My coffee maker has started leaking water from the espresso tank when it’s under pressure. I mean, it still makes espresso, but leaks water onto the counter. So I have to replace it before it goes entirely belly-up. When I first noticed it, I was royally ticked off, but then I recalled that I bought the machine in 1990, with money from my first job after grad school, & it cost maybe $150 then. So that thing owes me nothing.
I have no time for any kitchen equipment that’s not multi-purpose—toaster oven instead of toaster, no Panini maker or hot dog cooker—so the ideal solution would be to replace the entire machine, which is an espresso-coffee combo. But I’m not looking to shell out $500 at the moment for anything that doesn’t involve the words “Saab” & “transmission”, & as the coffee maker works, I’m going for the espresso-only option.
I would have just bought another Krups machine—after all, you can’t argue with 21 years of solid service. But the consumer ratings on the Web have been really bad on both the quality of the equipment & the customer service, so that’s out.
& of course I could still pony up north of $1000 for a home espresso maker—well, I mean, there are machines on the market going for that, but I am still in possession of most of my senses. The way I look at it, whatever I get is interim—nothing’s going to last as long as my last one. Once I find a permanent (ish) gig, I should give it all due honors & a Viking funeral.
But if my options are a new machine or paying $4 per cup at a coffee shop, it’s a no-brainer.
I just hope it lasts long enough for the replacement to get here.
Friday, March 4, 2011
Thursday, March 3, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Defending the thesis
Germany’s Defense Minister has resigned from Angela Merkel’s government in disgrace. The issue is that large portions of his 2006 doctoral dissertation at the University of Bayreuth was plagiarized.
For those Gen-Whiners who are the products of the US education system in the past 20 years, “plagiarism” means quoting other people’s words without attributing the proper source. You know—when you “research” a term paper by Googling & then cutting-&-pasting whole articles from Wikipedia or TMZ, pretending you actually, you know, wrote it. I know you’ll find this difficult to grasp (for one thing, we’re talking about more than 140 characters), but this practice is considered wrong in any academic community that hasn’t surrendered entirely to the text-crowd.
What gives Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s crime a particular irony is the fact that he was studying…law.
Well—part of the problem with lawyers is that they learn their ethics in law school.
Anyhow—the Euros take their academic credentials seriously (as opposed to Americans, who think the very act of getting a non-MBA advanced degree vaguely anti-democratic; certainly anti-Republican), so after some attempts to brazen his way out of the publicity, Guttenberg has resigned.
What I’m kind of confused about is why it took six years to discover the plagiarism. Was Guttenberg the only person at Bayreuth who had access to the Internet? Were his thesis readers unable to recognize the works he quoted but didn’t cite?
The words of one of my masters oral committee members, Eugene D. Genovese, come to mind. I’m going to paraphrase: Don’t plagiarize: if it’s good, your professor is going to recognize it; if it’s not, you’re going to get a bad grade.
Or you'll have to resign your political office.
For those Gen-Whiners who are the products of the US education system in the past 20 years, “plagiarism” means quoting other people’s words without attributing the proper source. You know—when you “research” a term paper by Googling & then cutting-&-pasting whole articles from Wikipedia or TMZ, pretending you actually, you know, wrote it. I know you’ll find this difficult to grasp (for one thing, we’re talking about more than 140 characters), but this practice is considered wrong in any academic community that hasn’t surrendered entirely to the text-crowd.
What gives Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s crime a particular irony is the fact that he was studying…law.
Well—part of the problem with lawyers is that they learn their ethics in law school.
Anyhow—the Euros take their academic credentials seriously (as opposed to Americans, who think the very act of getting a non-MBA advanced degree vaguely anti-democratic; certainly anti-Republican), so after some attempts to brazen his way out of the publicity, Guttenberg has resigned.
What I’m kind of confused about is why it took six years to discover the plagiarism. Was Guttenberg the only person at Bayreuth who had access to the Internet? Were his thesis readers unable to recognize the works he quoted but didn’t cite?
The words of one of my masters oral committee members, Eugene D. Genovese, come to mind. I’m going to paraphrase: Don’t plagiarize: if it’s good, your professor is going to recognize it; if it’s not, you’re going to get a bad grade.
Or you'll have to resign your political office.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Taps
The last known US veteran of the First World War died Sunday at age 110.
In 1917 Frank W. Buckles lied about his age to enlist in the army at 16, looking for adventure. He drove ambulances and found blood, mud and ugliness.
He got his adventure later, when he signed on as purser for a freighter. But that led to ugliness, as well—he was in Manila when the Japanese invaded in 1941, spent more than three years in prison camps and was rescued during the airborne raid on Los Baños in 1945.
