While in London a couple of weeks ago, Amy M. and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show, which was a lot more fun that I was expecting it to be. It really is quite the event; the BBC devoted an hour of prime time coverage to it each night all week.
It was also quite mobbed: I was promised giant mutant vegetables, and I was not disappointed: Some of the display gardens were quite elaborate: I like the idea of this; would that all roads could be devoid of cars and covered with flowers:
And, of course, carnivorous plants are not without their appeal: And here's a motto I think we could all live by: After downing rather voluminous Pimms and lemonades, we went in search of food, and followed the signs that read "Seafood and Champagne." We were not disappointed.
I got bit by (among other things) the gardening bug, and picked up a bunch of seeds (mostly herbs) which, after only less than two weeks, are growing insanely.
Well, last Sunday, actually. On May 30, 1980, Peter Gabriel’s third album was released, the one widely believed to be his masterpiece, if not in terms of sales, than certainly of artistic vision.
1980’s Peter Gabriel was third album to be titled Peter Gabriel, even using the same typeface, his idea at the time being to have each album seem like subsequent issues of a magazine. As a result, the third album is unofficially called “Melt,” as the cover features what appears to be Gabriel’s face melting (courtesy of Hipgnosis). (He would have kept this going but his record company decided, with album four, that he should start naming them properly; so 1982’s Peter Gabriel ended up with the more or less official title of Security, likely because the cover picture appears to be a still from a bank security camera. Minimalist titles like So, Us, and Up followed. In fact, those are the only proper studio albums he has released since 1982; not the most prolific of artists, is he?) Five years into his solo career (Gabriel left Genesis in 1975, following The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway tour), his first two albums, Peter Gabriel (aka “Car”) and Peter Gabriel (aka “Scratch”) careened from style to style, sometimes successfully (“Solsbury Hill,” “Here Comes the Flood,” “D.I.Y.”), sometimes less so (most of “Scratch”). However, by album three, he had found a sound, a vision, and the songs that made them work. It could be called “world music,” although at this stage I’m not sure what world it would be; certainly not Earth. I first heard “Games Without Frontiers” on the radio circa 1980 or 1981 or so and thought it was one of the strangest—and coolest—songs I had ever heard. The rest of the album is only modestly less strange, but still very cool, and more than a little haunting.
“Melt” was produced by Steve Lillywhite, early in his production career, and the record boasts the sound—of which Lillywhite was a chief architect—of the “gated” drum sound; that is, a noise gate is applied to a conventional drum to change—or eliminate—the decay of the impact. Coupled with a lack of cymbals, it tended to add a unique, punchy, and at times almost electronic sound to acoustic drums. This became a popular sound in the early 1980s, and it is argued that this was the first album to use this effect. It is highlighted on the opening song “Intruder” (drums played by Genesis mate Phil Collins—the effect is also featured on Collins’ “In the Air Tonight”), a creepy creepy song about, well, an intruder. “I know something about opening windows and doors/I know how to move quietly—to creep across creaky wooden floors.” The obsession with obsessive personalities continues on “No Self Control” (“I don’t know how to stop!”). “Start” is a brief sax/synth instrumental that leads into the radio favorite (well, played on the radio once or twice) “I Don’t Remember,” featuring Tony Levin’s “Stick” (a type of mutant bass).
More deranged characters appear in “Family Snapshot,” an attempt to get into the mind of a Lee Harvey Oswald-like political assassin (“‘I don’t really hate you/I don’t care what you do/We were made for each other—me and you/I want to be somebody/You were like that, too’” After the heavy drama of “Family Snapshot,” side one (in the old vinyl days) ends with the light-ish “And Through the Wire” featuring guitarists Paul Weller (The Jam, whose classic Sound Affects came out in 1980) and Dave Gregory (XTC, whose extremely classic Black Sea also came out in 1980). Side two opens with the big hit (well, it occasionally got played—it rose to #48 in the U.S.) “Games Without Frontiers”—and, yes, that’s Kate Bush chanting “Jeux sans frontières” in the background), leading into “Not One of Us” (“You may look like we do/Talk like we do—But you know how it is...”). “Lead a Normal Life” is set in a mental institution. The album ends on a political note; “Biko,” about South African anti-apartheid activist Stephen Biko, who was killed in police custody in 1977. The song begins and ends with a chant of the South African song “Senzeni Na?” (“What have we done?”) which was sung at Biko’s funeral. “Biko” was often played at the end of Gabriel concerts, and the audience were encouraged to chant along.
Speaking of which, several SU-ians and I journeyed to Rochester in 1986 to see Gabriel live on the So tour. Although he didn’t play “Solsbury Hill” (my favorite Peter Gabriel track), and I was not a big fan of So (it was his big mega-platinum albums with “Sledgehammer,” “In Your Eyes,” and “Big Time”), it was still a phenomenal show.
So, let’s put on the great Peter Gabriel, melt a bit, and get so strange across the border...
The official pre-MTV video for “Games Without Frontiers”—ah, the state of video technology in 1980!
25 years ago yesterday, on May 13, 1985, Dire Straits’ fifth studio album Brothers in Arms was released. It has the distinction of being the first compact disc I ever bought; I had got my first CD player as a high school graduation present (which I suppose suggests that that was 25 years ago, as well...oh, joy) and Brothers in Arms had just come out, so...
I was pretty much a Dire Straits fan from day one—I had their debut 45 “Sultans of Swing” back in 1978, and I pretty much kept up with them throughout much of the early 1980s. Mark Knopfler is a guitar god.
Having formed in Britain as part of the pub rock movement in the mid-1970s that preceded punk, Dire Straits were certainly out of step in their homeland, although they were a hit in the States (“Sultans of Swing” was a top 40 single). They began as a four-piece—Mark Knopfler on lead guitar and vocals, brother David on rhythm guitar, John Illsley on bass, and Pick Withers on drums. Only Illsley would still be in the band by Brothers in Arms.
Their first, eponymously titled record (1978) remains one of the great debuts, with scarcely a bad song on it (“Sultans of Swing” was in it), although their quickly recorded follow-up Communique (1979) had that “difficult second album” feel to it, and the scrabbling guitar solo in “Lady Writer’ was obviously supposed to be the next “Sultans of Swing.” It wasn’t.
David Knopfler had left by the third album Making Movies (1980), which was a great leap forward in style and complexity, and 1982’s Love Over Gold—boasting the compelling 14:25 “Telegraph Road” and one of the greatest, most intense guitar solos ever—went even further. (It remains my favorite of their six studio albums.) A retreat to simpler material resulted in the 1983 EP Twisting by the Pool, by which time Pick Withers had been replaced by ex-Rockpile drummer Terry Williams, albeit temporarily. (It was also in 1983 that Mark Knopfler recorded his first movie soundtrack, to the great Bill Forsyth film Local Hero, and started his career as a producer, producing Bob Dylan’s comeback Infidels.)
