These guys have attitude you can cut with a knife.

These guys have attitude you can cut with a knife.

What I don’t know is whether their products are any good or even how much they cost.

But their ad copy is good – in that, even though my bullshit sensors are about to vibrate right off, I still want to try their cognac to find out just how full of it they are.

_We don’t do “smooth”. Smooth is not a descriptor. Just like “yummy” or “tasty” are not descriptors for wine.

If one wants “smooth”, one does not want to drink spirits with personality. The whole point of artisan spirits is reflecting a terroir and a craftsmanship; “smooth” is what is left when a spirit is mass produced and has nothing else to give._

http://pmspirits.com///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

I would never have guessed that this actually existed – still does exist, in fact.

I would never have guessed that this actually existed – still does exist, in fact. And that people take entire multi-semester university courses based on it.

Next week I will be lecturing on the inadequacy of canonical lists of monuments and the ways in which they (maybe inevitably) communicate more about the political outlook of their authors than about the works being canonized. But here, let Mortimer Adler tell you about it himself (emphasis added):

we chose the great books on the basis of their relevance to at least 25 of the 102 great ideas. Many of the great books are relevant to a much larger number of the 102 great ideas, as many as 75 or more great ideas, a few to all 102 great ideas. In sharp contrast are the good books that are relevant to less than 10 or even as few as 4 or 5 great ideas… [these less-relevant works include] many twentieth-century female authors, black authors, and Latin American authors whose works we recommended but did not include in the second edition of the great books.

…so there is a theory for excluding all those people: they don’t talk so much about the Great Ideas – or if they do, they tend not to dwell on the whole complex of Great Ideas.

So what are these 102 Great Ideas?

Adler has handily compiled them into a 2-volume “syntopicon.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Syntopicon:_An_Index_to_The_Great_Ideas#Content

They include Angels, Duty, Eternity, Fate, Immortality, Metaphysics, Infinity, Judgment, God, Soul, Good and Evil, Prophecy, Sin, Temperance, Punishment, Religion, Theology, Virtue and Vice, Wisdom, Will (!) and World (!?)

…so that’s 20% or so that seems… culturally inflected, let’s say.

Then there’s Aristocracy, Honor, Courage, Custom and Convention

…I can see why an established ruling caste might have an interest in writing about those…

and Government, Democracy, Citizen and Constitution, Monarchy, Oligarcy, Slavery, Liberty, Tyranny and Despotism

…which sounds pretty much exactly like a US civics course, along with the outstandingly creepy Necessity and Contingency.

Consider, for a moment, what all of these sound like put together – what it means to select a canon of worthy books based specifically on their mixing many of these ideas together. A book that’s merely about Slavery, Liberty, Government, Tyranny and Despotism and Oligarchy cannot make the list. Even if it also mentions Democracy, Constitution and Citizen – approvingly or critically.

But it’s Adler’s afterthought that I find most suggestive about where his Great Ideas are coming from: apparently he later regretted that he didn’t think of Equality.

There’s an obvious snarky point to be made there, but instead let’s look at the complex he put it in when he later published Six Great Ideas: Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Liberty-Equality-Justice.

…that strikes me as a very culturally specific hexad, partnering beauty with goodness AND equality, like they were self-evidently co-supporting.

Cool sermon, bro.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Dirk Puehl looking over my photos of Parthian Nisa again, I guess they do tell a story that the other photos do not,…

Dirk Puehl looking over my photos of Parthian Nisa again, I guess they do tell a story that the other photos do not, including one view down a reconstructed alley. Just out of sight: a heavily built medievalesque wooden door into a building interior. It was locked when I was there, so I don’t know what they put behind it.

These are from about 10 years ago – I have no idea what’s happened since then. I’ve included some shots of the reconstruction work and of some unreconstructed walls so you can get a sense of the difference. Also a long shot of Turkmenbashi’s Gypjak mosque – the largest mosque in Central Asia! – which I happened to snap while at the archaeological site.

Jason K Adam Thornton Jeremy Duncan Paolo Greco there is something terribly wrong with me.

