Radium Water! Now -- With Vitamins!

      The thing about "A.I." is that there's a lot of smoke over very little fire -- and every coat-tail riding grifter and half-baked amateur futurist is emitting their own clouds, huddled over the flames and seeing the Promised Land (or at least a fat bank account) in their glow.

     The latest comes from the very top: the current administration in Washington, DC* is pushing a "golden age of science" built around applying A.I. to, well, everything.  Exactly how anyone is supposed to do actual science -- which is based on working out the actual facts about actual things and ideas -- using a tool that has a great and apparently inherent tendency to just make up plausible bullshit, no one can say.  In practice, it hasn't worked out, and the scientific journals have the same problem with specious A.I-generated article as fiction publishers do with A.I. dross that falls short of human efforts (and takes several pages to do so†), and the same problem with made-up A.I. citations as the legal profession.

     A.I. doesn't create new stuff; it uses the old stuff we already knew to create patterns of plausible stuff.  It may be able to pick out patterns in data that elude humans, too; but those results must be evaluated very carefully by subject-matter experts to determine what's real and what is only another "hallucination."  A.I. fools us in much the same way we fool ourselves, so it's not a simple task.

     Poorly understood by most people, with characteristics even the people who work developing it are struggling to understand, A.I. today occupies the same cultural space that radium (and radioactivity in general) did over a century ago, or vitamins a few year later.  The radium thing did not turn out so very well; vitamins did better.  The hype and hoopla‡ lingered, as the hype and hoopla from A.I. is now.

     Maybe let's not be in such a hurry to gulp it down by the gallon.
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* Here's a question for later: if the District of Colombia ever achieves statehood, will we start calling the Pacific coastal state "Washington, AC," or "Washington, OG?"  Or something else?  Yeah, yeah, the new state would be called something like District of Colombia, or maybe just Capitol District (for all those Hunger Games fans out there), but the city is Washington and you know we'll keep on using the old, familiar synecdoche.
 
† The problem is not so much that the writing is lousy -- Sturgeon's Law predicts 95% of all unsolicited fiction people send in is unpublishable -- as it is the sheer volume.  Typewriters let us write faster than we can think, and word processors let us edit so quickly that getting it right in the first draft no longer matters, but A.I. churns out fiction in greater volume than any collection of editors and assistants can manage to read.  There are gems in the slushpile, and 5% of the total was a sufficiently productive return at the pittance paid "first readers" to sort through it.  0.5% is not, and if A.I. was capable of recognizing the flaws well enough to sort through it, it wouldn't be creating so much unusable work.
 
‡ Even for vitamins: for awhile, every breakfast cereal advertised itself as so packed with vitamins that between them and the sugar, there couldn't have been much room left for grain.

Supper For A Snowy Day

     There's a chuck roast simmering under all those vegetables.  It came out tender and flavorful.

Home Made Sloppy Joes

      Sloppy Joe mix in a can is cheap and easy.  It's what I grew up eating and I never gave it much thought.

      I have ended up with a lot of ground beef in the freezer and decided to use up some fresh vegetables by making Sloppy Joes from scratch.

      There's nothing much to it; I sauteed a chopped onion, a couple of large carrots diced small and a couple of stalks of celery, then added a large tomato chopped up and some basil and a little black pepper.  Set it aside and browned a pound of ground beef, draining off the fat and oil, and adding a little sage, paprika and chili powder, then a small can of tomato paste and a large dollop of ketchup (actually "chili sauce," sold with ketchup and really a better version of it*).  I omitted the usual green bell pepper and put in a couple of tiny slices from a hot pepper that I had beheaded and tasted by touching the cut end with a fingertip and tasting my finger.  Hot!

      And then I made a terrible mistake.  Tam came through the kitchen and I offered her the hot pepper, "It's too hot for me but you may like it."

      She grabbed the pepper, popped it in her mouth, got a soft drink from the fridge and went back to the office.   About two minutes later, she came back to the kitchen, said, "I won't need any dinner," and stuck her head under the kitchen-sink faucet with the cold water full on.  This was...unexpected behavior.

