The most pleasing vegetable (and a Saturday night recipe)

I have shared this with my kids, who thought it an unusual confession.  Now for the world:

I find cooking sliced leeks in butter on the stovetop a fantastically pleasing experience. It's the combination of the bright and cheerful green/white colour with the gentle smell of onion that doesn't overpower the kitchen the way onions can.  I can't think of any other vegetable which gives the same aesthetic pleasure in its combination of sight and smell.

I know - doing garlic (especially with some chilli flakes) in a pan with olive oil can be pretty intensely pleasing too, from an olfactory point of view.  I even love the smell of virgin olive oil heating up by itself.  But you don't get any substantial aesthetic pleasure from the colour.  (Yes, I know, some olive oils have a nice colour - but it's not the same cheerful palate as leeks.)

Anyway, now that that's out of the way, I was very pleased with the result of more-or-less following this recipe last night:

Seared salmon with mashed potato and leeks

The ingredient list I modified a little, so I will write my version that worked well:

*  Enough potato for a generous serving of mash for four
*  One large leek (you want to get at least a cup when its sliced)
*  Butter (and a bit of olive oil)
*  Corn, fresh, sliced off the cob (I used one big cob's worth for 3 people last night - yes, I had left over potato - but I would say you probably want a cup and a bit for 4)
*  small amount of garlic (minced out of a jar is ok)
*   baby rocket (a couple of cups)
*  skin on salmon pieces

The great thing about mashed potato is the way they reheat so well in the microwave.   I did this yesterday - did the mash after lunch, went to a movie, came home and the rest of the cooking was very quick.


So:   make your mashed potatoes the way you like, but while the potatoes are cooking, cook the sliced leeks in a couple of tablespoons of butter (perhaps more, because I use a substantial amount of butter in mashed potato anyway.)   Mix the leeks into the mash and there you have it - mashed potato with a sweeter, more intense flavour than the blander variety.  Just plain mash with salmon is a bit dull, I think.

Cook the salmon fillets with some butter and a little olive oil.   Take them out,   perhaps drain off some of the butter/oil, put in the corn kernels and garlic, with a little bit more butter if you want, and they soften with a few minutes.  While waiting, mash on plate, salmon on top.  Throw rocket in with the corn, just to wilt them (only takes a minute), add a bit of salt, and onto the salmon and mash.

I still served a lemon wedge with the salmon.   I think its often a bit tricky finding the right side vegetables with pan fried salmon, as you want some moisture somewhere, and I can't be bothered doing a sauce.  This worked well.

You can thank me later.
 

The New Zealand problem

I see courtesy of Sinclair Davidson that there is some kind of ban filter working to prevent getting onto this blog in New Zealand.  At least on the network he was using.  The reason it's listed is apparently for "hate and racism"!

I would love to know whether it is because of things I quote from Catallaxy.

(By the way, Sinclair, I am pretty sure that after I had a go at you for not filtering "chinks" on your block list for comments, you started to do so.  Can I claim credit for controlling your blog from here?  I'll send other recommendations as I see fit.)  

Or is because I don't always delete Graeme Bird's anti-Semitic ramblings in comments fast enough.

Sinclair ought to at least tell us if Catallaxy suffered the same fate.  If people could get to that site from NZ, but not to mine, there would be something seriously wrong!

The predictably appalling Arndt

I was going to write a post about how the odd looking Queensland detective heading the Clarke murder investigation could not possibly stay in charge after making his utterly gormless comment which carried the extremely strong suggestion that, who knows?, maybe the mother could be the one who should be blamed for making her husband so distraught that it led to him killing her and their kids.

The statement was completely and utterly unjustifiable - one that only the stupid, usually divorced, misogynists of Catallaxy could endorse -  and I was pleased to see the guy step down voluntarily.   I don't want to be mean, as they sometimes have an awful job which I would not want to do myself; but this guy's inability to avoid saying there are "two sides" to such a enormously malevolent act seems to confirm that you don't have to be very sharp to be a police officer at any level, in Queensland in particular (although other States' forces give us a run for the money at times, too.)   