Jason K Adam Thornton Jeremy Duncan Paolo Greco there is something terribly wrong with me. I see this tragic, peculiar story and all I can think is that they look like Carcosans.

Originally shared by Steve Keller (Robotkarateman)

In other news …

http://news.aazah.com/content/woman-shoots-man-she-met-craigslist-injuring-her-cervix-during-sex#.VUAl5zK9LCT//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Need this printed for as a elevator pitch for Am Tart.

Need this printed for as a elevator pitch for Am Tart.

“The Culpeper facility is in effect a huge subterranean mattress, stuffed with about $4 billion in newly printed bills of all denominations,” Proxmire said in 1976. “Under this doomsday scenario we would have $4 billion in cash and no people except a few lonely radioactive government officials.””

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-feds-cold-war-bunker-had-4-billion-cash-for-after-1699204253//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Purple Emitter…

Purple Emitter…

#justcarcosanthings

Originally shared by tony dowler

It’s a total coincidence that the purple emitter and the prison district are located adjacent to one another. Keep telling your players that. When one of the two comes up, mention the other, which just happens to be right next door. See what theories they spin.

And while we’re on the topic, isn’t it odd that that the records for prisoners kept on sublevel 8 are stored in a separate locked strongbox off premises from the rest of the prison records? Or that the Emitter stands on ground that was once prison property still connected, they say, by underground service tunnels? That certain cells listed as vacant in the rolls still receive regular visitors? That certain cells listed as in-use never do?

Moves and situations:

A powerful gang operating from inside the prison, with a secret source of contraband

A midnight shipment, a midnight blue coach, crates wrapped in inky silk, the sound of windchimes on the air

An earthquake tumbles the east wall of the prison, releasing a certain most wanted from solitary

More on my Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/creation?hid=1756807

I’m belatedly catching up with Boardwalk Empire’s final season and with Doyle’s death I think I can see the pieces…

I’m belatedly catching up with Boardwalk Empire’s final season and with Doyle’s death I think I can see the pieces falling into place (please no spoilers). I guess the decision to end it was made some time after season 4 finished filming, which means they missed out on a bunch of important stuff – Rothstein’s death, the Atlantic City Conference, the formation of the Big Seven, for which Nucky is actually famous…. so I’m left fantasizing about a BE fill-in movie. But reading around, I discovered something I didn’t know about – gangster Dutch Schultz’s last words and the stir they’ve caused (mostly related to his rumored buried treasure).

According to the Fount of All Knowledge:

Although the police were unable to extract anything coherent from Schultz, his rambling was fully transcribed by a police stenographer. This includes the famous:

A boy has never wept…nor dashed a thousand kin.

But the entire text (linked below) is much more rambling, for example:

You can play jacks, and girls do that with a soft ball and do tricks with it.Oh, Oh, dog Biscuit, and when he is happy he doesn’t get snappy.

One of his last utterances was a reference to “French Canadian bean soup” (French Canadian pea soup is a popular dish that is still produced as canned goods by many food companies).

Schultz’s last words inspired a number of writers to devote works related to them. Beat Generation author William S. Burroughs published a screenplay in novel form entitled The Last Words of Dutch Schultz in the early 1970s, while Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson connected Schultz’s words to a global Illuminati-related conspiracy, making them a major part of 1975’s The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Schultz#Last_words_and_posthumous_events//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

and finally a goatduck for Paolo Greco, apparently from the Book of Hours of Joanna The Mad, which the British…

and finally a goatduck for Paolo Greco, apparently from the Book of Hours of Joanna The Mad, which the British Library is dangling in front of my nose but I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to look inside.

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/illuminated-manuscripts/page/22/

http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/03/the-mystery-of-the-hours-of-joanna-the-mad.html

and an alleged link to the manuscript itself… of which I can’t seem to see any more than the cover:

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_18852

Curious Creatures in Zoology, by John Ashton, is as charming a write-up as you could ever hope to find of the usual…

Curious Creatures in Zoology, by John Ashton, is as charming a write-up as you could ever hope to find of the usual dog-headed men and werewolves and so on from 1890, collated from eariler sources.