By 1985, Dire Straits was little more than Knopfler, Illsley, and a collection of other musicians and less of a proper band. (Session man and ex-King Crimsonsite Tony Levin plays his “stick”—a weird sort of bass—on “One World,” actually my favorite track on the record.) Odd, then, that Brothers in Arms became such a mammoth hit record. The first three tracks are still mainstays of FM radio—“So Far Away,” “Walk of Life,” and of course “Money for Nothing,” the anti-MTV song that ironically became an MTV hit (the computer animation—a novelty in 1985—helped). Actually, it wasn’t really an anti-MTV song; Knopfler often wrote from the perspective of characters, and in this case it’s blue-collar appliance schleppers who think that there’s nothing to being a musician.
I confess to not having been all that impressed with Brothers in Arms at the time; sure I liked it, but it was actually my least favorite of their records at the time. It’s hard to explain why; listening again to it 25 years later, it’s not especially dated like a lot of albums from the 1980s—perhaps the atmospheric pop jazziness of many of the tracks didn’t suit me at the time, but I appreciate it a lot more now. I remember using the new features of my first CD player to skip slower tracks like “Your Latest Trick” and “Why Worry” but with hindsight they’re actually quite nice. Perhaps I’ve mellowed in my old age. “Ride Across the River” always seemed a tad Peter Gabriel-esque, and the title track remains a haunting, beautiful classic.
I think part of the difficulty was that it was the first record I remember hearing that was released at CD length (actually, it’s only 54 minutes and change, although I remember it being longer, for some reason); as someone brought up in the vinyl era, you get used to the rhythm of two ~21:30 sides; song sequencing used to be a bit of an art, and even today albums that go on much longer than 45 minutes can’t always keep my attention. It’s hard to explain.
Following the tremendous success of Brothers in Arms, Knopfler was never particularly comfortable as the rock star, so he retreated into soundtracks and production and didn’t reconvene Dire Straits until 1991 and the so-so On Every Street. And then he called it a day and began a solo career. He remains a guitar god.
So let’s put on Brothers in Arms, celebrate the leaving forever of high school, and recall a time when this kind of computer animation was impressive.
I confess I don't have cable, and avoid cable news channels at all costs, so I don't really know, but from what I've read...you mean, this isn't Glenn Beck?
Two new albums have been receiving non-stop rotation on my CD player/iPod.
Together, the new one by The New Pornographers, is an improvement over 2007's Challengers, and the extensive use of cellos makes it sound a bit like mutant ELO at times. The refrain in the opening song "Moves" I assume is "These things get louder" but I swear it sounds like "Bee stings get louder," the kind of elliptical lyrics that wouldn't be beyond A.C. Newman. There are the usual complement of looney Dan Bejar songs, although they're less looney than, say, "Jackie, Dressed in Cobras" from Twin Cinema, or anything on the last Destroyer album (Bejar's own band, whose last album featured songs titled "Foam Hands," "Leopard of Honor," "Shooting Rockets (From The Desk Of Night's Ape)", for example). But then with tracks called "Valkyrie in the Roller Disco" and "A Bite Out of My Bed" ("Someone took a bite out of my bed"), Newman can be pretty odd, as well. This is one of those records where, after a play or two, you feel like you have known these songs for years. (And with lines like "Honey child, you're not safe here..." someone's been listening to The Smiths.) And only Neko Case's harmonies can make lines like "I wear my Sunday suit to walk the streets/That would feel Byzantine" sound sensible. "Up in the Dark" ("What's love but what turns up in the dark?") is classic NP. Great record; I highly recommend it.
On Tuesday, Heaven is Whenever, the new one by The Hold Steady, came out. They may never make a record as good as 2006's Boys and Girls in America again, but this one is far superior to 2008's Stay Positive. You have to like a song ("The Weekenders") that begins with the line "There was that whole weird thing with the horses." (Actually, it's the return of the characters from the song "Chips Ahoy!" about a girl who can psychically pick winning horses. Hmm...anyone got her number?) "She said the theme of this party is the industrial age/You came in dressed as a train wreck." THS's keyboard player quit, so there is more guitar on this one, which is fine by me. It's not hard to imagine "Rock Problems" being sung by Ray Davies on a Misfits/Low Budget-era Kinks record. The opening song, "The Sweet Part of the City" ("the parts with the bars and restaurants"--indeed) begins with a little riff that is unfortunately vaguely reminiscent of Jefferson Starship's "Find Your Way Back," which I hope was unintentional. In the title track, "She said Hüsker Dü got huge/But they started in St. Paul/Do you remember 'Makes No Sense at All.'" (I do, actually--it was on Flip Your Wig, as well as a 1985 EP which also included Hüsker Dü performing a cover of not only The Byrds' "8 Miles High" but also "Love is All Around"--yes, the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show--which has to be heard to be believed.) The song continues, "Heaven is the whole of the heart/Paradise by the dashboard light/Utopia is a band/They sang 'Love is the Answer.'" And that pretty much sums up the bulk of THS's influences. Great record; I highly recommend it.
There's no video up for any of the songs yet, but who needs video when you have audio anyway?
Jon Stewart, as usual, is right on the money vis-a-vis the brouhaha over Gizmodo, the purloined iPhone prototype, and Apple's complete freakout.
If you're unfamiliar with the story, background is here. Shorter version: if you're an Apple engineer and you're field-testing a new iPhone protoitype, don't get drunk in a Redwood City bar.
Apple—you guys were the rebels, man, the underdogs. People believed in you. But now, are you becoming the man? Remember back in 1984, you had those awesome ads about overthrowing Big Brother? Look in the mirror, man! …It wasn't supposed to be this way - Microsoft was supposed to be the evil one! But you guys are busting down doors in Palo Alto while Commandant Gates is ridding the world of mosquitoes! What the f--k is going on?!
…I know that it is slightly agitating that a blog dedicated to technology published all that stuff about your new phone. And you didn't order the police to bust down the doors, right? I'd be pissed too, but you didn't have to go all Minority Report on his ass! I mean, if you wanna break down someone's door, why don't you start with AT&T, for God sakes? They make your amazing phone unusable as a phone! I mean, seriously! How do you drop four calls in a one-mile stretch of the West Side Highway! There're no buildings around! What, does the open space confuse AT&T's signal?!
