The European Space Agency is simulating a trip to Mars, and they want you to lead the mission.
From the "Week in Review" of today's New York Times comes a short article about the European Space Agency's attempt to get participants for the 17 month long experiment. According to the brief, particpants will live in a "module of interconnected metal tanks," earning about $160/day. This comes out to roughly $58,ooo/year and $82,000 for the duration of the trip.
Something tells me that a new reality show is looming.
I would consider taking part in the experiment under three conditions: 1. I get an unlimited supply of muffins while on-board 2. I can bring the complete DVD set of "The Sopranos" (I really want to see it now) 3. This astronaut is not allowed on the trip
If the Space Agency simply allows participants to play "World of Warcraft," I'm sure thousands of people will be willing to particpate. What's better: playing "World of Warcraft" 100 hours a week in your mother's basement or playing "World of Warcraft" 100 hours a week in a simulated space capsule?
Here is a link to the ESA website in case you're interested.
I just returned from Freihofer's Jazz Festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center. Currently, day two of the event is ongoing, but my parents and I decided to only go to the first day. The reason for this was simple--Tower of Power! performed yesterday only.
I've been wanting to see Tower of Power! since the seventh grade, when my middle school jazz band played "What is Hip?" Yesterday, finally, I was able to feel the power.
However, given the poor behavior of the audience, I feel like an apology is in order to the group. Here it goes:
Dear Tower of Power!,
I was at your concert last night. It was awesome. Hip. Powerful. When you played "Diggin' On James Brown" I honestly felt a tear coming down my cheek. It could have been due to the wind (I have really sensitive eyes), but I actually think it was from hearing you guys for the first time, after over six years of waiting.
Your dancing was fantastic. Funky Doctor (the baritone saxist) was hilarious. Your lead singer was so good he even impressed my mom.
Yet, for some reason, the amphitheater was half empty when you played. People were trickling out in the middle of songs. The atmosphere was pretty much dead as you played.
I want to apologize for this. You deserve much better.
You came onto the stage after a very long day of jazz, some which was incredibly inspiring, some which was not. David Sanborn on the saxaphone was fantastic. Jean-Luc Ponty on the jazz violin was surprisingly good. Yet, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey was dull and melodyless--they clearly thought they were too cool for school. The Ray Haynes Quartet, while good, was simply too small and calm to fill such a large amphitheater.
And then there was George Benson. He came on right before you. He was once good (so my mom tells me). He was once a pop-star. Now he's old and not very good at all.
When Benson was playing, the crowd was dancing all around, singing the words to his old hits. They were living vicariously through the aging Benson, remembering the days when they were younger and listened to his hits on record or radio.
At around 9:30, you guys came on, and the crowd was emotionless and half-empty. Apparently, many people came to simply see Benson and then left.
You deserve much better. Your performance was one of the greatest live performances I have ever seen. The music, the dancing, the personality--you guys are the real deal.
This coming fall, when I have to vote for a Spring Concert performer here at Amherst, you're definitely going to be my write-in candidate.
Now, finally, I know what hip is. You group is the definition of hip.
Thanks,
JT
For anyone unfamiliar with Tower of Power!, here is a clip of them playing their hit "What is Hip?" at the 2006 Montreal Jazz Festival with Carlos Santana. Their performance last night was very similar, minus Santana and the full crowd.
Last semester, JT and I turned this video into something of an Amherst tradition. Active from the 1950s until his death in 1977, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was a blind master of multiple instruments. His ability to play more than one instrument simultaneously was often dismissed as showmanship, but Kirk insisted that he was trying to emulate sounds in his mind. In the video, he plays two saxophones at once; in other performances he often played three. Although his main instrument was the tenor saxophone, he also mastered the straight alto sax, or stritch, and the curved soprano sax, or manzello. As a young player, he discovered as discarded one of each of these instruments and realized that they fit well into his mouth beside the tenor sax. Kirk avidly explored a variety of other instruments, including clarinet, trumpet, harmonica, english horn, nose flute, recorder, gong, conch shell, whistle, siren, alarm clock, graden hose, and flute, which one hears him play in Quincy Jones's "Soul Bossa Nova," the Austin Powers themesong. This video of "Volunteered Slavery" captures Kirk's unparalled ability to circular breathe, the method of storing a reserve of air in the cheeks to blow out while inhaling so as not to interrupt the stream of music. This video, although over 10 minutes long, gets progressively more exciting. Enjoy!
