JohnWShipman

Hewlett-Packard tightens the screws (1973)

2012-01-15T16:01:00.000-08:00

Around the time of the 1973 Oil Crisis, energy conservationsuddenly became an issue in California. Hewlett-Packard wasconcerned about their electric bill. So they started a programto save energy.

Most -hp- buildings back then had high ceilings illuminated byfixtures that held eight fluorescent bulbs, each eight feet long.Every division's maintenance staff had various ladders and workplatforms for getting up to the ceiling. They came around totake one bulb out of every fixture.

When that was done, they came around and took another bulbout of every fixture.

About the time the fixtures were down to three bulbs each, alot of people started to complain that they couldn't see whatthey were doing. So they sent the staff around to make surethere were at least four bulbs in every fixture. The complainingdied down because the company had responded.

This is a pattern I have observed many, many times in othercontexts. I suspect they actually teach it in managementschools: lay off staff until the remaining staff explode from thestress, then hire a thin slice of them back until the screamingdies down.

Is this actually a good idea? Not always, I'd say. Considerthe American health care system. Because so much of the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries revolves around profit, theytend to cut to the bone, and then maybe a little more.

Maybe in normal times this will fly for a while. But whathappens when disaster strikes? Have you spent much time in anemergency room lately? Because so many people are uninsured,they can't afford preventive care, then they get really sick andgo to the ER. Waiting times in most ERs nowadays, I hear, arepretty long unless you have a severed artery or aren't breathing.And this is pretty much all the time. What if we get a reallyugly flu epidemic or a natural disaster? Where is the reservecapacity?

My solution is, of course, typical Progressive cant. Makehealth care a nonprofit activity. Go to single-payer like allthe rest of the civilized nations, which spend half what we doand get better outcomes, like the Canadian healthcare system.

The day I wore a burqa (ca. 1980)

2012-01-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

Somewhere around 1980 I was invited to a Halloween partyby an old New Mexico Tech friend who was living in Palo Altoat the time.

Another friend of mine was an inveterate shopper ofsecond-hand stores and had a number of treasures, including anauthentic burqa. She agreed to loan it to me for the party.

It was a black robe witha head covering that left only two parts visible: a tinyrectangle enclosing my eyes (with some small coins hangingjust underneath), and my legs up to about mid-calf. I putflip-flops on my feet and drove to the party.

This was during the Iranian hostage crisis, when Islamistmilitants took over the American embassy and held 52 Americansfor over a year. The news often showed footage of Iranianmilitants screaming “Death to Carter!”

So when my dear friend Candy answered the door, I said in ahigh sing-song voice, “Death to Carter! Death to Carter!Happy Halloween! May I come to the party now?”

Candy and I have been friends since we were freshmen togetherin 1966, so I was quite surprised that she didn't seem to knowwho I was. But I wasn't armed or otherwise menacing so she letme in. I didn't shave my legs, so I doubt anyone thought I wasfemale, but no one had any early correct guesses about who I was.

I stayed in character for twenty minutes before Candy figuredit out! The lesson that has stayed with me, since that day, ishow much a burqa makes one anonymous. This is not a valuejudgement, just an observation.

At this point I weighed probably around 300 pounds, sofinding a costume that concealed my identity was a goodtrick. But a burqa worked surprisingly well.

The first computer program I ever ran (1966)

2012-01-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

This story is part of my permanent Web, but you are welcome to leave comments here.

At Texas Tech, I found a sympathetic staff member who said I could run my program. I was in ecstasy.
They had two computers then. One was an IBM 1620 with add-on core memory (persistent storage—a luxury of the day!) and a Flexowriter terminal. However, such was not for mere mortals, but I would be welcome to run it on their IBM 7044, the older and not so shiny system.
The first obstacle was learning how to use an IBM 026 keypunch. What a miserable excuse for a human-computer interface! Communicating with computers by punching holes in a piece of cardstock! If you made a mistake, you had to throw away the entire card and start over: once you punch a hole, you can't unpunch it.

(the full story)

A foot of snow in Socorro

2011-12-06T16:41:00.001-08:00

The weatherman predicted 2-4", but we got over a foot the morning of 12/05. First shot shows the bird feeders and birdseed bin in my backyard with foot-tall snow caps.

I cleared off the back half of my car so I could get some snow gear out of the trunk. This picture shows the depth of the snow on the car roof. The “Pica pole” is a little over a foot long; there is another 3/4" or so of metal past the 0" mark, so definitely over a foot.

Looking east along Campus Drive on the south side of Fitch and Driscoll, you can see more cars with serious snow caps. Note the depth of the snow on the roof of the pickup truck on the left.

2011-10-24T09:18:00.001-07:00

Let our sorrows/Carve out hollows/For our happiness to fill.—John Hall

Three bangs for the Fourth

2011-07-04T17:10:00.000-07:00

Some items from the mid-Aughts, some new ones. Let's start with a few neologisms.

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Oneiroplasty: Create your dreams. (JS)

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Dysmenorah: Crankiness during Hanukkah. (JS)

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These quotas are so arbitricial. (Arbitrary x artificial; JS 2011-1-13)

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Delorious (delightful x glorious; JS 2004-6-26)

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Glorgeous (glorious x gorgeous; JS 2004-7-24)

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Indicement (inducement x enticement; DJ on Radio Free Santa Fe)

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De-furred gratification. (JS, on the Shed-Ender 2006 for removing thatch from cats)

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Nobody knows you're a dog, on the Internet. (Thaddeus Bejnar)

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If there's a “Lighthouse for the blind,”, how come there isn't a “Foghorn for the deaf”? (Richard LeRoy)

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That's just icing on the gravy. (Richard LeRoy)

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Gotta watch both ends at the same time. (Thumper, to Bambi, on the ice)

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That Achy-Breaky song has turned country and western music into an ass-wiggling contest. (Waylon Jennings)

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Excuses and rarblizations [sic]. (Bad TV closed caption, probably for “rationalizations”.)

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“When I grow up, I want to be a musician.”

“Son, you can't do both.” (Anon., from the Christian Science Monitor)

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I dare you to make less sense! (Hank Venture)

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Done there, been that. (Joe Martinic)

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I've got things to place and goes to be! (JS, 2010-12-27)

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Talk to the booty, 'cause the hand's off duty! (Pat Buckley's 9-year-old grandson)

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We had to clean out the plastic dinosaur tray at Walmart. (Pat Buckley on entertaining grandchildren)

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Did you hear about the Amish woman who went wrong? She wanted two, Mennonite.

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Loan Sum Pawn (now-closed hock shop in Belen, NM)

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I've seen that look on his face before, but not at the table. (Woman who wishes to remain anonymous; of her husband; at Denver's Rioja restaurant; I've been there, the food is really that good.)

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Roger Melone: Is this tempo too fast for the clarinet?

Clarinetist: It's also difficult for the player.

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Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby. (Anon.)

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The Information Technology degree is for people who can't program but want to control the computers because there is money and power involved. (Pat Buckley)

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Real programmers can write in FORTRAN no matter what language they are using. (Pat Buckley)

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If your program is long enough to need a subroutine, Perl is the wrong language. (Brian Truitt)

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Being really good at C++ is like being really good at using rocks to sharpen sticks. (Thant Tessman, via Bill Weiss)

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A true friend will stab you in the front. (Oscar Wilde)

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That's the best one of that kind I never saw before in my life. (Bob Eveleth)

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Quantum mechanics: The dreams that stuff are made of. (Bumper sticker)

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Schroedinger's Cat: Wanted dead or alive!

