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Russell Arben Fox has gone a tad overboard with his Harry Potter predictions. Go tell him what you think. (I'm too tired today. I spent all day writing a veerrrry complicated - and boring! - exam for my first year students. But no one ever said exams would be fun.)
In other übernerd news, I see that amazon has Doctor Who - the Key to Time
Do you remember? It was one of the Douglas Adams-scripted episodes.
I made this today for our Halloween party; you all have to run out and make it RIGHT NOW!!1!11! Really, it's wicked good.
2 c sugar
1 c light corn syrup
1 c water
1/2 t salt
2 c raw, hulled pumpkin seeds, aka pepitas (or you could use seeds from a pumpkin you carved if they were washed well and toasted slightly so they were quite dry. In that case I'd add them when the sugar syrup hit 250.)
2 t baking soda (smoosh out the lumps)
3 T unsalted butter
1. Heavily butter a 15 1/2 x 10 1/2 x 1 pan (i.e., a regular rectangular cookie sheet, but with sides) and also an offset spatula (or use a regular one.) measure out the butter and the soda into little dishes and put them, along with the pan and spatula, next to the stove. Go on, it'll make you feel like a TV chef.
2. Stir sugar, corn syrup and water in a heavy-bottomed saucepan with a candy thermometer, over medium heat (err towards the high side) until sugar dissolves. Add salt and cook to 260 (it will take a while to get there, but you don't really need to stir it at this point. Just every now and again.)
3. When the mixture hits 260, add the pumpkin seeds and start stirring. Keep stirring until you reach 290 (hard crack stage.) The temperature will fall but will rebound pretty quickly. Some of the seeds will pop, and they and the syrup will get amber-colored.
4. Turn off the heat when it reaches 290, and add the baking soda and butter. Stir furiously while the mixture foams up (only a few seconds.) Quickly pour it into the prepared pan and smooth it out with the spatula. Let cool completely and break into pieces.Save the dust to put on ice cream (precious, sparkly dust.) Put in an airtight container. This would probably keep for a while, but you ain't never going to find out.
If you've never made candy before, words like "hard crack stage" are scary. Candy is not, actually, all that hard to make, though it's easier to do so in a dry place. It has a chemistry-set aspect to it: as long as you follow the rules precisely, and manage not to burn yourself, it will turn out as advertised. (The burn-yourself danger is greatest with caramel; when you add the cream to the sugar syrup it goes nuts. Other types of candies, not so much, but your kids can't help you.) You do need an accurate candy thermometer, which you should periodically test by putting it in boiling water and making sure it registers 212. My mom gave me a nice one a few years ago, with silicon grips. Make sure the thermometer isn't touching the bottom of the pan, as it will give a false reading. in general, it takes longer to cook than you think, although for the most part you're not actually doing anything. There's a bit of waiting around as you stare at the thermometer--is it ever going to go up?! It is, and will heat more quickly at the higher temperatures (I can't think why.) Make this candy! Make this candy nooooooowwww!!! /Giblets, PBUH.
All the kids in the housing complex went trick or treating tonight. (This Halloween thing has been catching on in Singapore last couple years.) Zoë is looking unusually 80's-video cool in her bat costume (click for larger image):
Mei Mei looks pretty good, too. (Here they look like a couple of nuns.)
In other curious costume news, we got them a pair of almost matching, hand-stitched "Tintin au Vietnam" T-shirts while we were in Hanoi
About our trip to Vietnam.
1. God, I hope in 30 years John and I will be going on a nice trip to Iraq to stay in a fancy hotel and wander around looking at historical buildings.
2. While listening to vietnamese hip-hop in the car from the airport, and comparing it to the filipino hip-hop I heard earlier this year, it occurred to me that for a group of people who have created all this world-spanning triumph of popular music, black people in America ought to be a lot richer.
Here are some of my photos (and a drawing) of Hanoi. I didn't really take as many pictures as I meant to, and in general I didn't really do as much stuff as I wanted to, since I didn't feel all that great. But the enforced relaxation made for a nice time. There was a fabulous bathtub in the hotel, something I don't have here in Singapore. I'm already missing the flaky, buttery croissants, and the tasty north vietnamese honey.