Today will be my first day off from this blog as I will soon head off for the Freihofer Jazz Festival at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.
Among others, George Benson and Tower of Power! will be performing. It should be a very hip affair.
I will provide an account of the festival tomorrow evening. Until then, I shall be computerless and Miller will be in complete control of The Vegan Dessert.
Have a very good weekend; I'm sure Miller will have some great posts.
The most entertaining documentaries are those that could be mockumentaries if you didn't know otherwise. This is the case with Spellbound, a tale of eight logophiles who compete at the National Spelling Bee.
Christopher Guest could not have created a better cast of characters. There is the Machine, Neil Kadakia, whose multimillionaire father quizzes him on 8,000 words per day, hires Spanish and French tutors, and pays 1,000 Indians to pray for victory at the National Bee. There are the two minority underdogs--Ashley White, an African American from the projects of Washington, D.C., and Angela Arenivar, the daughter of an illegal immigrant farmhand who doesn't speak a word of English. There is the spaz, Harry Altman, whose nerdy hee-haw laughter, steroidally recounted jokes, and broad repertoire of facial contortions make him simultaneously lovable and beat-upable. There is the multitalented Indian, Nupur Lala, whose comparative blandness is supplemented by the three stooge-like geeks she barely bested at the regional spelling bee. There is Emily Stagg, the prep-school trained, New Haven dwelling polo player whose yuppiesque hyper-maturity is annoying on a middle schooler. There is Ted Brigham, the reclusive Missourian obsessed with weapons whose family raises peacocks and wears shirts adorned with the stars and bars. Finally, there is April DeGideo, a favorite of JT and mine, whose pessimism-driven self-motivation seems to transcend her parents' blue collar roots. A slew of scintillating minor characters adds further zest to this smorgasboard of personalities.
Spellbound not only documents unique members of disparate American communities but also the communities themselves. The racism of the South, the snobbery of the Northeast, the opulence of Orange County, the drear of the Rust Belt--all are succinctly captured in their most potent forms.
JT and I are not fans of the cinema. In fact, last night was the first time in living memory either of us had seen a good movie. It gives us hope that in the future, we will muster the money and courage to see another.
If you scroll down to the previous post, you may see that my partner Miller has listed his favorite five fruits.
However, maybe you shouldn't scroll down at all, because the list is seriously flawed. He has two fruits that I've never actually seen someone eat whole--lime and avocado. He has one fruit that is as insubstantial as food gets--grapefruit. And then, to take all credibility out of his list, he has kiwi number one. This is like ranking Clifford the Big Red Dog as the novel of the century. Here is my attempt to put some common sense into this debate. I love fruit, and I don't want anyone to be discouraged by Miller's peculiar taste.
First, I'll list out the criteria I took into account for my list. In addition to taste, I considered: -convenience -fun factor (the enjoyment derived from eating the fruit) -color -durability (what lasts in a backpack the longest without being mashed) -accessibility (how easy it is to find in a supermarket)
5. Cantaloupe Probably the most underrated fruit on this list. I love how it feels when you bite down on a nice, firm piece of cantaloupe. The one big problem with this fruit is that it's not all that convenient. In high school, I don't think I ever saw someone come in with a cantaloupe in their lunch box. 4. B-A-N-A-N-A-S When I was little, I was literally horrified by the texture of bananas--they were too mushy. Yet, once I overcame this fear, bananas became a staple of my diet. What breakfast is complete without a banana? It's also great how you can tell exactly how ripe a banana is by simply looking at it. You don't have to feel how firm it is or cut it open--it is perfectly OK to judge a banana by its cover. Gwen Stefani did a noble service by advertising this fantastic fruit.
3. Pineapples Good canned or fresh, pineapple is an excellent vegan dessert option. CAUTION: do not eat this fruit with milk.
