They Made A Pan For Me?

     A start-up that calls themselves Our Place has pretty much made my ideal pan.*  It's early days yet; I only got the Always Pan Wednesday.  But at this point, I'm pretty much sold; the only remaining question is durability, and time will tell.

     So far, it is everything the manufacturer promises. Kind of a cross between a small Dutch oven and a frying pan, it's not oven-safe but other than that, it'll do most anything you need it to.

     I was checking out the website a few months ago, and they were running a sale that took the price from "Should I risk it?" down to "Gonna have to try this."  The lead time was nearly three months but they were getting rave reviews.  And it's nice-looking.

     It ought to hold up well: the deep pan and high, domed lid are sturdy, simple aluminum castings, the included strainer/steamer is stainless steel, and the long handle and knob on the lid are some kind of high-temperature plastic that feels a little like Delrin.  There's an included wooden spatula that parks neatly on a short peg on the handle, with the business end hanging just inside the pan through a gap in the pan and lid -- and the gap lets steam exit when the spatula is removed, or you can rotate the lid slightly and close it off.  And the pan has pouring spouts copied from Grandma's cast-iron skillet and every bit as handy.  But wait -- there's more!

     The non-stick lining was promised as some kind of next-level ceramic, dishwasher-safe and slicker than, well, any other pan you've got.  I've had ceramic non-stick pans, but they were fussy to care for and not as good as the modern Teflon replacements.

     This one is not fussy and almost preposterously slick. 

It is much deeper than it looks in this photo, too.

     See that?  Nice picture of a pan, hey?  --I just cooked bacon and eggs in that pan, drained off the grease and wiped it out.  It hasn't been washed yet.  If it didn't have high sides, I'd be hard-pressed to corral a fried egg to flip it.

     I made Hoppin' John last night -- fried ham chunks, with a lot of fresh onion and a little celery and carrots (plus fresh mushrooms, because I am just that kind of heathen), and once that's all translucent and sizzling, you drain the grease, and add canned chilies, crushed tomatoes and blackeyed peas.  It's not the most pan-friendly of entrees, and to make matters worse, a small amount of leftovers sat in the pan while Tam and I watched two episodes of the second season of Homecoming.†

     The pan wiped clean as a whistle.  Even a little sauce spattered down the side and on the outside of the lid (the inside of it is nonstick, too) came away clean.  A little soapy water and a rinse and it's ready to go.

     I'm liking this pan.  Looks like just the thing for grilled cheese sandwiches or fancy pork chops and vegetables or just about anything else I might cook for dinner.
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* They make some other housewares, too -- plates, bowls and glasses with a functional, pleasantly-shaped and no-frills design esthetic that I find appealing and that could fit in just about anywhere.
 
† Also highly recommended.  You have to watch the (marvelous) first season to know what's going on.  The narrative structure, cinematography and editing remain unusual and engaging, and the music is a wonder.  It's based on a podcast drama -- and the podcast is well worth listening to.

Wednesday Dinner

     So I cooked a brisket:

TAMARA KEEL PHOTO

     Tamara took a photo of last night's dinner -- a chimichurri-marinated brisket slow-cooked in a sealed pan on the grill. I added potatoes, onion, carrots, red bell and Poblano peppers and sliced mushrooms about an hour or 45 minutes before the meat was done.

      I had some misgivings at about the one-hour mark, and added some water. The bottom did get a little well done, but the rest of the meat was very tender.  Next time, I'll cook it fat side down.

      Wasn't too sure about the vegetables and the chimichurri, but let me tell you, they were absolutely wonderful. Just a little heat to it.

      There's not really a recipe for this. Brisket gets about an hour per pound over indirect heat (rake the coals to the sides of the grill) and the veggies are added with about an hour to go. Use whatever vegetables you have -- turnips are good in this, celery would work, whatever your garden grew too many of. (Zucchini? Maybe. They kind of want tomatoes, and so it goes....) Keep it covered the rest of the time, let it sit a few minutes before slicing the beef and enjoy!