Via Boing Boing, snake used as a weapon by noisy hotel guests. I bet they were playing Whitesnake. Hmmm...Snakes in a Hotel. I think we've found the sequel to Snakes on a Plane. If the series catches on, they can do Snakes in a Cab, Snakes at Baggage Retrieval, and Snakes on the 1:20 to Birmingham.
In the tradition of “Diary of a Crossword Fiend” and other crossword puzzle blogs I heard about at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament back in February (as well as the official NYT Crossword blog), I am finally getting around to starting to blog sporadically about my own crossword puzzling. This may or may not be a daily thing; as with most things, we’ll see.
By the way, if you routinely do any of these puzzles and have not done them yet, be forewarned—there be spoilers here! I should do a “below the fold/read more” kind of thing, but I’m lazy.
There are generally three puzzles I do each day. Today, my times were:
Today is a Wednesday (I think...yes, it is), which means a mildly difficult New York Times puzzle. It is by veteran Richard Silvestri, who usually injects a fair amount of humor into his puzzles. It took me a while to glom onto the theme; the first theme entry was clued “One who plunders boatloads of jack o’lanterns?” and the answer was PUMPKIN PIRATE. Okay... The second theme entry was clued “First-rate chastisement?” and the answer was SUPREME BERATING. Still didn’t get it; I’m fairly dim today. The third and final theme entry was clued “Nickname for an unpredictable Communist?” ERRATIC THE RED. Aha! ERIC THE RED with RAT inserted. Ah, then theme entry #1 was PUMPKIN PIE with RAT in it (I’ll have the pumpkin pie without so much rat in it...wasn’t that a Monty Python sketch?) and #2 was SUPREME BEING with a RAT in it. An odd theology, that. Anyway, 58 Down explains what’s going on: “Chinese calendar animal...or the key to this puzzle’s theme.” Ah...and 59 Down is RAT. Curiously, this isn’t actually the Year of the Rat (except in Ft. Lauderdale, I am led to understand...); it’s the Year of the Tiger, which is better than “The Eye of the Tiger.” The last Year of the Rat was 2008. Al Stewart’s “The Year of the Cat” was released in 1976.
Elsewhere in the Times puzzle, the ALOU baseball family appears again, but there aren’t too many of the “old regular” entries one comes across all the time today. Some witty clues: “Fall preceder” (PRIDE), “It’s game” (TAG), “Ship of fuels” (TANKER), and something I did not know: “What ‘........’ means to a typesetter” (STET). Or, as we used to say in magazine publishing, “never let them see you stet.” And what did Cervantes call “The tongue of the mind”? PEN.
The theme answers of Donna S. Levin’s Los Angeles Times puzzle were 16 Across “Extremely defensive state of mind” (BUNKER MENTALITY); 30 Across “Physical play” (ROUGH HOUSE); 39 Across “Abstinent one” (TEETOTALLER); 54 Across “Sam-I-Am’s story” (GREEN EGGS AND HAM). The theme? As 60 Across explains, “This puzzle’s theme—according to Twain, it’s ‘a good walk spoiled’” (GOLF). Yes, that line is just too too Twain.
Interesting thing about the word “teetotaler.” For many many years, I thought (despite the spelling) that it derived etymologically from preferring tea over booze—that is, non-alcoholic beverages. However, I learned in a Toastmasters meeting that it has an etymology not unlike D-Day. Says the Online Etymology Dictionary:
1834, possibly formed from total with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-Eng.). The use in temperance jargon was first noted Sept. 1833 in a speech advocating total abstinence (from beer as well as wine and liquor) by Richard "Dicky" Turner, a working-man from Preston, England.
Elsewhere in the L.A. Times puzzle, Giant Mel OTT makes one of his ubiquitous appearances (he would be, with the ALOUs, part of any crossword puzzler’s baseball all-star team, methinks). We can lower our cholesterol with 57 Across (OLEO), another “regular.” Once, BUTTER was an answer in a puzzle and I exclaimed “I can’t believe it’s not oleo!” “Drug in Shatner novels” is of course TEK.
Finally, Lynn Lempel’s WaPo puzzle is titled “Coat of Many Colors” and is rather a clever theme that works nice and symmetrically: “Like plumbing or carpentry jobs” (BLUE COLLAR), “Sign of hope amid the gloom” (SILVER LINING), “Still popular Elizabethan ballad” (GREENSLEEVES), and “Best Actor winner for ‘Sayonara’” (RED BUTTONS). It sounds like something they would have worn in the 1970s.
It has been long believed (even repeated by Rebecca Fraser in her excellent recent book The Story of Britain) that “Greensleeves” was originally written by Henry VIII as an attempt to woo Ann Boelyn. Others dispute the story (Alison Weir points out in her 2002 book Henry VIII: The King and His Court, that “Greensleeves” was written in an Italian style of composition that didn’t reach England until after Henry’s time, and of course it seems highly unlikely that Henry VIII would have written anything Elizabethan). Wikipedia tells us that
One possible interpretation of the lyrics is that Lady Green Sleeves was a promiscuous young woman and perhaps a prostitute. At the time, the word "green" had sexual connotations, most notably in the phrase "a green gown", a reference to the way that grass stains might be seen on a lady's dress if she had made love outside.
On her sleeves? Curious.
Anyway, elsewhere in the puzzle, we have two entries clued “The whole kit and caboodle,” 32 Across (ALL) and 40 Down (EVERY BIT). “Kit and caboodle”...there’s a phrase that sends me to the Online Etymology Dictionary:
kit "round wooden tub," 1275, probably from M.Du. kitte "jug, tankard, wooden container," of unknown origin. Meaning "collection of personal effects," especially for traveling (originally in ref. to a soldier), is from 1785; that of "outfit of tools for a workman" is from 1851. Kit and caboodle is 1861, from boodle "lot, collection," perhaps from Du. boedel "property."
That answers that. The crossword puzzle mecca of ENID is clued today as “Present-day Oklahoma city on the old Chisholm Trail.” RHEA is clued as “Actress Perlman with an ostrich-like namesake.” I guess it depends on whether you are a Cheers fan or an ostrich fancier. Or perhaps both, of you’re that much of a Renaissance man/woman.
It’s always interesting (and I use a hitherto unknown definition of “interesting,” it would seem) when the same word appears in more than one puzzle on the same day. Today, we had OXEN in both the NY Times and the LA Times, and AGOG and EVIL in both the LA Times and WaPo. I'm often agog at evil oxen.
All right, one more for the road. NP from their last record. This may be how I'm getting to Vancouver next week which, coincidentally, is where the NP's hail from.