      She kept at it for several minutes, occasionally making strangling noises.  She finally got cooled off enough to say, "I'd've been better off just using pepper spray."  The pepper had been way too hot to eat whole.  Major fail on my part and I apologized profusely -- but there's nothing much you can do.  Water works as well as milk and she had plenty of it.

      I encountered both of the tiny slices of the hot pepper in my Sloppy Joes and they were indeed hot.  Not overwhelming, smothered in meat, tomato sauce and vegetables, but a little hotter than I would have preferred.  Tomato paste works really well in controlling the thickness: add water until you're happy with it.  It was very flavorful -- but it would have tasted a lot better without the guilt of having fed my friend a pepper that was too hot even for her.
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* Both Heinz and Red Gold make a version of this kind of chili sauce; I have used it in place of ketchup for years and highly recommend it.   Brooks Rich & Tangy Ketchup is very similar, or at least it was back when it was my preferred ketchup-like condiment.  All three have the mild sweetness you'd expect from ketchup and little to no heat.

Geekery

     A neat little set of relay interfaces:

     They're for work.

Runnin' On Fumes

     For some reason, I ran out of energy very early yesterday.  Got up, took Tam off to the doc-in-a-box, and then, at her suggestion, went to a franchise wings place.

     It was...not good.  "Mild" boneless wings were over-spicy and dry; adding ketchup did nothing good for them.  Side "cool-off" veggies were of dubious quality: carrots chalky, celery soggy and browning at the cut ends.  The fries were adequate and my drink (lemonade) was fine.  And of course the music was too loud.

     Got back home and went to change from shoes to sandals; that seemed like such a good idea that I swapped my dungarees for soft lounging pants and y'know, the bed was an inviting placed to look at a little TV from.

     I watched the 2004 production of "A Wrinkle In Time," the movie edit (it had aired as a four-hour TV mini-series), and nodded off briefly a few times.  This is not a negative reflection on the movies, which is an honest effort, marred by small effects budget and somewhat plodding directing: it's all there and there are occasional brilliant touches (Kyle Secor's Man With Red Eyes is spot-on) but the pacing is not quite what it should be and it is an unsubtle reading of the original book.*

     After that, I fell asleep.  Woke up around eight to make a little dinner -- leftover picadillo, mine topped with an egg (very good!).  Thought I would nap a but after and instead slept the night through, woke to feed the cats at six, and slept until Meet The Press came on.

     Friday, I went into my yearly Employee Review on about four hours sleep, concerned that the huge recent changes at work (everyone between me and the Chairman of the Board was hired within the last three years; I've been there for thirty) are squeezing out my job.  Instead, I learned they like the quality of my work, want me to be "a little nicer" and are concerned about the same deadline-slippage that bothers me.  I must have needed the rest. 
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* Having recently read the book helped a lot, especially with the scenes between departing Camazotz without Charles Wallace and returning to save him, which were barely explained. 

"Unseemly"

     I participate in a little neighborhood online bulletin board, mostly by reading. My neighborhood, like many these days, is home to a few chicken-owners. Perhaps more than average, since SoBro is home to Agrarian, an upscale version of the good old feed & seed co-op and an excellent source of small domestic fowl* and everything you need to raise them.

     This is supposed to be a "new trend" but in fact, it's a very old one.  My Mom, who grew up in the 1930s and 40s, was a city girl and her family kept chickens everywhere they lived -- and milk-goats, too, if they had a big enough lot.  This was not unusual at the time, at least in the Midwest.  Mother never tasted cow's milk until she attended public school.†  (She and her siblings tended to make pets of the surplus goats despite being warned not to, which caused an occasional very awkward dinner.)

     A recent posting to the neighborhood thing complained of a rooster crowing at 5:30 a.m. (which is, by the way, a very fine time for a rooster to crow -- that whole 5:30 to 8:00 a.m. block, is exactly when they're supposed to be rousting folks out of bed) and wondering if the owners can't silence it? 