We haven't been blogging because we're in Vietnam. That doesn't actually preclude blogging, of course, but makes it less likely. In my brother's immortal words: "sometimes I just don't care about what somebody said on the internet." We have been having a great time, although I keep looking around thinking I've lost my two-year-old. "OMG! She was right! Here! Oh, wait." It was somewhat disappointing to find that Hanoi is hazy as well, but it poured rain tonight just at sunset and the air is clear now. We ate a delectable paté sandwich today, with liver mousse and slices of head-cheese-like stuff, as well as cliantro and other herbs, on a crackling hot baguette. There's also lots of great passion-fruit around; I only ever see them in Singapore at the expensive supermarket costing approximately their weight in platinum. I should ask Loon, maybe I can special order them. They're so tasty. We had some great ice-cream next to Hoan Kiem lake. We also saw the water-puppets, which were cool (thanks dsquared!), although I think they dumbed down the stories to mere vignettes because they wouldn't be comprehensible otherwise without super-titles or some such. (Great overheard quote from the 50-ish American guy behind us, in a complaining tone: "I can't understand the worrrds!" Dude, you don't speak fricking vietnamese.) We walked through a wet market in the old quarter earlier and in addition to the usual live eels, bound flower crabs and gory fish heads they had...live worms? Graded into different sizes, all wiggling with their brethren in various square compartments? What was up with that? Somehow I don't think anyone was planning to go fishing, but who the hell eats live worms? I accept that the answer to this question is likely "vietnamese people."
So it looks like this issue of Avengers might be pretty good (thanks, Jacob!)
And Tim Burke actually hauled off and sent me an actual MODOK action figure. (thanks, Tim!)
Here are pictures of the girls admiring it. Mei-Mei instantly declared it to be her wobot. 'Mei-Mei's wobot is vewy wonderful. Mei-Mei's wobot is vewy amazing."
Zoë likes it, too. 
Zoë proceeded to make a fine drawing. "MODOK goes for a walk". (Click for larger image.)
The whole cult MODOK thing started way back in 2003 or so when I snapped this pic of Zoë apparently trying to squeeze her head into rather a small space:
I was talking to a Singaporean friend today and she said the haze might persist until--February?! That seems impossible. Even if we're saying it's going to hang around until the proper monsoon starts, surely that would be January at the latest. Zoë hasn't been able to play outside for recess in days. We made the weary round of doctor's today to get more asthma medicine and romilar for everyone. Kee-rap, is what I say to this. It's actually a bit better today, the index or whatever is down to 60 (it was 150 the other day.) I don't want to have to go for the SARS-effect surgical masks. This is Singapore, man, not Mexico City! It seems a bit unfair, since Singapore itself has great emission controls and almost no cars on the road more than 10 years old, but even Harvard-educated technocratic mandarins can't control the weather. I let Violet play at the playground for 40 minutes, though. Feast yo eyes on the cuteness: (pix under the fold.)
Chris Sims always brings the professional-quality funny to the task of comics-blogging. Now he's decided to take us back to a bold era in X-Men history: the early nineties. Many chances to remember why you hate Cyclops so much, plus Sims offers us an indelibly accurate (if mildly unsafe for a family blog) description of everyone's favorite telepathic ninja assassin: "Psylocke leaps vagina-first into the fray!" Um, I know, but just go look at the picture. It's funny, because it's true!
From the department of inappropriately used slang, used - oddly - appropriately - this panel from Osamu Tezuka's Kapilavastu (Buddha vol. 1)
That Astro Boy-lookin' young feller there with the central casting Disney animals loitering about him is Tatta, a pariah. Volume 1 ends with the birth of Siddhartha and Tatta stalking into the wilderness, swearing terrible vengeance. "You've killed my family and all my friends already! But I ain't gonna go down so easy, not me!" And then, when an angle presents itself with regard to the pursuing soldiery: "check out my pariah piss, you bastards!"
Well, anyway. I wasn't sure whether I was really going to enjoy Buddha. I'm not really such a manga fan. (Some folks will complain it's been mirrored for left-right reading, with all that entails. What do I care? I'm left-handed myself. More power to my left-handed peeps!) But it's out in a lovely edition, and everyone has been saying and saying it's great. And Osamu Tezuka is a little bit famous, I should say. (I mean: no one complains that your characters look like Astro Boy when, like, you invented Astro Boy.) And I really really enjoyed it, and it's really really great, and I am now going to read the next 7 volumes or however many there are.
