the wasteland

went to lechmere tonight in search of a tasty beverage and can confirm that 1) it is infested by chain stores, 2) all of which are closed after 9.30pm, 3) and what is open after 9.30pm is reprehensible.

paris, recollected

through an improbable sequence of events, i wound up in paris for 10 days a few weeks ago. i spent most of that time underground, reading for generals between answering questions, in the main space at le laboratoire. events and observations:

1. the first morning, i ran through the louvre to the seine, and then across the bridge to the left bank on my way to the champs de mars. i slowed down passing the overflowing summer gardens at the musee de quai branly, and then did a double take at the vegetal wall by patrick blanc covering the entire administrative building (longer article here). much of the wall up to head height is covered with a particularly soft and fuzzy moss that invites you to hug it, so i did.
2. the tubular metal seating in paris parks and gardens is magnificent, especially the low reclining chair, which is perfect for reading. one evening, after failing to find the pont des artes, we sat in these chairs in the tuileries garden with a large bottle of warm orange juice and watched the sun go down over the obelisk.
3. france does not believe in adequate ventilation.
4. i met a friend from google for drinks and one of his ex-googler friends came along too. she went to pastry school in paris and now lives there, making stunningly good artisanal caramels in her paris pastry lab. (extra points if you know what a galipette is. i didn't. trust the french to have a polite word for it.)
5. shanaz showed up from zurich for some kind of wedding celebration, and we made an executive decision to go to le comptoir du relais. it was great: pea soup with mint and tapioca, a terrine of pork, a poêlée of girolles and zucchini topped with a shaving of dry-cured pork, beef cheeks with tremendous depth of flavour, and a round slab of crisp, tender, slightly gelatinous suckling pig.
6. some people got invited to mathieu lehanneur's workshop and i insinuated myself into the contingent. five (or possibly six) floors up, at the top of an old building surrounded by fabric stores, is a large workspace filled with marvelous things. it reminded me of the roomful of olafur eliasson's* maquettes that traveled with take your time, except much slicker.
7. all the boulangeries and patisseries i wanted to go to were closed. chance alone guided me to regis colin, on rue montmartre, at the end of another early morning run into the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th arrondissements. it was an unpromising-looking store and they had just opened for the day. the bleary-eyed counterlady sold me a compact croissant and a pain au chocolat, both still warm from the oven. i ate the croissant standing on the corner as the sun cleared the horizon. it may have been the best croissant i've ever had. (as it turns out, it took over 18 months for me to run across a better croissant in narita airport.)

* on that note: the Institut für Raumexperimente

the sackler

on my way home today, inspired by housemate ben's example, i stopped in at the sackler to see the latest rotation of the review exhibition on show while the fogg undergoes renovations. i didn't know that the museums were still acquiring, but there were several pieces there from the last couple of years, including a beautifully-made bar of milled aluminium with cast resin spelling out "confidence in daybreak modifies dusk" (a quote from emily dickinson's letters), that appeared to be made of glass from a distance and only became comprehensible close up. the docent and the curatorial commentary opined that piece was made of plastic around which aluminium was cast, but this seems implausible: the resin would char and discolour immediately on contact with molten aluminum. much more likely that the aluminium was milled to form the negative spaces between the letters and then locked into a matrix for the resin pour. in any case, a beautiful object.

roni horn, 2007. image from the harvard art museums.

then, as i was leaving, i bumped into one of the board members of storm king and zaha hadid, in town for the weekend. which only goes to show that museums are worth going to.

the generals

are done with; suddenly, there is a sense of release, and the days are filled with hours to each of which a determinate number of pages to be digested is not attached. we celebrated with inglourious basterds and discovered that cinema on friday morning is a blissfully isolate experience.

maps and representations

We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which were then put on paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map; and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps.

gregory bateson, steps to an ecology of mind

the perfect reading chair

the height and pitch of the back are perfect. these chairs are literally strewn all over parisian parks and gardens but, despite repeated searches, i can't figure out where to get one.