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In the ballet of life, some people are the dancing potatoes. (JS 2010-12-8)

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Ormolu Cummerbund (band name, JS, Dec. 2010)

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There are only two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it. (Oscar Wilde; found on a gravestone in the Eunice, NM, cemetery)

On ways of teaching and learning

2011-04-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

This essay on instructional methodology is on my regular web, but you can leave comments here.

Updated 2011-07-04 with some feedback from Dr. Cormack.

Two rules for writers

2011-04-13T20:39:00.000-07:00

This essay on being a writer is on my regular web site, but you can leave comments here.

John McPhee, my favorite technical writer

2011-01-26T16:54:00.000-08:00

I never had specific training as a technical writer, just always wrote the documentation because nobody else wanted to. Reading widely and copiously, though, is my first recommendation for becoming a better writer, so I try to seek out the better nonfiction writers to inspire me.

There are a number of nonfiction writers whose work I enjoy and would hold up as good examples. Stephen Jay Gould in biology, Lewis Thomas in Medicine.

But John McPhee, columnist for the New Yorker, is my favorite of them all. When I was convalescing from my knee replacement last spring, I finally read his Annals of the Former World (ISBN 978-0-374-51873-8), a monster on the subject of geology.

I avoided geology in my college years. We had a choice of biology or geology, and at New Mexico Tech, the Geology Department is extremely tough, especially the undergraduate intro course. I figured if anyone could help remedy this large lacuna in my education, it'd be McPhee.

This guy has it all. The big picture. The thousand telling details. The human element and the accidents of history. But he also has a wicked gift for writing, especially explaining things in terms people can appreciate.

As I was reading Annals, one paragraph so impressed me that I had to stop and catch my breath. This is from page 121, as part of his general introduction to plate tectonics.

Almost all earthquakes are movements of the boundaries of plates—shallow earthquakes at the trailing edges, where the plates are separating and new material is coming in, shallow earthquakes along the sides, where one plate is ruggedly sliding past another (the San Andreas Fault), and earthquakes of any depth down to four hundred miles below and beyond the trenches where plates are consumed (Japan, 1923; Chile, 1960; Alaska, 1964; Mexico, 1985). A seismologist discovered that deep earthquakes under a trench had occurred on a plane that was inclined forty-five degrees into the earth. As ocean floors reach trenches and move on down into the depths to be consumed, the average angle is something like that. Take a knife and cut into an orange at forty-five degrees. To cut straight down would be to produce a straight incision in the orange. If the blade is tilted forty-five degrees, the incision becomes an arc on the surface of the orange. If the knife blade melts inside, little volcanoes will come up through the pores of the skin, and together they will form arcs, island arcs—Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, the New Hebrides, the Lesser Antilles, the Kurils, the Aleutians.

The boldfaced part just made my jaw hit the floor. What, structurally, is he doing there? The orange is a metaphor for the Earth, yes, but then what happens? It's a knife blade, but it's also a large geological structure, and it is melting.

One of the general principles that guides my own technical writing is that some people are verbal thinkers while some are more visual in their thinking, so pictures are a Good Thing. But here, McPhee doesn't need a picture; his words paint a clear picture that anyone can appreciate and visualize why island arcs form. A two-dimensional picture wouldn't work anyway. Better to let the reader use their three-dimensional imagination.

Dot's a wrap

2010-12-14T02:28:00.000-08:00

Tonight's batch of three-dot splendor comes from loose notes from the late 1990s.

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Neologism file: anomalicious—not just strange, but evil. (1995-07-20)

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You got a broken muffler belt. (Rural mechanic diagnosis)

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Marcia's requirements for potential marriage partners: Don't marry anyone until you have (1) seen them vomit, (2) gone on a long car trip, and (3) met their parents. I would add, for those of us of a certain demographic, met their kids.

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A change is as good as a rest. (Lioness's mother on staying busy)

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The first duty of a revolutionary is to get away with it. (Abbie Hoffman)

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Conceit causes more conversation than wit. (La Rochefoucauld)

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It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC; as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration. (Edsger J. Dijkstra; I think you could say the same about FORTRAN, my first language.)

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Romeo wasn't bilked in a day. (Walt Kelly)

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Transcendental defenestration (idea for a new cult, 1999-2-21)

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It's difficult to make a good show if the ingredient doesn't bleed or twitch. (Irondad, a fan of the original Japanese Iron Chef)

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Everybody is somebody else's weirdo. (Unix fortune file)

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Kaa's method for getting rid of religious proselytes: say “Well, I'm a nudist. If we're going to talk religion, I've got to be naked.”—and start disrobing.

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My hometown of Hobbs, NM, is not exactly a culinary Mecca. Here are my notes from a trip there in 1998. Chinese Kitchen: rubber General Tso's chicken. Furr's cafeteria: broiled salmon with half a cup of tartar sauce; overcooked carrots; Iceberg lettuce and plastic tomatoes; cold toast; nice new potatoes with onion; German chocolate pie. Got the runs.

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You can't underestimate the power of fear. (Tricia Nixon, according to a Unix fortune)

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Back when Zen Rhino was a chef they had a special called “Happy Trails”: stuffed triggerfish and a Roy Rogers.

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Philately will get you nowhere. (JS 1998-8-26)

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Thank goodness modern convenience is a thing of the remote future. (Walt Kelly)

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I can do without actually having to traipse around in leather lace-up boots and be hit upon by furry men in codpieces. (Sen, on why she doesn't like the SCA or RenFair scenes)

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Ambiguity is a two-edge sword. (JS 1998-6-6)

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Nobody can be like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it. (Talullah Bankhead)

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The public at large tends to confuse the composing of a symphony with the writing of its score. (Edsger J. Dijkstra)

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(1) If my girlfriend calls me passive-aggressive one more time, I'm going to make her pay in ways she won't even be aware of. (2) I'm not going to stop torturing myself until I figure out the cause of my pain. (The late Ycho)

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She's about as stable as a coffee table perched on an epileptic penguin's beak. (Djinn, on an acquaintance of his)

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Visual Basic? I might as well build my program out of mud and popsicle sticks. (nails)

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But it's not *TRUE* object-oriented programming unless you can subclass a semicolon. (jafo, 1997-12-3)

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Do you think reading about cowboys is sufficient to ride a horse? Like horses, real programs tend to throw you. (JS, late 1997, to a programming student)

100 meteors

2010-12-14T01:59:00.000-08:00

Meteor-watching is the wide-angle form of astronomy. No optical aid, just lie flat on your back with a good all-sky view. On 2010-12-14 from 0058 to 0230 I observed 100 meteors of the Geminid shower, plus three sporadics. That's better than one a minute. Two of them were brighter than Sirius, and one had a strong blue-green color. Several of them left trails visible for a few seconds.

The Etscorn Observatory here on the NM Tech campus is not a bad place for meteor-watching. There is a berm surrounding the observatory compound that cuts off most of the nearby light sources. However, it was pretty chilly out there tonight: the thermomenator in the car read 25F when I was heading back home, and there was frost on the roof of the car. My hands were so cold after packing up that I had hand cramps. I had to stick my hand in my armpit for a while just so I could operate the car key.

Equipment: foam pad; sleeping bag; heavy coat; fur hat with the fur on the inside where it will do the most good; gloves; water; flashlight. If you do this sort of thing in the winter, keep in mind that you will not be moving much, not generating much heat.