Anyway, I thought it was all over, but then Bettina "Not a Psychologist, I just like being introduced that way" Arndt fulfilled my prediction that she would come out and say something stupidly offensive:

And she was saying this after the media was reporting the guy had a DVO against him already at the time he killed his family!

Even worse, she doubles down after the guy voluntarily stood aside:

And worse still - she apparently claims in a grubby newsletter that someone who was "close to the family" rang her to spill the beans on "the background to Baxter's actions" - which she hopes will come out in a coroner's hearing. 

How despicable is this?   Leading her "men are the real victims here - even when they kill" loser followers in a un-sourced whisper campaign that, yeah, the dead mother was a real bitch??

I was looking at her website the other day, and one of the things that annoyed me was that, sometimes, there has been a tiny kernel of a worthwhile argument in some of her attitudes, but she blows her credibility so completely out of the water by her unhinged culture war against feminism attitude that she is now the last person to listen to any sex or relationship topic. 

She needs to retire from the public discourse.  That severe head tilt she shows on her social media profile pic  (something Tim Blair would mock if she were a Lefty figure) must be giving her a headache by now.

A good take on the "reocons"

From the Niskanen Centre, a rather good explanation of the people surrounding Trump: "Meet the Reocons".  The subheading:

On the American right, a growing group of intellectuals are using acute cultural fears to secure an illiberal future. It’s reactionary politics at its most explosive and unpredictable.

Another book to be written about how Trump created a departmental shambles

One of the more interesting things to read about the Roger Stone sentencing is this article at the Washington Post, explaining that the prosecutor appeared not to really be endorsing the revised sentencing submissions, and wouldn't confirm who had written them!

It really sounds like a Justice Department in complete internal disarray, all due (of course) to Trump and his enabler Barr.

While on the topic of Trump, I was trying to find live streaming of the Democrat debate on Youtube yesterday lunchtime, and there was none to be found.  (I think it was still on while I was looking, but maybe I was a little late.)   Instead, I ended up watching a little live streaming of Trump at a rally, and once again I find his cult status completely puzzling.

The 10 minutes I watched were mostly bragging about how his election night went, and how TV pundits couldn't believe it when he started to win.   It was a story he has presumably told scores of times before, and people behind him did not look all that engaged.  Finally, he moved onto "Democrats are the parties of high crime and late abortion, ripping the babies from the mother's womb", and the audience got a little animated again.  And he threw in some clearly dubious bragging about medical advances.   It seems, incidentally, that Trump cultists are really pleased that if they get a deadly illness, they can try some pre-approved drug.  The fact that the vast majority of new drugs never get approved (only 14% make it, apparently) would surely indicate that very few of them going to have a benefit from the drug, let alone be saved by it.   (Not all new drugs would be actual life saving ones in any event.)

My point is - it is extremely difficult to understand why his followers think it is worth going to his rallies.  He speeches are rambling, clearly vain, off the cuff efforts by someone who would be given a poor rating as a high school orator let alone as an adult, and the audience itself does not look highly engaged during the more repetitive sections.   He doesn't attempt theatrical drama and practised emotional high points, like Hitler.  Yet people still, presumably, get some emotional lift from being there.

Although I have never been to a cricket match in my life, I think it might be like the odd way you sometimes see a cricket crowd start to amuse themselves during tedious play, with Mexican waves, etc.   What they came to watch is not all that great at the moment anyway, but they all know they all like the same thing when it is great.  

And I am still inclined to believe that they are clinging together because they know they are on the losing side of long term social and economic change.   

Japanese architects still trying to kill people

This takes me back:   a decade ago I was mocking the way Japanese architect designed houses seemed to disproportionately feature stupid, unsafe stairways.  A reminder:

I’ve mentioned here before the fondness modern Japanese architects seem to have for precipitous stairways without rails, balcony levels with low walls, and generally anything that any sensible client would recognize as a death trap for them or their house guests.
Well, I think this distinctive set of apartments in Tokyo probably takes the cake.  Why bother waiting for the resident to slip off the edge of rail-less stairs when you can actually build large holes in the floor!
As I said in a comment at Dezeen, the next logical step is hidden, spring loaded trap doors in the floor, to keep clients on their toes.