Buckles’ generation never got the attention the World War II vets did, at least here in the US. The last two British soldiers from 1914-18 died in 2009; Harry Patch’s funeral was held in Wells Cathedral, with full honors and military representatives of Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. I don’t know what plans there are for Buckles, except that he’ll be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I’ve met two soldiers from that war—one was a guest of honor at a Smithsonian lecture I attended in 1996. He was in a wheelchair and spoke very slowly, but his brain was as sharp as they come, even in his tenth decade.
The second I interviewed early in my reporter days—when my job was mostly to rewrite press releases. The city room received a mimeographed (yes, that long ago) announcement with the blanks handwritten about the election of this fellow to some office in a local service organization. To my utter chagrin I can’t recall his name and I can’t find a copy of the story I wrote, but I recall my interaction with him.
He was Scottish and had served in the trenches of the Western Front, part of the Gordon Highlanders. He told me it was awful and the only thing that got him through was the daily rum ration. Following the war he moved to Chicago and became a sheet metal worker. When the US entered the second war he was 49½ years old, and he upper limit for the Sea Bees was 50. He served in the outfit for six months in the Pacific.
And he told me John Wayne’s “The Fighting Sea Bees” was complete rubbish.
He was in his 80s when I spoke with him, and had only recently married for the first time. When I asked him why he replied, “Ooch, I was shy.”
Well, they’re gone, now. There’s one British soldier (in Australia) and one non-combatant woman in England. All the soldiers of the war to end all wars fading away.
In 1917 Frank W. Buckles lied about his age to enlist in the army at 16, looking for adventure. He drove ambulances and found blood, mud and ugliness.
He got his adventure later, when he signed on as purser for a freighter. But that led to ugliness, as well—he was in Manila when the Japanese invaded in 1941, spent more than three years in prison camps and was rescued during the airborne raid on Los Baños in 1945.
Buckles’ generation never got the attention the World War II vets did, at least here in the US. The last two British soldiers from 1914-18 died in 2009; Harry Patch’s funeral was held in Wells Cathedral, with full honors and military representatives of Britain, Germany, France and Belgium. I don’t know what plans there are for Buckles, except that he’ll be buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
I’ve met two soldiers from that war—one was a guest of honor at a Smithsonian lecture I attended in 1996. He was in a wheelchair and spoke very slowly, but his brain was as sharp as they come, even in his tenth decade.
The second I interviewed early in my reporter days—when my job was mostly to rewrite press releases. The city room received a mimeographed (yes, that long ago) announcement with the blanks handwritten about the election of this fellow to some office in a local service organization. To my utter chagrin I can’t recall his name and I can’t find a copy of the story I wrote, but I recall my interaction with him.
He was Scottish and had served in the trenches of the Western Front, part of the Gordon Highlanders. He told me it was awful and the only thing that got him through was the daily rum ration. Following the war he moved to Chicago and became a sheet metal worker. When the US entered the second war he was 49½ years old, and he upper limit for the Sea Bees was 50. He served in the outfit for six months in the Pacific.
And he told me John Wayne’s “The Fighting Sea Bees” was complete rubbish.
He was in his 80s when I spoke with him, and had only recently married for the first time. When I asked him why he replied, “Ooch, I was shy.”
Well, they’re gone, now. There’s one British soldier (in Australia) and one non-combatant woman in England. All the soldiers of the war to end all wars fading away.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Weather or not
The Bay Area was atwitter late last week, because there was a possibility of snow—for the first time in 30 years. I was actually looking forward to it because I knew whatever we got wouldn’t last long, & I enjoyed the prospect of not having to shovel (being in an apartment complex—someone else’s problem) & watching the reactions of the kids who live here.
Alas, it never happened—evidently some areas got a light dusting, but San José wasn’t touched.
Meanwhile, Seattle has been shut down again for the third or fourth time since Thanksgiving, because of snow, which they just can’t seem to figure out.
So much for being the vortex of innovation.
Alas, it never happened—evidently some areas got a light dusting, but San José wasn’t touched.
Meanwhile, Seattle has been shut down again for the third or fourth time since Thanksgiving, because of snow, which they just can’t seem to figure out.
So much for being the vortex of innovation.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Searching for dinner
God bless those Googling hearts over in Mountain View: the search engine giant has an algorithm that intuits a search entry of “broccolini” might mean you’re looking for recipes & returns a whole mess ’o ways to cook the veg. They call it “recipe view”.
And once you have your initial results, you can sort by ingredients, cooking time or calorie count.
I just don’t even know where to start.
And once you have your initial results, you can sort by ingredients, cooking time or calorie count.
I just don’t even know where to start.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Nuts & oats
A columnist for the NY Times takes McDonald’s version of oatmeal to task for being, well, the McDonald’s version. Which is to say, without any redeeming social or nutritional value.