update: the brainy julien benayoun has solved this puzzle. this perfect reading chair is part of the luxembourg family of outdoor furniture designed by frederic sofia and made by fermob.

on a street in paris

on a street north of the rue de rivoli, just a few blocks away from le laboratoire.

ike jime smackdown

turns out ike jime (the mystical japanese fish-killing technique) yields better-tasting, better-textured fish by acclamation. the folks at cooking issues (now officially my favourite blog) proceeded to do some nifty investigative research on why this might be the case. the plausible explanation is that inserting the needle up the spine destroys the fish's spinal cord:

Certain fish that swim for very long periods have highly a highly developed autonomic nervous system for swimming (sounds like the CPG’s Bob was talking about). These fish, like bass, like horse mackerel, etc. benefit from spinal cord destruction. Other fish, like plaice, that don’t have highly evolved constant swimming reflexes, don’t benefit (or at least not as much). The paper recommends doing a species by species test to see which fish benefit the most. The paper didn’t mention CPG’s (in fact no paper did that I could find). Someone needs to do some research on that. So then, when you destroy the spinal cord, you destroy the swim reflex, which helps reduce ATP loss, delaying and softening rigor, increasing the quality of the fish.

this definitely did not emerge when i was talking to the professors at the tsuji academy about their fish preparation techniques in 2005.

more cooking issues

i keep telling people that being a graduate student is, apart from the comparatively lousy pay, the best thing ever: you get to do stuff you're interested in, doze off reading, work in cafes, the whole bit. then i read the latest post from cooking issues and it is clear that in fact the real best thing ever is to be dave arnold and nils noren. this episode, they do an in-depth analysis of ike jime (a semi-mystical japanese fish-killing process purported to yield superior fish flesh).

convivium

the final issue of convivium, image from hortus.

this is my latest minor fixation: convivium (from the publisher of hortus). a serial festschrift (of a sort) for elizabeth david, this journal consists of 8 issues, each 128 pages, of writing dedicated to obscure issues relating to food. better yet, each edition is letterpress printed and illustrated with engravings and woodcuts. (obviously, this hit all the right buttons.)

if you have £49.50 kicking around, you might consider ordering a set of all 8 issues. and if you have £99.00 at a loose end, you might consider ordering a set for me too.

fond of the pond

pachaug pond this weekend. on saturday evening, the sky at dusk was wreathed in pale cirrus clouds that appeared to emanate from the sun, which glowed from below the horizon in the gap between an island in the pond and the westerly shore. we took kayaks and canoes out on the water. everything glowed in the blue light that radiated from the sky, and small insects made circles on the still surface; we heard the band clearly, playing in the bay, and the beacon on the beach flashed on as the last light faded. later, when the air turned cold and a layer of mist appeared on the water, an old christmas tree was consigned to the fire and went up in a rush of flames, and pipes and cigars appeared. people eventually drifted off to tents and bed. the acoustic guitars came out at 1am and drew the circle of people in chairs tightly around them. dozed off around 4am in a hammock strung between two paper birches, to music and the sound of the tea-coloured pond lapping at the breakwater.

new cards

are software-controllable iphone camera settings too much to ask for? so it would seem.

i've been meaning to do these for a while; finally got round to setting them up and printing them between lab sessions on thursday, and then hunted down a guillotine for the cutdown. trying out a couple of new ideas: design variation (there are 24 unique card type x image/color combinations) and keywords. on the latter: whenever i pull out the stack of cards i've collected from other people, i usually end up wondering why i thought they were interesting enough to get a card from. the only exceptions are when i've scribbled something down a couple of words from our conversation on the card. maybe keywords will help--i quite like how these turned out. i also realized, after finishing the printing, that the source file had reverted to an earlier, more ineptly-kerned version. i'm thinking what you're thinking. this is how the cookie crumbles.

translation

it is not often apparent how translation affects poetry. below, Рождественский романс by joseph brodsky, in two english translations. i know which one i like better.