     There is only one way to effectively silence a rooster; the owner responded, saying the rooster was already overdue to go to the Great Beyond or possibly a crockpot, and screen after screen of horrified comments ensued: "Don't kill it, rehome it!" "Send the rooster off to a farm to live out its natural life!"  --The "natural life" of excess roosters on a farm is to get fed to the hogs, if they're lucky; but don't try to tell moderns that.

     But the capper was the commenter who mused, "...I don't think many of us realized that people who own chickens in the city were using them for anything other than eggs. There's something about butchering an animal in an urban residential area that just seems generally unseemly."

     Lady, it's a chicken. If you're not the kind of "wit" who cuts off their heads and lets them run all over the backyard while they're expiring, it's no more "unseemly" than what the local high-end butcher does with a side of beef and a collection of cutting instruments that may include a stainless-steel bandsaw, in a tiny shopping district in the middle of an urban residential area. It's a good deal less unseemly than what any of your neighbors who hunt will be up to in their garage if they're lucky enough to bag a deer.

     I don't dislike chickens, though I think they're dumber than a bag of rocks and considerably more smelly.  I'd need to be a lot hungrier before I'd kill and dress one, though I do love fresh eggs, especially when laid by a critter that lives outdoors and gets to eat bugs.  But calling out the normal process of slaughtering and eating non-productive hens (and perhaps even roosters, though IIRC, they're a bit tough and gamy) as "unseemly" when you only know it happens because your neighbors said so, is just about the silliest thought I have seen expressed today. Possibly this week.
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* They also sell ducks.  This is a great temptation to me: as a child, I had a duck and so did my baby brother.  They are pleasant, garrulous creatures if you have enough yard to ensure the duck splat doesn't get too concentrated, who wander around all day "talking" to one another and eating whatever they find that looks edible.  Ours each laid an egg a day, rich and strong-flavored, excellent for baking and just fine fried.  Alas, Roseholme Cottage doesn't have enough yard for two ducks and a solo duck would be too lonely: they're not very bright but they're quite social.

† For reasons I have never fully understood, she managed to avoid public school until third grade. Both of her parents were fully-qualified schoolteachers and the family was moving around a lot at the time, so perhaps it was just easier.  On the other hand, she was the youngest child in a very large family and though Mother's mother was an unsentimental person, I do wonder if my grandmother succumbed to the temptation to keep her youngest at home for just a couple more years.

Note To Self

     Do not inhale oatmeal!  It doesn't work at all well like that.

And On The Next Morning...

     Poblano, a little white onion, one egg, just a few pieces of Emmentaler cheese and an individual-sized serving of corned beef hash.

     It's not to everyone's taste but it suits me.  Started the corned beef early, added onions, then followed with egg and poblano after the onion had cooked a bit.  So it was nice and crunchy on the bottom but not burned and the poblano wasn't overcooked. Lifted out on a wide spatula in nearly one whole section. A dash of mild hot sauce and it's ready.

Snow? SNOW!

     ...Which is the morning news in two words.

     Current forecasts call for eight to ten inches of snow on Sunday, along with record cold temperatures.  It will be a mess.

     Of course, the easily-panicked have been busily clearing sore (and formerly groaning) shelves of bread, milk and eggs -- along with, I'm told, a lot of the meat.  Just to add to my fun, last night I unknowningly lost the battle of the refrigerator door and the darned thing spent six hours with the door a half-inch ajar.  So I'll have to get out there and join them, in hopes of replacing the nice corned beef brisket I'd set back for Sunday and the Surry sausages  for later on.  Oh, and milk and butter, dammit.

     (Effective immediately, boxes of soda cans are banned from the fridge.  They interfere with things in the door, especially if those things shift.  Grabbing a quick snack should not involve solving a 3-D puzzle.)

     Imminent weather nightmare!!!!1!!!eleven!  Plus the trash runs today and I have yet to get it out there.  So...check back later for pithy insight or whatever.