Okay, fair enough—who would really expect anything under the golden arches to be anything except high-fat/high-calorie? I mean, even the salads chalk up high totals of both—even before you pile on the dressing.
But what I’m wondering is how long will it take before some self-absorbed be-labeled Yuppie with more credulity than grey-matter decides to sue the chain for deceptive advertising.
& lest you wonder what I’m talking about, I refer you to the San Diego “concerned mother” who has sued the company that makes Nutella for exactly that.
Seems that she was shocked—shocked—when her friends informed her that the chocolate-hazelnut spread she’d been feeding her four-year-old daughter daily was “in fact not a 'healthy' 'nutritious' food but instead was the next best thing to a candy bar." (Quote from her complaint.)
Evidently Athena Hohenburg didn’t notice the jar’s nutrition label (mandated on all food products) where it said that each two-tablespoonful serving contains 21 grams of sugar & 200 calories (with 100 calories from fat).
Like many of her class she seems to be literate enough to file suit, but not enough to read a label.
& that’s why I expect to at some point see news of the suit (possibly class-action) against McDonald’s when someone becomes shocked to discover that their oatmeal has more calories than a hamburger.
Okay, fair enough—who would really expect anything under the golden arches to be anything except high-fat/high-calorie? I mean, even the salads chalk up high totals of both—even before you pile on the dressing.
But what I’m wondering is how long will it take before some self-absorbed be-labeled Yuppie with more credulity than grey-matter decides to sue the chain for deceptive advertising.
& lest you wonder what I’m talking about, I refer you to the San Diego “concerned mother” who has sued the company that makes Nutella for exactly that.
Seems that she was shocked—shocked—when her friends informed her that the chocolate-hazelnut spread she’d been feeding her four-year-old daughter daily was “in fact not a 'healthy' 'nutritious' food but instead was the next best thing to a candy bar." (Quote from her complaint.)
Evidently Athena Hohenburg didn’t notice the jar’s nutrition label (mandated on all food products) where it said that each two-tablespoonful serving contains 21 grams of sugar & 200 calories (with 100 calories from fat).
Like many of her class she seems to be literate enough to file suit, but not enough to read a label.
& that’s why I expect to at some point see news of the suit (possibly class-action) against McDonald’s when someone becomes shocked to discover that their oatmeal has more calories than a hamburger.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Commercial break
Here are two examples of the better mousetrap precept. Or, perhaps, the “find the pain points and apply analgesics” precept.
In the UK a graphic designer has created barf bags for the consumer to express his/her opinion of the Royal Wedding. Although the concept is evidently new to many Britons, Lydia Leith has sold out her first batch and is rushing to print more.
And then back on our side of the Pond, a San Francisco company has built a smartphone app that enables drivers to find available metered parking spaces. Right now their coverage is limited to Hollywood, Calif., and Roosevelt Island in NY, and it’s only available on the iPhone, but they have plans for expansion.
Frankly, I think both products are boons to modern society.
In the UK a graphic designer has created barf bags for the consumer to express his/her opinion of the Royal Wedding. Although the concept is evidently new to many Britons, Lydia Leith has sold out her first batch and is rushing to print more.
And then back on our side of the Pond, a San Francisco company has built a smartphone app that enables drivers to find available metered parking spaces. Right now their coverage is limited to Hollywood, Calif., and Roosevelt Island in NY, and it’s only available on the iPhone, but they have plans for expansion.
Frankly, I think both products are boons to modern society.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The male of the species 2
In the interest of displaying the appearance of impartiality by way of showing both sides of the story, even when one side is pretty lame, & the story’s not much of one to begin with, I refer you to the follow-up the WSJ published to the article I discussed yesterday.
This one is even more replete with generalities & non-facts as the writer defends the 20-something American male. Seems that twelve of them or so have started Internet companies & made it big, so everyone should just get off all their cases.
Whatever.
This one is even more replete with generalities & non-facts as the writer defends the 20-something American male. Seems that twelve of them or so have started Internet companies & made it big, so everyone should just get off all their cases.
Whatever.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The male of the species
The story in the WSJ is headlined “Where Have the Good Men Gone?” & claims that “[t]oday, most men in their 20s hang out in a novel sort of limbo, a hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance.”
The writer refers to this as “pre-adulthood”, with the guys characterized as “frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers”.
I don’t find this particularly odd. What puzzles me is limiting the description to the immediate post-teen years. Seriously—at what point do guys grow out of it?
The writer refers to this as “pre-adulthood”, with the guys characterized as “frat boys, maladroit geeks or grubby slackers”.
I don’t find this particularly odd. What puzzles me is limiting the description to the immediate post-teen years. Seriously—at what point do guys grow out of it?
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