Truths to Hold Self-Evident

Looking today at the new administration being sworn in, and at Congressional leaders, Supreme Court justices, and several decades of former presidents and vice-presidents, I realized why this country is in the state it's in. For as long as anyone can remember, we have been led by people who, regardless of gender, age or party affiliation, lack the common sense to wear a hat when it's twenty-something degrees with a wind chill factor of 14 and you're going to be outside for an hour or two.

As our President Obama prepares to spend the next several years dealing with a depressed economy, two wars, and living with his mother-in-law, let's wish him the wisdom and strength to be successful. I really don't want to think about the alternative.

Professor Ben Rides Again

Sorry for the way-too-long between posts. The beginning of my resurrected teaching life - this time in continuing education - is coming up fast, and I'd forgotten how much time it takes to create lectures from scratch. I'm enjoying the process - it's impossible to teach without learning a bunch of things yourself - but it has kept me from writing here. Maybe if I start posting here entries about heating, cooling and plumbing system basics...

Item 1: The Captain Has Turned Off the Fasten Seatbelt Sign

The big story here, and probably in a lot of other places, has been the emergency landing of that plane on the Hudson River back on 1/15. Even my friends across the pond have probably heard about it: three or so minutes after taking off from LaGuardia for what was supposed to be a fairly short flight to North Carolina, a US Airways jet apparently had its engines nailed by a couple of geese in the area of the Bronx Zoo, thereby destroying the engines and bringing down the plane. With no real chance to make it to any other area airport without endangering populated areas below, the pilot brought it down into the Hudson River. Everyone - 150 passengers from infant to elderly, plus crew - were successfully rescued despite frigid temperatures of both the air and the water. The only significant injuries were to the geese. If you know what goes on in NYC on a typical day you can imagine how much it takes to get a bunch of seasoned New Yorkers standing at the windows with their jaws dropped. (When it comes to current events, we're hard to impress.) But at my workplace, which overlooks the river, that's exactly what happened. I guess a plane floating down the Hudson will do that. Praise whoever you're of a mind to - a lot of bullets were dodged that day.


Item 2: And Now, the End is Near...

Just about eight years ago, George W. Bush took an oath to uphold the constitution and serve the United States of America to the best of his ability. Unfortunately, that's exactly what happened.

In final tribute to the man 22% of Americans (no doubt most of them being comedians) think did a good job, Letterman did a final montage of his "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" the other night. In the hope I can get the technology to work right, I present it to you herewith. (Watching this, I had to keep reminding myself I wasn't watching Will Ferrell.) Enjoy.



Item 3: How About You Don't Get Back to us on That?

Memo to Sarah Palin: Leaders don't whine. Either figure out the real reason things didn't go your way and fix them, or stop thinking about 2012. Here's a hint to get you started: it wasn't Katie Couric's fault.



Item 4: Free and Worth Every Penny

Now that the AOL Welcome page has devolved into the National Enquirer, from where am I supposed to get news?

Item 5: Success Is Counted Sweetest...

I've had a number of inquiries about the man-vs.-waffle maker competition. The day after the crashing defeat described in the previous post, I knew I had to take this beast on again or there would be no rest. Armed with a better batter recipe (thank you, Alton Brown) and with the bitter humiliation of the previous day's experience still stinging my soul, I went the distance and emerged reasonably victorious, even having extras for freezing. (Since this is supposed to be a victory lap, we're not going to discuss what happened the following day, except to say I learned not to try to heat a frozen waffle in the microwave.)

Waffle Iron 1 Ben 0

Do you know how kids, when they're young, wake up at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning and dive headfirst downstairs to look under the tree, while mom and dad are hoping for a little more sleep first? Fast forward to a few years later, when the same kids are home from college for the holidays and, around 11:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, mom and dad are saying, "Are they ever going to wake up and come down here?"

I got a gift this year I'd really been hoping for: a waffle iron. I'd wanted it since getting used to having fresh waffles while on vacation earlier this year, when the hotel had an electric one in the lobby as part of their breakfast set-up. Since the last thing I need is another electric appliance on my kitchen counter, I got one of the old-fashioned cast iron kind for the stove top.

If you've never had cast iron cooking equipment, your first is a real experience. First you have to bake it to clean off the paraffin used to protect it during shipping. Then you have to oil it and bake it again to "condition" it. Turns out cast iron is not naturally non-stick. Who knew? For washing, ti's water only. If you use soap, it undoes all that conditioning.