Ah, convergence. Now this is a universal remote: a TV clicker with built-in bottle opener Perfect for those who have become--or want to become--completely immobile.
I came across an interesting variation on the infamous "Nigerian" scams--you know, that someone in Nigeria needs help holding onto millions of dollars and just needs your bank account information...yeah.
Anyway, I got the following note this morning purportedly from someone who is in my Toastmasters club:
Hello ,
How are you doing? Hope all is well with you and family, i am sorry i didn't inform you about my traveling to England for a Seminar.
I need a favor from you as I've misplaced my wallet on my way to the hotel where my money and other valuable things were kept and I will like you to assist me with an urgent loan of $2,800 to sort-out my hotel bills and get myself back home.
I will appreciate whatever you can afford to help me with and I'll Refund the money back to you as soon as i return.Please kindly help me to send the money through Western union with my details below.
Name: XXXXX Address : 12 Cromwell Road Zip code: SW5 OSW State: London Country : England
kindly help me to make the transfer as soon as you receive this email and once you have it sent, send me the money transfer control number with details used in sending it.
Thanks so much
Your reply will be greatly appreciated.
D----a
A couple of things struck me. First, having known this person for years, it was more than a little out of character (and she types better than that)--and, second, even if I didn't know her well, why would she be asking me for help? If someone were really stuck, wouldn't they be more likely to call someone they know rather than send a generic e-mail?
Oh, and they don't call them ZIP codes in England.
The scary part was that the reply-to address was almost the same as her proper e-mail address--but two letters had been transposed.
As with most scams, a little common sense and a little logic go a long way toward not falling for these things. Something as simple as doing a Google search for the subject line (in this case, "Kindly Assist Me") also turns up a few links to similar scams.
Other clues that something is a scam: if a bank that you have never heard of tells you to update your account info, it's probably a scam. (Funny: I used to get all sorts of notices presumably from "Fifth Third Bank" telling me that my account info needed updating. I had never heard of "Fifth Third Bank" and the name even sounded phony. And then I was watching a basketball game a few months ago and it was being played in the "Fifth Third Bank Arena" in Cincinnati and I thought, "Hey! That's the bank that's in all those e-mail scams! It does exist!" Probably not the kind of marketing the bank wanted.)
Anyway, the point is, if it sounds phishy, it probably is!
Despite everyone at Graphics of the Americas cynically doubting that I would never get home from Miami Beach yesterday, what with Phase 2 of the Snowpocalypse ravaging the Northeast, in point of fact my flight from Miami to Philly took off on time and landed 10 minutes early. My connection to Albany also took off on time and landed 5 minutes early.
I was actually dreading flying US Airways after my last bad experience, but this time I think they may have redeemed themselves in my eyes.
Well, I tried to give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt. While writing my story on the keynote address by MS's August de los Toros for today's WhatTheyThink, I had wanted to include a link to a very cool video that Microsoft Surface had put together showcasing all the futuristicky things they were working on in the area of ubiquitous interactive touchscreen and flexible displays. No dice. It wasn't that I couldn't find the video--I couldn't even get onto the Surface site.
I am on a Mac, naturally, and use Safari as my default browser. When I went to the main Surface site, I was told I needed to install Silverlight (Microsoft's Flash-like animation and video environment)--to basically see anything. Since installing software is always tons of fun, and when I'm on deadline is one thing I adore getting sidetracked with, I thought, "Sure, why not?" Since I was on the GoA pressroom WiFi, it was a tad slow, so it took about 15 minutes to download. Fortunately, I needed to take a restroom break and socialize a bit, so I let it do its thing.
I came back, it was done, and I again tried to launch the Surface site. This time I got the Silverlight logo that spun a bit and eventually stalled without doing anything. Great.
So then I tried Firefox, my other default browser when a site doesn't like Safari. This time, I got the spinning Silverlight logo again, as well as a countdown, which stopped at 30 and went no further. Great.
Okay, Plan C. I actually have Internet Explorer on my Mac. It has been years since Microsoft had a version of IE for the Mac, but I have carefully preserved this one in a hermetically-sealed folder on my hard drive on those rare occasions when a site I need to access won't work with anything else. (For example, I once did a lot of writing for a publishing company that configured their independent contractors' online billing site to only work with IE--which they only did after MS discontinued IE for the Mac and probably knowing full well that 90% of their contributors are on a Mac and won't be able to use IE. It wouldn't surprise me if that was their not-so-subtle way of preventing their freelancers from billing them.)
Anyway, IE crashed within seconds of accessing Surface. Great.
Strike 3.
So, I really wanted to link to that video, but never got that far. It does make me wonder what the future depicted in that video would look like if Microsoft actually were the ones to develop all these products. I had to be nice in my WTT article, but all I could think was, if it all ends up anything like Office or Windows, I'm going to want to take one of those glass displays, smash it, and slit my wrists with the shards. A fatal error has occurred, indeed.
There was one brief debate in one of the sessions I attended yesterday where the topic of whether Flash or some other online video/animation environment would prevail, and I don't really care either way--as long as it's something that works fairly transparently and consistently. I have never had a problem getting Flash to function, and I'm sure if I looked, I would find that there are even better solutions out there. But to be the one that prevails, it's going to have to be the one that is most easly available, is most stable and functional, and causes the least amount of grief to use. That's a tall order for any software company, but the reward is the conquering of the universe.
I have attempted to consolidate all my myriad social media activities into one place, so using Twitterfeed I am attempting to set up a feed so that things I post here at Blogito Ergo Sum automatically feed to Twitter and Facebook. This post is an attempt to see if it works.
Here's an idea that combines one of the most disturbing memories of high school biology class with hand-knitted craftsmanship. Via Boing Boing, we give you: a hand-knitted dissected frog. Perfect for grandma.
So I checked into The Marseilles Hotel yesterday, and although it's not the nicest hotel in the room (your typical South Beach flea trap), I was more than a little bemused to see this Post-It Note attached to a little purportedly inspirational poem on the wall: I don't know what picture they are talking about, but I detected no ghost activity--not even actress Alice Ghostley. (The next door room's closet is behind the [thin] wall behind the bed, and it's easy to hear hangers clinking about in the morning. Perhaps the ghosts offer a valet service.) Fortunately, there has never been any definitive evidence that there are such things as ghosts. But even if there were, there certainly, as far as I know, has never been a reliably documented incident of someone being killed or injured by a ghost. So there's not much to be scared of.
I do have a question about ghosts, though. Even if we grant the premise that there is some kind of energy that comprises the soul and that it can linger on Earth after we shuffle off this mortal coil, and even if we assume that it can take the physical form of the person who died, why, oh why, is it wearing clothes? Ghosts always seem to be "seen" wearing Victorian garb, or fancy dresses (never flip-flops and tank tops, thankfully), or whatever. What would the mechanism for that be?