From An Away Game

     Posted elsewhere, a few days ago:

     "The Peelian principles of policing tell us that 'the police are the public and that the public are the police, the police being only members of the public who are paid to give full-time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.'

     "Our own history makes it clear that the Press is the public and the public is the Press, the Press after all being simply members of the public who give (and draw!) attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interests of community welfare and existence.

      "The cops are us. The reporters are us. The protesters are us. The people who choose initiate force are, alas, us. It really is that simple."

     I will note (for those convinced that "reporter" is just a guise) that a person holding a camera, a notebook or a smartphone has only got one hand free -- which makes it a hell of a lot harder to shoot fireworks at police, or even to chuck rocks with accuracy.

*  *  *
     My focus has been on Press-police interaction and what the First Amendment protects.  With attention to the wider conflict most visibly taking place at present in the Pacific Northwest:

     Historically, especially in post WW II history, terrorism and street-level violence intended to further a goal is often aimed to do so not as a direct effect but by stimulating a reaction.  It is entirely possible that, if there is any goal to the rioting past breaking things and making a mess, the goal is not to burn down a Federal courthouse or police headquarters, but to provoke a harsh and violent reaction from police -- any police at all, local, State or Federal.

     If this is so, then playing the game at the surface level is a losing strategy.  This is not some 19th-century Napoleonic War set-piece.  The only way to win is to embrace and, essentially, co-opt the non-violent elements while discrediting the violent ones.  It worked in Indianapolis.  I don't know if it can work in Portland; a tipping point may have passed.  But what's happening there now hasn't been improving the situation.
*  *  *
     P.S. A commenter -- whose comments I have not been publishing for some time now -- has leveled an accusation:  "Yet, oddly, you have censored all the comments that disagree with you."
     This is untrue on its face, since I have published some comments that disagree.  And it demonstrates precisely why this person's comments aren't getting published, since he or she shows a deep lack of comprehension of who is limited and what is protected by the First Amendment: I choose not to publish comments that I find ill-informed, intemperate or invidious.  I'm not the government; I can publish or not publish whatever the hell I like.

     And so can you.

I Give Up

     No matter how carefully I explain it, I still get comments that amount to, "But why can't the police just stamp on anyone who disagrees with them violently enough, along with everyone else in the vicinity including the Press?"

     Did you feel that way during the Obama administration, when a routine Federal bulk-buy of ammunition via a long-term contract had many of my Right-wing gun-owner friends running around, waving their hands and talking about the Feds ginnin' up for a war on the Heartland?  Every power you let the Feds exercise unchecked is available to whoever is running the show, and we've been alternating parties in power pretty regularly for quite awhile now, with no sign of it changing.

*  *  *
     I also keep getting told how the "major media" is "100% behind" all the destructive civil unrest.

     So, first off, nobody reads National Review or Breitbart?  Fox News is not "major media?"  Because the last time I checked, they had slightly better viewership ratings than CNN.

     And second off, even CNN was decrying indiscriminate destruction and looting.  When protests here in Indianapolis gave way to graffiti, fire-setting and window-smashing, every single one of our local TV news operations -- we have five -- condemned it, along with the shambling remains of our local newspaper.  Four of those newsrooms are run by major network affiliates; the fifth is an interesting also-ran, the former CBS affiliate, and if there was anything extra to be had from siding with the destructive elements, they're hungry enough to try it.  They didn't. 

     Locally, there appeared to be very little personnel overlap between daytime protestors and nighttime wreckers.  After IMPD decided to be less confrontational and more interested in making sure everyone went home okay, it looked like the protesters displaced the would-be rioters and looters: there were still as many police officers around, but they were guarding the people waving signs and chanting slogans instead of staring them down.  The officers were guarding the city, too.  We had a few marches that went on well past curfew after that change in tactics -- but we didn't have any more smashed windows and eventually, things wound down.