“The Mimicke or Getulian Dogge,” is, I take it, meant for a poodle. It was “apt to imitate al things it seeth, for which cause some have thought that it was conceived by an Ape, for in wit and disposition it resembleth an Ape, but in face, sharpe and blacke like an Hedgehog, having a short recurved body, very long legs, shaggy haire, and a short taile: this is called of some Canis Lucernarius. These being brought up with apes in their youth, learne very admirable and strange feats, whereof there were great plenty in Egypt in the time of king Ptolemy, which were taught to leap, play, and dance, at the hearing of musicke, and in many poore men’s houses they served insteed of servaunts for divers uses.

Chris Kutalik – an ancient source for the Dog-men of the Space Cantons? There’s also an extensive chapter on bears.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42508/42508-h/42508-h.htm

#countercolonialheistcrawl for the section on fish.

Mike Davison stats for Sir Mawes of Matignon, who has waited these long two years to finally joust in Normandie.

Mike Davison stats for Sir Mawes of Matignon, who has waited these long two years to finally joust in Normandie.

Sir Mawes of Matignon

nobility!

st 11, de 9, co 11, in 6, wi 9, cha 14. HP 11.

mail hauberk (ac 5)

wooden kite (BF 1-3)

medium warhorse (+1 save, +2 dmg)

sword, trappings of nobility. 100gp.

squire Winnock, F1 hp 5, ac 6 Ring Mail, Wooden Round Shield, Sword, Dagger

5 Men-at-Arms (0 Level) Boiled Leather Armor, Swords

Sir Mawes spuriously lays claim to all the lands of Plouescat because he thinks nobody is watching and he fancies the barmaid there. He recently inherited Matignon when his uncle was poisoned. It is famous for its Dread Boar, which hasn’t been seen in decades but which now adorns Sir Mawes’s Own Brand Sausages.

Improbably badly written article contains gaming magic.

Improbably badly written article contains gaming magic.

I’m not sure what a rare Native American tribe might be, but apparently its members can summon local whales, dolphins, sharks, seals and other marine species, talk to them, and receive information about Tsunami threats scheduled for 2017.

#countercolonialheistcrawl

#suppressedtransmission

Originally shared by Hans Youngmann

#thingsthatmakeyougohmmm   Especially if you live in Western Washington…

http://yle.fi/uutiset/aalto_university_helps_native_americans_relocate_after_whales_warn_of_impending_tsunami/7916402//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Paolo Greco thinking about your idea of a fumble-based game – did I ever tell you how the great Dashoguz gas…

Paolo Greco thinking about your idea of a fumble-based game – did I ever tell you how the great Dashoguz gas explosion happened, when Ahmedov abandoned his post?

I thought “huh. I haven’t thought through what should happen if the crane operator goes away. I wonder how bad it is if he doesn’t do his job?”

So I rolled.

Four ones.

…I had set Dashoguz up as a handy place for you guys to discover the ins and outs of mechawrestling: the workers had their own little unapproved league of mechs made out of retired mining parts. They were allowed to get away with this lunacy because the manager was also in on it, commandeering all the best parts but, for some reason, finding that when he told the miners to work on his mech those parts never quite fit together the way they were supposed to.  There was a workers’ favourite and a mole working for the boss and then the boss’s sycophantic lackeys who hated him more than anyone, and I imagined you guys getting involved in all that and sneaking the best parts out and maybe staging a workers’ uprising.

Yeah, no. BOOOOOOOOM. And then you were stealing motorbikes and ram-raiding their glue-mech and swiping Caterpillar and off to Khiva.

The Mughal Emperor Humayun modeled his court on

The Mughal Emperor Humayun modeled his court on

“Haft Paykar, a legendary palace built for the Sasanian ruler Bahram Gur in the image of the heavens with its seven domed pavilions, each painted in a different color corresponding to the hues of the seven planets. Humayun copied Bahram Gur by giving audiences in a different room of his palace at Din-Panah in Delhi each day of the week, varying the color of his robe to match the decor of that day’s room.

