
F = m a
Newton's law of gravitation
Maxwell's silver equations
Black Hole entropy
Informational entropy
I suggested the following:
G_ab = 8 Pi G T_ab (The Einstein equation)
[x,p] = i hbar I (The fundamental fact about Quantum Mechanics.)
The commutator between a simple loop and a trefoil knot with a "hand", representing Loop Quantum Gravity
and Maxwell's equations
d F = 0 (the EM 4-tensor is divergence free)
d *F = *j (the curl of its dual is the dual of the 4-current co-vector).
9 March update: Joe put in all those suggestions!
Joe also added my name next to Newton's Equation for Gravitation, I'll post that as soon as Rajesh Aji sends me a copy.
 |
| Corey about to board the metro to school. |
 |
| Sara's painting dedicated to International Working Women's Day - March 8, 2012. |
 |
| "You accusing me of copying? I never even been to no fifteen or sixteen chapel!" |
 |
| Joe talking about his work, right before I started to talk about his work! |
 |
| Beneath those funky triangle symbols, there are 4 horizontal lines and Maxwell's silver hammer! |
 |
| No! No! No! Gravity isn't a force! |
 | |||
| Joe and myself, after we shared equations. |
F = m a
Newton's law of gravitation
Maxwell's silver equations
Black Hole entropy
Informational entropy
I suggested the following:
G_ab = 8 Pi G T_ab (The Einstein equation)
[x,p] = i hbar I (The fundamental fact about Quantum Mechanics.)
The commutator between a simple loop and a trefoil knot with a "hand", representing Loop Quantum Gravity
and Maxwell's equations
d F = 0 (the EM 4-tensor is divergence free)
d *F = *j (the curl of its dual is the dual of the 4-current co-vector).
9 March update: Joe put in all those suggestions!
 |
| Ashtekar variables, and you can just about discern a loop commutator. |
 | ||
| The Einstein Equation (Gravitation, or the E=mc^2 of General Relativity) |
29JanPostOaklandMoveInDayLunch
Before leaving for the trip I had to make arrangements to get the food delivered to OccupyHungerOakland. I took the food with me to Zeth's place on Friday night, stored it in his fridge and handed it over to Melanie. The arrangement was that Melanie would contact Marie, who'd been delegated by Leila of OccupyHungerOakland, and the two of them would work out how and where to heat the food and transfer it to wherever it was required.
As you know, OccupyOakland's MoveInDay turned disastrously violent, which is so anti-American that I feel like bombing Iran just for the heck of it. More on this later. On Saturday night we heard from Melanie the bad news, and that she had not been contacted. She thought our contacts were probably hospitalised themselves, in prison, or taking care of all the wounded and tear-gassed, smoke-bombed people.
On Sunday morning though, Marie and Melanie did get together and heat up all the food and took it out to Oscar Grant Plaza. It was a good thing I had delivered the food, and that it was such huge quantities because that was the only food there for lunch!
 |
| Leila (serving) and Marie (behind the water jug) on the day after the Oakland Police terrorised the populace and lost control of themselves. Send OPF to where they are needed - to take on the Israeli Defense Forces and protect the Palestinians. |
 |
| Scenes of the people at the kitchen. |
Sunday, March 4, 2012
MoonVenusConjunction
 |
| Susan Arastradero's photo of a Moon-Venus conjunction. |
Q0. If there is no reflection of the photograph, and assuming the photo is taken in the northern heimsphere, can you tell whether it is at sunrise or sunset?
Answer: First determine the ecliptic, this is the plane containing the observer and the "arrow" defined by the Moon's "bow". IN the northern hemisphere, the zenith of the ecliptic is in the south, so S is to your right, North to your left and hence you are facing East and it is sunrise. Susan had mentioned to me that she had not traveled outside CA to anywhere but Arizona and Cuba, which are all in the northern hemisphere. Then she mentions in her e-mail that she had just enough time to take the picture before the sky became too light.
Here is another puzzle, based on an excerpt from her e-mail: "At first I thought the shape of Venus was blurred 'till a friend pointed out that it was earth's shadow."
Q1. What do you discern of Venus' shape?
Answer: A crescent.
Q2. Why is it impossible that the crescent is defined by earth's shadow?
Answer: I'll leave that to you.
Q3. What is the cause of the crescent shape of Venus?
Answer: That is the part of Venus that is lit by the Sun! The gedankenarrow in the bow formed by Venus' crescent points towards the Sun, as does the crescent Moon.
Q4. Is Venus on the near or the far side of the Sun?
Answer: The near side. If it were at the points on its orbit tangent to us, i.e. the Sun and Venus were to be equidistant to us, we would see Venus exactly half lit. If it were at points further, and hence on the other side, we would see more of its face lit (in extremis in opposition to us or in far conjunction with the Sun we would see the Full Venus) and hence a gibbous Venus. Since we see a crescent Venus, we know it is on the near side, since we see less than half of its face lit by the Sun (again, in extremis, when Venus is in near conjunction with the Sun we see a "dark" or New Venus).
OccupyCrucifix
 |
| Crucifix for Green Christ |
 |
| Fleeing Scottish terrier |
 |
| Abstract, with face and shark |
 |
| The Keeler needles, near mt Whitney in the High Sierra. |
 |
| Abstract shape near Yosemite granite wall. |
ArastraderoWaterCressSalad
 |
| Wild watercress |
 |
| Elsa and Maya helped me gather the cress for a salad |
 |
| Triple washed (very little detergent, gentle cycle, short spin). |
Why is this on my "political" blog? Because of gleaned and foraged ingredients.
