Sunday, October 28, 2012

October 28, 2012



Sunday Morning on CBS did a Christopher Walken interview. Made me think of this.



Psy Gangnam Style owes some credit to the Walken video. Some moves and both start with reclining on chairs.



As the storm approaches: when the going gets tough, the tough get a "Crave Case" and sacks of Fries.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

October 27, 2012



Big "Frankenstorm" coming. Will watch tonight's forecasts, as they are good within two days and not so good beyond that range. Already have the batteries from last storm.

Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise has a nice chapter on Weather forecasting. Claims local broadcasts have a "Wet Bias." From his book:

"In what may be the worst-kept secret in the business, numerous commercial weather forecasts are also biased toward forecasting more precipitation than will actually occur. (In the business, this is known as the wet bias.) For years, when the Weather Channel said there was a 20 percent chance of rain, it actually rained only about 5 percent of the time.

People don’t mind when a forecaster predicts rain and it turns out to be a nice day. But if it rains when it isn’t supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic. “If the forecast was objective, if it has zero bias in precipitation,” Bruce Rose, a former vice president for the Weather Channel, said, “we’d probably be in trouble.” "



Tundra Brewery has a table at the Greenmarket. 2 for $5, will try Brown and Red before going for the Six-Pack.



Finally, someone gets it right.



Some good Pepper purveyors at the Greenmarket.



Scooby at Union Square.



From the archives, The Misery machine.

Saturday, October 20, 2012

October 20, 2012



Sweet potatoes in the sun.



Never heard of Cardoons. Seems they are "celery on steroids."



Barnes and Noble Coupon Time: Little Shop of Horrors.

Saw the original musical at the Orpheum Theatre on the LES. When I saw it, Mr. Mushnik was played by Philip “Fyvush” Finkel. Later saw Rob Bartlett as Mr. Mushnik on Broadway. Vincent Gardenia plays him in this version.

Wondered what happened to Rick Moranis and found this at IMDB:

"Following the death of his wife in 1991, the difficulty of raising their two children on his own, and his increasing disenchantment with Hollywood, Moranis retired from acting in 1997. He had intended the retirement to be a sabbatical of a couple of years, but later realized that he didn't miss the pressure. He still does occasional voice work, e.g. Brother Bear (2003)."



Barnes and Noble Coupon time: The Essential Writings of Hunter S. Thompson.

"As an afterthought, it seems hardly proper to write of life without once mentioning happiness; so we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? "

Friday, October 19, 2012

October 19, 2012



RIP Yankees. Great season, fantastic ALDS, horrible ALCS. Same thing as last year, Detroit silences the Yankees' bats. Swisher, A-Rod and Granderson must go.



Waiting in Emergency Rooms and Hospitals. Nothing to read, and I found Stephen King's Duma Key. I always liked him and this is good so far.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

October 14, 2012



"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."



O Captain! my Captain!








Saturday, October 13, 2012

October 13, 2012



Great weekend for games and Giants v SF on Sunday. Yankees look horrible, hope they wake up.....Ichiro and Raul homer. Wow ! Nooooooooooooooooooooo. Jeter lost for season.



Frank Langella has an interesting conceit for a Memoir. Capsule memories of people he knew and worked alongside.



Playoff Victory beers included different sized Coronas. The Coronitas are so cute.



They never get it right, it is Brussels Sprouts.



Last Corn of the season, looks seedy, tastes great.

Friday, October 12, 2012

October 12, 2012



Yankees are the ALDS winners.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

October 11, 2012



Wow ! That one last night goes down as one for the ages. Yesterday, I listened to the FAN, Mike Francesca was lambasting a caller for saying "Bench A-Rod, and play Ibanez." His reply was something along the lines of you don't replace a Superstar with a bench player. He treated the caller as something of an idiot. Hope he apologizes today, but I won't hold my breath.

Monday, October 8, 2012

October 8, 2012



Way to go Carsten Charles Sabathia.



Pesto Sauce Time !

Ingredients
2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/2 cup grated Parmesan
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup pine nuts
2 medium sized garlic cloves, minced
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method
1 Combine the basil in with the pine nuts, pulse a few times in a food processor. Add the garlic, pulse a few times more.
2 Slowly add the olive oil in a constant stream while the food processor is on. Stop to scrape down the sides of the food processor. Add the grated cheese and pulse again until blended. Add freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Makes 1 cup.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

October 7, 2012



In reading Killing Kennedy there is a piece on the Cuban Missile Crisis. It brought back so many memories. I was in grade school at the time and we all thought World War III was about to happen. A scary time. Can't believe that the 50th Anniversary is this month.



Wet Red Peppers at the Forest Hills Greenmarket.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

October 6, 2012



I have read a lot on the Kennedy Assassination and an old College roommate is an expert. Will try this one only because I thought the Killing Lincoln was better than expected. Heard he discusses George de Mohrenschildt, who is one of the more interesting people around Oswald in Dallas.



Nate Silver's new book The Signal and the Noise has been ordered. I encountered "Bayesian inference" in my readings on Randomness. More to come in this book. I also expect to see Random Walks , Chinese Restaurant and Monte Carlo processes.



Heirlooms in the sun.



Cornucopia from behind.



Great live version of Steely Dan's "My Old School."



Thursday, October 4, 2012

October 4, 2012



Way to go Yankees !



From Ghosts of Cannae, War Elephants :

This brand of military disconnect also helps explain another characteristic Punic military delusion, a reliance on war elephants. Like the Romans, the Carthaginians got their first dose of panzer pachyderms from Pyrrhus, military history’s favorite Epirote,when they fought him in Sicily during his short sojourn there in 278. Unlike the Romans, who simply learned to deal with the elephants, the Carthaginians had their own by 262 and soon became addicted.This proved to be a bad habit. Elephants can be panicked easily, not a good quality during warfare.

When this happened, they tended to treat friend and foe alike, flailing wildly and stepping on anyone in the way, which was often the Carthaginians themselves. Granted, the elephants were terrifying to uninitiated enemy troops, and could disrupt cavalry, since horses found their scent repulsive. But there were simply too many ways they could be thwarted, and their net effect was to add another uncontrolled variable to the battlefield. They do appear to have played some role in defeating the Roman general Regulus when he invaded Africa in 256, but it is hard to find another comparable Carthaginian success with pachyderms. And this must be weighed against the elephantine expense of capturing, training, and transporting them,a negative cost-benefit result by any realistic accounting.But Carthage was plainly struck by their jumbo size and power—an ancient ultimate weapon—a mirage the possession of which might render all other military shortcomings irrelevant, a particularly beguiling notion to an acquisitive people not much used to fighting on the ground. Also, elephants were available. Carthaginians,after all, lived in Africa, and so-called forest elephants (Loxodonta africana cyclotis)were likely to be found north of the Sahara. Although they were smaller than the Indian models ridden by the Hellenistic Greeks, they were still plenty impressive, standing nearly eight feet tall at the shoulder.

Even Hannibal was fooled, making a heroic effort to herd some over the Alps, only to have them die well before he ever reached Cannae.Still, he remained interested, and his disastrous last stand at Zama in 201 featured eighty of the giant beasts. But war is not a circus, and they panicked as usual, marking Hannibal as the last and greatest of the Punic pachyderm true believers.
Pg. 67 Robert L.O'Connell


Monday, October 1, 2012

October 1, 2012



Nate Silver's FiveThityEight Blog is the place to go in this election. The name comes from the number of electors in the United States electoral college. He is mentioned a lot in a New York Magazine article about Polling.