2. Apples The second best food on the planet.
I probably have averaged two apples/day since I was about five years old. Apples are the perfect snack. An apple can be left in a backpack for weeks, yet still stay fresh and firm (go ahead, try it). There is also such amazing variety--Granny Smith, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious. You can go across the color spectrum and taste spectrum while still staying in the apple genre. It is also a lot of fun to chuck an apple core into the woods once you're finished with it--very empowering. 1. Grapes The best food on the planet.
Fun to eat (how many grapes have you fit in your mouth?), fantastically smooth and moist, surprisingly filling. I challenge you to tell my any food that is better than a bunch of grapes.
Honorable Mention: Nectarine
Most Overrated: Kiwi, Raspberry, Lime, Grapefruit, Avocado, and Strawberry
To celebrate my live return from the field, I have decided to address an important facet of my life--fruit. Fruit is not only healthy but also delicious, thereby differentiating the dietary group from its adjacent planty counterpart on the food pyramid. My taste in fruit tends more towards the sour side, but I'm sure that JT will soon regale you with his more mundane list.
1. Kiwi.
Indisputably my favorite, the only downfall of this fruit is that when combined with milk, kiwi becomes unpalatable. The fruit's exterior fur is dissimilar to the skin of any other. Interiorly, kiwis possess a slightly tougher and sweeter core surrounded by a ring of edible seeds embedded in a more sour green matrix. Besides grapefruit, which comes later on my list, kiwi is the only fruit of which I know that gets its own utensil--the kiwi spoon, or spife. The spife has a rigid enough blade to saw through the fuzz and center of a kiwi with ease, allowing the connoisseur to shape her fruit into a polygonal solid.
2.Raspberry.
A close second, raspberries have many kiwiesque qualities. Small and indestructible seeds provide texture, a little hair covers the outside, and the pH is low enough to burn a canker sore. The nodular nature of the fruit allows for many dissection planes. The small central cavity is another source of raspberry amusement. Sharing the name raspberry is a rude form of expectoration that also plays an important role in my life. When I was four, my father taught me how to raspberry. Excited by my new skill, I decided to share the joy with a crotchety old lady at a buffet later that week by raspberrying in her soup. That is the closest I have come to excommunication from my family.
3. Lime.
This filamentous fruit bitterly takes bronze. Not only excellent in conjunction with prepared dishes, lime is surprisingly good when eaten alone. Introduced to the fruit by my grandmother, I have been a proponent of freestanding lime since a young age. She often placed a slice of the fruit alongside her famous avacado garnished salads.
4. Avocado.
Also advocated by my grandmother, avocado was an acquired taste for me. Not until a friend placed the fruit on a melted cheese sandwich did I see the light. A perfect avocado possesses a skin peelable into two or three pieces. After slicing longitudinally, one may caressingly twist the fruit into two parts around the smooth pit. Avacado is perfect on a variety of food, including blue corn tortilla chips and turkey sandwiches (a point my collaborator will surely protest).
5. Grapefruit. The perfect breakfast item. After slicing the fruit in half widthwise, I recommend cutting around the perimeter to separate the meat from the rind, and then cutting between individual sections. After this efficient procedure, one can eat each section in turn without worrying about labor-intensive hassling. After the fruit is hollowed, one should press the grapefruit spoon against the inside skin to coax out the hidden juices. Although eating grapefruit requires significant effort, the ends justify the means.
If you look outside your window right now, you might notice that it's light out. Kind of strange to be light out at eight? Well, today's the longest day of the year!
In honor of the very important day, I have compiled a list of some other long things:
While you were busy watching the Sopranos, Sex in the City, and PTI, the Discovery Channel has quietly become a heck of a Television channel.
Long gone are the days of dull documentaries about the Serengeti, Otters, or insects. With Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, and Man v. Wild, the Discovery Channel has developed some great brands. I haven't seen any of Planet Earth yet, but have heard from many that it is amazing.
Man v. Wild credits extra attention. The show is incredible. In the show, one man, Bear Grylls, takes on the World. He gets placed into rain forests, deserts, and frozen tundras and simply tries to survive.
There are certain questions that pervade every episode: how is the camera man sticking with Bear? Where is Bear trying to go? How is Bear such a survival machine? These questions are part of what makes the show so fantastic.
Bear treats the show as an educational tool, as if we, the viewers, may soon be stranded in a desert and need to pee on our heads to cool off. Or eat a decaying Zebra for food.
