📺 “Blue Bloods” School of Hard Knocks | CBS

Watched "Blue Bloods" School of Hard Knocks (Season 8, Episode 14) from CBS
Directed by Alex Zakrzewski. With Donnie Wahlberg, Bridget Moynahan, Will Estes, Len Cariou. A student is shot bu a rival gang member in his high school courtyard; Danny and Baez try to prevent further violence, the principal recklessly takes matters into his own hands.
Great little turn by Ernie Hudson in here, though his character’s motivation given a lengthy career didn’t seem realistic to me.

👓 Harvey Weinstein shows how not to respond | Axios

Read Harvey Weinstein shows how not to respond after allegations from Uma Thurman by Mike Allen (Axios)
Stunning series of interviews by Maureen Dowd, on the cover of N.Y. Times Sunday Review, "A Goddess, A Mogul And a Mad Genius ... Uma Thurman ... is finally ready to talk about Harvey Weinstein" — and Quentin Tarantino
This is a simple me-too article (in the original meaning of “We’ve got to post something, but don’t have anything interesting of our own”) where Axios is just recapping some other reportage going around the web. Sadly nothing new here, but they had to post something about what is going on with the story. Would be nice to see them doing some original reporting on the matter.

👓 ‘Bitcoin is my potential pension’: What’s driving people in Kentucky to join the craze | The Washington Post

Read ‘Bitcoin is my potential pension’: What’s driving people in Kentucky to join the craze by Chico Harlan (Washington Post)
The possibility of a windfall lures many who see themselves in a financial rut.
This is just painful to read and feels all too much like a Ponzi scheme gone wrong. Sadly, the reportage doesn’t take a direct stance, so some are more likely to read this and think that it’s an actual investment scheme to be dabbled with. If it were a realistic currency, then having a relatively constant value would be a key feature.

I came across this from Paul Krugman’s tweet which is all too apt:

Happy Fornicalia

As we coast toward the nones of February whence we’ll commence the celebration of the Fornacalia, by all accounts an Ancient Roman religious festival celebrated in honor of the goddess Fornax, a divine personification of the oven (fornax), and was related to the proper baking of bread, I thought it only appropriate to call some attention to what should be an international holiday for bakers.

While shamefully few, if any(?), now celebrate the Fornacalia, I’ve always looked at the word as a portmanteau of a festival along the lines of a bacchanalia for bread with tinges of seeming Latin cognates fornicati, fornicatus, fornicata, and fornicatae or the Greek equivalent porneia (πορνεία). Knead these all together and you’ve got the makings of a modern day besotted festival of bread immorality. And really, who wouldn’t want to celebrate such a thing?!

I’ll celebrate myself by doing some baking, listening to the bread related episodes of Eat This Podcast, while reading and looking at bread porn on Fornacalia.com. Special thanks to curio maximus Jeremy Cherfas for providing entertainment for the festival!

How will you celebrate?

 

Featured photo Bread is a flickr photo by Jeremy Keith aka adactio shared under a Creative Commons (BY) license.

👓 Designing for Equity: Growth, Slack, and Abundance (NOT Grit, Deficits, and Scarcity) | Canvas Community

Read Designing for Equity: Growth, Slack, and Abunda... by Laura Gibbs (Canvas Community)
Inspired by Gregory Beyrer's post about equity and his "Summer of Canvas" plus it being the Fourth of July holiday, I am re-posting below an blog post from another blog: 10 Ways to Give Your Students the Gift of Slack. I've changed the title (a lot of people thought I meant Slack-the-app), and I've updated it with some links to Canvas Community spaces in which some of these same ideas have come up. I hope this is something that will promote more discussion and more blog posts; it's my opinion that designing-for-equity is both a pedagogical and a civic duty, and it is not just about technology or about online courses: it is about the future of public education in this country.
The cartoon that came along with this post was particularly poignant.

📖 Read pages 163-194 of Ratio by Michael Ruhlman

📖 Read pages 163-194, Part 4: Fat-Based Sauces, of Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking by Michael Ruhlman (Scribner, , ISBN: 978-1-4165-661-3)

Mayonnaise: 20 parts oil: 1 part liquid: 1 part yolk
Hollandaise: 5 parts butter: 1 part liquid: 1 part yolk
Vinaigrette: 3 parts oil: 1 part vinegar

Rule of thumb: You probably don’t need as much yolk as you thought you did.

I like that he provides the simple ratios with some general advice up front and then includes some ideas about variations before throwing in a smattering of specific recipes that one could use. For my own part, most of these chapters could be cut down to two pages and then perhaps even then cut the book down to a single sheet for actual use in the kitchen.

Highlights, Quotes, & Marginalia

Part 4: Fat-Based Sauces

But what greatly helps the oil and water to remain separate is, among other things, a molecule in the yolk called lecithin, which, McGee explains, is part water soluble and part fat soluble.

Highlight (yellow) – Mayonnaise > Page 168

Added on Sunday, February 4, 2018

The traditional ratio, not by weight, is excellent and works beautifully: Hollandaise = 1 pound butter: 6 yolks. This ratio seems to have originated with Escoffier. Some cookbooks call for considerably less butter per yok, as little as 3 and some even closer to 2 to 1, but then you’re creeping into sabayon territory; whats more, I believe it’s a cook’s moral obligation to add more butter given the chance.

Highlight (yellow) – Hollandaise> Page 185

more butter given the chance! Reminiscent of the Paula Deen phrase: “Mo’e butta is mo’e betta.”
Added on Sunday, February 4, 2018

 

🎧 1.03: A Proportional Response (with Dulé Hill) | The West Wing Weekly

Listened to 1.03: A Proportional Response (with Dulé Hill) by Josh Malina and Hrishi Hirway from The West Wing Weekly
Dulé Hill joins Josh and Hrishi to talk about shooting his first episode of The West Wing, visiting the real White House, and losing to Martin Sheen in 1-on-1.

🎧 1.04: Five Votes Down | The West Wing Weekly

Listened to 1.04: Five Votes Down by Josh Malina and Hrishi Hirway from The West Wing Weekly
The limits of practical idealism. Plus, Hrishi sets Leo's dialogue to music, and Josh unwittingly reveals a secret.

It’s all about the small tidbits one can discover or rediscover upon watching episodes. This episode had a particularly interesting walk & talk in the opening.

🎧 1.05: The Crackpots and These Women (with Eli Attie) | The West Wing Weekly

Listened to 1.05: The Crackpots and These Women (with Eli Attie) by Josh Malina and Hrishi Hirway from The West Wing Weekly
For Big Block of Cheese Day, Josh and Hrishi are joined by Eli Attie, who was Vice President Al Gore's chief speechwriter before leaving politics and joining The West Wing as a writer and producer. Plus, the truth about David Rosen. President Ronald Reagan's Challenger Disaster address...

Elie Attie’s appearance on the show made it infinitely much stronger. There was a nice richness to the additional background he brings here in comparisson to Hill’s recent performance. Notes about Gore using the same campaign idea that appeared behind Bartlett in the episode were great to hear.

I’m trying to catch up on episodes of the podcast to match my recent push at rewatching episodes.