     If you meet strongly-motivated protests with force, you just get more force; and once those gloves have come off against one group of protesters, there's no reason to not take them off against another.  Unless you're eager to see a Second Amendment activism day or weekend at some state capitol go very badly, you should be concerned about police use of force.  It's certainly not always wrong -- but it is far better to avert a riot before it starts, and in a way that defuses escalation.

     Our governments operate with the consent of the governed.  You cannot manufacture consent with tear gas, pepperballs and less-lethal weapons.  You cannot beat or shoot people into embracing the virtues of our system of government.

     And I can't thump any sense into the heads of people who are so mired in the rah-rah excitement of the Red vs. Blue contest that they cannot remember any history or conceive of any future.  Go get yourself another beer, and keep swearing at the TV screen.

The Bill Of Rights Is Not A Menu

     You don't get to pick and choose among the items in the Bill of Rights.  They all apply.

     Whenever I write about the First Amendment, I get the same kind of pushback and quibbling that shows up whenever use-of-force, especially firearms, is under discussion.  In use-of-force, people ask, "So I can shoot the bad guys when...?" and spin scenarios.  It's the wrong question, framed the wrong way.  It's not "can" or even "should."  It's "must," as in, "When must I shoot?"  Certainly, no sooner the necessary and only in response to an articulable deadly threat; persons with far more training and experience than I have are better able to address that.

     On the First Amendment, people still think it must have implied exceptions and secret codicils -- surely it cannot protect unpatriotic thoughts or writings?  Surely it doesn't protect silly people who think being required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance constitutes flag-worship?*  Surely the press can be be chivvied away or even arrested when their presence inconveniences the police?

     The last question is usually phrased, "When the police have issued a lawful order to disperse...." Such orders are usually issued to rioters; if a reporter is directly participating in the riot rather than gathering news, sure, the order applies.  By the same token, a person in a blue vest marked PRESS, taking pictures, shooting video, recording audio or taking notes is, in fact, not rioting, and the order to disperse does not apply to them.  Doesn't make any difference if they're on the sidelines or in the rioting crowd, though the latter location does expose them to whatever dispersal methods the police might then use.

     No, journalists aren't special.  What is protected is the activity, and it is essential to our freedoms.  When police can operate in secret, hidden in night and fog, suppressing reports of their actions, there is no check on them.  Conversely, a police force that attempts to conceal public acts cannot be assumed to be operating in the public interest.

     A free country does not suppress ideas.  A free country does not abide police acting in secret when public demonstrations get out of hand.

     You cannot defeat bad ideas by suppressing them -- and the best way to show up violent nitwits as dangerous fools rather than role models is to shine a light on them, and on fair and responsible police and civic action to render justice.  That can't be done in the dark.

     The Bill of Rights isn't an a la carte menu; undermining part of it weakens all the rest.
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* It most certainly does, though it took a whole series of court cases to decide.  I cited the case in my previous post.

The First Amendment: Freedom vs. Authoritarianism

     It pains me to have to write this.  It's probably going to cost me some readers.

     But it's an important principle, one at the very heart of our country's strength, and it appears to me that we're in danger of losing it:  The First Amendment.

     Freedom of thought; freedom of belief.  Freedom of expression.  Freedom of the press.  These are very basic things, things that are supposed to be set outside the government's grasp.  They apply not only to ideas we like, or to ideas that most people agree with -- they also apply to unpopular ideas.  Repugnant ideas.  Wrong ideas.  The most effective way to fight bad ideas is to counter them with better ideas, not by attempting to suppress them.

     In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court wrote, "There is no mysticism in the American concept of the state or of the nature or origin of its authority.  We set  up government by consent of the governed and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. [...]
     "Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. [...] Freedom to differ is not limited to things  that do not matter much.  That would be a mere shadow of freedom.  The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."

     When I wrote about law enforcement apparently targeting journalists, in reports a Federal judge found so credible he granted a temporary restraining order, I received a few comments.  They were...heated.  Vitriolic.  The people who wrote them are free to hold such ideas, of course.  I'm not obliged to post them on my blog, but I will quote from them in order to address the significant concerns they raise.