I bet you want to read dsquared raising hell on critics of the Lancet study and their sudden expertise in epidemiological research, don't you? Yes, you do. Embarassing to see Blair and Straw just denying the results on zero factual basis, but Tony "Yo" Blair's been having an embarrassing few years here. Someone really needs to ask these people if they're up in arms about falsely high reports of death in Congo or Darfur.
So, I found a blog all about Hanoi food, called Stickyrice. The Noodlepie guy (he has/had a great blog about Saigon street food but he's moved, I think to France) also wrote a guide to Hanoi street food although it's a few years old now; you can download it as a pdf here. Sampled wisdom:
Lau De Quan
87 Lang HaGood place for a winter Lau De (Goat soup) also, does a mean grilled Goat. And for the adventurous the Marinated Goat's Udder is quite pleasant. This place gets really niosy and packed around 6 or 7 pm. A great place to introduce your friends to the 'real Vietnamese' dining experience. And if you need warming up then you should really imbibe a shot of Goat's bollocks whiskey, sure to put a fire in your belly.
Lau De Loc Tho I
27 Lang HaMuch the same as the one above and just a little further up the road. A little smaller and lacking in all-important atmosphere, but still an interesting dining experience. This place is otherwise known as 'The bear on all fours with its tongue hanging out in a huge tank of alcohol restaurant'. One of only two spotted in the city so far. It must be said that their ruou ho chua is particularly rank, but then what do you expect if you put a dead cat-like creature and a snake in a bottle of rice wine and leave it to soak?
What indeed? One nice thing about being a woman in SE Asia is that people don't press you to drink repulsive tonics to increase your manhood. I saw my ex get badgered into a lot of cobra whiskey in rural Vietnam. With! Real! Venom! Tastes like burning, apparently.
So, wait, is Bush actually going to screw over all his right-wing supporters by not enacting this 700-mile fence thing? Mickey Kaus is convinced he's will, but Captain Ed has been assured he's going to sign, and since Kaus is always wrong about everything and...what now? Anyway, here's today's Post:
There also are questions of whether the fence will be more of a symbol to be used in elections than a reality along the border. For one thing, shortly before Congress adjourned, the House and Senate gave the Bush administration leeway to distribute the money allocated for the fence to other projects, including roads, technology and other infrastructure items to support the Department of Homeland Security's preferred option of building a "virtual fence."
The Post quotes someone who really needs to work on his anti-anti-immigrant spiel a little more:
"This is the feel-good approach to immigration control," said Wayne Cornelius, an expert on immigration issues at the University of California at San Diego. "The only pain is experienced by the migrants themselves. It doesn't hurt U.S. consumers; it doesn't hurt U.S. businesses. It only hurts taxpayers if they pay attention to spending on border enforcement."
Um, I'm actually fairly open to immigration, but Cornelius just made this sound pretty win-win from the US point of view, no? (/Kaus)
You know what? Bleg is like the worst word ever, except for vlog, which is even worse. Nonetheless, John and I have decided to go to Hanoi for a long weekend this month, and I wanted to solicit our well-travelled readers for suggestions as to what to do. I was considering going to Halong bay for one night around on a boat, but maybe it would be more relaxing to just potter around in Hanoi? I haven't been in ages, so please tell us fun stuff to do. I really want to eat this one street food where they heat a cast-iron plate in the image of a cow and then cook strips of marinated beef, green onions and a fried egg on it. Mmmmm. And pho, obviously. And sketchypaté (tm) sandwiches. And basically everything, because Vietnamese food is the greatest. Ben Wolfson, please feel free to chime in in comments on how to put the right diacritical mark on the o in pho. Command shift tasty!
Zoë is working on her new Supersky Heroes comic. First, she decided to give herself a Caldecott medal. She's seen it on a few of her books and decided she was deserving.
I'm sure that Randolph Caldecott would be honored at the resemblance.
The yearly illegal burnoff of rainforest in Indonesia and (to a lesser extent) Malaysia has sent its sickly cloud of smoke over to Singapore. This is the worst I've ever seen it; everything, everywhere smells like the fireplace when you come downstairs in the early morning in wintertime and there are still-warm ashes fluttering around. A photo of haziness isn't really that impressive, but when you look out your windows and just can't see at all buildings which aren't very far away--it's weird. My contacts feel like bits of spicy Dorito, and MeiMei and I can't breathe. Blurg, I wish it would rain. I expect Holmes to pull up in a brougham. It's a real pea-souper, if the pea soup had lots of ham in it. Smoky smoky ham.