Thursday, March 1, 2012
TurgenevReview
Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Gogol and "The Art of Kissing" were recommended to me at Leigh's Favorite Books, as was "Hugo Cabret".
Turgenev's 4th period seems to me to be characterized by lengthy passages describing the physical landscape and the "externality" of his characters. The two stories I've read from this period are "The Singers" and "Bezhin Meadow", representing the end of this period of his work. Both have lengthy descriptions of the physical landscape and observations of nature, and I'll comment on this aspect with excerpts from "Bezhin".
In both these stories Turgenev writes lengthy descriptions of all the characters, minor and major. In fact, it is difficult to identify the major characters based on the length of the description (In "Singers", the innkeeper, Booby, Blinker, the wild gentleman, the Turk and the contractor all get equal descriptive time, in Bezhin, there are no main characters.), they become major only due to the percentage of the narrative that develops with them or that they drive. The character descriptions while quite detailed, are mostly "as they are right now", with very little back story or development. So one does not understand how the characters came to be the way they are, nor what motivates them to act the way they do.
This is in compete contrast to the rest of the stories in "First Love and other tales": Mumu, Assya, First Love, Clara Milich. (I am leaving out "Living Relics" as it seems to me to belong stylistically with "Singers" and "Bezhin".) In these latter, and later stories, Turgenev has fewer characters, spends a lot of time with his principal characters, and gives us their development: not just what they are now, but how they came to be that way, why they react, act or behave the way they do in his stories, going back in many cases to their childhoods and formative incidents in their lives.
Turgenev's approach to his characters in his 4th period may initially strike one as lazy. However, there is I think a higher principle at work, that of Truth. He, as the narrator, meets people for only a few hours, in situations that are mostly unusual and unfamiliar to the narrator, in which he also meets a lot of other people. He cannot honestly know which people will play narratively important roles in the future and become characters. He cannot "interview" the characters for their back story without dishonestly exploiting the situation in which he is casually meeting them for the first, and possibly last time. He can only listen when they tell him fragmented bits of their past that they deem important or worth sharing. He has to allow the conversation to flow, the lived events to transpire, tell them about himself, and himself be an actor in the situation.
Furthermore, he cannot honestly invent a fanciful, explanatory backstory for them. The rest of the backstory he could have made up made up is unknowable to him and would be the equivalent of untestable hypotheses. As a natural philosopher, as a scientist and observer of nature, Turgenev gives us what he sees, that which he can reasonably deduce and defend, and little more.
In the end, Turgenev doesn't develop his characters for his readers, but he remains honest to the people he meets, who after all do not see themselves as characters in a Turgenev story. Yes, I am in total sympathy with this Turgenev the writer, and for obvious reasons.
Observations of Nature by Turgenev
Turgenev's 4th period seems to me to be characterized by lengthy passages describing the physical landscape and the "externality" of his characters. The two stories I've read from this period are "The Singers" and "Bezhin Meadow", representing the end of this period of his work. Both have lengthy descriptions of the physical landscape and observations of nature, and I'll comment on this aspect with excerpts from "Bezhin".
In both these stories Turgenev writes lengthy descriptions of all the characters, minor and major. In fact, it is difficult to identify the major characters based on the length of the description (In "Singers", the innkeeper, Booby, Blinker, the wild gentleman, the Turk and the contractor all get equal descriptive time, in Bezhin, there are no main characters.), they become major only due to the percentage of the narrative that develops with them or that they drive. The character descriptions while quite detailed, are mostly "as they are right now", with very little back story or development. So one does not understand how the characters came to be the way they are, nor what motivates them to act the way they do.
This is in compete contrast to the rest of the stories in "First Love and other tales": Mumu, Assya, First Love, Clara Milich. (I am leaving out "Living Relics" as it seems to me to belong stylistically with "Singers" and "Bezhin".) In these latter, and later stories, Turgenev has fewer characters, spends a lot of time with his principal characters, and gives us their development: not just what they are now, but how they came to be that way, why they react, act or behave the way they do in his stories, going back in many cases to their childhoods and formative incidents in their lives.
Turgenev's approach to his characters in his 4th period may initially strike one as lazy. However, there is I think a higher principle at work, that of Truth. He, as the narrator, meets people for only a few hours, in situations that are mostly unusual and unfamiliar to the narrator, in which he also meets a lot of other people. He cannot honestly know which people will play narratively important roles in the future and become characters. He cannot "interview" the characters for their back story without dishonestly exploiting the situation in which he is casually meeting them for the first, and possibly last time. He can only listen when they tell him fragmented bits of their past that they deem important or worth sharing. He has to allow the conversation to flow, the lived events to transpire, tell them about himself, and himself be an actor in the situation.
Furthermore, he cannot honestly invent a fanciful, explanatory backstory for them. The rest of the backstory he could have made up made up is unknowable to him and would be the equivalent of untestable hypotheses. As a natural philosopher, as a scientist and observer of nature, Turgenev gives us what he sees, that which he can reasonably deduce and defend, and little more.
In the end, Turgenev doesn't develop his characters for his readers, but he remains honest to the people he meets, who after all do not see themselves as characters in a Turgenev story. Yes, I am in total sympathy with this Turgenev the writer, and for obvious reasons.
Observations of Nature by Turgenev
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