I'm not sure how much longer the series is going to continue. There are only so many places Bear can go. I suggest you turn to the Discovery Channel ASAP.
Here is a quick clip that epitomizes the show's greatness:
The Mets just lost again, falling to the Twins 6-2.
That makes their record 4-14 for the month. They've lost 6 consecutive series.
If I didn't have this blog to distract me, I'd be quite depressed. Nonetheless, I am pretty upset.
Since the start of June, the starters have come back to earth, the bullpen has fallen apart, and the batters have forgotten how to bat.
Admittedly, the Mets schedule has been quite difficult the last few weeks, espcially with inequiable interleague play. They've played the Yankees, the Dodgers, the Diamondbacks, the Phillies, the Tigers, and the Twins this week--all formidable teams. Yet this is no excuse.
A .500 record against these teams would have been perfectly acceptable. A .285 record is not.
Sometimes batters have hard times, sometimes pitchers lose it for a while, but for a whole team to go into a slump, for this long? It doesn't make sense, and it's starting to piss me off.
Wake up Willie! Let's start getting people out Glavine! Learn to hit Carlos'! You made it to game seven of the NLCS last year. Now, it looks like you don't even deserve to get to the first round.
Once Miller returns to this blog, assuming he does, you'll probably learn from him that he is a big fan of classical music. Also, he is not a big fan of rap.
Thus, before he gets home from his paleontology dig, I thought it would be appropriate to post a Youtube of Kanye West's new single "Stronger" (there is no music video).
This song has special significant to this blog. Every night, for at least the past week, I have listened to this song before beginning my blog posts. I prance around me room, waving my hands, and pretending to know the words. It is a lot of fun and gets my focused for the important task ahead of me.
First off, congratulations to last week's winner: "g." He knew the story behind whole, 2%, and skim milk. Here is his answer:
"In two percent milk, two percent of the total contents of the milk is fat. It does not mean that the milk contains only two percent of the fat that it normally contains. Whole cow's milk is around four percent fat. So two percent has about fifty percent of the fat that normal milk does. As you can see, I've asked myself the same question before. Where's the 50% milk?
By the way, did you hear about the cow that produces low fat milk, straight from the udder? Pretty wild. "
As for today's question, it is a bit more abstract:
It is illegal to speed. On some highways, this means it is illegal to drive over 55 miles/hour. On others, it is illegal to drive over 65 miles/hour. Maybe some, it is illegal to drive over 80 miles/hour. I just went out to my car, and the speedometer goes up to 120 miles/hour.
Why?
It is certainly not legal anywhere in the United States to drive this fast. Why are there not regulations to limit how fast cars can go?
I'm sure Porsches, Ferraris, and many other cars can go significantly faster than my faithful Oldsmobile. To me, this doesn't make sense. The reason speeders are ticketed in the first place is that speeding is dangerous. It leads to accidents, injuries, and sometimes death. Rather than relying on police officers to catch speeders, why not just regulate cars so that they cannot speed? Set a cap of 80 miles/hour or something around there. I'm sure this will upset loads of high schoolers, weavers, and car aficionados, but to me, it is a matter of common sense.
Please give me your thoughts on this tangent. There is no correct answer, though the best commenter, as always, will be rewarded with a nice, warm handshake.
As I mentioned a little more than a week ago, I never watched the Sopranos--don't get HBO.
However, with all the talk on the web, in the papers, and on TV about the ending (non-ending?), I really want to see the last show. What was it like in the diner? How long did "Don't Stop Believing" go for? Was the black screen up for nine or ten seconds?
Though the ending may have upset fans of the show who had been watching it for years, it surely peaked interest in the show for those who never watched it before (see: DVD sales).
Today, on two different websites, I came across apparent endings to the show. Here is one, courtesy of Deadspin.com:
Here is another ending, courtesy of Hillary Clinton. (You'll have to go to the site to view it, I cannot embed it). Though I have not put support behind any Presidential Candidate, and this is not meant to endorse Clinton as a candidate, I have to say that Sen. Clinton was on the ball with this spot. It doesn't get across any message at all, yet still, it is so creative and unlike anything I've ever seen a candidate churn out. It's not negative in any way but simply witty.
