Noticed this on the shelves in a supermarket yesterday. (I was hunting for clotted cream, but that’s another story.) I can’t recall if I’ve known before that “quark” was also a kind of cheese.
I suspect that this might have potentially amusing physics joke uses in the future.
To further my education, I looked up quark cheese on Wikipedia. All very interesting. […] Click to continue reading this post
So I had a big payoff.
The War has dragged on for a long chunk of the Summer, with attacks on three fronts, air (Flitty), ground (Slinky), and, most annoyingly, tree (Fluffy). While I do counterattack, including pointless and potentially embarrassing bouts of fury that see me rush outside early in the morning, sometimes in various states of undress, waving a broom, towel, pan, cup of tea, machete, or whatever I can lay my hands on, most gain is made by thinking through useful purely defensive countermeasures (perhaps in another post I will share with you a rogue’s gallery of the results of other countermeasures – see e.g. here). These were first laid on in July, while the figs were still far from interesting to the enemy, and also while they […] Click to continue reading this post
Vienna. (Yes, the 80s song’s refrain did ring in my head as I arrived. No, I still have no clue what the lyrics mean.)
I am at the Erwin Schrodinger Institute (named after one of the co-discoverers of the modern Quantum theory upon which so much of our science and technology depends, in case you were wondering – he with the cat) for a while. There is a workshop here on the study of aspects of nuclear physics using holographic methods from string theory, a topic I’ve told you quite a bit about before. This is week one, and there are some longer survey talks that have been put on to set the scene and get everyone on the same page. It is an excellent way to start a workshop. As a bonus, present are some of my old friends from my postdoc days who I last saw in Madrid earlier this year, Karl Landsteiner (one of the organizers) and Esperanza Lopez, (you may recall me chatting a bit about those days in an earlier post), and, as icing on the cake, to my surprise Rob Myers, a friend and collaborator from even further back, is here too.
It is not just about old friends and colleagues, but new ones too. I’ve met and re-met […] Click to continue reading this post
After spending more than half the day writing a report, fiddling with data gathering for the report, and dealing with various annoying issues in background over email, it is nice sometimes to be able to walk outside into the garden, pause to take a deep breath in the warm sunlight, and harvest some lovely tasty things.
Aaaahh…
I really need this sometimes. It is good.
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The experiment seems to have been a success.
Some of our best people were on site working on diagnostics. Here’s one of them engrossed in their work. (Photo on the left. Click to enlarge.)
In short, they vanished like, er,… Hot cakes.
-cvj
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Well, this morning I did an experiment. It began with zesting some lemons from the garden, and rapidly got into the business of mixing cupcake batter (recipe here – big on the lemon zest this time, and some of the juice), to make cupcakes… then melting chocolate (7 oz), pouring it over whipped butter (1 cup!), folding in some confectioner’s sugar (three cups or so), and a few drops of vanilla essence…. to make a chocolate frosting. More photos below, which you can click for larger views.
This (and my dutiful munching on tester cakes that ensued this morning) was all in aid of a nice test of a lemon cake plus chocolate question raised earlier. You will recall from an earlier post that author Aimee Bender‘s reading at Skylight of her new[…] Click to continue reading this post
No, I am not going mad. Well, no more so than normal, perhaps. The Green Zebra tomatoes are here, and they are lovely. (Click for larger view.)
Well, here’s the first batch of the season (not counting the onesies and twosies I’ve nibbled over the last few weeks as I go by), representing four different varieties… By the way, my compost played a role in all this, so it is quite satisfying.
If the War goes well, I ought to get more of these soon. Several plants are producing tomatoes.
News from the Front? Fluffy has started the above ground […] Click to continue reading this post
In other news…
It’s a long story. You should refer to last year’s start of The Troubles, starting with the Great Tomato Atrocity. This year it began with the lovely tomato on the right…
(click for a larger view).
At first I thought it was an early attack by Fluffy (in the 3.x series, presumably – I did battle with series 1 and 2 last Summer – especially since I’d deployed the first level of countermeasures already this season, the shields around the main tomato area of the garden. Had Fluffy found a way past those? Would I have to fortify them? I was very annoyed since I wanted to make a gift of that tomato and had been admiring it every day since it began to ripen, waiting for the moment to pick it. Evidently mine were not the only admiring eyes. And my paws were not the first to get to it. So I decided to launch more level one of the offensive countermeasures, to test the possibility that something other than Fluffy was a work here. Perhaps one of Fluffy’s allies. The Fluffy series with less good PR: Slinky. I might need to be fighting a war on two fronts. […] Click to continue reading this post
Yeah, I know I’ve used this post title before, but I do love it. So… sorry.
One of the things that really sets my week up nicely is my Sunday visit to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Today was an exceptionally nice day for it, but weatherwise and just the overall atmosphere of the market. The people making their food purchases and simply socializing, the vendors, the many musicians (even the corny ones sounded really good today), and of course – the food itself.