Combining the convenient parts of several batter recipes, including some I just made up, I proceeded eagerly into this new adventure and made my first waffle. Or what would have been my first waffle had the half that didn't overflow onto the stove not burnt to an unrecognizable crisp and gotten shredded as I tried scraping it out. A few minutes and one quick visit to the Internet later (and now armed with information on how to actually use a cast iron waffle maker), it was time to scrape it clean for another attempt. I was determined to make as many tries as it would take to cook something edible. (That's what big bowls of batter are for, right?) The second try wasn't much better, though at least it didn't overflow. The third try came out overcooked but moderately edible, assuming the person you gave it to was either really hungry or in a charitable mood. The fourth and fifth tries came out reasonably. The fifth quickly became a total disaster when I poured the last of the batter into the bottom half of the waffle iron and then, drunk with my new-found waffle-making successes, put the top half on up-side down. (In the true spirit of foolishness, the fact that the two sides of the top half look nothing alike wasn't enough to prevent me from doing this.) What I was able to scrape off became my portion, but that's ok. One of the great parts of cooking things yourself is that food which you'd recognize as horrible if someone else made it ends up tasting great to you.

The waffle iron is now rinsed, oiled and stored away till I get a rematch. And this time it's personal.


Class of 2008

I may not have put decorations on the tree or remembered to buy a wreath, but at this time of year the gingerbread cookies just have to get made. Some readers may recall that last year, in addition to making conventional gingerbread men I put together a kind of designer series. (They're at
http://ben-better-left-unsaid.blogspot.com/2007/12/ah-christmas.html. Right click on the partial photo and select "view image" to see the whole photo.) This year, I am pleased to announce the following new additions:

The Jennifer Aniston:

The Governor Blagojevich:

The Plaxico Burress:

Lost Soles

"It's not funny the first time you see it, but after 15 times you start laughing."
(My niece Caroline discussing "Napoleon Dynomite.")

Finally taking a break from the pressures of the season How easily a busy work schedule and holiday preparations distract us from the important things: guessing what Michelle Obama is going to wear to the inauguration.

Like everyone, I've seen over and over again that clip of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at Bush. After my initial anger at how they were treating our president - I thought only we could treat our president that way - I started wondering about a couple of things. First and perhaps most obvious is: you're 15 feet away - HOW COULD YOU MISS??? Second, especially after learning that this, apparently, is a traditional means of expressing disrespect in Iraqi culture, I started wondering exactly how many shoes does the average Iraqi own that they can do this? Think about it. If you threw one or two shoes every time you felt dislike for someone, how many times could you do it before you'd run out and have to control your emotions or, failing that, start throwing socks? And does the cost and general condition of the shoe factor in somehow? ("I hate you so much you're not worth me throwing my new Bostonians. Eat these old Payless shower flip-flops, you dog!")

Unrelated Item: Timber!

A couple of nights ago I was up for a bit in the middle of the night, though the crash downstairs probably would have wakened me anyway. Prepared to take on a vicious gang of hoodlums, I walked downstairs and in the living room found the Christmas tree laying on its side with the vacuum cleaner and various other items that were in the tree's fall-path knocked down as well. Also there were two cats staring up from the rubble, their concerned expressions clearly saying, "Don't worry, Daddy. We'll find whoever did this awful thing!"

There is a certain futility that comes with having a Christmas tree and cats in the same house.

It's an artificial tree set in a heavy concrete base that's supposed to be hard to overturn. (Having raised twin sons and, in the process, lost all faith in the word "unbreakable", I probably should have known better.) Although it could have been either of them, I suspect it was Willie whose physics experiment led to the tree incident. He's grown into a muscular and athletic fellow we call "mighty cat." (Motto: why walk when you can leap?) Catch the right spot on the tree with a well timed leap and the concrete base doesn't stand a chance.

Happy Holidays to all!

Am I The Only One Who Thinks This Is Funny?

Photos have always held a fascination for me for the way they so often capture things the photographer could not have anticipated. A photo in my local newspaper today showed a group of parochial school kids depicting a nativity scene in a Christmas pageant.

Sometime between now and December 25th photos of things like that will be in nearly every small newspaper. Yet this one stands out for its inclusion, even unintentionally, of an additional religion icon...


Poetry, it seems, does not always need words. Sometimes numbers will do just fine.

Bubble and Squeak

As much as it may sound like the name of a Saturday morning children's cartoon, the title is from an English style of cooking. It involves taking a bunch of leftovers - meat, potatoes, vegetables, and anything else that can't run away - and mushing them together into a thick patty for pan-frying. Think larger version of the futuristic meal-in-a-pill concept from science fiction and you'll have the idea. It seemed a good name for unrelated thoughts ground up in the processor of my mind and presented as some kind of loose-fitting, if unrecognizable, unit. Better than "Thought Hash" or, worse, "Thought Sausage."