Well, they are still at it, if this post at Dezeen is anything to go by:

A series of triangular and rectangular platforms create numerous floor levels inside this house in Osaka, Japan.

Designed by Tato Architects, House in Takatsuki is a three-storey building containing 16 different floor levels.

Imagine negotiating this.  I keep getting images of cartoon/slapstick characters falling down various ledges from top to bottom:

I particularly like the touch of the sharp cornered metal step in the last photo.  Perfectly suited to slicing open a calf.

It's really just nuts.

In Trump news

*  I see that some on Twitter are pointing out that the media should perhaps show some scepticism about the self-seving nature of the "I have considered resigning over the Trump tweets" story from Barr.   I think they are right:  it does have a air of "how can I ensure that I stay here, helping my dumb-ass boss whose heart is in the right place, while maintaining a semblance of independence to be recorded in the history books."  

*  Seems that Trump has decided to try to neuter the intelligence services by installing a complete flunky as their acting head (which apparently means the Senate can do nothing about it, even if they wanted to.)   What's that sound in Russia?  Putin popping champagne, no doubt.  

Someone else on Twitter, though, says that this will have a chance of backfiring, as Grenell''s direct, partisan interference is likely to result in lots of leaking against him.   But will that concern Trump cultists?  Probably not.

All the best people

I knew that if I wanted to see the worst possible take on a horrific domestic violence murder suicide by an estranged husband*, I could wait for Bettina Arndt to comment, or go to the open thread at Catallaxy.

News reports are saying that no  Family Court proceedings re the children were underway yet, so perhaps Arndt is finding it hard to come up with a "bias against men in the Family Court leads to despair" aspect yet.   But that doesn't stop a regular at Catallaxy:

push anyone hard enough and they will snap. the article mentioned that she had withdrawn the children from him, probably on advice of lawyers. its a standard trick before a family report, make the kids not use to being around dad. the family report will note awkwardness, the judge will use that to decide custody. my ex did it to me. she has probably been provoking him for months, again on the advice of lawyers so that bad reactions can be documented. ex did that to me as well and it went on for a whole year. by the end of it I was ready to kill someone. the first would have been her lawyers, but in the end I kept it together, just.

the system is easy to rort and is heavily biased against men.

this woman now has to live the rest of her life, physically and mentally scarred knowing she could have avoided it all.

the left has weaponised women’s hypergamous behaviour. might sound heartless but I have zero sympathy for her.

He wrote that before he knew the wife/mother had died in hospital too, obviously.  Also before he knew anything at all about the reasons the mother left home and was, apparently, not letting the kids stay with him.  

While the thread is not exactly full of endorsement of his take on the matter, several take the opportunity to chime in on his subsequent comment that Rose Batty (son killed by father) is an appalling person for campaigning against domestic violence.

I've said before that there are lot of psychologically damaged, bitter-after-all-these-years divorced blokes on the site:  and it when it comes to domestic violence, their takes are the worst in the nation.

Update:    you might want to sit down while you read this one (from a different, regular Catallaxy commenter):

He was challenged, by one of the women so stupid as to want to appear in that community, to which he responded:

 

 *  mind you, only recently estranged.  It looks like it is barely a couple of months since the wife left the matrimonial home with the kids.   

Producers only have themselves to blame

I announced last year that I was well and truly "over" My Kitchen Rules.   I'm sort of happy to see that I am not alone - this year the show has gone into a ratings downwards spiral so bad that it looks like it won't recover.