One of the highlights for me today was a new (ish) vendor, specializing entirely in mushrooms.
The variety was fascinating, and I stood there with a friend sniffing and sampling for a while (encouraged by the vendors, I hasten to add) before purchasing a lovely persimmon enoki (the ones in the middle of the first photo):
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There’s something enduringly lovely about local independent bookstores. I love stopping by to visit them, try to give my local ones the first shot at supplying me with a book I’m looking for, but most of all I value them as community centres at the heart of the villages (real and virtual) that exist in our neighbourhoods, even in a vast city like Los Angeles. People gather and linger at them, bonding over the written word for the most part, but sometimes just for the sake of gathering and lingering. In that role they are a lot like public libraries, another favourite of mine. Much of what I said can apply to the large chain bookstores too, but somehow I find them less likely to have that community feel that independent stores have. I’m not sure why (location? focus? less of a personal touch in the organization of the material?), but this is the way it seems to me. (I’m speaking about the USA; the feel of bookstores is different to me in different countries.)
Last night, after a quiet evening meal after a long day of working on the Project, I went for a nice long walk, heading to Skylight books in Los Feliz. (That’s the neighbourhood at the base of the hills of Griffith Park, in case you don’t know.) My friend and colleague Aimee Bender was launching her new (long awaited) novel “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”, and I thought I’d go along to support the launch, hear about the book, and absorb a bit of the buzz. And buzz there was, since in addition to […] Click to continue reading this post
It has been a wonderful Spring for me so far, I must say. On many fronts. For example, work is trundling along steadily, with small but regular landmarks in my project being set and met, and the garden is planted with lots of new vegetable plants that carry promise for tasty treats in the months to come. In the mornings the garden has a cacophony of sounds from all sorts of birds, all determinedly busy with whatever it is they think needs to get done that morning. It is good to start that day hearing all that activity. 
(Fully half of that sound comes from a remarkably energetic Northern Mockingbird that manages to run through several distinct birdsong choruses at high volume while flying from tree to tree in the neighbourhood. It is almost as though it is trying to create the illusion that there are several mockingbirds in residence…) In the photo you can see a pair of mourning doves (the same pair I think I spoke about earlier), surveying the activity in the air and on the ground below.
There’s a feeling of promise, hope, and growth all around at this time of year. It’s everywhere. A nice surprise waited for me early last week. I was filling the kettle at the sink for my first cup of tea of the day one morning and noticed something green […] Click to continue reading this post
So it has been a quiet week or few in my immediately local world. This is by choice. Recall that I’m on sabbatical, and working on a project. I’m trying to work on it exclusively, but I keep getting interrupted by several other things, especially since I returned from Walkabout.
But I do what I can, saying no to some things, doing some duties where I am needed, and tending somewhat to my private life and friendships of course. But mostly I’ve been hiding and working on the project. Overall, I can report that I’m very pleased with progress in the last month (since I returned to LA) on several aspects of the work. I’m sorry that I have not – and still will not – tell you anything about the project. I’ve already given my reasons, and nothing has changed. Perhaps later.
Most of my work has been in Away mode, which means at offices other than the one assigned to me at work. I am certainly staying away from the department as much as I can, (no disrespect intended, but people find things for you to do if you’re perceived as being around – I am not around!), and the same goes for the campus, making only fleeting visits to the latter, mostly in stealth mode (my obligatory sabbatical beard, among other things, has helped here). Sometimes I appear for a […] Click to continue reading this post
I find myself back in Los Angeles for a bit, putting Walkabout mode on pause. Perhaps to do my laundry, perhaps to chair the committee of the upcoming Ph.D. defense of my student, Tameem, perhaps to be able to sit outside in the early morning sun in a T-shirt and blog over breakfast.
The garden is full of weeds and flowers, and all is well with the world, albeit a bit blurry due to my jetlag.
Anyway, a few random things to note:
Another Spring is here, in full force. I once again snort in exasperated laughter at the bizarre claim so very many people make about Los Angeles (Southern California more generally) not having seasons, as I marvel at all the many signs of it screaming for attention. As a random example, I’m observing some mourning doves eyeing me up from nearby as they try to decide whether I’m a threat to their potential nesting sites that they are checking out. Seems that at least one pair is rather impressed with my cluster of strelitzia nicolai and want to move in. I want to tell them that I’m not the problem, but the fact that they’d be in plain sight of the crows/rooks/ravens/winged-Nazgul that pass by here a lot will be. I’ve seen them strike nests in those trees from previous years and scoop up a tasty warm meal.
Eight hours of jetlag means only one thing: […] Click to continue reading this post
These are not really my cup of tea (at least not first choice), so to speak, but they are very pretty.
While working at the countertop of a coffee bar at Mercado San Miguel, in Madrid, (drinking my usual café cortado) I watched the fellow at the counter making them for some customers.
It was a rather elaborate process, and quite fascinating to watch. It might seem odd […] Click to continue reading this post