For comfort, I much prefer the Perseid meteor shower in early August. My friend Elinor the astronomer uses the term “sucker holes” for those gaps in the clouds that make you hope it will clear up, but then it doesn't. For the Perseids this year I was lured out to the observatory by some sucker holes, but before I'd been out there an hour, it was socked in.

Tonight, though, the sky had that diamond-hard clarity that we often get in wintertime here on the altiplano. Nothing like staring at the entire sky for an hour or two to give one perspective.

A tale of three cities

2010-11-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

This week's three-dot monsterpiece comes from a 15-to-20-year-old group of 3x5 cards that I fished out of the washing machine soaking wet. Because of my fetish for Fount India ink, they were all crisply legible after they dried out.

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This is real music. There's no accordion part. (Roger Melone rehearsing the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra Chorus.)

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There are lots of groups you can go sing in and have fun. (Roger Melone again. He meant that some choruses are only about fun. I personally think singing with this group is about the most fun I've had in my entire life...once the sweating and working are out of the way.)

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Q: What's the difference between a soprano and a seamstress?
A: A seamstress tucks up frills.

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I gotta be stuff and do places! (JS 1995-06-30)

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Q: What's the difference between genius and stupidity?
A: Genius has its limits.

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If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put them all there? (Brenda Santistevan, 1997-07-10)

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The only thing we have to fear is pheromones. (JS 1995-12-23)

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Who's got time to budget their time? (JS 1996-03-08)

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If your battle plan is going perfectly, you are in an ambush. (Early USENET)

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NM Tech Computer Science professor Victor Yodaiken always referred to our local supermarket as “The Produce Museum”. I have never bought a bag salad there that would last until the third day. Rumor has it that Socorro is the end of the line for three different produce delivery routes, so we get the stuff that nobody in Belen, Carrizozo, or T or C wanted.

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Neologism file: His optimism soon dwaned. (Steve Ingoglia, 1997-4-18; dwindled x waned.)

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Everybody misquotes these lines. I carefully transcribed them during my N thousandth viewing of Wizard of Oz.

“I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.”
“Now I know we're not in Kansas anymore.”
“I keep forgetting we're not in Kansas.”

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Natalie Derrick: He was Baroque.
Jeff Rhoades: He had no Monet.

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Dump the notes, play the music. (John Murfin, 1996-02-24. John is an outstanding Celtic fiddler who knows approximately 10^13 fiddle tunes.)

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If you could teach your dogs to smoke, they wouldn't chew up your slippers. (John Murfin)

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It's too dark to see flashlights. (Becky Titus, at a Hop Canyon party.)

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I'm very attached to non-attachment. (Me, demonstrating how not to do Buddhism, to Magail Medina, 1995-8-2.)

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Is it still Monday again already? (JS 1996-02-01)

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We have three seasons every month: morning, afternoon, evening, and wrinkled. (JS, 1996-08-24; can't remember what inspired this but the 3x5 card has a note: “Overactive Surrealist gland.”)

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You're born a Patty, then you find the grill. (Jan Thomas)

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Less often than not. (JS 1997-06-12)

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Sub-pessimal. (JS, date unrecorded)

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Q: What do you get when you cross a Unitarian with a Jehovah's Witness?
A: Someone who rings your doorbell for no particular reason.

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Out one ear and in the other. (James Robnett, 1995-10-20)

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The trouble with the rat race is that if you win, you're still a rat. (Anonymous)

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Q: What's the difference between an oboe and an onion?
A: You cry when you're chopping up an onion.

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It's laudable to want to study your errors. But it helps if they aren't coming at you so thick and fast that you can't study them in isolation. (JS 1995-11-19)

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No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up. (Lily Tomlin)

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I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. (Bertrand Russell)

Three dots in the fountain

2010-11-11T13:12:00.000-08:00

Shipman family standards: “Purt-nost,” which is sort of a hybrid of “purty near” and “almost.”.

“What time is it?”
“Purt-nost five.”

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One of the commonplaces of reunions is riotous tales out of school, from the days when we were young and foolish (we're old and foolish now.) Like the time some of my friends, under the influence of the Demon Rum, drove their car onto the railroad track at the Socorro station and went as far as they could go. Not sure why, but at the place where they got stuck on the tracks, the car was freed up by the expedient of tipping it into the adjacent irrigation channel.

These are all grownups now, at least nominally. Some of them resent being reminded.

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You can see just by watching him. (Ty Murray, Pro Bull Riding tour announcer and nine-time world champion)

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No foot will remain unshot. (Pat Buckley on the Democratic Party)

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Dogminatrix: one who instructs dog owners in the proper maintenance of the dominance hierarchy. Cesar Millan, for example.

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An American tourist in Belfast was confronted by a masked gunman who demanded, “Catholic or Protestant?” and pointed the gun at him.

The tourist thought for a moment. He had an even chance of being a martyr. Then he got a bright idea and replied, “Actually, I'm Jewish.”

The terrorist smiled through the hole in his ski mask. “I must be the luckiest Arab in Ireland.”

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Vegaquarian: Someone who eats only vegetables and fish. (Lynne Heatwole)

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Merle and Janet Bickford were a married couple of artists that I knew many years ago. They were both sculptors and had a large studio near the Pacific shore where they both worked.

At one point they sculpted each other, in life size, using a wild assortment of scrapbox materials. They were trying to express, they said, the complexity of their relationship. When the pieces were completed, they showed them.

During the showing, one art patron took such violent exception to the ice pick that was buried up to the hilt in the eye of one of the figures that she plucked it out and threw it on the floor. The artists rushed over and put it back in, insisting that that was an important part of the overall composition.

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Bubba and Junior were standing by a flagpole, looking up at it. An attractive blonde engineer walked by and asked them what was going on.

“We need to know the height of this here flagpole,” answered Bubba.

The blonde pulled a wrench out of her pocket, unbolted the flagpole from its base, tipped it over and walked it down, laid it on the ground, pulled the tape measure off her belt, measured it, announced “Eighteen feet, six inches, plus or minus a quarter,” re-installed the flagpole and went on her way.

“Ain't that jest like a woman,” said Junior. “We need the height, and she gives us the length.”

Non-Euclidean carpentry

2010-11-06T11:39:00.001-07:00

To read this story, I'll have to ask you to visit it on my antique 1996-era personal Web pages. You can leave comments here if you like.

Three if by space

2010-11-04T15:59:00.001-07:00

As of May 2007, the Owl Bar in San Antonio, NM, went through an average of 300 lbs. of green chile per week. That amounts to about eight tons a year. That does not include the Owl's Albuquerque branch.

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A veritable Who's Who of Who's That. (Richard LeRoy on movies with no one famous in the cast)

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I shoot every third salesman, and #2 just left. (Sign in Prescott Grey's office)

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My dad was fond of three odd lunch items: cervelat (a Swiss sausage), braunschweiger (a soft liver spread—bleah), and Durkee's salad dressing. From the Wikipedia article on the Glidden paint corporation, I learned that Glidden bought Durkee & Co., and that Durkee's sauce was reputedly a favorite of President Lincoln. From Durkee's web page:

In 1857, Eugene R. Durkee created the product that helped make him famous, which today we call Durkee Famous Sauce. It was the first prepared and packaged salad dressing. To appreciate this endeavor, remember, this was created prior to refrigeration. It was carried west by the pioneers. Historians have found old, discarded Durkee dressing bottles along covered-wagon trails. Durkee Famous Sauce was even purported to be stocked in Mary Todd Lincoln's pantry and served to Abraham Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War.