Noticing that they have apparently changed the format a little this year, I'll fess up to having had a look at it for perhaps 20 minutes last week.   It is no wonder the ratings are tanking.  At least in previous years, if there was a contestant who was really annoying, you knew they weren't going to be back the following year.   So what do I find this year - the guy last year assigned the role of "bitchy, apparently gay, dude" is back, along with quite a few others from last years' contestants.   And as for audiences being over it being played as a personal conflict drama, I tuned in just at the right time to find a room in which there was some confrontation going on about whether that episode's cooks were being "honest" or not about their past experience with cooking for a living, with tears and upset from one of the accused.  I assume Pete and Manu had gone outside for a breath of fresh air (something the audience was wishing they could have as well) because they were no where to be seen in trying to calm down the room.   (Not that I have any doubts that the producers were involved in making this happen.)

People are over the faked up inter-contestant conflict aspects of the show, I reckon; even though that was always part of the format, it was clear the producers thought that ramping it up would attract more viewers.  I think it has backfired spectacularly.  A little bit of "who are going to play this year's 'baddies'?" could be fun - but push it too far and it just starts looking manipulative, too transparent and as bad as most other reality TV.

England, flooding and Conservatives

So, large parts of England are under water again.

Attributing any particular flood to climate change is a tricky thing, given the range of factors that help contribute to flooding generally.   (Look, even an opinion piece at The Guardian complains that a lot of current flooding is causing by poor infrastructure decisions.)   But the more floods that appear the more it's fair to assume that the attribution studies will confirm the connection with increased flooding generally.    

Fortunately, for England, their brand of conservatism is not tied to culture war denial of climate change:

The warnings came as George Eustice, the new environment secretary, admitted that the “nature of climate change” means the government cannot protect every household from extreme weather, such as recent storms which have brought flooding to parts of the UK.

“We’ll never be able to protect every single household just because of the nature of climate change and the fact that these weather events are becoming more extreme,” Mr Eustice told Sky News.

Why did Australian conservatism decide to follow the line of American conservative denialism, instead of the European path?   Probably the IPA I would say - and at heart, the American and Australian conservative path was likely formed by mining interest funding to "think tanks".  I would assume that limited mining (at least on land) in England means they have never been targeted in the same way.   

Fornication soon

For those disappointed that there is no new post yet - all 3 of you - things are busy at work and personally.

But I am working on a post about how early Stoics were not very "stoic" at all about sex, and how odd it seems that a pornographic painting of Zeus and Hera played a role in justifying their views.

This is what happens when you have an hour to kill at St Lucia, as I did last Saturday, and you go to the University library and notice a book on the shelf entitled: The Making of Fornication: Eros, Ethics, and Political Reform in Greek Philosophy and Early Christianity.

More to come...

Update:  it just occurred to me that story of the sexual grooming of a young student by an old sports coach of St Kevin's College which featured on last night's 4 Corners (and it was a very sordid case) was the sort of stuff which [some] Greek philosophers would have thought was actually appropriate; almost noble.   Ancient Greece was a very different place, and one that it's hard to get your head around.

Update 2:  OK, my update should be qualified, as I reminded myself about the massive contradictions in ancient Greek writings about how homosexuality was viewed - including those around the nature of the teacher/mentor and student relationships.  I am sure I read this article many years ago, and linked to it in a post.  

A simple question

With all the fuss about Huawei and the 5G network, is it possible for Western governments with concerns to just keep using 4G network and make all government related work use phones which are only 4G capable?  And recommend all businesses with security concerns, or just Joe Public, to do the same if they want to?

I mean, I've never really understood what the appeal of 5G is meant to be.  Isn't 4G plenty good enough for nearly all use these days?  5G capable phones are just becoming available (as is the network itself, which needs a heap more antennas across a city) but is there any real demand for 5G phones?

So why would it be such a big deal to keep using the 4G network and 4G only phones?

Probably there is a technical reason, but I would like to know....
  

Uncut trash

I had to abandon watching Uncut Gems, the movie slavered over by nearly all critics in one of those cases where their enthusiasm looks more like a group dynamic than anything the mere audience can understand, after 30 (maybe 40?) minutes.

