Science, Technology, Medicine and Stuff ...

On the desk

The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman

On the turntable

Etta James

On the airwaves

Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me!

The Torch, Be Yours To Hold It High

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch, be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields

- John McCrae
posted at 3:14 PM

Thrill of the Grill

David Brooks, writing in the Weekly Standard, examines "Patio Man and the Sprawl People: America's newest suburbs".

" I don't know if you've ever noticed the expression of a man who is about to buy a first-class barbecue grill. He walks into a Home Depot or Lowe's or one of the other mega hardware complexes and his eyes are glistening with a faraway visionary zeal, like one of those old prophets gazing into the promised land. His lips are parted and twitching slightly. Inside the megastore, the grills are just past the racks of affordable- house plan books, in the yard-machinery section. They are arrayed magnificently next to the vehicles that used to be known as rider mowers but are now known as lawn tractors, because to call them rider mowers doesn't really convey the steroid-enhanced M-1 tank power of the things.

The man approaches the barbecue grills and his face bears a trance-like expression, suggesting that he has cast aside all the pains and imperfections of this world and is approaching the gateway to a higher dimension. In front of him are a number of massive steel-coated reactors with names like Broilmaster P3, The Thermidor, and the Weber Genesis, because in America it seems perfectly normal to name a backyard barbecue grill after a book of the Bible."

What to do once the grill has been purchased? Steven Raichlen's "The Barbecue! Bible" (yes, there is an exclamation point there, and no, I don't know why) is one of my favorite cookbooks, and is the authoratative source for recipes for grilled food.
posted at 11:55 AM

Pax

Truth remains stranger than fiction: "Monks fight on roof of holiest place"

"Eleven monks were treated in hospital after a fight broke out for control of the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem ... The fracas involved monks from the Ethiopian Orthodox church and the Coptic church of Egypt, who have been vying for control of the rooftop for centuries ... The fight erupted over the position of a chair used by an Egyptian monk near the entrance to the roof ... On a hot day, the Egyptian monk decided to move his chair out of the sun. This was seen by the Ethiopians as violating the "status quo" in the church, set out in a 1757 document which defines the ownership of every chapel, lamp and flagstone."
posted at 3:27 PM

The Customer is Always Wrong

The powers behind "major" league baseball just don't get it. Now, they have forced a college student to close down his wildly popular New York Mets fan-site Mets Online. Don't even get me started on the subject of this years All-Star "game".

While Bud Selig fiddles, and the "Major" Leagues burn, minor league baseball is enjoying unprecedented popularity.

"As Major League Baseball grapples with economic problems, a deteriorating image and a possible players' strike, minor league baseball is a phenomenon of fun where a family of four can attend a game for less than $40, food, drinks and parking included, and the children will probably come away with a player's autograph, too.

'People never gave up on a night at the ballpark; they were just starving to feel the connection," said Dave Echols, general manager of the Brockton franchise. "We give them a game they can almost touch, and a good time, too.'"
posted at 5:15 PM

Outside the Box

Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the New Yorker, explores the role of the "best" and "brightest" in the growing wave of business failures. In "The Talent Myth", he asks: "are smart people overrated?"

"The management of Enron, in other words, did exactly what the consultants at McKinsey said that companies ought to do in order to succeed in the modern economy. It hired and rewarded the very best and the very brightest—and it is now in bankruptcy. The reasons for its collapse are complex, needless to say. But what if Enron failed not in spite of its talent mind-set but because of it? What if smart people are overrated?

...

They were there looking for people who had the talent to think outside the box. It never occurred to them that, if everyone had to think outside the box, maybe it was the box that needed fixing."
posted at 9:31 AM

Robber Barons

Corporate Scandal Trading Cards via Slate. Collect them all!
posted at 1:21 PM

You Wine Some, You Lose Some

"Cork Screwed", in Time Out New York, describes some of the tricks restaurants use to deceive customers ordering wine with dinner:

"As a certified sommelier, I'm comfortable tooling around a wine list and deciphering labels, so I spent the month of May conducting a simple investigation: I dined in 20 restaurants—small and large, simple and fancy, in Manhattan and the outer boroughs—and ordered what I considered to be the best-value wine to see if the bottle on the list matched the one delivered to my table. What I discovered is that wine service shenanigans are about as common as tuna tartare, especially at the cheaper end of the list, where most customers happily reside. Of the 20 restaurants, five served me the wrong bottle of wine, a less valuable one in every case. Extrapolated—assuming each was a deliberate switch—this would be a staggering case of collective fraud."
posted at 11:01 AM