However, for some reason, at the very end of Clinton's video, the screen goes black. Maybe my Internet went down. I'll have to check that out; I'm kind of pissed off.
So yesterday, when writing about the golf U.S. Open Championship, I failed to say anything about the winner of the event, and only wrote about Tiger Woods.
This was a mistake; my bad.
At the time of that post, I knew that Argentinian Angel Cabrera had won the event, however I did not know this:
During Middle School, I played fantasy baseball on smallworld.com. Each participant got something like 50 million dollars and would have to put together a a team that fit all the position requirements (the key was to have a pitching staff full of closers). Once the season started, you could only make a limited number of roster changes--maybe three a week.
I remember that one year, Smallworld introduced a feature in which you could purchase extra waiver moves. For a dollar, you could make one more trade than anyone else. This completely undercut the idea of fantasy baseball; it's supposed to be about knowledge, not money. Of course, people in my league did buy trades, though I'm sure I ended up winning.
Anyway, by way of The New York Times Magazine comes an incredibly bizarre and disturbing article about how online gaming has followed this same, capitalist path to a remarkable extent.
Titled "The Life of the Chinese Gold Farmer," the article describes the sale of virtual money in "massively multiplayer online role-playing games" such as World of Warcraft.
It details the lives of professional gamers in China who work for twelve hour shifts, 7 days a week, collecting gold coins in World of Warcraft, only to be sold to those who are too lazy to collect the coins themselves. The workers get paid as a function of the coins they collect and have "daily production quotas."
There is apparently a multi-million dollar business for virtual money. Multiple websites are devoted to the exchange of real money for money that which can only be seen on computer screen. Thousands of companies in China are devoted to collecting virtual coins, guns, and gear to sell to the highest bidder.
"For players lacking time or patience for the grind, there has always been another means of acquiring virtual loot: real money. From the earliest days of M.M.O.’s, players have been willing to trade their hard-earned legal tender — dollars, euros, yen, pounds sterling — for the fruits of other players’ grinding," author Jullian Dibbell writes.
This practice has been given an official name: Real Money Trading (R.M.T.), and the workers have been dubbed "Gold Farmers."
In probably the most entertaining portion of the article, Dibbell describes how the Chinese Gold Farmers are often hunted down in the game by regular players who know that they're collecting gold later be sold.
"In part because gold farmers’ hunting patterns are so repetitive, they are easy to spot, making them ready targets for pent-up anti-R.M.T. hostility, expressed in everything from private sarcastic messages to gratuitous ambushes that can stop a farmer’s harvesting in its tracks. In homemade World of Warcraft video clips that circulate on YouTube or GameTrailers, with titles like 'Chinese Gold Farmers Must Die' and 'Chinese Farmer Extermination,' players document their farmer-killing expeditions," Dibbell writes.
I would love to know if some professional athletes are dishing out hundreds of thousands of dollars for the virtual money.
If you want more, check out the slide show that comes after the article. It presents the players of interactive online games alongside the characters they play as.
This blog was born approximately two weeks, and I wanted to take this time now to tell you, our many highly respected readers, that it is going to be around for a while.
This blog is building (I can feel it in my gut), and there's no way we're going to give it up now.
Anyway, now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want to make an important announcement. I know some of you probably checked our blog today two, three, ten times while you were bored at work or home. You may have noticed that the blog was the same each time you checked.
The reason for this is that on weekdays, both Miller and I work in labs, and thus cannot post until we get back from work. Monday through Friday, we start posting at around six p.m. and then continue through the night. I recommend that on weekdays, you check this blog as a nice dessert before you go to bed, or a sweet, wake up dessert once you rise from bed.
As for the weekends, check it out whenever you want, since our only work during the weekend if writing this blog.
If you have any suggestions for this still very young venture, please let me know in the comments section.
Also, Miller should be arriving home from his geology adventure in the next few days. Then you'll be able to hear much more of him and less of me.
Tiger Woods took 2nd at Today's U.S. Open, ending with a final score of +6.
I could say who took first, but I honestly don't care.
I have never played a round of golf in my life. Up to about ten years ago, I considered watching golf on TV just about as boring as watching grass grow.
When Tiger came along, everything changed. There was now a reason to watch golf; I could watch history being made.