Ships off the coast of Singapore.
I'm reading "The Avengers" and the trouble with the Avengers is - it's boring. They have too many meetings, trying out new members and stuff. (It's like they think they're the Legion of Super Heroes.) Anyway, I had an idea.
Iron Man, always updating to the latest version of Word Press. Hulk triple-posting. HULK BLOG! The Vision turns out to be a libertarian and posts Rush lyrics every Sunday. Thor is vexed by trolls and starts sock-puppeting (but everyone knows it's him because there are dots in the middle of the O's.)
And the Delurker is this Watcher-like character who shows up to help them out.
Anyway, that's always been the great battle-cry in comics history: "Well fight together, or separately if need be!"
Jacob Levy told me about this thing (which he got from Leiter). I got a good one, first time out. This is one of my favorite Nietzsche aphorisms, actually. It's quite perfectly framed now.
Wow, Will Saletan has noticed that people who claim to want to reduce the incidence of abortions are unwilling to take real steps to do so, since real steps would involve broadening access to birth control! OMG no way! I guess it'll probably take a few more years before he sees that there might be this thread running through these desires to increase the negative consequences for women having sex, a thread like...teh sexism! Because it's almost as if these pro-lifers care more about controlling women's sexuality than they do about wombabies. Almost. Ha, just kidding, he'll never notice that in a million, million years, because he's too busy giving concern-troll advice to abortion-rights supporters that if they will just admit that abortion is a bad, evil thing that we should all deplore, then magically we'll be able to come to a consensus with the anti-abortion crew. Since they're interested in empirical evidence on the best ways to reduce the number of abortions in the country, even if the best methods involve promoting women's sexual autonomy. Right? Oh noes, what is this?
Less contraception, less sex, more women choosing life. So, the abortion rate among these women went down, right?
Wrong. It went up. The decline in contraception overwhelmed the decline in sexual activity, resulting in a higher rate of unintended pregnancy. And the increase in unintended pregnancy overwhelmed the increase in women choosing life, resulting in more abortions. From a pro-life standpoint, trading contraception for abstinence and a "culture of life" was a net loss.
That's why Ryan insists on birth control. He's tired of pious slogans and symbolic bills crafted to save more congressional seats than babies. He's had enough of the debate between life and choice. He wants a new abortion debate. "You're either for reducing the number, or you're not," he says. He's made his decision. Now make yours.
I made mine a long time ago, dickweed. I'm a feminist. Look into it some time.
A Nice Johnny Apple article about high-end restaurants in Singapore. I think I've only tried one of these, Jade at the Fullerton hotel, which is excellent. Inventive Chinese food that is served in a western, plated style, in small servings, so that you can try lots of different things even if there are only two of you--though, of course, they do have several banquet rooms. You see the waiters rushing in to the banquet rooms with roast suckling pigs and what not. The last time John and I went to a super-expensive Japanese restaurant I felt that it was very good but not worth the $. I want someone to rock my world with the kaseiki; it sounds like I need to finagle a dinner invite to the Japanese Club.
From Woodward's new book, in which all and sundry try to make themselves look good and distance themselves from the now-floundering Bush administration:
A powerful, largely invisible influence on Bush's Iraq policy was former secretary of state Kissinger.
"Of the outside people that I talk to in this job," Vice President Cheney told me in the summer of 2005, "I probably talk to Henry Kissinger more than I talk to anybody else. He just comes by and, I guess at least once a month, Scooter [his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby] and I sit down with him."
The president also met privately with Kissinger every couple of months, making him the most regular and frequent outside adviser to Bush on foreign affairs.
Kissinger sensed wobbliness everywhere on Iraq, and he increasingly saw it through the prism of the Vietnam War. For Kissinger, the overriding lesson of Vietnam is to stick it out.
In his writing, speeches and private comments, Kissinger claimed that the United States had essentially won the war in 1972, only to lose it because of the weakened resolve of the public and Congress.
I keep thinking I can't be shocked or dismayed any more, but I keep being wrong. Perhaps someone will ask Hitchens about this. Who the f$%k gets up in the morning and says, "I feel like getting some counter-insurgency advice from Henry Kissinger"? Do you think he prayed with Bush? So many memories.
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