“One of the popular games in Humayun’s court involved a round Carpet of Mirth that depicted circles corresponding to the sun and the planets on which courtiers would sit after throwing dice to determine their position. Humayun himself occupied the central circle of the gold-embroidered cloth “like the Sun,” reflecting “beauty,” “light,” and “purity”.”

This is a totally different approach to cocktail making from my usual…

This is a totally different approach to cocktail making from my usual harassed-barman-with-30-seconds-before-the-end-of-the-world method. I think I like it.

Certainly I’m intrigued by the possibilities of steeping fruits, fresh herbs and spices in the alcohol for a few hours or days ahead of time – citrus juices need to be squeezed fresh or they change flavour, but I see no reason not to lemongrass your gin for a day in the fridge, for instance. The main downside is that I would end up thinking about my night’s drinking all day long.

#illadvisedcocktails

http://www.bojongourmet.com/2014/03/grapefruit-ginger-and-lemongrass-sake.html//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

so I am slowly resurrecting the drinks blog

so I am slowly resurrecting the drinks blog

here’s my amaro roundup – no pretensions to completeness. Coming soon: a less reliable guide to sake from someone who knows next to nothing about the topic. As I update, progressively more wines and so on. I might do requests. Plus this post if you want to receive these updates.

https://richarddrinks.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/amaro-what-we-have-learned-so-far///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

“We live in turbulent times, with more and more space pirates entering our settlements and enclaves.

“We live in turbulent times, with more and more space pirates entering our settlements and enclaves. Security in our bordering galaxies is deteriorating. We just want to make sure we keep our freedom and our way of life.”

…surprise bonus in the middle of my search for Mamluk architecture.

http://iron2112fist.blogspot.com///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So the replica Napoleonic French frigate Hermione is coming to America really soon.

So the replica Napoleonic French frigate Hermione is coming to America really soon.

That’s right: a full scale replica of an 18th century ship in sailing condition. This is something that doesn’t happen very often, O people of the East Coast. Details:

http://parade.hermione2015.com/voyage-2015/

Ports of call from Virginia to Maine, this June & July

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2015/apr/18/french-replica-of-revolutionary-frigate-sets-sail/?shr=g

via Joseph H. Vilas 

#replicaships

amazing/finally!

amazing/finally!

The complete movie Fall of Otrar (Gibel Otrara) online. In Kazakh with some Russian dub, no subtitles.

…I missed it when it first came out, and it’s been very hard to find ever since. Alas I can no longer follow it properly, since I let my Russian rot. But if you want to know the Kazakh nationalist version of the Mongol conquests, this is the film for you. Or if you’re interested in the Islamic world in the Mongol period, then it’s worth watching just for the interiors, despite the fact that it’s very nearly in Sepia.

Kind of Eisenstein-inspired but with more sex and violence.

http://ikinokz.net/4783-gibel-otrara-ten-zavoevatelya.html

via one of my students, who found it after I mentioned it offhand during a lecture.

another brief summary of the Mayak nuclear disaster, in case you’re just joining us

another brief summary of the Mayak nuclear disaster, in case you’re just joining us

Originally shared by Dave Shapiro

The Town that Never Was

On 29 September 1957 the town of Ozyorsk had a problem, a significant problem. Before you call up Google maps looking for Ozyorsk, know that it will not appear – it never existed…officially. On that night people in the nearby town of Kyshtym noted that there was a column of glowing red smoke or dust that rose more than a kilometer. Local news reports suggested that it was a form of Northern Lights.

Located 1600 km (1000 miles) east of Moscow, Ozyorsk was a factory town. The particular factory was the Soviet Union’s Mayak Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing Plant. The nuclear age began in 1945 and being the era of the Cold War, there was an urgency to develop better, more powerful weapons as well as attempt to implement a non-military use for nuclear energy. Mistakes were made; critical design errors. What occurred that September night was the result of a design error; an error that produced the third worst nuclear disaster in history.

As with tornados and earthquakes, there is a scale for measuring the intensity of a nuclear event. This scale is known as the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES). The scale runs from level 0 to level 7; being a logarithmic scale, each level is greater than the previous by a factor of 10. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only two level 7 events; Ozyorsk is the only level 6 event.