And another thing. Those silly ghost-hunting shows...they always seem to be using infrared cameras to capture "heat traces" or whatever, which is supposed to be evidence for ghostness. As Ken A. explained to me (as he has used infrared cameras), in order to pick up anything, you need to calibrate an infrared camera using a coefficient that has been determined for the surface generating the heat (which is what infrared radiation is). How do you calibrate an infrared camera to take into account the surface of a ghost? Because unless you do this properly, whatever you pick up on the camera could be anything and not especially reliable.
So, anyway, last weekend, if you have read below or followed my Facebook/ Twitter/ TweetDeck/ Etc. updates, you know was the 33rd annual American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, held at the Brooklyn Bridge Marriott in beautiful downtown Brooklyn, NY. It's located right across the street from the Supreme Court Building, and rumor has it that the hotel was constructed for the primary purpose of sequestering juries, although I'm told that may be apocryphal.
Anyway, the event drew about 650 contestants (and many other non-competing guests) and worked like this. For most contenders, there were seven puzzles, which ranged in difficulty from pretty easy to "queen bitch" difficulty (Will Shortz's term). Everyone gathers in the main banquet hall, and yellow folders help ensure that one's eyes stay on one's own puzzle: A puzzle is passed out, Will Shortz says, "Ready, set, go," and a clock ticks down the time allotted for a given puzzle--15 minutes, 20 minutes, etc. When you are done, you raise your hand, a proctor picks up your paper, marks the time, and you are released to go out to the lobby and commiserate with others--"what the heck was 19 down?" "did you get the theme of that?" "I have shamed the family," "I paid money to do this," and so forth.
It's interesting how the puzzle scoring and tracking has evolved, and it's a somewhat sophisticated process now. Every contestant is given a Contestant Number, and a sheet of bar-code labels that you stick on the back of each puzzle. (How fortuitous that a crossword puzzle grid can be easily used as a bar code!) These all varied by contestant: The puzzle is graded by hand; judges verify manually that each square is filled correctly, and deduct points for wrong letters and blank squares (I am happy to say that in seven puzzles, I got no wrong answers or left any blanks). Points are then awarded by how quickly the puzzle was completed. The marked puzzles are then scanned and uploaded to the contest Web site, and you can log in with your contestant nunber to see the scanned puzzles, and track the standings (which are also posted in hard copy on the wall near the banquet hall). I would say that at least half of the contestants had iPhones and BlackBerrys or at least laptops. There were computers in the lobby of the hotel, as well.
There are a bunch of different contestant categories, based on skill, age, and geography. The A category is the best of the bunch--these are the power solvers who are more like human laser printers and can fill in an entire grid faster than I can write a single letter. (There are all sorts of tricks they use, only some which I have any aptitude for.)
At the end, there is an eighth puzzle that is used for the playoffs. If you've seen the movie Wordplay, you know how this works. There is a stage on which is a set of three large puzzle grids mounted on easels. The three contestants stand at their easels (they are angled such that they can't see each others' grids), they are given sound-proof headphones, and then solve the final, really hard puzzle while 700+ people watch--and Neil Conant of NPR and puzzle constructor Merl Reagle do play-by-play commentary. It's pretty intense, but a lot of fun. You do meet interesting people from all walks of life--some of them are rather silly walks: This is Jim Jenista, who apparently always comes to this event in some bizarre costume or other. He's kind of a celebrity.
It was a fun time, and I look forward to next year's tournament. I must work on my speed.
Sitting in a TGIFriday's in Penn Station, I finally, for the first time, am hearing the original of a 1999 Weird Al parody. "Pretty Fly for a White Guy" that Shazam tells me is by The Offspring. What a wretched song. I much prefer Weird Al's "Pretty Fly for a Rabbi."
For those who have not been following my Twitter and/or Facebook updates, I finished the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament at 75th out of 644. I shall blog more about it (and post pictures) when I get home to my proper computer--God and Amtrak willing...
I have really been enjoying the new SyFy (jeez, I hate that spelling) Channel show Caprica, a prequel to the new Battlestar Galactica, which I also liked a great deal. And I can watch it even though I don't have cable, or know what night it is on. SyFy, like a number of other networks, makes their shows available online, which means they can be watched any time one wants. I can connect my laptop directly to my TV, and some networks (like ABC) have online video quality that even exceeds that of what comes over my cable provider! This is how I watch Lost each week--and I recently discovered a show called FlashForward, which I also like a lot. And what I really like about watching programs online is that there are far far far fewer commercials. There are the usual commercial breaks (shows are actually written with "act breaks" and develop dramatically between commercials), but only last about 30 seconds (not enough time for a bathroom break, though) and typically include only one sponsor. In the case of FlashForward, some episodes offered the option of playing a 90-second introductory "infomercial" and then being able to watch the show without any commercials. Yes! Hulu.com is also a good site to watch old and new shows with a minimum of interruption.
This is how TV began, after all--a single sponsor footing the bill for a show, and commercial breaks were kept to a minimum and you didn't get the constant clutter of a zillion ads per 2- or 3-minute break (which even individual sponsors hate). If you think commercials are taking up more programming time these days, you're right. If you watch old and new series on DVD, you can see this quite dramatically; in the 1960s and 70s, a one-hour drama like Star Trek or The Wild Wild West clocked in about 52 minutes per episode. A half-hour sitcom like M*A*S*H or The Bob Newhart Show was about 26 minutes. Today, a "one-hour" drama like Lost is 42 minutes; a half-hour sitcom about 21 minutes. And, to be honest, I remember the single sponsor's ads better than a zillion (generally loathsome and tasteless) ads clustered in one block.
Being able to watch shows online with a minimum of commercials is far preferable (yes, someone has to pay for them, but there has to be a better way)--but it may be changing. Unfortunately. Says Ad Age:
Starting this fall, Nielsen intends to start making available data that take into account viewing of commercials that run in a particular show, no matter whether they are seen online or on TV. The data will be made available for evaluation starting this September and are intended to become the basis for ad negotiations in February 2011.
But here's the catch: For Nielsen to be able to provide the commercial rating, shows seen online will have to have the same group of commercials that run on TV. If this system were adopted en masse -- and it's not clear that it would be -- online viewing might be crammed just as full of commercials as the more traditional TV-watching experience.
Oh, well, It was nice while it lasted. Guess I'll go back to reading books and watching DVDs.