Three things about the film were rendering it unwatchable:

1.    has there ever been a movie with a worse sound mix?   It had to be intentional, and I presume designed to make situations seem more stressful; but to me it's a complete artist failure, and doesn't feel like real life at all.   If you have seen it, you would surely have to know what I mean - the way dialogue is surrounded by a soup of other noise (mostly, other people voices).  Here's how I think real life works:  even if you are in a room where everyone is talking but you are concentrating on one speaker, you either have to both shout to be heard over the din, or you are able to mentally focus on the one voice and don't notice so much the other murmur.  And in film, unless you have characters shouting at other over noise, that is why you can reduce the other ambient noise to a level (and a kind of blur) where the audience doesn't find it distracting.   This movie ignores that completely.

I don't know how they did the sound in this film - maybe they did just put mikes all over the place and let the extras talk and not bother mixing it at all.    But it really, really, drove me nuts, because my mind refused to accept that this is how sound in film should work.

2.   Has there ever been such a praised film with such a God-awful, weirdly anachronistic musical soundtrack?   It reminded me a bit of John Carpenter's cheap-as electronic soundtracks.  But he was working in the 80's - this film is set in 2012.   I have no idea why they thought this was appropriate, and it kept intruding too.

3.   As I have always said, it doesn't matter what the swear word de jour is, and I don't care if it reflects how certain people in New York speak - its intense overuse in a screenplay renders dialogue into a tedium of listening to what is effectively just a verbal tic.   (Don't teenagers who get into the trap of using "like" once or twice n every single sentence start driving you nuts?  Why am I supposed to find one verbal tic irritating, but not another?)    I see that it's in the top ten movies for "f count" - looking at the list there is only one other I have seen (Casino - and I remember feeling it was OK-ish but not particularly great).   


Of course, movies about seedy characters and a quasi criminal underworld are not generally my thing, and I have repeated asked what does someone like Scorsese want to forever keep returning to it.  (He has, by the way, an executive producer credit on this film.)     But even so, I just couldn't stay with the film, which didn't seem to setting up a "first act" that held any dramatic interest anyway.

I have looked at reviews for any negative ones.  At least Dana Stevens in Slate seemed to be nearly as bothered by the sound mix as me:

...most conversations in Howard’s world are operatic screaming matches, conducted over the competing noise of overlapping background dialogue, the incessant buzzing of the locked bulletproof glass door that leads into the shop, and an ambient—perhaps too ambient, as in omnipresent—electronic score by Daniel Lopatin, who composes under the name Oneohtrix Point Never. 

And her conclusion:

...I found the result to be claustrophobic and, finally, dull, with scene after scene that hammers home the same point we understood from the very beginning: that Howard is a lost soul, fated to run both his business and personal life into the ground. 

Very glad I gave up on it when I did!

And finally, there is pretty good reason to suspect that the critical reception is not being met with the same response from audiences:  Variety asks Uncut Gems’: The Startling Indie Smash That Audiences…Don’t Like?

The appalling Fox News

This is transparently setting up an excuse for Trump to pardon Stone.

I would support any Democrat candidate who had a policy "Fox News to be made illegal as a threat to democracy".

Update:  conservative Australian pundits commentary:  "Democrats just don't understand how on the nose they are with the broader public because of their embrace of identity politics. They're going to lose.  Ha ha ha ha."

Gold speculation

Noticed this on Twitter:

Now, I may have a mere "man in the [relatively well educated] street" knowledge of economics, but I thought one of the things that modern economists were virtually all certain about is that returning to a gold standard would be a foolish idea.  (I mean, I don't think even Steve Kates - the most highly self- regarding Trump cultist economist on the planet - even advocates for it?)   

Yet the WSJ has a London editor who argues that economists are fearful that this Judy Shelton is right on this?

OK, I see from a Marketwatch article that her ideas about gold and money are more complicated - and actually (if I understand it correctly) kind of globalist-friendly.   Which means Trump probably doesn't understand her ideas at all.   And no one seems to think her ideas are at all practical.  She has also done a huge flip flop on low interest rates.

I always feel I should understand economics more on a theoretical level:  but when you see a field with the supposed life long experts on the subject holding such divergent views, it more-or-less dis-incentivises me from spending too much time on the subject.