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Hooker: Buy a lady a drink?
Patron: As soon as one shows up.

My friend Frank says he has actually used this line. He is very tall and wide, though. I wouldn't dare. I hate pain.

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Me: Don't mind me, I'm just part of the furniture here.
Dan Lunceford: I would never describe you as furniture. Furniture is utilitarian.

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Four life stages of soprano: bel canto; can belto; can't belto; can't canto.

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There are four types of tenors. A countertenor sings alto and even soprano parts in falsetto voice. Lyric tenors are for light romantic roles, while dramatic tenors are for tragic roles. Heldentenors (literally, “heroic tenors”) are for Wagner.

Two of my voice teachers said that if I had started younger I could have been a Heldentenor. The joke goes that there are four types of tenors:

A countertenor has no testicles.
A lyric tenor has one.
A dramatic tenor has two.
A Heldentenor has two, but he is standing on one of them.

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Neologism file: travedy = travesty x tragedy (Laurelle Powers)

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Neologism file: cargyle = the diamond-shaped patch of debris in the middle of a busy intersection that both straight and turning cars miss (Gary Henderson)

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Neologism file: quoozy = queasy x woozy (Nan)

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Perl: The popular version of Intercal. (Dworkin Müller)

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The video game Dance Dance Revolution requires that players dance around on a special mat to score. One friend of mine who was rather overweight at graduation showed up two years later looking quite svelte, and attributed it all to spending significant time playing it.

Marcia said there was a new one called Pole Dance Revolution that was being test-marketed at the Burning Man Festival.

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Goddamn English people have ruined our language. (JS 2009-01-02)

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Eastern New Mexico University in Portales is a first-rate school for music and performing arts, among other departments. However, compared with my alma mater New Mexico Tech, it is somewhat less strong in science.

My friend Phil Johnson and I used to go birding frequently in Boone's Draw, a beautiful wooded tract near Portales that is one of the best birding spots in the state, surrounded as it is for many miles in every direction by treeless grasslands. The spot is also known to ENMU students as a party spot, since it is miles out of town and quite isolated. Tony Gennaro, the science department, told us that there were rumors of devil worship there, but based on our experience camping out one weekend there, Phil judged that beer worship was more likely.

One fine day we encountered a big hulking guy creeping around with a bow and arrow. Turns out that he was a student in an ENMU anthropology course. The instructor had taught them how to make knapped flint arrowheads, and promised this student that if he could successfully slay an actual bunny rabbit with it, he was guaranteed an A.

Three dots for Sister Sara

2010-11-04T14:36:00.001-07:00

Excess will not be enough. (Director's advice to Jim Carrey before he made the life-action Grinch movie)

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So it's less of a tossup and more of a toss-off. (Anthony Martinez on XM's classical channel, before they merged with Sirius)

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Five stages of life:

You believe in Santa Claus.
You don't believe in Santa Claus.
You are Santa Claus.
You look like Santa Claus.
You believe in Santa Claus again.

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I nom, therefore I om. (Nan Silvernail; 'om' rhymes with 'Mom'; reference to lolcats)

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Are you out of blinker fluid? (Encouragement to drivers who do not use their turn signals. "Turn signals are a sign of weakness," says Nan.)

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Q: What's the capital of Iceland?
A: $4.30.

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Focus on your own damn family. (Bumper sticker)

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A well-deserved inferiority complex. (Miriam Nadel)

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They're deep-frying everything on a stick these years at State Fairs. Here are some ideas I haven't seen yet:

Chitlins.
Kim chee.
Liver.
Lutefisk.

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It's a good thing the shoe bomber didn't hide anything in his ass.

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The little girl started to eat before the blessing. Grandpa admonished her, “In this house, we pray before we eat.”
“But Grandma's a good cook!” protested the little girl.
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I can tell you from long experience that one of the hardest things about choral singing, and especially solos, is knowing when to breathe. A prudent soloist will have required breaths marked in the part well ahead of performance, and perhaps some optional breaths marked that may or may not be used depending on one's wind and the tempo. Which leads to this story about a rising young soprano who shared a stage with one of the most experienced warhorses in all of opera.

RYS: Do you really need that many breaths to get through that?

MEW: Honey, it takes a lot more gas to run a Cadillac than a Volkswagen.

As for the Republicans

2010-11-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

“As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.” (H.P. Lovecraft, 1936)

Hat tip to Digby.

Three-dot style

2010-10-28T16:07:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize that my cousin Helen reads this blog, until she chided me (with good reason) for not posting enough. I hope this item will address this fault of mine, at least briefly.

When I lived in the Bay Area I enjoyed reading Herb Caen's column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Much of his content was what he called “three-dot journalism”, short items separated by ellipses.

So here are some random short items gleaned from one of the series of 3x5 cards I carry in my Nerd Pack at all times: the Misc series.

***

One of the place names on the Alamo Navajo Reservation near Magdalena, NM: One-armed Man Who Walked Off Cliff.

***

Neologism file: Monitor lizards—people who spend all their time on the computer. (Nan Silvernail)

***

“It's like applesauce that knows somebody.” (Marcia B. on the apple compote at Standard Diner in ABQ.)

***

“Cotton balls garnished with angel farts.” (ibid, on haute cuisine)

***

Socorro, NM, was established in 1626, torched in 1680, and resettled around 1815.

***

There are two stories of how the Llano Estacado, the great Staked Plains of Eastern NM of my youth in Hobbs, were named. One theory is that the early explorers used tall stakes pounded into the ground to navigate—heaven knows there are few landmarks there, or any terrain relief. The other theory is that the edge, the Caprock, looks somewhat like palisades of stakes from a distance.

***

“A lifetime of temporary relief.” (a chronic pain sufferer on her life)

***

Natillas is a favorite local dessert from our Hispanic heritage here in the Rio Grande Valley. It is a custard with some vanilla wafers in it. The winner of the local reader's poll for this was Teofilo's in Los Lunas, right across from the Luna Mansion, which was recently bought by the people who own Teofilo's. Shipman's summary: Yum.

***

Speaking of local culture, mañana does not mean tomorrow. It means, not today.

***

“Cubist seeks square hole.” (Nan)

***

In Jack Williamson's autobiography, he tells the story of how he and Fredrik Pohl investigated the site of the famous Socorro Saucer Incident. They found two anomalous things about the scene. There were four depressions in the sand claimed to be the footprints of the saucer; they were laid out in a perfect square, except that one footprint that would have been positioned on a large rock was off to the side. Wouldn't a landing strut sit on top of the rock, or at least leave scrape marks on the rock? Also, the scorched bushes were scorched from the bottom up; one would expect bushes scorched by flame from above would be scorched from the top down.

***

“Politics is the art of getting votes from the poor and money from the rich while convincing each group that you are protecting them from the other.” (anonymous British labor official)

***

“Self-loathing government dependents.” (Pat Buckley on Teabaggers who are on Medicare and Social Security)

***

“Software as a disservice.” (Me, on SAS, Software As a Service; I also view The Cloud with some great suspicion.)

***

“A gift of fertilizer!” (Me, examining a guano strike on my car. So if you hear me say this, it's a more polite way of saying “bullshit.”)