     Let me be clear: to the extent that modern "cancel culture," largely a phenomenon originating in the Left, focuses on silencing unpopular opinions, it is a bad thing; and to the extent that that it turns government powers to that end, it is contrary to the Bill of Rights.  But the fact that one side of a conflict is bad does not necessarily mean the opposing side is good; they can both be bad, and to varying degrees.

     When a commenter writes, "I am so tired of watching Portland Antifa and their I'll get away with arson and battery etc that I want to see the mobs machine gunned into hamburger. I want to see Portlands gutters running with the blood of these idiots. If that includes a bunch of lefty so-called journalists, it's just collateral damage and no great loss," the course of action he endorses is completely contrary to American values.

     Individuals who commit arson and battery indeed ought to be arrested by police and changed with their crimes -- but the person standing next to them, waving a sign and jeering, is not equally culpable.  In any event "machine-gunning" is not how the government should or, Constitutionally, can respond -- and if they could, there would be nothing to keep a future, Left-leaning Administration from doing the very same to a rioting mob of Right-wing protestors.

     As for "lefty so-called journalists," there's nothing in the Bill of Rights that limits press freedom to one political leaning or another: John Stossel, Glenn Greenwald, Sean Hannity, Rachael Maddow and some nitwit with a blog are all protected from government interference, even when they're offering up nothing but opinion.  It is generally understood that the government is expected to not shoot them, especially when they have taken pains to make themselves identifiable as "press."

     Dreams of  "gutters running red with blood" are best left to authoritarians: fascists and communists, either of whom will kill you just as dead for saying the wrong thing.  That's not how it is supposed to work in the United States of America.  When you urge it, you are urging the overthrow of our system of government.

     Another commenter was irked at the press:
     "I duuno but I have not seen any evidence of a true independent reporter for some time."
     I'm not sure what this means, especially in a world of blogs, Twitter and YouTube videos open to anyone.  Most professional journalists do work for some entity, and they answer to some kind of an editor -- but they operate pretty independently: it's the only way you can cover a developing event.  And it is true that if we send reporters working for National Review and The Nation to cover the same event, they're going to deliver very different views of it -- not because they got their marching orders from above, but because they freely chose where they wanted to work, based in part on congruent outlooks.

     "Also the police know that if a protest is not broadcast in living color it can die out."
     That doesn't give the police the right to censor or deny coverage.  That would be the opposite of a free press.  Still, it seems nonsensical; I have seen everything from long-term "Occupy" camp-outs to Second Amendment rallies get lots of attendance despite receiving only cursory TV coverage.  It takes more than the chance to grace TV screens to get feet on the ground -- especially for more than one day.

     "We saw that with the Vietnam war. Put all the losses up and cover up the wins and before long you have a vibratent anti war faction."
     This is a distortion of history -- of something that was on TV screens every night of my childhood and teens.  Opposition to the war in Vietnam started in 1965 with opposition to the draft, especially in the age group subject to it.  Protests grew after that, still focused on the draft, escalating to the mass turning-in of draft cards in October, 1967.  The Tet offensive in early 1968 resulted in the first press coverage implying the U. S. military in Vietnam was weak -- with causality lists to support that impression.  The truth was closer to a strong U. S. military, fighting a war under conditions and with aims that were so misaligned with reality as to make the war unwinnable: they'd been a given a mission that left them stuck throwing men into a meatgrinder.  Under such circumstances, a "vibrant antiwar faction" was inevitable.  You're blaming the media for what should be laid on Congress and the Presidents who were running that "police action."