Moscow Carol

A Christmas Ballad

In such an inexplicable blue, Upon the stonework to embark, The little ship of glowing hue Appears in Alexander Park. The little lamp, a yellow rose, Arising--ready to retreat-- Above the people it adores; Near strangers' feet. In such an inexplicable blue The drunkards' hive, the loonies' team. A tourist takes a snapshot to Have left the town and keep no dream. On the Ordynka street you find A taxicab with fevered gnomes, And dead ancestors stand behind And lean on domes. A poet strolls across the town In such an inexplicable blue. A doorman watches him looking down And down the street and catches the flu. An old and handsome cavalier Moves down a lane not worth a view, And wedding-party guests appear In such an inexplicable blue. Behind the river, in the haar, As a collection of the blues-- The yellow walls reflecting far The hopeless accent of the Jews. You move to Sunday, to despair (From love), to the New Year, and there Appears a girl you cannot woo-- Never explaining why she's blue. Then in the night the town is lost; A train is clad in silver plush. The pallid puff, the draught of frost Will sheathe your face until you blush. The honeycomb of windows fits The smell of halva and of zest, While Christmas Eve is carrying its Mince pies abreast. Watch your New Year come in a blue Seawave across the town terrain In such an inexplicable blue, As if your life can start again, As if there can be bread and light-- A lucky day--and something's left, As if your life can sway aright, Once swayed aleft. trans. Alexey Vernitsky

In anguish unaccountable the steady ship that burns at dark, the small shy streetlamp of the night, floats out of Alexander Park in the exhaustion of dull bricks. Like a pale-yellow, tiny rose, it drifts along, past lovers' heads and walkers' feet. In anguish unaccountable sleep-walkers, drunkards, float like bees. A stranger sadly snaps a shot of the metropolis by night; a cab with squeamish passengers jolts loudly to Ordynka Street, and dead men stand in close embrace with private homes. In anguish unaccountable a melancholy poet swims along the town. Beside a shop for kerosene, a porter stands, round-faced and sad. A ladies' man, now old, lopes down a dingy street. A midnight wedding party sways in anguish unaccountable. On Moscow's murky south-side streets a random swimmer sadly floats. A Jewish accent wanders down a yellowed melancholy stair. A fragile beauty swims alone from New Year's Eve to Saturday, exchanging love for bitterness, unable to explain her grief. The chilly evening floats above our eyes; two trembling snowflakes strike the bus. A pale and numbing wind slaps reddened hands. The honey-gold of evening-lamps flows out; a scent of halvah fills the air. The Eve of Christmas holds the pie of heaven above its head. Your New Year's Day floats on a wave, within the city's purple sea, in anguish unaccountable-- as though life will begin anew, and we will live in fame and light with sure success and bread to spare; as though, from lurching to the left, life will swing right. trans. George Kline

what has happened

to the economical, concise, well-written journal article? it has vanished, is what.

volunteer

new little friend

singlespeed

finished converting the rescued trek elance frame to a fixed-gear singlespeed today, after 2 hours of sawing and then grinding a steel drop handlebar salvaged from another trash bike to turn it into bullhorns. without derailleurs and with a single gearing ratio (kept the smaller chainring on, in case), it is a light and addictive ride. sold.

only downside: have to stop ragging on fixie-riding mission hipsters.

histories and stories

History is first and foremost a tangled net of events. Each event lies in dozens of stories, determined and overdetemined by the causes flowing through them, yet ever open to new directions and twists. Indeed, given happenings may be seen as parts of different events within different stories. Because people and groups construct their future by interpreting their causal environment, the very knowledge of the past itself shapes the future, even though aggregate regularities and structural necessity simultaneously oblige it … But plot is a chimera. History does not happen in stories, even if we usually talk about it as if it did. The storylike element enters history itself only because we as historical actors frame our future intentions relative to a past understood in stories. The past stories we consider do assume thereby a special causal importance, although not an importance that can overwhelm either structure or direct determination.

