Halfway down the Danube

The random page test

Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, page 172:

The Filipino-style Chinese donut, or shtekeleh, is the great contribution of the District of Sitka to the food lovers of the world. In its present form, it cannot be found in the Philippines. No Chinese trencherman would recognize it as the fruit of his native fry kettles. Like the storm god Yahweh of Sumeria, the shtekeleh was not invented by the Jews, but the world would sport neither God nor the shtekeleh without Jews and their desires. A panatela of fried dough not quite sweet, not quite salty, rolled in sugar, crisp-skinned, tender inside, and honeycombed with air pockets. You sink it in your paper cup of milky tea and close your eyes, and for ten fat seconds, you seem to glimpse the possibility of finer things.

Encouraging

  Not that I think anything will come off it (I'm a cynic) but I was very heartened to read this story, and very impressed by the eloquence of those kids in front of TV cameras.  Guts, smarts, and heart -- a good combination.  There's hope.

Welcome!

   Welcome to our new site!  It's basically the same old thing, but better - it's faster, so we're happier, and maybe we'll even post more!  Who knows!

Importing four years worth of blogging is no small feat... So it will be a while before we've moved everything over here.   In the meantime you can still read the archives over at the old Halfway House (hah, I'm funny!).   As soon as we've finished a few administrative things, we can also sort the posts by author - this will also take a bit of time.

So.  Welcome.  We're glad you came.

Movable Type Blog Request

Are there any MT utilities which will allow a non-primary MT user to extract their posts and comment threads and save them to one's hard disk? I've been doing it by hand, and it is the most mind-numbing tedious unpaid task I've performed in some time. Any help would be vastly appreciated.

Update: Another 500 Internal Server Error from posting this. I get those about 80% of the time now. It's kind of creeping me out.

Movable Type Blog Request

Are there any MT utilities which will allow a non-primary MT user to extract their posts and comment threads and save them to one's hard disk? I've been doing it by hand, and it is the most mind-numbing tedious unpaid task I've performed in some time. Any help would be vastly appreciated. Update: Another 500 Internal Server Error from posting this. I get those about 80% of the time now. It's kind of creeping me out.

Loving at 40'

  This week marks the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. For non-Americans -- and, I don't know, Americans under thirty? -- Loving was the case in which the US Supreme Court decided that individual states could not prohibit interracial marriages. Mildred Loving is still alive, and made a statement:

Loving at 40

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia. For non-Americans -- and, I don't know, Americans under thirty? -- Loving was the case in which the US Supreme Court decided that individual states could not prohibit interracial marriages. Mildred Loving is still alive, and made a statement:

The Outcast Book Club

Picture five people voted off a reality TV show. That's pretty much my book club. Three women, two men. We take over a random New York City restaurant and drive out the other patrons with our conversation. (Okay, that probably wasn't Scarlett Johansson eating by herself and giving me the eye and fleeing after eavesdropping. No, who am I kidding. Of course it was.)

First book was Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight. ("Daniel Handler" is Lemony Snicket's pseudonym.) A cross between Nabokov and I Know What You Did Last Summer, You Killed Mr. Griffin!. There are brilliant High Modernist books for young people. This isn't one of them.

Second book was Julia Glass's Three Junes. This won the National Book Award? It's Mary Sue fanfic about the AIDS crisis in New York. Much of it has a supposedly Scottish narrator. I'm no expert on Britistani diction, but I know that wasn't it. Actually, that holds true for the American characters too. I won't even describe ze Frenchwoman. Every single detail I could independently verify was wrong.

Third book was Alison Bechdel's memoir in graphic novel form, Fun Home. That's short for "funeral home".

