Saturday, April 12
OK... this is frustrating. Blogger won't display any of my sidebar -- my archives or my links -- and it will only display the most recent post. I don't know why it's doing this. Certainly, I didn't conciously program any of that. The closest troubleshooting I could find on the Blogger page suggested switching to "no archive" format. I tried that, and it didn't work. If you have any brilliant suggestions, please email me. If you have any ideas on how to fix this that are likely brighter than mine (remember: I don't know how to program), please email me.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/12/2003 05:37:00 PM
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Hmm. I hope this is just Blogger going crazy on me. I have no idea how to fix this.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/12/2003 05:21:00 PM
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I don't know why my sidebar has disappeared. Thoughts?
I also don't know why all my posts have disappeared.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/12/2003 12:43:00 PM
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this is from my class on political prints (cartoons) in 17th century England.
The meanings of words weren''t very well attached to what they described. Originally, the Puritans created nearly all of the political prints. However, they took seriously the commandment against graven images. To avoid this, they simply called prints 'picture,' 'sculpture,' 'figure,' or 'emblem.' Everyone knew that by using these words, they were all talking about the same artwork that mocked the Spanish ambassador. However, it was not an image, so there was nothing wrong with it. The term image only applied when you chose to use it: for instance, when you wanted to break the artwork in a High Church Anglican sanctuary.
This looseness of terms--I don't know what else to call it--showed up in other contexts, too. Around 1640, a fellow named Cook wrote that usury, rape, sodomy, piracy, and idolotry were all the same thing. It wasn't that he didn't distinguish between the acts involved in each, it just that the law treated them all as the same, therefore they must be. The only explanation I can figure for this is that the five were all sins against God and crimes against the laws of the country, and that they were punished the same. Still, I can't see how piracy fits in. Takings without just work?
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/12/2003 12:42:00 PM
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Wednesday, April 9
I used to think that the recipes in the New York Times were written on an absurdly high level for people expert at parching foods at precisely six and one-half minutes with ingredients that required trips to grocery stores not found in Hyde Park (especially now that Binny's Beverage Depot has replaced the Wine and Cheese Chalet). Escautoun With Basque Cheese and Wild Mushrooms requests the ingredients I expect from the NYT: duck fat, Esplette pepper, fresh wild mushrooms (trompettes de mort or the lowly hedgehogs), Basque sheep's milk (ok, so it gives some substitutes). The cooking directions aren't bad, though. For complicated and likely to fail, try pate a choux .
But today, they presented a recipe more appropriate to the kid's section of USA Today (does it have one?): how to boil an egg . Pardon? [And no, it's not a Minimalist recipe.] Just what audience are you catering to? Expecting that some folks will soon be cooking Seders, the recipe states "But cooking hard-boiled eggs can be almost as bewildering as nailing down their symbolism." No. Nailing down the symbolism in Judaism of a hard-boiled egg beyond me, but these eggs were one of the first things I learned how to cook, even before I could scramble them. Sheesh. How complicated would they make simple food coloring if they reprinted the instructions for Easter? Some of the directions the recipe gives are pretty bad, too. Julia Child does 17 min, an ice bath, 10 sec, another ice bath. Wonderful if you want rocks. And there's something about 4 hours of simmering? Uh-huh, no. Stick the eggs in some water, bring them to a boil. 10 minutes, maybe 12, that's what it takes. Bathe them in ice water, they'll never get cool anytime soon if you don't.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/09/2003 09:27:00 PM
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Does "The game is over. May peace previal," spoken by the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Mohammed Aldouri, count as surrender?
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/09/2003 05:52:00 PM
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I suppose it's not particuarly noteworthy to say that Thomas Friedman's column today, "Hold Your Applause," is worth reading.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/09/2003 07:11:00 AM
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Monday, April 7
So, 36 hours in Los Angeles and I'm back again. There's four inches of snow on the ground here. I've been to Los Angeles before--if you want to get technical about it, I was born there, but I don't remember that first year and a half I spent in Pasadena. Still, this was the first time I've ever understood the city's appeal. Bright sunlight, wide open freeways (ok, so I had the fortune not to get stuck in traffic on the 405), modern buildings that actually look good, flowers I can't even begin to identify. As Danny DeVito's character in L.A. Confidential , Sid Hudgeons, said:
"Come to Los Angeles. The sun shines bright, the beaches are wide and inviting, and the orange groves stretch as far as the eye can see. There are jobs aplenty and land is cheap. Every working man can have his own house, and inside every house, a happy all-American family. You can have all this, and who knows, you can even be discovered, become a movie star, or at least see one. Life is good in Los Angeles. It's paradise on earth."
Yup, I won't finish the rest of that line. It would spoil the effect. Anyway, life's not all bad, despite the snow. I just achieved an elusive goal--no Friday classes--thanks to a grad student who decided she'd prefer just to teach for a longer time on Mondays and Wednesdays.
posted by Amanda Butler |
4/07/2003 07:51:00 PM
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