Seven months after the event, a Danish newspaper reported that radiation had been detected over portions of the Soviet Union. Most believed that it was the result of nuclear bomb testing. Then in 1976 everything changed when Russian biologist Zhores Medvedev published a book describing the nuclear accident. Armed with this information, scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory examined the path of the radiation plume and discovered that several towns and settlements appearing on pre-event maps, no longer existed. 

Eventually through further investigation and the release of documents by the Gorbachev government, the cause of the disaster was uncovered. When designed, no allowance had be included for repairs to the nuclear waste storage tanks. Tubing on one of the tanks began leaking and the solution was to stop the flow of cooling water. The tank began heating eventually reaching temperatures greater than 350℃ (660℉). One report stated: “The tank exploded due to a severe chemical reaction of sodium nitrate and acetate salt.” 

It is estimated that the explosion had the force equivalent to 100 tons of TNT. A 160 ton concrete lid, buried 8.2 meters (27 feet) below the surface, was blown into the air. The surrounding area was inundated with radioactive material. Within 10 hours more than 23,000 ㎢  (15,000 square miles – larger than the state of Maryland) became contaminated. This is known as the East Ural Radioactive Trace or the Kyshtym Disaster. Scores of towns and villages were evacuated, never to be populated again. Today, more than 800 ㎢ remains affected and it is one of the most contaminated areas of the planet.

Negrotrar

Negrotrar

1 Campari

1 Cynar

1 Green Chartreuse

2 shakes celery bitters might not be doing anything given the circumstances.

stir, strain. No garnish, although I’m tempted to add a sprig of dill. 

#illadvisedcocktails

Uncool academic confessions: as far as anthropological theories go I find old-fashioned structural functionalism to…

Uncool academic confessions: as far as anthropological theories go I find old-fashioned structural functionalism to be about the most useful and fruitful approach. Which puts me somewhere in the 1950s and combines shamefully with my fondness for Blue Note jazz and Brutalist architecture.

…I found myself thinking this morning: has anyone ever actually done a structural functionalist reading of the Old Testament? It seems unthinkable that they haven’t, but I haven’t seen one. Consider how much effort is devoted to finding a basis on which the People of God can be identified – pretty much all of Leviticus is defining the community and its signs of recognition. What is proper succession of power and on what precedents can one challenge it in order to maximise the chances of communal prosperity etc. And then which power interests are specifically excluded and why.

…those parts of my brain annexed by Marxism and Analytical Philosophy pretty much demand that this be done, if only to illuminate biases that lie under all other anthropological work done by Judeo-Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_functionalism//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Idea for a series of cocktail-themed t shirts, horizontally striped in the colours of ingredients, in the canonical…

Idea for a series of cocktail-themed t shirts, horizontally striped in the colours of ingredients, in the canonical proportions. So: Negroni

Bottom third: white (gin)

middle third: scarlet (Campari)

top third: burgundy (Italian vermouth).

Aviation: white with a lemon yellow shoulder girdle, violet bottom hem.

Manhattan: burnt sienna with the lowest third burgundy, except right along the hem the narrowest of bright orange pencil-stripe. Or maybe I’d handle dashes like a spatter line crossing the other colours. 

Results of experimenting with that Elan Vital cocktail Joseph H. Vilas posted recently

Results of experimenting with that Elan Vital cocktail Joseph H. Vilas posted recently

(https://plus.google.com/u/0/101159830675913070599/posts/cw4wosjzV1U )

2 Jonge genever (Boomsma)

3/4 green Chartreuse

1/2 dry vermouth

1/4 creme de violette

1/4 amaretto

stir, strain

…this is not a colour I usually try to achieve.

I was scared of the toothache sweetness of the original recipe (which has yellow chartreuse in place of green and orgeat syrup in place of amaretto), so I toned it down a bit. The result, though, is like dry gin + benedictine, only more muddled. RECOMMENDATION: IMPERIAL

#illadvisedcocktails

uncool confession – every 10 years or so I get this urge to listen to Dire Straits’ first couple of albums, back…

uncool confession – every 10 years or so I get this urge to listen to Dire Straits’ first couple of albums, back when they were a blues-country band and Knopfler was still trying to figure out how he might be vocally different from Dylan.