     Here's a little to tide you over: The other day, I could've sworn one of my friends had "cast iron cookware" in a bug-out bag list.   She didn't; she was discussing prepping, in a very bug-in way.  I can promise you I will never carry cast-iron, unless it's the twenty feet from car to cookfire.  For bugging in, sure, 100%.  You should have that stuff, seasoned and ready to use.  She couldn't be more right -- and make that 200% at your secondary location/retreat/redoubt/bunker (if you have one): it's durable, long-lasting, excellent to cook in and makes great swapping stock, if it comes to that.  But carry it?  It weighs like, well, like cast iron!  There are plenty of reasons not to like lightweight hiker's cookware, but every pound less of cooking-container you carry is another pound of clothing, food or ammunition.  Run out of the last two and less-than-ideal cookware is the least of your problems.  ...Deciding when to dig in and when to trek out, that's a whole other story, and then there's the issue of having somewhere else to go.  (Me, I don't; for me, it's impractical.  My tripwires aren't that good and neither's my freedom to cut'n'run, at least until it's essentially too late -- but YMMV.  I still think it's best to already be elsewhere full time, if "elsewhere" is on your disaster plans and you can manage to make that work.)

"Meep-Meep" For The 21st Century

I blame Jeffro:

Oh, yeah.

Science: It's Hot

     At least, it's hot at the Chile Pepper Institute!   Another day, another few million Scoville Units....

Coffee Is A Weapon!

     Coffee stops thugs.  Over and over.  Yet airline stewpersons happily pour you a nice hot cup of it.  Is it because they have multiple big pots of nice hot java?

     So would they be okay with your dinky penknife if they were given fixed-blade knives more than 2.3" long and 0.5" wide, with molded grips? 

Digital Apocrypha

Or, Don't Believe Everything That You Are Told.

...But they do tell the story, or whisper it anyway, late at night, when the data centers are as quiet as they ever get and ghosts of ancient hard drives spin down, platters as big as truck tires keening at the edge of audibility. It's the story of Grace Hopper, the Navy's earliest attempts at organic computers, and how one small woman routed the clam menace[1] with a single sentence.

You see, researchers working for ONR had discovered that clams could be used as logic elements -- attach the electrodes one way, you had an AND gate; hook them up another way, you got an EXOR.[2] And so on. Big clams worked better than small ones, it was just easier to hook 'em up, and pretty soon they'd settled on the plentiful geoduck clam, so meaty it can't even hide in its shell. A weak-saltwater aquarium full of them was a sight to behold, bubbling away with a full matrix of wired-up geoducks, siphons at full extension in transparent nutrient gel.

The U. S. Navy was proud of these contraptions and were using arrays of bivalve organic gates, so much simpler and less costly than huge arrays of relays, to work out the basics of programming. As soon as they'd smuggled Dr. Hopper past the weight limit ( for reasons of stability,WAVES had to weigh at least 120 pounds and at 105, she was considered unfit to face a Nor'easter...in a computer lab), they sent her to examine the secret ONR clam-logic facility.

She was beyond unimpressed; she was furious at the wasted effort. "Gentlemen," Lt. (j.g.) Hopper exclaimed, "you cannot possibly develop useful programming based on a series of logical phallacies!"
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1. I've mentioned the clam menace before. Sometimes, it's zebra clams, which scour the water so clean nothing else can live in it; sometimes, it's something else. This is an example of the second sort.

2. All ORs were XORs, back in the day; that's just how it was. You were either okay with it or not. Or would that be okay or okay? Depends on which way is up.

The Things You Learn, Looking Up "Brisance"

Brisy, brisy-- Turns out the word comes from French for "shatter," and refers to the rate of pressure increase when an explosive is set off. PETN is one example of a high-brisance explosive: it is not the most explosive, unit-for-unit, but the pressure wave ramps up very fast and leaves broken bits when it passes by.

It's what the shoe-bomber was trying to use. But it takes a hard push to set off, and for that, the idiot was using-- Um. Why make things easier for fools? Suffice to say there is a very explosive, very unstable substance that can be made from stuff you'd find under the sink, but don't; it's so poorly-behaved that even mad bombers speak ill of it.