The Outcast Book Club

Picture five people voted off a reality TV show. That's pretty much my book club. Three women, two men. We take over a random New York City restaurant and drive out the other patrons with our conversation. (Okay, that probably wasn't Scarlett Johansson eating by herself and giving me the eye and fleeing after eavesdropping. No, who am I kidding. Of course it was.) First book was Daniel Handler's The Basic Eight. ("Daniel Handler" is Lemony Snicket's pseudonym.) A cross between Nabokov and I Know What You Did Last Summer, You Killed Mr. Griffin!. There are brilliant High Modernist books for young people. This isn't one of them. Second book was Julia Glass's Three Junes. This won the National Book Award? It's Mary Sue fanfic about the AIDS crisis in New York. Much of it has a supposedly Scottish narrator. I'm no expert on Britistani diction, but I know that wasn't it. Actually, that holds true for the American characters too. I won't even describe ze Frenchwoman. Every single detail I could independently verify was wrong. Third book was Alison Bechdel's memoir in graphic novel form, Fun Home. That's short for "funeral home".

Rosy Starlings

Single parent for the next few days.

Jacob, our youngest, has been sickish for some weeks. So he's gone to Germany with Claudia. We're not sure what's up with him, but we're having it looked at.

I have a couple of posts yet in mind about Jordan, but they're a bit depressing. So let's talk about birds.

Rosy Starlings

Single parent for the next few days. Jacob, our youngest, has been sickish for some weeks. So he's gone to Germany with Claudia. We're not sure what's up with him, but we're having it looked at. I have a couple of posts yet in mind about Jordan, but they're a bit depressing. So let's talk about birds.

Everyone is spawning, everyone is blogging

Wow, my old neighbor Nicki is baby blogging for the Houston Chronicle! She and her husband Andrew are getting rid of their bitchin' cars for their one-year-old, Peanut. Greater love have no parents. Also, if anyone can invent the no-calorie double-strength margarita for moms, it will be Nicki.

This book has a release date of October 30, 2007.

They do have bocce at Union Hall, and the best part is, the indoor bocce courts are presided by two portraits of Shriners. They also serve something called "Floyd's KY Beercheese". I'm down with the beer and the cheese, but I'm worried about that third ingredient.

Everyone is spawning, everyone is blogging

Wow, my old neighbor Nicki is baby blogging for the Houston Chronicle! She and her husband Andrew are getting rid of their bitchin' cars for their one-year-old, Peanut. Greater love have no parents. Also, if anyone can invent the no-calorie double-strength margarita for moms, it will be Nicki. This book has a release date of October 30, 2007. They do have bocce at Union Hall, and the best part is, the indoor bocce courts are presided by two portraits of Shriners. They also serve something called "Floyd's KY Beercheese". I'm down with the beer and the cheese, but I'm worried about that third ingredient.

Gumbo!

Had a refrigerator filled with dubious items: wilted celery, some senescent chicken thighs, half a pound of summer sausage (Klement's) left over from my birthday, a cup and a half of organic chicken broth in a carton.

First, I made a roux. Melted a third a stick of butter in a pan, added about the same amount of flour. Browned it until it looked like cafe au lait, and then a little darker. The bubbles as it browned looked like camera flashes in a stadium, quick little pulses. Turned off the burner, stirred in some paprika that was going stale, until it became the color known to early Crayola users as "Indian red".

I chopped up two small-mediumish onions, added them to the roux, stirred it until the onion bits were all coated, covered the pan and let them sweat. Did the same for the wilting celery.

In a different pan, I browned up the chicken thighs, cut into small pieces, then sauteed them with two diced peppers. Added the chicken broth, just covering the mixture. When that began to boil down, I added some tomato juice. The summer sausage, cut into pie slices, went in there as well.

Gumbo!