***

“Sometimes being an adult means not telling Mom.” (Nan)

***

“Is that flounder or flow under?” (Overheard at an Albuquerque restaurant.)

***

“We've got to find out where this chocolate is leaking from.” (Overheard at the Village Inn, ABQ)

***

A man asked his wife, “I've never understood that is meant by this phrase ‘Mixed emotions.’ Can you give me an example?”

His wife replied, “Here's one: You have the longest one of all your friends.”

***

“This restaurant is a free circus. All you have to do is pay attention.” (Sign on a refrigerator at the Manzanares Coffeehouse, Socorro, NM.)

***

Neologism file: apostatheosis—the ultimate in apostasy. (Jim Campbell)

***

Neologism file: conslutant [sic]—one who gives advice for extremely low prices.

***

Random neuron firing: I finally remembered the name of the legendary high-volume fish restaurant on the Berkeley waterfront: Spenger's. Ate there somewhere around 1980. Great food, huge selection, and massive crowds at all hours.

***

“In order to understand recursion, first you must understand recursion.” (Anon.)

***

“Vertil concoupe”; this is how a member of my family, probably my sister Sally, mangled “convertible coupe” at a tender age.

***

I missed the New Mexico State Fair this year, so I failed to try Deep Fried Butter, but Zombie Doughnuts in Albuquerque has a maple bacon espresso doughnut that is also pretty impressive on the junk-food scale.

***

Me: Good bye, cruller world.
Nan: I'm going to a buttermilk place. (2010-08-23)

***

“We ran out of green chile so we had to come home.” (Pat Buckley on his return from to Socorro from a vacation in Wyoming)

***

“If the unexamined life is not worth living, the over-examined life must be well worth living.” (Miriam Nadel)

***

Verdolagas is the local Spanish name for common purslane, which is one of the evil weeds banned by city ordinance here in Socorro. According to my informant, it is a delicious stir-fried vegetable, eaten commonly here in Hispanic households, and a good vehicle for red chile.

***

The Animas River runs through northern New Mexico near Farmington. I heard that the full name is Rio de las Animas Perdidas, the river of lost souls, because in flood it has killed many in the past.

***

Neologism file: Decolletage—avoiding Colette. (Me)

***

Kid: What are all those books that look alike over there?
Parent: That's the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Kid: Whoa, somebody printed the whole thing out?

***

“Rougher than a stucco waterslide.” (Justin McKee, color commentator for the Pro Bull Riding Tour)

***

In the Hobbs (NM) Varsity Band, one of our signature pieces was a bombastic little march entitled “Grandioso.” Only recently did I realize it was ripped bodily out of Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody. I'm so ignorant about classical music. On several occasions, the only way I've found out about a great classical piece was to perform it with the NM Symphony Chorus.

***

Neologism file: not-o-pilot—when you're not paying proper attention. (Me, 2010-09-20)

***

“It's a control freak thing. I won't LET you understand.” (Bumper sticker)

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I don't mind straight people so long as they act gay in public. (Bumper sticker)

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“Nature abhors self-esteem.” (Me, 2010-09-30)

***

At one point in my secondary school years, Dr. Pepper introduced a soft drink called Pommac. It was sort of the Edsel of soft drinks: introduced with a big splash, a commercial disaster. I used to drink this stuff. Pale pink, carbonated, not entirely unlike champagne.

***

Random neuron firing: I finally remembered the names of our family friends in Inverness, FL, around 1955: the Roscoes. Our family lived in this soggy pesthole for a few months between Dad's jobs because Dad's parents had retired there. The Roscoes were local real estate brokers who found us a small farm to live on. There were two horses on the property. Like so many young girls, my sister loved horses; as I recall, she actually rode the filly, Rowdy, at least once. The other horse was a big stodgy plow horse named Bob. I had no idea what he was good for, but I was only five then. I recall the electric fence in particular. I found out the hard way, of course.

Of cannons, Tchaikovsky, and a pregnant cheetah

2010-06-12T10:59:00.000-07:00

On my regular web is a story from my first performance with the NM Symphony Orchestra Chorus in 1995.

I live

2010-06-05T17:09:00.000-07:00

Got a total knee replacement 6/4...surgery went ok. I got a spinal instead of a general anaesthetic so I got to hear the saw...but that's the only thing i remember...they had me full of happy drugs.

Today the nurse said i was her star patient...walked about 10 yards with a walker...further than one expects.

Very hard to touch type with a blood oxygen probe on L index finger so i'll keep this short...many thnaks to all the well-wishers...will post here a bit when things improve.

No ski jumping for women in the Olympics

2010-02-16T17:55:00.000-08:00

I was surprised to learn that:

A woman named Lindsay Van owns the all-time ski-jumping record for the hill being used in the Vancouver Olympics, and
There is no ski-jumping event for women in the Olympics!

Apparently, men can't handle being bested by women. (10-minute video)

Kai Lung unrolls his mat

2010-01-23T17:03:00.001-08:00

There are so far two books I have liked so much that I typed them in to make them freely available. I just finished the second one: Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat, a quite singular work of fantasy by Ernest Bramah first printed in 1927.

The other one is Why don't we learn from history? by B. H. Liddell Hart.

One day while checking out

2010-01-20T11:39:00.000-08:00

Not sure why I'm an extrovert, but I scored 0.8 on the Myers-Briggs extrovert-introvert axis. This sometimes manifests in my tendency to start up conversations with random strangers.

The other day I was waiting to check out at Costco. It was crowded, and every one of the checkout lines had at least five carts. In front of me was a mom with two young boys, so I decided to use one of my Standard Gambits on her. “My,” I said, pointing at her younger son, who was somewhere around a pre-schooler and sitting in the cart, “what aisle did you find this product on? It's an attractive little number.” She smiled and thanked me.

At that point the older son, who looked to be in early grade school, pointed at the younger and said, “He wrecked the whole house!”

“That's his job,” I replied. (Thanks to the redoubtable Amy Blackburn for the “That's their job” meme, which is so universally applicable.)

“Why are you wearing sandals?” asked the older son, since it was a rather cold day in Albuquerque.

“I guess it's because I just don't have any common sense.” Several other people who were waiting nearby cracked up; this of course made my day.

I looked the kid straight in the eye and said, “Not everyone who is old is smart.”

This got another laugh from the folks standing in line, and a woman from the next line over remarked, “But everyone who is young is inquisitive.”

“That's their job,” I replied.

Statement on the 1964 Socorro UFO incident

2009-11-24T10:57:00.000-08:00

Here is my all-purpose, final statement about the Socorro UFO incident of 1964.

I did not arrive in Socorro until 1966, so I have no direct experiences to report.

Please consider two things that will make this story very difficult either to verify or to disprove.

Firstly, there was no physical evidence left behind of any technology unavailable in 1964. Some scorched bushes and depressions in the sand are well short of proof of alien visitation. The police officer who reported the incident could have been fooled by special effects concocted by the many intelligent, bored, mischievous students then attending New Mexico Tech, which has always had a highly select and technically oriented student body. Furthermore, campus research activities at the time provided access to heavy equipment and weather balloons, and many mining students had both expertise in and access to explosives.

On the other hand, it is all too easy for college students to claim that they staged a hoax. It is the kind of thing an upper-division student might say to impress a younger student.

I have nothing useful to add except the skepticism expressed above.

Another “where is he now”

2009-10-28T10:03:00.000-07:00

I was waiting in line at the Manzanares Coffeehouse today here in Socorro, and overheard a customer mentioning Martha's Black Dog Coffeehouse, the business that used to be there.