Change We Can Believe In

I've been home on vacation this week, so today's rants may not seem so, well, ranty. One by one, the items on the to-do list have been falling, always a sign of a good vacation. The most significant of these - and, I confess, the one I honestly didn't expect to accomplish - was finishing the tiling of the kitchen floor. (Forget what they show in you the tv commercials; there's a lot more to this than peeling off the paper backing and sticking a shiny new tile onto the floor. Minor things like cutting plywood sub-flooring around door frames and other irregularly shaped obstacles, removing doors from their hinges and trimming the bottoms to accommodate the new flooring height, etc. But I digress.) I'd started it weeks - ok, months - ago and ran out of time, and since then the unfinished project was a constant reminder of everything I'd ever failed to accomplish now that I'm firmly entrenched in middle-age. I'm happy to report that with enough focus and a minimum of bloodshed (I've spilled more grating potatoes), it's now been finished, a reminder that of all the things I've failed to accomplish, there's now one less. Just don't tell my kids. I want them to be surprised.

You've Got to be In It to Win It

At the newsstand the other day there was a sign advertising a phone number for getting that day's winning lottery numbers before they appeared in the newspaper. Each call costs $0.49/minute. (That's about 1/3 pound for my friends across the big pond.) Below it, in much smaller print, was another phone number to call if you have a gambling problem. By gambling problem, I suppose they mean people who feel a need to spend $0.49/minute several times a week instead of just waiting a few hours to read the winning numbers in the newspaper.

Remember Where You Heard It

I saw Miley Cyrus on Dancing With The Stars last night. (Yes, I'm a fan of the show. There, I admitted it.) Some day somebody's going to get her to stop doing Britney's act (on AND off stage), strip away the overblown Superbowl Half-Time Show production, and we're going to see that she's really very good.

Just a Little Politics...

I have to confess it's with no small amusement I'm watching Joe Lieberman's "thank-you-sir-may-I-have-another" act these days, now that it turns out he joyfully yapped at the heels of the wrong candidate the past several months. One wonders if, in letting Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship, Obama and the other Democrats really are following the lead of Abraham Lincoln's politics of inclusion, or the advice of Michael Corleone: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

Good for the Environment

Do you know how people in office waiting rooms wastefully take a new cup every time they get a drink of water? Earlier this week I was in a doctor's office, and they had a great way of handling this. Next to the bathroom sink there were some plastic cups and a permanent marker, along with a small sign saying to put your initials on the cup. I thought this was a very clever way for the office to get people to hold onto their cups and reuse them if they were still thirsty.

Happy Thanksgiving, all...

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

"Eating waffles from a bowl with a spoon isn't as easy at it looks."
(This from my son James a while back, and seemed worth sharing.)

I'm trying to get away from writing so much about politics and the presidential election, but it's the story that just won't go away. This time, it's the news reports of a sharp increase in gun sales following Obama's election that are keeping me political.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a gun owner and a believer in the second amendment: "A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." I'm also a believer, at least theoretically, of tempering things with judgment and common sense. So when the people who advocate that someone wanting to buy a gun shouldn't have his background checked respond to Obama's election by stockpiling firearms, I'm left wondering exactly how many guns does a person need to defend himself adequately. In our rush to quote the part about "the right of the People," we pass right by that pesky "well regulated" thing. The irony, of course, is that these same folks raised hell back in April when then-candidate Obama referred to people who "get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."


Unrelated Item: I Thought This Was Bloggable

It finally happened. I received an e-mail from someone saying that if I needed to reach him he would be "blackberryable." English is an evolving language, but I always thought of evolution as a gradual process. This is more like evolution by sledgehammer.


Unrelated Item: Pack Small, Play Big

The title is an expression used by children's entertainers, almost certainly created by some middle-aged magician who carried heavy bags and cases up and down stairs to a birthday party one too many times. It seems to apply as well to a fellow in Birmingham, England who creates detailed sculptures roughly the size of a grain of sand and mounts them in the eye of a sewing needle. A friend sent me the attached link and I found it mind-boggling, something that needed to be shared. The execution of the sculpting is amazing, but equally important for me was that this man, having had the idea, believed so strongly it could be done in the first place. I hope you'll watch it. I did, and was glad afterward.

http://www.maniacworld.com/art-in-the-eye-of-a-needle.htm