Had a refrigerator filled with dubious items: wilted celery, some senescent chicken thighs, half a pound of summer sausage (Klement's) left over from my birthday, a cup and a half of organic chicken broth in a carton. First, I made a roux. Melted a third a stick of butter in a pan, added about the same amount of flour. Browned it until it looked like cafe au lait, and then a little darker. The bubbles as it browned looked like camera flashes in a stadium, quick little pulses. Turned off the burner, stirred in some paprika that was going stale, until it became the color known to early Crayola users as "Indian red". I chopped up two small-mediumish onions, added them to the roux, stirred it until the onion bits were all coated, covered the pan and let them sweat. Did the same for the wilting celery. In a different pan, I browned up the chicken thighs, cut into small pieces, then sauteed them with two diced peppers. Added the chicken broth, just covering the mixture. When that began to boil down, I added some tomato juice. The summer sausage, cut into pie slices, went in there as well.

Crusaders

So after Jerash we went to Ajloun.

Ajloun is a Crusader castle, except not built by Crusaders. It was built by Saladin as a counter to the Crusaders. It let him control the upper Jordan valley and keep an overland route from Egypt up to Damascus.

If you walk around the castle, you can sort of see that it's an Arab copy of a standard medieval European castle. Oh, it's got all the standard castle stuff -- moat, gatehouse, arrowslits, murder holes for pouring boiling oil. But the proportions are subtly off. The stonework doesn't seem quite as fine. It's a knockoff.

Crusaders

So after Jerash we went to Ajloun. Ajloun is a Crusader castle, except not built by Crusaders. It was built by Saladin as a counter to the Crusaders. It let him control the upper Jordan valley and keep an overland route from Egypt up to Damascus. If you walk around the castle, you can sort of see that it's an Arab copy of a standard medieval European castle. Oh, it's got all the standard castle stuff -- moat, gatehouse, arrowslits, murder holes for pouring boiling oil. But the proportions are subtly off. The stonework doesn't seem quite as fine. It's a knockoff.

Jerash

Did the tourist thing a little this weekend: went to Jerash.

Jerash was once Gerasa, a minor Roman city. It survived into Byzantine and early Ummayad times, then gradually dwindled away. By the 1800s there was not even a village there.

Most Roman ruins got destroyed by people coming to find cheap stone already cut. That didn't happen to Gerasa. Part of the reason is that stone is cheap around here -- it's a whole plateau of soft limestone. Another seems to be that the region around Gerasa got largely depopulated... not sure why.

But anyway, the result was that the ruins of a good-sized Roman town survived into modern times. Gerasa isn't as well preserved as Pompeii, but it's bigger -- around 100 hectares. You could walk around it all day.

(Except that you'd die from heat stroke, of course. I scrambled over rocks and peered at columns for an hour, and I got pretty toasted.)

Some random notes.

Jerash

Did the tourist thing a little this weekend: went to Jerash. Jerash was once Gerasa, a minor Roman city. It survived into Byzantine and early Ummayad times, then gradually dwindled away. By the 1800s there was not even a village there. Most Roman ruins got destroyed by people coming to find cheap stone already cut. That didn't happen to Gerasa. Part of the reason is that stone is cheap around here -- it's a whole plateau of soft limestone. Another seems to be that the region around Gerasa got largely depopulated... not sure why. But anyway, the result was that the ruins of a good-sized Roman town survived into modern times. Gerasa isn't as well preserved as Pompeii, but it's bigger -- around 100 hectares. You could walk around it all day. (Except that you'd die from heat stroke, of course. I scrambled over rocks and peered at columns for an hour, and I got pretty toasted.) Some random notes.

The Controller of Companies

Further to the discussion of companies in Jordan.

One reason Jordan doesn't have Eastern Europe-style corporate governance problems -- with massive fraud, looting of assets, runaway management, and all that -- is because they have a Controller of Companies. That's not a typo; it's not a Comptroller, but a Controller.

The Controller of Companies

Further to the discussion of companies in Jordan. One reason Jordan doesn't have Eastern Europe-style corporate governance problems -- with massive fraud, looting of assets, runaway management, and all that -- is because they have a Controller of Companies. That's not a typo; it's not a Comptroller, but a Controller.