I spoke up. “Hi, I'm your volunteer Martha's Black Dog history consultant. I was there the whole time.”

The man looked familiar, and said he thought he knew me. I introduced myself and he grinned.

It was Andy Horwitz, founder of Bow Wow Records, one of the greatest little record stores ever. It opened on Central Avenue in downtown Albuquerque, sometime in the 1980s, and the stock was outstandingly eclectic. Many are the gems that I picked out of his bins, and many were the pleasant hours I spent yakking with Andy about any and all kinds of music, from the best of the popular current stuff to the farthest corners of ethnic and forgotten music. He had reggae, he had African, he had Hawaiian music, not to mention the all-important rock and roll.

Andy was a veterinarian before he opened Bow Wow, hence the name. Today he was very professionally turned out in a sharp suit, on his way to do some work for a pharmaceuticals firm.

As we parted, he told me something that I didn't know, or didn't remember: I was his second customer at Bow Wow.

Sure, it was only a business, just like Martha's was only a business. To make money, to pay the bills, to survive. As I told Andy today, Martha often claimed that the only reason she opened a restaurant was so there was someplace she could hang out where they couldn't throw her out. But some businesses go beyond just making a living, and customers will always remember how they made up a slice of what we call home.

Probably not ball lightning

2009-09-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

On September 20, 2009, at around 15:36 MDT, I was driving north on I-25, somewhere around the first five miles north of the northernmost Belen exit, in a hard rain in the middle of an electrical storm. My speed was somewhere over 60 mph. I saw what looked like a direct lightning hit on one of the utility poles paralleling the freeway on the east side, a fraction of a mile ahead of me. I was concentrating on the road, since the rain was coming down hard enough that I was using the faster windshield wiper speed, traffic was somewhat heavy, and visibility was not very good.

A very short time after the lightning hit, my attention was attracted to a bright light in the direction of the pole that had just been hit. At first it resembled a reflection of the sun, as when a highway sign is hit by a low-angle sunbeam and reflects it completely. However, that wouldn't explain it; the sky was completely overcast and there were no holes where the sun might have gotten through.

As I approached the impact site, it became apparent that the source of the light was at about the same distance east of the freeway as the utility wires. The light was a brilliant blue-white color, and it didn't seem to be a point source. It looked sort of amoeba-like, although the windshield didn't really give me a clear view. It was not at a pole, but about a third of the distance between the nearest pole and the one just south of it.

As I passed even with the site of the light, it seemed to me that it was not a point source at all, but an irregular blob of brilliant light at least a few feet in diameter, judging the distance by parallax. Its angular size was perhaps half the size of my fist held at arm's length.

Wrenching my attention back to the road, I had a strong afterimage, as when one inadvertently looks at the sun. I was a little concerned that I might have burnt my retina, but the afterimage faded within a minute or so. I checked both my rear-view mirrors as soon as I could spare the attention, but did not see a strong light in either mirror. The duration of the light was at least five seconds, perhaps as much as ten.

Analysis

New Mexico Tech is well-supplied with weather researchers, and I asked some of them about this. I was wondering if it were ball lightning. Here is a reply from Dr. Harald Edens:

I've seen a handful of reports and even a photo from alleged ball lightning in The Netherlands when I still lived there, that were caused by lightning-induced arc-over between tramway or railway overhead power lines that are everywhere in the cities over there. It made me very skeptical of ball lightning reports that have to do with power or phone lines.
As far as I know, many ball-lightning reports that cannot be explained by other means (including my own observation several years ago) are of some phenomenon that is not necessarily attached to anything. It also apparently is not all that bright (about the brightness of a 100W bulb), while plasma arcs on power lines can be blinding. Perhaps the arc looked big and spherical because it was scattering light through microscopic dust on your windshield, or it happened to be larger than the wire separation due to convection of the plasma arc that makes it bend upward into an inverted 'U' shape. I myself find anything that is extremely bright difficult to distinguish in shape, and appears round.
This is only my opinion, and ball lightning or not, I find it an interesting observation of yours!

It seems that based on the surface brightness alone, my observation was of a simple arc and not ball lightning. And there was a lot more than dust on my windshield at the time—it was a heavy, driving rain.

If you are reading this and have any other thoughts on what may have caused it, please leave a comment or send e-mail to john@nmt.edu.

Melrose Woods: A cultural battleground

2009-09-09T13:13:00.000-07:00

Most of New Mexico's hard-core birdwatchers would agree that Melrose Woods is either the best single birdwatching spot in the state, or at least way up there. However, since it is also beloved of dove hunters, it is the locus of the occasional skirmish in our beloved American culture wars.

This bit of state trust land contains a few acres of poplars, some quite large. It is the only big patch of wooded land for many miles, in the middle of a huge sea of grasslands. During migrations, especially in May and September, there are generally numbers of migrant birds resting and feeding there. Moreover, it has been the location of a number of amazing records, such as Fan-tailed Warbler and Gray Silky-flycatcher, that are hard to find anywhere in North America. Located near mile marker 354 on US-60, on the north side of the highway, west of Melrose (and around 30 miles west of Clovis, NM), the highway gate is at 34°25'54"N, 103°48'07"W. There is a chain but no lock. Be sure to leave the gate closed.

Here is a quotation from my online field notes of September 4, 2004:

Drove into Melrose Trap to find five truckloads of dove hunters staring dourly at me. I can't imagine why I didn't blend right in, being a good old boy from southeast NM from way back. Maybe it was the giant camera rig, the binoculars, or the shorts and Birkenstock sandals. They were blasting away with shotguns right next to the trucks, probably to see if they could make me jump (they didn't).

My field notes didn't record the social interaction. I looked around at the hunters and focused on one who was considerably older, sort of the patriarch of the group. “Did y'all do any good?” I asked, which is a polite way in this culture to inquire about success in hunting and fishing. He nodded deeply. “Excellent. Glad to hear it,” I said, and continued on into the woods. When I returned they had left. Dove hunting is an early-morning activity; I didn't expect they'd linger.

Growing up in Hobbs, I was really quite comfortable around hunters. You have to be. When deer season opened, over half the male population of the public schools would be gone.

Last weekend, I spent all of one day and pieces of two more working Melrose for interesting records and what bird photos I could get. Saturday the 5th I was there for a couple of hours but left at 5pm. I noticed that the birdwatchers had hung a couple of hummingbird feeders in the woods, the better to get looks at the migrant hummingbirds.

Sometime after I left and before dawn the next morning, party or parties unknown blew one of the feeders to bits with a shotgun, and left a note: “You are fucking gay bitches!”

This didn't particularly surprise me. I knew a few intolerant yahoos in Hobbs, along with every other kind of people.

However, next day I was out there by myself around mid-day and a couple of youths showed up in a loud, purple pickup. I was sitting a little ways into the woods and came out to see what all the noise was. I did not converse with the gentlemen, but I did see at one point one of them holding what might have been a long gun, or maybe he just brought out a broom with an extra-long handle—I could only see it in silhouette. They climbed around on some of the old buildings and walls; they didn't approach me and I didn't approach them. I sat down and continued watching birds, with one eye on my car. After a while I ate lunch at the car, then left for a while, hoping they'd leave. They were gone 45 minutes later when I came back.

I have no idea whether they were involved in the destruction of the hummingbird feeder or the angry note.