andrew abbott, the system of professions

le whif

labo group gave out a few hundred of these le whifs today at TEDxBoston. 200mg of chocolate, aerosolized (i assume). powerfully weird, but they do taste like chocolate. for those who care, close to zero calories.

the inventors explain that the history of food consumption has followed a trajectory of decreasing volume (which is only arguably true), and that inhaled food--le whif is the first example--is the logical telos of that trajectory. they didn't say why, but they're not the first to think that something like this might be on the way. back in the 80s, writing about japanese food, mfk fisher noted that

We have never been taught to make little look like much, make much out of little, in a mystical combination of ascetic and aesthetic as well as animal satisfaction ... [but this new acceptance], no matter how unwitting, of the intrinsic asceticism of Oriental cooking, is suspected by some observers to be a kind of intuitive preparation for the much leaner days to come to all of us who live on a polluted planet. What is now a stylish fad, or an "awakening," depending on both pocketbook and chronology, may become in the future an exotic recollection of the Good Old Days, when carrot curls and cashew nuts were eaten by caprice and not necessity. A latter-day MacLuhan might argue that out current preoccupation with culinary simplicity is really an instinctive recognition of our diminishing supplies of food ... of our need to accept austerity as the rule, after a long time of heedless Western glut.

from the introduction to japanese cooking: a simple art

tara donovan at lever house

about a month ago, i passed by lever house on the way up to the park avenue armoury to see anthropodino with ami.

anthropodino, image from the armoury on park.

crossing over from the other side of park ave, i noted a proliferation of james surls's characteristically charmless semi-biomorphic sculptures littering the median, and then was stopped short by tara donovan's wall installation of plastic sheeting. this was one of my favourite pieces at her ICA show; it's mesmerising to stand inside the lobby of lever house (filled also with barcelona chairs, doubtless authentic, perhaps even original) and watch the light from the street shift as pedestrians pass by. (the courtyard also held a tom sachs exhibit, fortunately temporary, of large white hellokitty crying fountains.)

the lever house collection's homepage has a great sequence of photos of the installation of the donovan piece and is worth checking out.

projects left behind

from life work, by donald hall

tolerance

A group's tolerant attitude toward, and encouragement of, the efforts of another group to raise its power and social standing requires that the first group's secure social status is not endangered by these efforts. There is something smug about tolerance, despite best intentions, since it implicitly asserts one's own superiority ... Intolerance is an admission of weakness that acknowledges the power of another, just as tolerance is a sign of strength that confirms the other's inferiority.

peter m. blau, exchange and power in social life

moving on

Although it is easy to fit any given segment of the past neatly and intelligibly into the patterns of world history, contemporaries are never able to see their own place in the patterns. ... He no longer felt that he was among equals in his school and his town. He was no longer in the right place. Everything he had known has become permeated by a hidden death, a solvent of unreality, a sense of belonging to the past. It has all become a makeshift, like worn-out clothing that no longer fitted. And as the end of his stay at the Latin school approached, this slow outgrowing of a beloved and harmonious home town, this shedding of a way of life no longer right for him, this living on the verge of departure--interspersed though the mood of parting was by moments of supreme rejoicing and radiant self-assurance--became a terrible torment to him, an almost intolerable pressure and suffering. For everything was slipping from him without his being sure that it was not really himself who was abandoning everything. He could not say whether he should not be blaming himself for this perishing and estrangement of his dear and accustomed world. Perhaps he had killed it by ambition, by arrogance, by pride, by disloyalty and lack of love. Among the pangs inherent in a genuine vocation, these are the bitterest. One who has received the call takes, in accepting it, not only a gift and a commandment, but also something akin to guilt.

hermann hesse, the glass bead game

the academy of ham

we finally have the internet back. 37 days, 39 phone calls (192 AT&T minutes), and 6 service visits after ordering verizon dsl service, theacademyofham now spreads its SSID across the land.

aerogel

would someone buy me a block of aerogel? (what is aerogel? find out here and here.) you can do all sorts of neat things with it. it is also optically weird and looks awesome.

photo taken at JPL by robert m. brown and found at hubert van hecke's aerogel page

tool library

why, cambridge, can't you have one of these?