     "But sure, let's make a protected class that wants to tear down civilization. That will end well."
     The men who wrote the Bill of Rights, and who got the Amendment passed in the U. S. Congress and the legislatures of the States, were convinced that by protecting freedom of belief, freedom of thought, freedom of expression and freedom of the press from government meddling and limitation, they were protecting the exchange of ideas fundamental to the United States of America.  I'm quite sure there are reporters, commentators and editors who would love to "tear down civilization," everything from radical Islamic fundamentalists to black-flag anarcho-communists to pipsqueak Nazis to some kinds of crazy I can't even conceive of.  Our best weapon to fight them is to address and counter their destructive nonsense with constructive sense, with better ideas -- ideas that include freedom of the press.

     You cannot improve a free society by making it less free.  That road only leads to one place, and it's not freedom.

     History is unmistakably clear about that.

Rocket To Venus

     The past is a large and surprising place: 1920s rocket to Venus.

Targeting Journalists

     Whatever is going on in Portland, Oregon, it's ugly.  Trying to set an occupied building on fire is evil, no matter who the fire-setters and their prospective victims might be.  Trying to ambush someone with a hammer is not a legitimate act of protest.  Waving signs and chanting slogans?  A-okay.  Blocking traffic?  Not so much.

     --Precisely where on the scale of despicable actions one might rank turning pepper spray and less-lethal weapons on clearly-identified journalists who are not in the body of a crowd of protesters, rioters or plain old malefactors is an open question, but it's not admirable.  Especially not when it is done by law enforcement personnel.

     That's not just my opinion; the U. S. District Court for the area thinks the behavior is credible enough and disturbing enough to rate a temporary restraining order, telling the various law enforcement agencies operating in Portland that they cannot target journalists covering the protests and unrest.  (Here's one news story summarizing it.)

     There are reasonable exceptions -- if J. Random Newshound has gotten him- or herself into the midst of a violent mob that gets tear-gassed (etc.), that's just part of the risks of the job.  But deliberate targeting of a journalist is now officially forbidden.

     What have we come to, that it is necessary to remind the people charged with enforcing the laws and maintaining order that the First Amendment is a fundamental part of the body of this country's laws?

This Just In--

     The National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda has issued a Severe Brainstorm Warning for all of the United States.  At 7:45 a.m.m Eastern Time, mental disturbance "Stone" was expanding, and may strike anywhere, at any time.

     Persons in the warning area are advised to seek a comfortable area in the living room, family room or bedroom of their home.  Comfort food, favorite movies and TV shows, children, pets and other family members should be close at hand throughout the storm.  Even favorite songs will be of some assistance.

It's Not A Football Game

     The interesting thing about street-level politics -- from the most civil of electoral contests to scuffles on the asphalt, from sign-waving to brick-throwing, is that it's not a ball game or a Western: you are not obliged to pick sides, and even if one side is less worse than the other, that doesn't mean they can't both be in the wrong.

     Which brings us to lovely Portland, Oregon.  All I know is what I read in the papers -- and half of that is wrong.  For sure they have civil unrest, violence, rioting.  It looks like the rioters are the usual mix of sincere activists, would-be Marxists, and people who just showed up to set fires and break things.  For sure there is a Federal response, using officers who appear to have missing or obscured nametags.  The Mayor doesn't want them there and neither does the state's Governor; DHS showed up, and refused to speak to local reporters.

     Even well-connected local media can't come up with answers.

     Many of my Facebook acquaintances are cheering on the Federal actions in Portland, despite the Constitutional reservation of general police powers to the States.  How is it jackbooted thuggery when the Feds take on a bunch of well-armed, frustrated ranchers and yet not jackbooted thuggery when the targets are Left-of-center and dreadlocked instead of Stetsoned?

     I don't know.  I'm not at all in favor of violent protest or setting fire to Federal offices, but I'm not real keen on the kind of arrest-tag-charge or release of persons not on Federal property we're seeing from the Feds, either.

And It All Lurches On

     I have stopped asking "What's next?"  I don't want to know. 

     Increasingly, it looks like our species' present troubles are the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Did Not Feel Well Today

     So I didn't post any thing.  I worked outdoors a lot Saturday and it was not a good idea.  I was exhausted and achy all day Sunday and Monday was not much better.