Aside from being fun, unpretentious music, there’s a lovely wry sense of the absurdity of being a country outfit in 70s London. Single-handed Sailor is straight up cowboy music about Greenwich Maritime Museum. Eastbound Train is going to the Isle of Dogs. And on their very first record they have a song about an aging amateur combo that do it for the weekend stardom of small bars and christenings. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h0ffIJ7ZO4U//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

So now Disney Channel is agitating for May the 4th to become a holiday.

So now Disney Channel is agitating for May the 4th to become a holiday.

…just thinking about that for a moment:

1. way to depress the cinco de Mayo people

2. actually cinco de Mayo commemorates a victory by a ragged (Mexican) resistance against an invading evil empire (France)

3. so we would end up with a holiday in memory of a pretend victory over a fictional enemy edging out an actual historical war.

This is Tartary

Painfully hipster anti-gin is painful

Painfully hipster anti-gin is painful

So my curiosity got the better of me and I bought this “garden gin” made by (wait for it) Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. They don’t call it a gin because it doesn’t contain any juniper. And they have some story about the Founding Fathers and Jefferson and gardening…

http://www.artintheage.com/our-spirits/sage/

…but there’s no actual historical basis for the product.

I would love to tell you that it totally blew away all my biases.* But I can’t. It’s… not terrible. It does not bear the hallmarks of a badly-made distillate. But it tastes like the spirit equivalent of the less popular herbal teas from the organic and whole foods section of the supermarket. Notes of licorice, lettuce and soggy marsh weeds, like how I imagine Demeter Fragrance Library’s Wet Garden might smell.

http://www.fragrantica.com/perfume/Demeter-Fragrance/Wet-Garden-7778.html

So far the best thing I’ve managed to do with it is:

3 Sage

2 Dimmi

1 Becherovka

stir and strain

…and even that, I would say, is more interesting than enjoyable, mostly because it masks Sage’s contribution. Experiments with Lillet, Chartreuse, bitters and sake were not worth repeating.

Scratching my head about whether there’s some other ingenious thing I could do with its way-off-the-beaten-path flavour.

Likewise scratching my head over a bottle of Bitter Truth Celery Bitters, which tastes like a mixture of curry and burning printed circuit board (i.e. celery seeds – I shoulda seen both of these coming, really). So far both drinks seem to work best as appetite suppressants.

#illadvisedcocktails

All of this

All of this

“This is not science. This is hegemony at its most powerful and invisible, posing as logic. In these fears, we see a soup of recent historically specific troubles, blended and projected. Anti–Active SETI co-signers see imperialism as universal, quite literally — that is, extending across the universe.

That aliens would have imperial ambitions is taken as natural. Far from being the historical outcome of a specific organization of capital in the latter half of the second millennium, these signatories assume that the ideology of capitalist imperialism is inevitable across the galaxy.”

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/aliens-extraterrestrials-active-seti//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

superb article. And yes, this is essence of Tartary

superb article. And yes, this is essence of Tartary

Originally shared by J. Max Kielbasa

“People will enjoy telling each other fantasy stories set in that strangest and most mystical of eras, a time of malign magic and crushing poverty — the early twenty-first century.”

This sentence at the end of this GoT and Marxist Theory article pretty much seems to sum up Tartary, of the Toxic, America, and Pop varieties, that several of us have been talking on and off about for a few years.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/game-of-thrones-season-five-marxism///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

“There are three main points to the MIW theory, according to the Griffith statement.

“There are three main points to the MIW theory, according to the Griffith statement. First, that the universe we live in is just one of an unknown“gigantic” number of worlds, some of which are“almost identical to ours,” but most are “very different.” Second, all of the worlds are “equally real,” existing continuously through time with precisely defined properties.Third, quantum phenomena arise from “a universal force of repulsion between ‘nearby’ (i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar.””

http://disinfo.com/2015/03/new-quantum-mechanics-theory-says-parallel-universes-exist-interact/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpQJY48LLg//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

C & B Old Fashioned might be the most misleading name for a cocktail I’ve ever seen.

