The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)
READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Sunday, May 11th, 2008
There is a comparison to be made between Into the Wild, and Vagabond -- the structures of the two films are not identical but they have a similar project in mind. Sean Penn is (obviously) no Varda, oh well. I am interested to read Krakauer's book; my expectation is that a lot of what came off in the movie as sappy, was Penn's additions.
I was driving to Home Depot today, and the car behindin front of me was (I'm assuming) driven by an evangelical Christian. The car had several bumper stickers that helped me make this assumption; the one I'm thinking about now said,
This car is washed in the BLOOD of Christ
It was weird -- it looked vaguely like a horror movie promo. (It also made me wonder about transubstantiation occurring in the car wash.)
I was looking through my bookshelf today for something to read, and thinking, I really need something different, a change of pace. Well what caught my eye was the Inferno, which I have been meaning to read for a while -- since 2005, when I bought this translation. I read the book a long time ago, in high school, in a different translation, and maybe again in college; but I think my ear has developed enough since then that I will get a lot out of rereading it now. So here I go!
posted evening of May 11th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Inferno
This morning Sylvia and I rode our bikes into town to buy bagels for breakfast, and back. I think that is the farthest Sylvia has riddden on her own so far! She was fine for most of it but had trouble with the (gradual, but long) hill up South Orange Ave. from the train station to the bagel shop.
Here is Sylvia baking muffins with her grandmother (2003). And Sylvia's other grandmother, at her birthday party last month.
...My sister, who is herself a mother, passes along a link to this narrative of Mother's Day History.
For your Mother's Day viewing pleasure, The Mothers:
posted morning of May 11th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Sylvia
My dad sends along this quote from Fred Palmer, senior vice president for governmental affairs at Peabody Energy (formerly Peabody Coal):
Are there negatives associated? Sure. But 50,000 people die per year in our highway system, and you don't think about that when you get into your car. And you shouldn't.
How exciting! Sylvia and I are going to Brooklyn tomorrow, to see the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. (Sylvia already saw it with Ellen a couple of weeks ago, and wants to go back; I have not seen it yet except in photos.) And! We will be meeting Bill at the museum, whom I have not seen in a year or so; and then having dinner with Dan, whom I have not seen in a lot longer time, I'm thinking about 8 years.
Tonight we watched Crash. It's funny -- it reminded me in certain key ways of Lush Life, which I just finished reading; and my reaction to it was similar to my reaction to that book: it's a pretty gripping, entertaining story as long as you avoid thinking about the deficiencies in the plot and characterizations. If you just watch, don't think: a good movie. (In the end, not nearly as well-done a story as Lush Life, which despite having some similar defects is much more coherent.)
A.O. Scott's review is absolutely spot-on. Here is a nice line: "Metaphor hangs in the California air like smog."
posted evening of May 9th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about The Movies
You want to know what is a really excellent pasta? Foglio d'Autunno, is what. I bought a bag this evening to go with the dinner I was making for Ellen, and man -- I don't know if I have ever tasted a more pleasant pasta. It's really surprising, since noodles are usually made in regular shapes; these are like little irregular lumps of pasta in different colors. I recommend it.
This recipe was inspired by A White Bear's Cauliflower Pasta Sauce. (For reasons too complicated to explain in this short context, you can log in to AWB's recipe site using as a password, the initial letters of the phrase "Why Must You Be Such A Little Bitch?") I was scanning through the wiki this afternoon looking for a dinner recipe; my eyes kept coming back to that one. Thanks AWB for reminding me of the existence of asiago cheese, which I had somehow forgotten about.
Modified Cauliflower Pasta Sauce
one red onion
garlic
one head of cauliflower
a bit of spinach
grated cheese, asiago or romano
Sauté the onion, garlic and cauliflower in olive oil for a good long time, about half an hour. It's ready when the the cauliflower gets tender and pleasant to bite into. At this point you should put pasta into the water that you have been bringing to a boil.
Add a few handfuls of cheese and the spinach leaves to the pan. As the cheese starts to burn, pour some liquid over it and stir well. (AWB used broth, I used white wine.) Turn the heat down to a simmer.
When the noodles are ready, toss everything together in a bowl and serve.
It's a good dinner, and pretty easy to put together. I was worried when the cheese started burning, that I had done something wrong; but it turns into a really nice brown sauce in the wine.
posted evening of May 9th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Recipes
Question about timeouts on select(): if anyone has ideas about this, please let me know in comments.
Obviously select() is not a real-time operation; if you pass in a 1-second timeout, you cannot assume that you will get to run again in one second, since the operating system is allotting time to all the processes on the machine: in an extremely busy environment, it could be several seconds before you get the processor back. But I'm wondering whether the timeout is 1 second of real time, or 1 second of execution time -- in the very busy environment where your process does not get another time slice for more than a second, would select() continue to wait on the files you passed in until it had waited for a second? Or would it return immediately?
(select() as it is used in this post should be read to mean "select() and poll()," since I'm assuming both API's behave the same in this regard. Who knows, maybe they don't! But that seems unlikely to me.)
1 leek, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise, rinsed, and thinly sliced into half-moons
½ cup low-salt chicken broth
pinch of crumbled saffron threads
kosher salt
black pepper
¾ lb. monkfish fillet
chopped parsley for garnish
Heat oven to 400° F.
Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large cast iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sausage and brown on both sides. Add the potatoes and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add the leeks, broth, saffron, pinch of salt, a couple of grinds of pepper. Bring to a boil.
Rinse the monkfish, pat dry, season with salt and pepper. Place on top of potatoes and drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil. Transfer pan to oven and bake until the fish is cooked through, about 15-20 minutes. If potatoes are not ready, take out fish and wrap in foil, until the rest is done. Serve with parsley on top.
The parsley (along with a little bit of oregano) was the first use our new herb garden has seen.
posted evening of May 8th, 2008: Respond ➳ More posts about Projects
This morning Sylvia and I rode our bikes into town to buy bagels for breakfast, and back. I think that is the farthest Sylvia has riddden on her own so far! She was fine for most of it but had trouble with the (gradual, but long) hill up South Orange Ave. from the train station to the bagel shop.
last month.