Off for the weekend to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in beautiful downtown Brooklyn. This is the first year I have been able to attend since I first went in March 2007. (It has tended to conflict with Graphics of the Americas.)
Speaking of Graphics of the Americas, I jet off to Miami Beach on Wednesday...so I should start drinking now to be in the right frame of mind to get on a plane.
Funny--The Beatles could fly non-stop from Miami Beach to the U.S.S.R., but I have to transfer in Atlanta. That Georgia's always on my itinerary, let alone my mind.
Expect blizzards, as I have to fly back Friday night--we have basketball tickets for Syracuse vs. Villanova in Syracuse on Saturday!
I have recently discovered--thanks to WTT's Cary Sherburne--TweetDeck, a social media management application that puts all one's Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn updates in one place, and lets you write once and publish posts in all three places simultaneously. So while I have not been blogging here all that much lately, I have been trying to master the art of the terse over at Twitter et al.
The simultaneous plus and minus of TweetDeck is that updates pop up automatically on-screen--which is good for staying involved in virtual conversations, but bad when some people don't know when to stop!
OUR colleague Jim Giles subscribes to Google Voice, the Google service which, among other things, transcribes incoming telephone messages and sends them to you as an email. Jim forwards on to Feedback a transcript of a call from the owners of the apartment he rents in London. The message was to enquire about some work being carried out there. It is, he suggests, evidence that computerised dictation has not reached maximum verisimilitude quite yet.
"Good Morning to you on Michael for French forces area so will you go out. Workman in your flight 046 44 life. Pace, Elco we must install a new phone working. I'm coming to tell the cats. I could please celebrate the contract. It's not working. M A D late. Thank you. If you can leave me. Another [phone number]. Thank you."
As you can imagine, Jim was particularly pleased that the cats were being kept in the loop.
Via Boing Boing, the Muppets Studio YouTube channel features Beaker performing "Dust in the Wind" whilst being attacked by nasty commenters. Oh, also check out the Muppet version of "Bohemian Rhapsody."
I heard this repeated on NPR this morning and thought it was pretty funny:
...the President and CEO of Toyota apologized to his customers for causing them so much worry.
"I am deeply sorry," said Akio Toyoda.... After the interview he was seen leaving in a black Audi.
I'm sure there's a legitimate reason that he wasn't driving his own company's car, but still.... And after apologizing for the acceleration problems, appropriately, he couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Happily, my own Toyota Camry is not involved in this whole mess, or at least that's what they tell me. Although, I wonder how effective an excuse it would be to get out of a speeding ticket.
Yes, I did watch the Superbowl last night; a friend of mine had some people over so we gathered round for one of the only remaining communal activities left in a fragmented media culture. I should point out that his fiancée's dog was a bit more entertaining.
Anyway, some random thoughts.
It was actually a fairly good game, which the Superbowl usually isn't. It was nice to see an onside kick actually work, which it usually doesn't. I wasn't particularly for or against either the Colts or the Saints, but given that the Saints have never been to a Superbowl before, much less won one, it was nice to see the underdog win. And Peyton Manning does seem like a bit of a dink.
Am I the only one who sees that floating overhead camera above the field and thinks of Nomad, the killer probe from "The Changeling" episode of Star Trek? (Don't answer that.) And am I the only one who wished that Nomad would eliminate Phil Simms?
Sports announcers are almost always insufferable (hint: TV is by definition a visual medium; we don't need their constant nattering every nanosecond), but Simms seemed to have been even more so, with comments that ranged from the blindingly obvious ("This team wants to win this game!") to the overly self-important ("I told the coach of the Saints not to do that and he did it anyway!" Gasp!) Still, he's not as bad as John Maddening. Seen live, sporting events have the barest minimum of announcing and it's still really easy to figure out what is happening (more so, since no one is talking about a bus trip they went on with some coach 30 years ago, while failing to explain why a play is under review). Why do we need these people? I think some organ music like they have at baseball or hockey games would be far preferable. Or, barring that, the constant scraping of nails on a blackboard. (Whenever I am forced, Clockwork Orange-like, to listen to Bill Raftery call a college basketball game I react like that woman back in the 90s who had seizures whenever she heard Mary Hart's voice on Entertainment Tonight. And don't get me started on Dick "For the love of God, don't call a 3-point shot a trifecta!" Vitale.)
But I digress.
Oh, and we couldn't help wonder who dressed all the on-air people? Purple striped shirts with pink paisley ties? And other even more garish combinations? Their mothers let them go out dressed like that? I'm surprised HD sets across the country didn't explode like popcorn. It kind of reminded me of the green and purple make up they needed to use back in the 1940s to get people to show up properly in the very earliest days of TV broadcasting. Maybe they thought that everyone still had black-and-white sets. Maybe CBS Sports hired color blind people as wardrobe supervisors. Maybe next year they'll all get clown suits.
Speaking of HD, The Who in HD is not a pretty sight. And they were, um, disappointing, but then Entwistle was always my favorite. I guess I liked the CSI theme medley. Anyway, 'nuff said.
As for the commercials, they were loathsome, of course, but not as obnoxious as they usually are. There may be something good about the recession, if it meant that many companies took a pass on the Superbowl this year. What always annoys me about Superbowl commercials is that they are all basically the same, and always seem to revolve around really stupid people doing really stupid things to obtain really bad products. I guess I wonder if companies really do think that their target customer has a sub-moronic IQ. Kind of makes me want to run right out, wallet in hand.
The Doritos commercials that all seemed to have the common theme of violent revenge also were colossally unappealing. But then, so are Doritos.
And what was with the misogyny? It was even worse this year than ever. It was rather amusing, and ironic in a way, that CBS refused to run a commercial from a gay dating site but all the commercials they did allow seemed to be about how men really hate women (unless they have beer--and bad beer at that, but I kid Bud Lite...). It just seemed more upsetting than it usually does. It kind of makes you wish that PBS would carry the Superbowl. At least then we could get some nifty totebags. As for the Tim Tebow commercial, well, not everyone grows up to become a football star, you know. But the obvious joke of course is to combine the two "controversial spots" and have Tebow's mom say, "So please, give birth to your child, so he can grow up to be a man...and find love at ManCrunch.com."
Though, that is a rather unappealing name for a Web site, isn't it?
Anyway, thank the great maker that it's over for another year and we can get back to real sports: college basketball--after yesterday's win over Cincinnati, Syracuse is now 23-1 and ranked #2!). We have our SU-Villanova tickets for February 27...I think...I hope...
A North East writer has been given a grant of £2,000 to use sheep to create random poems, which also utilise the deepest workings of the universe. ... Each of the animals has a word from a poem written on their backs and as they wander about the words take a new poetic form each time they come to rest.