For those of you who appreciate irony, ponder the happy, emphatic people on X: that ill-behaved explosive is also an unwanted by-product of MDMA synthesis. So, kid? Don't visit the lab! (Y'otta be nicer to your serotonin and dopamine levels anyway; gross fiddling with them is like trying to adjust a wristwatch with a sledgehammer.)

Clear down at the bottom of this heap of suck, fail and disappointment is a rotten little Easter egg: safrole. It's the reason you can't find real old-time sassafrass root at the grocers, the root being a source thereof: first, safrole makes rats break out in cancer, so FDA banned it along about 1980 (except you'll still find a bit in things like cinnamon, basil and black pepper) and second, it's a DEA List I chemical! So if you were planning to dig up some sassafrass root and brew your own? The Feds will save you a seat on the bus, right next to the enterprising, slender, dentally-challenged fellow who built his very own meth lab.

Geesh. I should'a run with the definition inferred from context. "Brisance!" It sure busted up a little corner of what I thought I knew.

Chips, Dipped

Tam bought some (supposedly) wasabi-flavored chips. I grabbed a couple to try. Chip one: faintest of hints of a trace of a taste of wasabi.

H'mm. Fail. What to do with chip two? Turned to fridge, removed pot of ground ordinary horseradish, dipped chip two in, removed and et it. Ahhh! That's the stuff!

Geesh, guys, get with it. I'm not askin' to be hit over the head but there's got to be some zing. Otherwise, why bother?

The Horror Of User Fees!

OMG! There's an office where you have to pay to use the fridge and microwave? Summon the militia! Fetch the People's Guard! Such creeping exploitation must be stamped out!

Yep, there is such an office. It's the state Medicaid office, where the downtrodden government employees must shell out $7.00 a year to use the breakroom appliances. Seven. Dollars. A. Year!

How can they bear up under the burden?

Why is easily answered: as a matter of policy, our state.gov doesn't supply refrigerators or microwaves to any of their offices unless it's staffed 24 hours a day. Offices working the more usual government hours can have appliances donated...but they are not owed 'em. So, one office collects dues? So what. If it cuts down on the orphaned half-bottles of milk and well-aged sandwiches, it may be a boon.

But breakroom appliances are certainly not a right.

Class, in these days of a lousy economy, what group is not feeling so much of a pinch? What (non-productive) sector of the economy keeps growing and growing? Hint: it's not manufacturing. It's not service industries. And you pay 'em under threat.

Seven bucks to rent fridge and 'wave space? Gee, it sure beats not havin' a job and having to hang out in the other place where you have to pay for the kitchen appliances and pay to keep 'em running: home. Or hanging out there 'til the bank forecloses on it, anyway. I wonder what the user fees are like for space at a trash-can fire under a bridge?

Stock Check, Aisle Whatever

...Picked up some nice pickle relish the other day. Color seemed a bit off, but hey, you can trust the neighborhood Yuppie Market, right? No date on it that I could see.

Got the bottle out last night and man, it really doesn't look right. Gone all transparent. And not-quite hidden in the label art, worked right into the design, there it is: "BEST BY 20 OCTOBER 2011." Yick.

Hey, Mister Condiment-man? Bigger print, please. Helps me, helps the kid restacking the shelves at Fresh-O-Mart -- and prevents you losing customers. In one sense or another.

I wonder if the Mayor feels like this? "Gee, it looked kinda okay when I bought it..." WTH, an expired pickle running Public Safety might be an improvement.

Goodbye, Old Brand

I don't know what they've done to it. I grew up enjoying Armour Corned Beef Hash as an occasional treat; my Mom would bake it with eggs on top for a light Sunday supper (family of five, one can of the stuff). In later life, I kept it as a kind of standby food -- I like it, it stays good on the shelf and it lends itself to various additions -- onion and scrambled egg, perhaps?

Over the years, I'd gravitated to other brands; the Other Guys put up corned beef hash in smaller cans, more suited to feeding one or two people.