(or one of these?, or one of these?)

sourdough success

after a few false starts, i've figured out the activation schedule on this starter that's been growing for almost two weeks. last night, a nice sourdough loaf; today, a killer grilled cheese sandwich.

the 17th vermont brewers' festival

two weeks ago, andrea asked if i'd be interested in going up to burlington for the annual vermont brewer's festival. does a dog have fleas? lisa drove up from connecticut and we left on friday afternoon. after traffic miscellaneously up 93 and 89, we stopped for dinner in downtown burlington. it was dark when we got to the campsite, but we sat under a tent canopy intended for small trucks and drank rum and coke and i poured surreptitious shots of basil hayden's for people who would appreciate it. more than two inches of rain fell on friday night; by 1am, the gradually rising water level at my end of the tent drove me out into the back seat of the car where i eventually fell asleep on top of a pile of cd cases.

we camped with people who care about food. (photo by brennan guerriere.)

next morning, there were stacks of bacon and ziploc omelets, and i made a batch of sourdough pancakes with the starter that's been doing its thing for two weeks, massive blueberries andrea picked at home, a half cup of bacon fat, and dark grade B maple syrup we got from the bulk bin at the local co-op. they were stunningly delicious--softly-crisp outside, tender and fluffy within. the next pancake sunday, east coast edition, is way overdue. it was noon by the time breakfast was over; i got an extra large cup of chuck's home brewed ryePA (a stunningly good, crisp, floral, dry-hopped rye IPA) and we went down to the lake to doze on the sand before grilling burgers for an early dinner before beer.

when we got to the fairground, there was already a line stretching at least 300 yards. we got our beer tickets (15 tickets, each redeemable for a pour) and a glass to drink beer from. after this, my memory begins to haze over. i vaguely recall an abundance of really beautiful dogs, having a seagull do a small poop on my arm, and having many excellent beers, including (but probably not limited to)

• dogfish's chicory stout and raison d'etre
• harpoon's munich dark
• allagash's tripel
• dieu du ciel's route des epices, rosee d'hibiscus, and aphrodisiaque
• north coast's pranqster
• ommegang's rare vos and hennepin
• magic hat's brown rice lager
• long trail's blackbeary wheat
• rock art's belgo-american ipa and the sunny and 75
• vermont pub and brewery's epinette and forbidden fruit
• trout river's double time and whitewater

i had 5 tickets left when they announced the imminent closing of the festival, so we cut a couple of lines and pounded our last beers--this was a crime, especially for the double time and white water. the skies were clear by the time the police kicked us out. we walked back along the lakefront trail with fireflies glowing in the bushes and the milky way a bright sash across the sky.

summer reading, 1 of 7

libraries are such marvellous institutions.

terroir: a critical analysis

going through the files, i found a paper from several years back analysing the relationship between subjective wine quality and underlying vineyard physiography (soil type, site exposure, etc). i recently updated it and reworked the figures, though the original dataset appears to have vanished. the physiographic components of a vineyard site are elements commonly associated with the concept of terroir: in various forms, the unique combination of physical characteristics of a vineyard have become associated with quality and thus with price. the french legal system of denominations d'origine contrôlée (DOC) is perhaps the best known of the type, though there are similar systems of spatial classifications in germany, italy, spain, and other traditional winegrowing regions, as well as in the US. if it's not from burgundy, you can't call it burgundy, even if it's pinot noir. in any case, opinions vary about the degree to which terroir is detectable in wine and the strength of the connection between quality and terroir. this paper is a first analysis of terroir in the american context (indicated by AVA, american viticultural area, classification) and its relationship with subjective quality (as measured by robert parker's wine score over a period of several years). flaws aplenty, but a good place to begin conceptually (i hope).

to download the paper, go to its google base page. comments (particularly on the analysis) and suggestions (for additional datasets) welcomed.

little gidding

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

t.s. eliot

(on which, also see ithaka)