But the exercise is not just an attempt to create living poems, it is also, according to the poet, an exercise in quantum mechanics.
So if you start seeing people wearing sweaters with random words written across the back, now you know where the wool came from.
Well, looks like Doomsday was postponed. I guess I'll have to go grocery shopping after all.
The Doomsday Clock has been set back 1 minute for the first time in its 63-year history. In moving the clock from 5 minutes before midnight to 6 minutes before midnight, scientists expressed optimism for humanity's future.
This end-of-the-world clock, set up in 1947, is meant to convey how close we are to the end of the world via catastrophe caused by nuclear weapons or climate change, among other factors.
Here's a story that gave me paws. No one escapes jury duty (would he need an escape claws?). This would make a good Law and Order episode.
Duty calls for an East Boston resident.
Someone is getting called for jury duty...but it's no human.
A family is trying to figure out how their pet cat was summonsed for jury duty.
“I said, Sal, what’s this? You know, I don’t believe it I was shocked,” said Guy Esposito, Sal’s owner.
Sal’s owners, Guy and Anna Esposito, think they may know the source of the mix up: Sal really is a member of the family, so on the last Census form, Anna Esposito listed him under “pets”.
“I just wrote ‘Sal Esposito’, scratched out the ‘dog,’ and wrote, ‘cat,’” said Anna.
Anna filed for Sal’s disqualification of service. However, the jury commissioner was unmoved and denied the request.
Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court is set for March 23. Anna said that if the issue isn’t cleared up by then, she will simply have to bring the cat to court.
A jury of one's purrs? It'll make voire dire an interesting process, at any rate. Although, I bet Michael Vick's lawyers wouldn't have minded having Sal on his jury!
Okay, I think I know why the hands of the Doomsday Clock are set to change, as this is yet another sign of the impending apocalypse:
The Rev. Canon David Parrott blessed a symbolic heap of laptops and smart phones on the altar of London's 17th-century St. Lawrence Jewry church Monday. An effort, he said, to remind the capital's busy office workers that God's grace can reach them in many ways.
"It's the technology that is our daily working tool, and it's a technology we should bless," Parrott said.
The short blessing capped Monday's services at the Christopher Wren-designed building — the official church of the Corporation of the City of London, which runs the capital's bustling financial district.
Parishioners took out cell phones as Parrott recited a blessing over them and their electronic devices. A few held their phones up in the air as he ran through the prayer.
Still, I bet Rev. Parrott was only repeating what someone else said.
The minute hand of the famous Doomsday Clock is set to move this Thursday, and for the first time, anyone with Internet access can watch. Which way the hand will move and by how much have not been made public.
The event will take place at 10 a.m. EST (1500 GMT) on Jan. 14 at the New York Academy of Sciences Building in New York City. While the actual clock is housed at the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences offices in Chicago, Ill., a representation of the clock will be changed at Thursday's news conference. (You can watch the live Web feed at www.TurnBackTheClock.org.)
The last time the Doomsday Clock minute hand moved was in January 2007, when it was pushed forward by two minutes, from seven to five minutes before midnight. The change was meant to reflect two major sources of potential catastrophe that could bring us closer to "doomsday," according to the board of "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists," a magazine focused on warning the world of the dangers that the invention of the atomic bomb helped to unleash. ... In December 1945, University of Chicago scientists who had helped to develop the first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project created "The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." The Bulletin's board of directors then in 1947 came up with the idea of a Doomsday Clock to symbolize these threats. The message is that humans are "a few minutes to midnight," where midnight represents destruction by nuclear weapons, climate change and emerging technologies in the life sciences. ... When the Doomsday Clock debuted in 1947, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was occurring, with the time showing seven minutes to midnight. The time has since changed 18 times.
The closest approach to Doomsday occurred in 1953, when the clock was changed to two minutes to midnight after the United States and the Soviet Union each tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of one another.
No word on whether Iron Maiden will be rewriting and rerecording their 1984 song "Two Minutes to Midnight."
Great jumping snails!* It's hard to imagine, but radio as we know it is only 100 years old--and its anniversary is today, January 12.
American inventor Lee De Forest was born in 1873 in Council Bluffs, IA, where his parents often said that they couldn't see De Forest for the trees, although it was unknown if young Lee was skilled at hide-and-seek. He went to Yale and, as an inveterate tinkerer, tapped into the school's electrical system and blacked out the campus. He was, needless to say, suspended. So they would have to wait for many more years before getting a college radio station. They eventually relented and let him back in, and De Forest earned his Ph.D. in 1899 with a dissertation on radio waves.
De Forest invented the audion, an electronic amplifier, followed by an improved wireless telegraph receiver. De Forest's subsequent triode was three-electrode vacuum tube that could be used as an amplifier of electrical signals, such as radio reception. It would much later be used in computers, as well.
Wikipedia takes up the story:
On July 18, 1907, De Forest broadcast the first ship-to-shore message from the steam yacht Thelma. The communication provided quick, accurate race results of the Annual Inter-Lakes Yachting Association (I-LYA) Regatta. The message was received by his assistant, Frank E. Butler of Monroeville, Ohio, in the Pavilion at Fox's Dock located on South Bass Island on Lake Erie.
DeForest apparently hated the term "wireless" and preferred instead "radio." It might catch on.
Anyway, what is claimed to be the first "true" public radio broadcast was made on January 12 (and 13), 1910, when De Forest broadcast part of a live performance of Puccini's opera Tosca --featuring Italian tenor Enrico Caruso--from New York's Metropolitan Opera House. (Odd; there is no record of any intellectual property disputes or disclaimers that the broadcast was owned by the Metropolitan Opera Company.) De Forest used two mono microphones and a 500-watt transmitter. Of course, not too many people had radio sets at the time and the quality of the sound left much to be desired. Still, you have to imagine that to suddenly hear voices coming out of a box in your home had to be akin to receiving messages from space. (Which they kind of were...)
By the way, the first actual wireless transmissions dated from four years earlier. Reginald Fessenden had invented a continuous-wave voice transmitter 1905 and made a voice broadcast over the North Atlantic on Christmas Eve 1906. It was only heard by the wireless operators on banana boats owned by the United Fruit Company. There's a demographic that broadcasters lost over the years...
So when everyone told Lee De Forest that he was bananas for trying to create radio, they could very well have been right.
And then video killed the radio star, The Buggles joined Yes, and it was all downhill from there.
So let's turn on the radio, get appalled at how it has devolved since its heyday, turn it off again almost immediately, then go find an old radio drama on MP3.
