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Dead!

There's a blogger named Martin Lersch who's an organic chemist and foodie, who's holding an ongoing series of tests (via recipes made by interested readers and himself) of potential flavor pairings based on common odorants.  That is, if they have at least one smell component in common, they're more likely to pair well.  So far he's done:

• garlic, chocolate and coffee
• banana and parsley
• strawberry and coriander
• mint and mustard
• meat and chocolate
• apple and lavender
• cauliflower and cocoa
• white chocolate and caviar
• parmesan and cocoa
• blue cheese and pineapple
• banana and clove
• apricot and chanterelle
• chocolate and caraway
• malt and soy sauce
• dark chocolate and smoked salmon
• chicken and rose
• apple and rose

Some of them work, and some do not - obviously other odorants and the tastes on the tongue might be antagonistic - but it seems like fun.  I decided to look up where he gets these pairings, and he talks about it here, mentioning a couple of different food databases.  One of them costs 1000 Euros to access - I decided to look at the next one down, Flavornet, instead.

Then I wrote a little Python script to sort out the foods which have common odorants on Flavornet.  The site has some formatting problems, so I need to do some cleanup, but here are some interesting potential pairings:

seaweed, raspberry
black currant, cat
curry, clove
camomile, celery
rose, honey, apple
rose, honey, tobacco
tomato, strawberry

From stereotypist , via patri , both of whose output might make them ljfriendworthy of you.

Dead!

Dead!

"Your manhood will never die as long as you stay with us."

I'm envisioning this as coming from the Hitler's-brain-in-a-jar people, trying to branch out into new markets. 

Dead!

Thank you, but I consult with my refrigerator on a bachelor time scale. So when I discovered them just now, I decided to toss them before they could mutate into a form capable of escaping.

Dead!

The State Department this week asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown of its service to keep information flowing from inside Iran, three U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. Link

I'm sure that nice Obama fellow would never do anything wrong with your private e-mail, right?

Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation. Link

Why?  Because reporters are whores for access.  With them out of the picture, our media from Iran comes from their calcified government (which is probably right now trying to find the word "Internet" in the Quran), and thousands of pro-democracy activists inside the country.  Hey, maybe Twitter is good for something!  Of course, they still can't monetize it.

via campmate and hydrologist, Carbon Buildup:
Gerlach, NV is supposed to get an inch of rain over the next four days,
on top of what they've already had recently. That is actually enough
to make parts of the Black Rock Desert into Black Rock Lake, literally. I
wouldn't expect there to be standing water by the end of August, but
these late rains do wonders for 'cementing' the alkali silts of the
playa. We will have to work extra hard to have dust storms this
year...

Same thing is happening in other normally dry areas. On Tuesday night
Bend, Oregon got six inches of hail. And another half inch of rain
fell there last night, causing localized flooding. Lakeview, Oregon
and Alturas, California are getting dumped on too. This is not a good
time to head out into those areas for any recreation, and certainly
not a good time for early playa touring or pre-Burning Man projects.
This storm is predicted to last through Monday. However, if you are
careful and have a strong desire to see deserts flooding, then you
should make the effort. It really is an amazing thing to see. [emphasis
indicating hydrologist brain added]

Besides fine weather and a nice grocery store opening within walking distance, I hit a thrift store which had a slow cooker for $7, and found a copy of the horrible 90's club hit "James Brown Is Dead" for $1.50 - including, of course, the 7", 12", and Deadly remixes.

AND, a fine cafe opened next door to Lanesplitters - "Local 123" with espressos which are tiny and deadlier than LA Style. 

Pluses: The aisles are wider, the lines are way shorter (for now), there's more parking, the cafe is twice as big, and they gave me a free bag.  And there's about 5% new stuff they didn't have room for before - English comfort food, Indian snacks, weird fruit, some more room for more corporate food like Trix, etc.

Minuses: The clerks don't have all the info they need yet - there was no pricing for the English imports, and the pastry clerk was baffled when I asked for a chocolate old-fashioned (he actually came over to apologize a little later - there's some active customer experience training going on).  Also, you have to walk twice as far to get the same stuff.  Probably worth it, if it means avoiding the Khumb Mela-like crush of people in the original BB's produce section.

Failed to conserve chi!

A lot of entertaining hoo-ha - I love that the lifting of budget constraints allows them to show
off all the cool toys in this universe.  And the characters are mostly true to form.

( But... (spoiler-y nerdery follows) )

NYT story about Sriracha sauce, which was apparently developed in the Asian food capital of the world (LA).

Dear Sir, please accept my application to your dojo.link

Edit: By the by, I have undertaken to emulate the production of a daiquiri by this method, and the shaker exploded, suggesting the need for a very firm grip.  However, the remaining fluid was well-mixed and quite cold.