Sorry if you were expecting a slam-bang ending. They can't all be Pulitzer material. Call it just an observation of life in these times.

Dolphin-safe beef

2009-08-21T15:42:00.000-07:00

You can read this post on my
regular site; I'll look for comments here.

Mr. Gaar's marvelous perpetual motion machine

2009-08-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

The story is on my regular web, but you can post comments here.

Kree-kree: Dangers of live music

2009-07-18T11:53:00.001-07:00

You can read this story on my regular web, but I'll look for comments here.

Oryx: armed and dangerous

2009-07-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

You can read this story on my regular web, but I'll look for comments here.

Disney train

2009-07-17T19:11:00.000-07:00

Disney's special Amtrak train, promoting the upcoming release of their new production of A Christmas Carol, stopped over in Albuquerque on June 9. Click on the thumbnails for larger images. Hewlett-Packard has a technology called “Train Wrap” for printing whole trains like this.

Lead units, Amtrak 157 and 71.

First car, MRLX 801101.

Second car, MRLX 801102.

Third car, MRLX 801103.

Fourth car, MRLX 800863.

The cherry on the sundae: an old open-platform observation car with a lighted drumhead sign, MRLX 800702.

A javelina and two reptiles

2009-06-15T15:11:00.000-07:00

This javelina, properly Collared Peccary, Tayassu tajacu, was wandering around near the entrance to the Washington Ranch, a short distance west of Carlsbad Caverns National Park headquarters. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

Ant nests of the harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex spp.) are quite common around here. There is generally a large cleared circle two or three feet in diameter around the hole. There is one in my yard, very close to where I park the car, and a number of people have suggested that I poison them out. However, if I did that, I would never get to see this extremely attractive reptile (Phrynosoma cornutum, the Texas Horned Lizard), which specializes in feeding on ants. The genus name means “toad-bodied”.

All summer long in Socorro you can find whiptail lizards. This beautiful specimen was photographed on the north ramp of Speare Hall on the NM Tech campus where I work. The snout-vent length is about five inches, the glorious tail much longer. Identification of the several species of whiptails in this area is subtle, but I believe this is a Chihuahuan Spotted Whiptail, Cnemidophorus exsanguis.

So much for levity in technical docs

2009-04-27T10:43:00.000-07:00

I received this e-mail about a publication I wrote.


I'm reading through the the Tkinter tutorial
and in the "Anchors" section is a discussion
of setting locations using terms such as N
(for north) meaning the top; S (for south)
meaning bottom; E (for east) meaning left
and so forth.  Reading on, I found this:
"We apologize to our Southern Hemisphere
readers for this Northern Hemisphere
chauvinism."

Last I looked, even in the Southern Hemisphere,
Hemisphere, north on a map is toward the top, 
south is toward the bottom, east is toward 
the left, etc. (Google a map of Australia,
and you'll find north is up)

While I appreciate that you academics are
whiny PC wimps, I at least would think that
there should be something to apologize FOR
before abasing yourself.

Second, I would have thought a professor in the
in the technical field would be far about [sic]
the stupid PC form of writing.

My reply:

Perhaps you have not seen McArthur's Universal Corrective Map of the World.
My remarks about hemispheric chauvinism were a poor attempt at humor. It is my policy, when writing dry technical works, to leaven the leaden prose with the occasional bit of ham-handed levity. I am not actually an academic, but a staff member who holds only a pathetic and superannuated (1970) bachelor's degree in computer science.
I'm currently revising the Tkinter reference for version 8.4, so I will include the above link in the new version in hopes that my joke might not fall so flat.
Thank you for your valuable communication.

Santa Fe: Pink Adobe; Kakawa Chocolate House

2009-01-25T14:11:00.000-08:00

Pink Adobe restaurant, Santa Fe, NM

The Pink, as it is known locally, has been a fixture in the Santa Fe restaurant and nightclub scene for decades. I had eaten there only once before, and we sat in the bar and had bar food. Very nice bar food, I seem to recall.

My friend Mongoose convinced me to try it again, and it was a winner from end to end. A warm sourdough baguette came out first with some fresh butter. Simple, but perfect.

For the salad course, I chose the goat cheese salad. It came out in a beautiful bowl with three thumb-sized pieces of herbed goat cheese atop first-rate mixed baby greens. To one side were several pieces of roasted squashes and bell pepper. All was adorned with a subtle but tasty vinaigrette.

The lobster, crab, and shrimp enchilada is one of their best-sellers. This is a typical sort of Santa Fe crossover dish, with deep roots in New Mexican cuisine presenting ingredients that can't be found within a thousand miles. Mine came with a goodly dollop of excellent guacamole on a few large chips, black beans, and an upscaled version of the standard "Spanish rice" that appears on just about every "Mexican" plate in the state. The rice was separate, not covered up with tomato sauce as is usual around here, and quite tasty.

The enchilada itself was heavenly. Generous bites of seafood, lots of cheese, and one of those cream sauces that defies analysis because it was so well-balanced and subtly spiced.

Nice staff, nice room, beautiful place-settings—everything I could ask for. Located directly across the street from San Miguel Mission, the ancient and beautiful Roman Catholic church.

No doubt the desserts are every bit as good as the other courses, but Mongoose had other plans.

Kakawa Chocolate House

It was worth a two-hour round trip for this part alone!

New Mexico magazine had a feature review of this world-class artisanal chocolatier. Have a look at their web page for general information, and please note that they do ship.

Their specialty is chocolate drinks, hot chocolate and also warm and cold. Mongoose had the Sciscenti's American, which was extremely tasty, smooth, and rich, with a long series of pleasant aftertastes, based on the one sip I stole of her drink. I opted for one of their historical Mesoamerican drinks, the “chili (mild)”. I am a fan of pretty spicy food, and even though this was supposed to be mild, it was too hot for Mongoose. I was able to detect small levels of heat (relative to my preference), but that was only part of an amazing spectrum of gustatory and olfactory effects. My drink had a lot more texture to it; it was thick and had a lot of small bits blended through it, all quite delightful. The aftertastes went on for several minutes in a long and complex series. I was reminded that chiles are fruits, after all, and the subtle sweetness was not just from the agave nectar that was the only specifically added sweetener. The menu described this drink as bittersweet, and that's accurate: not bitter, but far from oversweetened. Very much to my taste. This is the other end of the chocolate universe from Hershey Bars, my friends: a complex, adult bouquet of flavors and aromas.

I took some items from their mind-boggling chocolate cases home with me. So far I have tried two of them. The Aztec Brownie was another immersion in deep, complex chocolate flavor. Lots of nuts, quite crunchy, but nothing got in the way of the depth of the cocoa flavor.

When I saw the bacon truffles, made with wild boar bacon, I had to try them. It may seem outrageous, but it was tasty and balanced, another interesting data point in my recent quest for foods that qualify as both sweet and savory. The dark chocolate ganache was outstanding, of course, and the bacon did not struggle with it. It was not so much chocolate-covered bacon, as a truffle with just a hint of smoky bacon flavor and a few bits of tender bacon texture.

Seating is rather limited, and most of it was taken up by two groups of people lounging around: several people in a side room playing Celtic music, and another group playing chess. The server had to do some shuffling of furniture to liberate a table and two chairs, but she was very accommodating. Later we had a chance to meet and talk with Mark Sciscenti, the owner. The level of his scholarship and devotion to authenticity and creativity were apparent. A few of his “elixirs” were said to include ambergris. I was unaware that ambergris was historically used for flavoring, although I knew it was ridiculously expensive. Sciscenti has found an equivalent from botanical sources.