*An actual exclamation from a character on an episode of Dimension X, a great radio science-fiction series from the 1950s.
Over at PrintCEO Blog, via a 6th-century monk and a 20th-century biologist, reasons why we should declare the "2000s" over—especially if you're in the printing industry.
Many of us who do crossword puzzles or eat Chinese food (or both, sometimes simultaneously) have long been curious about a certain General Tso. Was he a real person, much less a real general, or was he fictional, like Uncle Ben or Betty Crocker? Or was he more like a Chinese Colonel Sanders, not a real military Colonel? And why name a chicken dish after him? Was it sort of a damning with faint praise sort of thing?
Whilst I could very easily have looked him up of my own accord, hunan nature being what it is (ahem) I would rather--like the dish--have it delivered to me rather than go and pick it up.
Ergo, the answer finally did indeed present itself in, of all places, yesterday's New York Times Crossword Puzzle blog.
It probably doesn't surprise anyone that General Tso's chicken (like much of American Chinese cuisine, or much ethnic cuisine we get in this country) doesn't really exist in China itself. But:
General Tso’s chicken is named for Tso Tsung-t’ang (now usually transliterated as Zuo Zongtang), a formidable 19th-century general who is said to have enjoyed eating it. The Hunanese have a strong military tradition, and Tso is one of their best-known historical figures. But although many Chinese dishes are named after famous personages, there is no record of any dish named after Tso.
The real roots of the recipe lie in the chaotic aftermath of the Chinese civil war, when the leadership of the defeated Nationalist Party fled to the island of Taiwan. They took with them many talented people, including a number of notable chefs, and foremost among them was Peng Chang-kuei. Born in 1919 into a poverty-stricken household in the Hunanese capital, Changsha, Peng was the apprentice to Cao Jingchen, one of the most outstanding cooks of his generation. By the end of World War II, Peng was in charge of Nationalist government banquets, and when the party met its humiliating defeat at the hands of Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949, he fled with them to Taiwan. There, he continued to cater for official functions, inventing many new dishes.
The article goes on to say that Peng invented the dish known as General Tso's chicken some time in the 1950s. In 1973, Peng moved to New York City and opened a restaurant near the United Nations. Hunan cuisine was virtually unknown in the States in the early 1970s, and Peng's restaurant became a favorite with U.N. officials--and with then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
“Kissinger visited us every time he was in New York,” Peng said, “and we became great friends. It was he who brought Hunanese food to public notice.”
The Chinese don't have much of a sweet tooth, and if you've ever had traditional Chinese desserts, they are not particularly sweet at all (but still very tasty). So needless to say, a main course would scarcely be sweet. As a result,
“The original General Tso’s chicken was Hunanese in taste and made without sugar,” he said. “But when I began cooking for non-Hunanese people in the United States, I altered the recipe.” (Though others have since laid claim to it.)
Peng eventaully moved back to Taiwan and General Tso's chicken became one of the staples of American Chinese food. One final irony, though:
General Tso’s chicken is now being adopted as a “traditional” dish by some influential chefs and food writers in Hunan.
Hmm...kind of like how Scotty "invented" transparent aluminum in Star Trek IV. (Yeah, like this post wasn't geeky enough to begin with!) There is also another irony in that the "traditional" Hunan dish is actually a product of exiled Nationalist Taiwan, which has to sting on some level.
Having further questions about Tso (is he a poultry excuse for a general?) I thought I would turn to our old friend Wikipedia. Tso (or, latterly, Zuo) lived from November 10, 1812 to September 5, 1885 (I shall have to mark November 10 on my calendar and celebrate each year with a delivery from the nearby Peking Chinese Restaurant, whose delivery menu describes the dish as "Finely chunks of chicken quickly fried until crispy, sauteed with exotic target, Hunan sauce." Not sure what "target Hunan sauce" is, but it is rather good.) But I digress...
Early in his career, Zuo "decided to abandon his plans to become a civil servant and returned to his home by the Xiang River in Hunan to farm silkworms, read and drink tea." Now there's an idea. I rather like that as a career move... There is no truth to the rumor that the original General Tso's chicken was made with silkworms.
When Zuo was 38 (in 1850), the Taiping Rebellion broke out, and he was hired as an advisor by the staff of the governor of Hunan. "In 1856, he was formally offered a position in the provincial government of Hunan."
In 1860, Zuo was given command of a force of 5,000 volunteers (later known as "Chu Army"), and by September of that year he drove the Taiping rebels out of Hunan and Guangxi provinces, into coastal Zhejiang.
Zuo captured the city of Shaoxing, and from there pushed south into Fujian and Guangdong provinces, where the revolt had first begun. In 1863, Zuo was appointed Governor of Zhejiang and an Undersecretary of War.
In August 1864, Zuo, together with Zeng Guofan, dethroned the Taiping teenage king, Hong Tianguifu, and brought an end to the rebellion. He was created Earl Kejing of the 1st Class for his part in suppressing the rebellion. He, Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang were called Zeng, Zuo, Li, the leaders in suppressing the rebellion. In 1865, Zuo was appointed Viceroy and Governor-General of Fujian and Zhejiang. As Commissioner of Naval Industries, Zuo founded China's first modern shipyard and naval academy in Fuzhou the following year.
There is no truth to the rumor that he later won an important military campaign by firing chunks of crispy fried chicken at the enemy, although that Hunan sauce made a good target.
[I]n his seventies, Zuo was appointed to the Grand Council, the cabinet of the Qing Empire at the time, in 1880. Uneasy with bureaucratic politics, Zuo asked to be relieved of his duties and was appointed Viceroy of Liangjiang in 1881. In 1884, upon the outbreak of the Sino-French War, Zuo received his fourth and last commission as commander-in-chief and Imperial Commissioner of the Army and Inspector General overseeing coastal defense in Fujian. He died shortly after a truce was signed between the two nations, in Fuzhou (Foo-chow), 1885.
He was buried on a bed of rice....
A distinguished military figure to be sure, and yet, as we now know, was unlikely to have ever eaten the dish named for him. His loss, really.
Writer and analyst for the graphic communications industry. Has written about half a dozen books on the subject of computer graphics hardware and software, and writes extensively on the printing and publishing industries.
I was promised giant mutant vegetables, and I was not disappointed:
Some of the display gardens were quite elaborate:
I like the idea of this; would that all roads could be devoid of cars and covered with flowers:
And, of course, carnivorous plants are not without their appeal:
And here's a motto I think we could all live by:
After downing rather voluminous Pimms and lemonades, we went in search of food, and followed the signs that read "Seafood and Champagne." We were not disappointed.