C & B Old Fashioned might be the most misleading name for a cocktail I’ve ever seen. If anything, it’s a very old style martini with some liqueur additions:

2  Plymouth Gin

1 Lillet Blanc

1 Campari

1/3 Bénédictine

1/3 Cointreau

Stir, Orange twist.

The version shown is served on the rocks, topped with Club soda.

I had mine up, minus soda, plus 2 dashes orange bitters.

It’s a delicious, nicely balanced drink with a wild colour. BUT I can’t help thinking, for how it tastes it could be greatly simplified. I reckon:

2 gin

1 campari

2/3 benedictine

2 dashes orange bitters.

trying this next….

#illadvisedcocktails

http://liquor.com/recipes/c-b-old-fashioned///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

soliciting names. I’m tempted by Triangulo Novo

soliciting names. I’m tempted by Triangulo Novo

2 gin (boodles with 1/4martin Miller)

2/3 benedictine

7 dashes peychaud’s

1 dash orange bitters

shake, strain, orange twist.

#illadvisedcocktails

ETA: the accepted name is now Research Triangle

If you find this one too sweet, sub Green Chartreuse for the Benedictine without changing anything else. The result will be clean-tasting and martini-like.

So; the Vieux Carré is a Saratoga with a whiff of Benedictine and Peychaud’s.

So; the Vieux Carré is a Saratoga with a whiff of Benedictine and Peychaud’s.

The Saratoga is a Manhattan modified by mixing cognac with the whisky – it’s equal parts rye, cognac and Italian vermouth, finished with 2 dashes of angostura bitters. http://cold-glass.com/2010/09/30/saratoga-cocktail/

Cognac plus rye, as Doug Ford has observed, makes a delicious, satisfying and sympathetic mixer.

Peychaud’s is essentially an aniseed bitters. Benedictine is essentially a sweet genepi. They’re generally credited with adding “waves of complexity” to the Vieux Carré. But what happens when you mix and drink them on their own?

…the genepi herbiness is freshened up by the anise. The whole takes on a minty, cooling mouthfeel. I’ve a feeling it would work well with gin and maybe a shake of orange bitters.

Up the ante for both Benedictine and anise and you get a Cocktail a la Louisiane:

3/4 oz. rye (or rye/cognac mix?), 3/4 oz. Italian vermouth

3/4 oz. Benedictine

3 dashes Herbsaint (New Orleans pastis)

3 dashes Peychaud’s

http://www.cocktailchronicles.com/2006/11/15/cocktail-a-la-louisiane/

But I’d really like to try this Benechaud mix with… the black pepper in Martin Miller’s gin? Dimmi? I don’t know. Evening of experimentation coming up, suggestions welcome…

#illadvisedcocktails

http://liquor.com/recipes/vieux-carre///cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

Hey – I don’t know if you’d like to play in this or what, but do you mind if I run this basic setup by you…?

Hey – I don’t know if you’d like to play in this or what, but do you mind if I run this basic setup by you…?

Carcosa wacky races 2: race from the cryptodont

 

you have disturbed Katy Perry’s pseudo-Egyptian tomb and now you are pursued by hordes of scurrying minions, whipped on by a vengeful nudibranch.

Every round the rearmost racer gets to fight the minions. If you’re the last racer twice in a row, they get you. Also if you score less than 1 speed in a turn, you’re fighting the minions (can’t quite remember how this works, but basically screwing up badly puts you in fighting range).

The race runs for 8 pbp rounds. On the 8th round you get to the caves of Muuuu: everyone who gets to the caves ahead of the player who seals them is saved.

The Golden Head of Graak – which an NPC racer stole from the tomb – is needed to seal the caves. Whoever gets into the caves while holding the head, wins the Grand Prize. It is very heavy: -2 penalty to speed while you have it.

There are various power-ups and encounters along the way – more than last time. The idea is that players will try to seize these and/or fight over them.