If you are getting the impression that this guy is a fanatic, that's accurate, but I mean that in a very good way! The one overarching principle of everything I tasted was that the amazing flavors of the chocolate always shined through.

No hablo español

2008-09-17T12:45:00.000-07:00

I'm ashamed to admit that I speak basically no Spanish, living as I do in a town where the phonebook has 74 entries under “Chavez” and only 14 under “Jones.”

Frequently, people call me on the phone and speak Spanish. So that I could be polite to them, I asked a Spanish-speaking friend of mine to teach me how to say “I don't speak Spanish.” I studied on it for several minutes until I was confident I could pronounce it correctly.

However, when I used this phrase to answer phone calls in Spanish, I could never get anyone to believe me. They would continue in Spanish, and I would repeat my magic phrase “No hablo Español,” and they would go on in Spanish, and a good time was had by none.

One day it occurred to me that maybe I was doing too good a job pronouncing it. Next time I got into this situation, I used a horribly exaggerated Texas accent: “No-oo HOB-low ess-puh-NOLE.”

That did the trick. Since then, every Spanish-speaking caller has believed me right away.

Two matanza surprises

2008-07-05T17:05:00.000-07:00

Here in the central Rio Grande Valley, I've often heard the word “matanza” used to describe a large party in the traditional Hispanic culture. Generally it involves one or more whole pigs, roasted in a pit.

This word has twice led me to surprises.

One day a few years ago I was getting my teeth cleaned. I happened to mention to the hygienist that I was from Socorro, and she replied that she had family there, and was planning to attend a matanza that weekend.

“With a pig, and everything?” I replied.

“White people know about the pig?”

This was my first surprise: that a Hispanic person didn't consider herself white. She certainly looked Anglo to me.

The second surprise took a while to reveal itself. There is an arroyo in Socorro County that drains a huge area, arising at the foothills of the Magdalena range twenty miles from the river. It passes on the south side of Socorro, and has often flooded badly. In former years it has killed more than one resident. Two years ago it ran again, and trashed a large area. On top of much flooding, it took out a power pole and left a goodly area of the county without power for days. Here is a view up the arroyo, looking at the I-25 and NM-1 bridges. The Magdalenas are visible in the background.

Early news reports referred to this arroyo as Brown Arroyo. However, as usual around these parts, there is an earlier name in Spanish: Arroyo de la Matanza.

Finally a bilingual friend of mine clued me in: matanza means “slaughter.” The party is called that because it centers on the slaughter of a pig. And the arroyo is called that because it is a killer.

Restaurant review: Rioja, Denver

2008-06-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

This is a review not only of a world-class restaurant, but another lovely big-city amenity: Denver's light rail transit system.

Staying with friends in Littleton on the south side of Denver, we wanted to have a nice meal downtown. The light rail system drops you right in downtown, and was a great low-stress alternative to driving and parking in the heart of the city.

A round-trip pass from the Lincoln station at the south end of the line to Denver and back was $8. The cars were attractive, clean, well-lit, and easy to use. We didn't have to wait long.

On a pleasant summer evening, there were lots of pedestrians in downtown Denver. Those of us who live in towns like Albuquerque with miserable mass transit are easily impressed by amenities like free shuttles and pedestrian-only streets. We even got rained on briefly: not a real downpour, just enough to be refreshing.

Our hosts are devoted foodies, and knowing that we'd only have time for one meal in Denver, they picked Rioja. The chef, Jennifer Jasinski, was right by the maitre d' station chatting with customers, and she came by our table twice to discuss our options. A very nice lady and, judging by the food, one of the great food artists of our time. The menu verbiage for the appetizer:

Fresh bacon: cardamom spiced Kurobuta pork belly, madras curry scented fresh garbanzo bean pureé.

Maybe this doesn't sound good to you, but it was one of the most exquisite appetizers I've ever had. The garbanzo puree smoothed out and complemented the richness of the bacon.

Flight of artisan blue cheeses: Bleu de Sassenage, Blue de Basque, Crimificato Verde Capra, house made curried date roulade, crispy pancetta frisee, red wine black pepper reduction.

Lest I not have room for dessert, I skipped the salad course and tried the flight of three bleu cheeses: one each of goat, sheep, and cow. The goat was really smooth and rich. The sheep version was my favorite: quite sharp, with a firm texture. I hesitate to describe the cow's-milk version as "middle-of-the-road", but it was between the others in creaminess and sharpness. All three were excellent examples of the style. The presentation was everything a foodie could ask for: one slender, crisp bread stick, a tablespoon of superb microgreens, a splash of red wine reduction on the side, and a mound of fig jam as a pedestal for a circle of crisp pancetta.

Scallops are my favorite seafood. I'll take good scallops over any form of lobster, crab, shrimp, or fish with fins, so it was a relatively easy choice to order the scallops. They were so wonderful, they recalled to me the best scallop dish I'd ever had: teriyaki scallop at Sanppo, a Japanese country-style restaurant that existed for many years in San Francisco at Post and Fillmore on the north side of the Japan Center. Rioja's scallops were perfectly tender inside, with just a bit of crunchy browned top. There were three scallops, each perched on a crunchy risotto cake, and adorned with a small dollop of smooth, rich green curry sauce. I wish I could enumerate all the ingredients of the vegetables and sauce in the middle of the plate. There were some slices of mango, a couple of beefsteak leaves (shiso), assorted greens. But there comes a point where one doesn't really care to dissect the dish, because it is such a glorious gestalt.

As a chronic chocoholic, choice of dessert was relatively easy (compared to choosing among all the riches on the dinner menu). Called "chilled s'mores pot de creme", it was a gorgeously rich chocolate custard in a ramekin with a layer of flame-caramelized house-made marshmallow, and two sticks of house-made graham cracker. Everything a chocoholic could ask for.

And now, back to the mass transit review. It might have been a good idea if we'd checked the baseball schedule before choosing our route back to Littleton: a Rockies game had just gotten out, and the light rail station near Union Station was wall-to-wall people. I had to strap-hang for well over half the ride back home, even though the transit district had added more and longer trains. With the cars near capacity, it got rather hot and sweaty in there. Still, it beats the heck out of driving.

For a small-town boy like me, seeing a reasonably well-organized big city is rather mind-boggling. Given the recent spike in gasoline prices, the transit district is finding itself overstressed. Even in cities, funding transit projects has been a hard sell for a long time, but now everyone is clamoring for more. Gov. Bill Richardson of NM is starting to look a lot more like a genius with his push for the RailRunner transit system, now open from Belen to Bernalillo and scheduled to open to Santa Fe late this year. It is unfortunate that the lead time for new transit routes is measured in years, when gas prices can double in a year.

Now that we're organized, what do we do?

2008-06-19T10:57:00.000-07:00

I'd've set this up a long time ago if I'd known it didn't cost me anything.

Currently on vacation in Colorado, and my hosts told me that this
service is free. I'd been considering putting up some random essays,
and this is a nice low-pressure place to stow them.

The title of this post is an old Shipman family trope. We would pack
the car for a vacation and Mother would say, "Now that we're organized,
what do we do?"

Once we got underway, Dad's ritual was borrowed from his father, as
he said, "We're off, in a cloud of powdered horse manure!"

Dad and Mother were both born in 1918, so Dad's dad might have
come by his horse manure quite honestly.