Tonight, as with every other major, I rooted hard for Tiger.
I've grown up during the steroid era of baseball, the invisible era of the NHL, the over-the-hill years of the NBA.
In golf, as well as tennis, I actually have a chance to watch the greatest player ever. I root so hard for Tiger because I want him to indisputably be the greatest ever. I want to be able to live during the career of the greatest player of a sport, even if it is one I have never played.
I do somewhat remember the years of MJ, but I was really too young to appreciate what I was seeing. In Tiger, I fully embrace the greatness.
Sports fans are often derided for jumping on the band-wagon, for being "fair-weather" fans. When it comes to Tiger Woods, and the sport of golf as a whole, I will not deny that I have jumped on the band-wagon. I have jumped on the band-wagon which I hope continues to steer itself up to the top of the history books.
(The picture comes by way of deadspin.com. It is of a young Tiger Woods with his father, Earl Woods)
Since this blog is named for desserts, and the Twinkie is the quintessential American dessert, I thought I should report this very important story:
There are now banana cream filled Twinkies.
Maybe I shouldn't be posting this information, since I'm indirectly advertising a clearly unhealthy food, but I thought this was a pretty big deal.
If anyone has had such a Twinkie, please provide a review in the comments section. I have one specific question- is the cream yellow or white?
Here is a link to the story from the Week in Review section of today's New York Times.
Also, as a side note, the Sunday Times is a remarkable literary achievement. The fact that they crank out such a massive paper on a weekly basis is extremely impressive. I spent half my morning reading it, and it was very satisfying.
Over Christmas vacation, I went to Washington D.C. with my family. The one major site we did not go to was the Jefferson Memorial.
This was apparently a big mistake since the Jefferson Memorial is currently sinking.
From today's Washington Post comes a story about the Memorial's deteriorating, sinking infrastructure. The article is incredibly technical and I don't understand half of it. Apparently, for now, the main structure of the Memorial is not at risk.
But with global warming, who knows how long it will be until the Memorial is completely submerged under water?
I say see it while you can.
(To view the article, you unfortunately have to create a Washington Post user name)
When Miller and I started this blog, we had planned on doing a litany of lists. We were going to list our top movies, top musicians, top fruits, top dinner utensils, and of course our top desserts. We thought it'd start some nice conversation in the comments section, and give us a chance to share our often eccentric taste.
For some reason, two weeks since this blog's birth, we have yet to pursue this vision.
Well here's a start.
With Miller still out of town, I will hold off on listing my favorite desserts. Instead, given Kellogg's recent decision to stop marketing certain "unhealthy" products, I thought it'd be appropriate to list my top five all time cereals.
Here are some things, in addition to taste, that I considered while making the list: -crunch factor -presentation -destruction time (how long it takes for milk to render the cereal inedible) -Toys given away in the box
Nutritional value was not taken into account.
Here are the top five cereals of all time:
5. Corn-Pops The one problem with this cereal is that you sometimes get a bad pop. However, the good ones more than make up for the few bad.
4. Fruit Loops Maybe it's just because Kellogg actually advertised this to me when I was little, but I have always loved Fruit Loops. I think its the first cereal I ever had in milk. The color combos are a big plus as well.
3. Cinnamon Toast Crunch Screw the milk. This cereal is tremendous when it is dry. 2. Razzle Dazzle Rice Krispie Treats This is a real throwback. For a limited time only, this incredibly cereal was the highlight of my day. It consisted of a rainbow array of rice krispie like pieces. It is a real shame that this cereal is no longer made, yet regular Rice Kripie cereal still is. 1. Berry Berry Kix The perfect cereal. It's good with or without milk, with or without a spoon, during breakfast, lunch, or dinner. It has it all: presentation, crunch, and a remarkable, fruity taste. When cereal was first thought up by some chef in Ancient times, Berry Berry Kix is definetely what he had in mind.
Honorable mention: Honey Combs, Honey Nut Cheerios (the fact that it lowers cholesterol was not factored into this ranking), Post Raisin Bran
Most overrated cereal of all time: Lucky Charms
Also, as a side note, cereal should never contain chocolate.
The European Space Agency is simulating a trip to Mars, and they want you to lead the mission.