 

Flailsnail if you like, but if the minions get you, they get you (and it’s not like a DnD combat – the minions have overwhelming numbers – high level will not save you). Or if you don’t want to risk a Flailsnailer on this nonsense, you can play a Tartary Carcosan or Barsoomian Green, like last time.

Thoughts?

Originally shared by Richard G

So if I were (and this is purely hypothetical) thinking of running

Carcosa Wacky Races 2: Race From The Crypt

in, say, June/July/August, would anyone be interested?

PBP over gmail posts, PvP and co-operative v environment, unfathomable in-game prizes.

…how it all went wrong last time:

https://lurkerablog.wordpress.com/2012/04/11/carcosa-wacky-races-signup/

I’m finally catching up with Boardwalk Empire two years later…

I’m finally catching up with Boardwalk Empire two years later…

I’m not crazy about it, honestly, despite all the praise it’s had. I think it has moments where everything comes together, interspersed with long periods of treading water. There’s a nihilistic meaninglessness about it that often seems like dodgy direction rather than exploration.

But Dr. Narcisse’s debut is solid gold. So polite, so menacing, so obviously a freak. And the rest of the cast don’t take quite enough of an interest to see that obvious freakiness. It’s such a come-down when he actually has someone murdered. Because up to that point, you have no idea what he might do. He could be the most dangerous thing anyone’s ever seen – a genuinely new idea. Mere hoodlum murder pops that bubble of perfect uncertainty.

Dimmi Martini

Dimmi Martini

2 Martin Miller gin

3/4 Dimmi

1/4 Lillet blanc

2 dashes orange bitters (most important)

lemon twist.

I have adopted the tag #illadvisedcocktails – if you post your cocktail recipes with the same tag we could I don’t know get some kind of community thing going here. It’s just a thought, maybe someone’s had it before.

WRT Courtney Campbell’s post today about Vancian magic being the dangerous leavings of a hyper-technical…

WRT Courtney Campbell’s post today about Vancian magic being the dangerous leavings of a hyper-technical civilization – – – found on Tripadvisor:

This is not the Marche de Fer in Port-au-Prince. I’ve tried to add this listing and some idiot keeps on sending me a link saying it’s been added, linking to the Marche de Fer, PaP.There used to be dozens of these all over Haiti, but now only a few still exist. Jacmel’s, similar to the one in Cap Haitian, is hidden away in the central colonial zone. If you don’t make your way up the steep, windy and narrow streets, you’ll miss it. Unlike the market in Port-au-Prince, there aren’t any tourists here, as it is used for the same reason it was built 150 years ago, Haitians selling basic needs, like food and clothing, to other Haitians.

…linked to the Port-au-Prince page.

So here we have a link, intended to tell people about some cultural artifact that is not the Marche de Fer, Port-au-Prince, marooned on the Marche de Fer, Port-au-Prince page.

A lost instruction pertaining to a lost artifact, which tells you not to confuse it with a more famous artifact.

This is how magic sword quests start.

“…..once we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use…

“…..once we made watches with minerals mined from the Earth and treated them like precious heirlooms; now we use even rarer minerals and we’ll want to update them yearly. Technology companies continually urge us to upgrade; to buy the newest tablet or phone. But I cannot forget that it all begins in a place like Bautou, and a terrible toxic lake that stretches to the horizon.’

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth//cdn.embedly.com/widgets/platform.js

A review of Home

A review of Home

CG animated features have a well understood formula now. You have to please the kids and their parents – the latter usually by pandering to their sense of nostalgia with the music and of naughtiness with some off-colour jokes the kids aren’t supposed to get. Some films aim higher than this parlour trick level and are genuinely entertaining to multiple generations. Home is not one of them.

Sheldon Cooper plays a cuddly toy alien whose personal problems and delusions are more fun than anything that happens to him. J Lo plays Rihanna’s mum, but you only find that out in the credits. Aliens play havoc with the Earth but nobody minds. Suburbanised lower middle class Australia is supposed to be really nice and everyone’s happy and friendly. The film would contain a devastating critique of colonial capitalism if it weren’t so busy rushing to the next inconsequential action sequence. In the end it’s less coherent than this review. 1 star.