Yesterday, Tam made a "mercy mission" run to the store and picked up a couple of cans of the stuff; being a wise shopper, she studied unit costs and which brands were offering loyalty-card discounts and came home with a couple of cans of Armour brand Corned Beef Hash. It looked like the best choice.

I'm disappointed. Maybe it's just the can I opened. I hope so but I certainly don't know what they have done to this classic. Instead of the solid chunk of stuff found in various competing versions, it flowed sluggishly out of the can, turning quite liquidish when heated and emitting a funny, sweet smell in addition to the usual corned beef hash aroma. It didn't cook down much, becoming a kind of meat paste with cubes of potato embedded in it, and it didn't brown at all.

Couldn't tell you about taste or mouth feel. I didn't eat it. Just couldn't bring myself to try. I'm confident it's okay to eat but it wasn't anything I cared to consume.

Dear Armour, if this represents what you are selling as CBH these days, you might want to rethink it. I love the stuff and I used to love your brand of it; after this morning, you've lost me.

Sic transit glorioski mundi.

Office Inflation Pool

How long before the $100,000 Bar actually costs a hundred grand?* Pick a date!

...But read the fine print carefully: parent multinat Nestlé, with a yearly income comparable to that of Brunei and roots going back to the late 1860s, is no stranger to the effects of hyperinflation and some years back, carefully renamed the candy "100 GRAND." ...By the time the price matches the old name, they'll either have re-renamed it 100 TRILLION, or be pointing out they no longer claim any particular monetary unit for it to be as good as a hundred grand of.
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* TV goof Stephen Colbert asked much the same thing in 2011 -- but we hasn't he wasn't† the first by a long chalk, so I don't feel bad about finding out after having asked myself the question.
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† And This Is Your Brain On Lack Of Sleep: the Spoonerization passed entirely outside my notice, despite multiple edits to correct other problems. (Mike James found it, thanks!) I was trying to wrest my days back around after working an earlybird shift Sunday. How well did it work? It's 0433 Monday as I type. I've read 7/8 of The Hunger Games since waking up at 0315. Yeah, gonna be a loooong day.

Nearly Maced Myself

...In the kitchen. While cooking.

My nephew showed up this morning with The Gift Of Vegetables. (This is the guy who painted my house; he was asked for an estimate by a neighbor, whose house he ended up painting, and he was down to do another estimate for another neighbor: good work is its own best advertisment!)

Among the bounty (which included The Squash, photo possibly to follow), a number of tiny, hot bright-red peppers.

I decided to make Cincy-Tex chili; this is a spicy, fragrant, beanless treat with good beef (stew beef from Fresh Market), onion, and three kinds of tomatoes: fresh, diced-canned (Italian imports!) and crushed-canned. And, of course, the hot peppers.

Got the beef goin', with some chili powder (can't find my cumin!), added the onion and a couple of big, red vice vine-ripened tomatoes, cut in chunks; diced one hot pepper, tossed it in and thought to saute a few more, to mild 'em up before adding.

Het up a little skillet with some oil, chopped 'em and tossed 'em in. They did not go quietly. About a minute in and thirty seconds to go, I took a deep breath -- and started coughing. Eyes not-quite burning but holy cow! Opened up a window and started a fan to help the exhaust and it was still strong enough to catch Tam a good one when she wandered in a few minutes later.

I only added about half the peppers to the chili, along with the canned tomatoes and Various Spices* and let it simmer for a half hour. Umm-mm, good! And not even Tam went after the reserve hot peppers, either.

We both qualified for the Clean Plate Club. But I've gotta tell you, for a few minutes there, I was wondering -- I could not catch my breath when the hot peppers heated up! Afterwards, they still had bite but weren't harsh or overwhelming.
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* Some black pepper in the pan with a very little oil, at the start; let it heat up, salt the stew meat a little and cut it up small. Then add some chili powder as it browns. With the canned tomatoes, some more chili powder, tarragon, garlic, paprika, ground nutmeg and a hint of cinnamon. Yep, nutmeg and cinnamon. You won't regret it. I'd tell you how much of each to add if I could -- I go by smell and, as it simmers, taste.