Food Porn: Hasenpfeffer

William and Juliana visited over the weekend to help me straighten the house and cut up some firewood, not to mention socialize a bit (we had a fine game of Order of the Stick – Juliana won). For dinner, we decided on something a little exotic, so we prepared Hasenpfeffer.


That's just a cell phone picture, but as I've said before, you work with what you've got.

For those familiar with neither the dish nor the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hasenpfeffer is a braised rabbit dish, and a darned good one, too.

We used a recipe that Juliana and William found on the internet. I suspect that it would work almost as well with chicken, by the way.

Ground Beef with a Side of Carbon Monoxide

Juliana found this little invention so fearsome that she encouraged me to make an article out of it.


While it's hard to tell at first glance, this device does not actually pump the exhaust directly over the patty. That would be bad, given the number of unpleasant compounds in car exhaust. However, the proposed device actually heats up metal surrounding the burger patty instead of exposing it directly to the fumes. Furthermore, this seems to be nothing more than a concept, not a physical item for which even a prototype exists.

It's still a pretty absurd idea, though.

Pictures from Saltare

Thanks to his Excellency, Sir Griffin O'Suaird, there are pictures from Saltare. I'll share a few here, more are available online.

Another Milestone

The Saga received its 50,000th visit on January 17, 2008 at 7:30:18 am.

Woot!

Saltare 2008

Saltare 2008 has come and gone, and it turned out to be a really fun event. I don’t know how many of the attendees knew how much confusion there was behind the scenes leading up to it, but everything came together at the end, and I don’t recall speaking to anyone who didn’t say they had a good time. (Double negatives balanced right? Looks that way. Whew!)

I taught two classes this year: “Contrapasso Variations” and “Wherligig in Depth”. If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you may remember my series of articles on the reconstruction of Contrapasso Nuovo, which was one of the variations that I taught. That class actually went pretty well, although a couple of details did trip me up a bit, this being only the second time I’ve tried to teach it.

“Wherligig in Depth” was an exercise in the non-intuitive nature of some dance figures. You can teach this dance any number of times to rooms full of smart people, and it still won’t “click” with some of them. The figure for the second chorus – commonly called an “S-hey” in the SCA – is usually the culprit, although it’s not unusual to end up with problems in the other parts of the dance, either. I think making a full-hour class out of this one dance is a good start; we still had sets working on parts of it well after class time ended and most people had gone to lunch. Drilling over-and-over is the only way to overcome the mental blocks some people have against this one.

I have to give great credit and thanks to Lady Andreva Rigaldi and Lord Lorenzo Petrucci, who both picked up a lot of the organization for this event. In addition to teaching and making out the class schedule, they came up with an interesting variation on a Caroso Ball format for the evening. This involved some dance-partner auctioning as a fundraiser for the hosting shire, and that little brain-child brought in close to $160. I brought a pretty good price, too, if I do say so myself.

"Hellos" to all of the gang who shared the cabin with me and to our various party and dinner guests over the weekend. The cabin was a really good idea, I think, as it allowed us to have all manner of period-ish dishes and be a little social hub when class was over and the ball not-yet-begun. Henry Horton State Park really has some nice facilities, although there are some event policies that can make them a bit hard to work with.

We do have a bid from the Incipient Shire of Stagsgate for Saltare 2009, who will also be hosting Kingdom A&S this year.

Bad me did not take pictures, but I noticed Sir Griffin lurking with a camera quite frequently, so I may be able to come up with some from him.

Brief Blog Blurb

It's a classic.

Cute But Crazy

From Yahoo news...

Kumari Fulbright is shown during a photo shoot for a calendar in Arizona. Fulbright, 25, was indicted with three men Dec. 18, 2007, by a Pima County Superior Court grand jury on charges of kidnapping, armed robbery, aggravated robbery and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon, the Arizona Daily Star reported. Fulbright, was Miss Pima County in 2005 and Miss Desert Sun in 2006, and sought the title of Miss Arizona during those years.

OK, it's a cheesey and gratuitous post. I found it amusing. I wonder if the photo shoot was for G. Gordon Liddy's "Stacked and Packed" calendar? That would certainly set up all sorts of "he can sure pick 'em" jokes.

Kinoki Pseudoscience

I was seeing ads for this product on TV during the holidays. Supposedly, these pads detoxify your body through the soles of your feet while you sleep. These days, a claim like that immediately sets off my skeptical alarm bells, especially if it includes the word “detoxify”.

Kinoki has a website, of course, so let’s see the actual claims and the support for them.

How Kinoki Detox Foot Pads® Work
Working quicker than other detox methods and using the natural cleansing power of double distilled bamboo vinegar, Kinoki draws harmful substances out your body. You’ll feel the results right away!

Remove Toxins While You Sleep
Simply place ONE PAD on the SOLE of your FOOT (or a targeted body part such as the shoulder or knee) before going to bed. By morning, the pad will have absorbed toxins accumulated in your body, turning the white pad to a shade from gray to black. Use a fresh pad each night until the color on the pad becomes lighter and lighter when removed in the morning.

Well, the home page doesn’t have much to offer. There’s no obvious reason why putting “double distilled bamboo vinegar” on your foot would “draw harmful substances out of your body”. Your body has a liver and kidneys for that purpose, and they use energy to basically pump waste out of your system. Convincing me that a pad soaked with vinegar will cause those wastes to spontaneously diffuse through my skin is going to take some serious evidence.

But low and behold, there’s a “Clinicals” link at the top of the page. Is it possible that this product has actually been through a clinical trial that proves its effectiveness?

Clinicals
Coming Soon.

I guess that was too much to hope for. They have eight testimonials, of course, but testimonials are easy to obtain whether a product works or not. Maybe the FAQ page will have something useful…

What specific benefits can I expect?
Kinoki Detox Foot Pads may help:

• Absorb toxins released by the body.
• Relieve the burden on the immune system.
• Assist in the natural cleansing of the lymphatic system.
• Assist in the extraction of toxins from the body.
• Support normal blood circulation.
• Assist in the extraction of heavy metals from the body.
• Improve quality of sleep.
• Promote vibrant health and wellness

No surprises, really. The list of benefits is vague, at best, and they only say that Kinoki “may” help. If they can find eight people who, by random chance, felt that they received any of these “benefits” after using Kinoki, they’ve got their testimonials, and with such vaguely defined “benefits”, getting those eight people should be a snap, especially when they invoke the all-powerful “ancient Chinese medicine” trope.

This is what we call a “placebo”, folks. If you need to trick your brain to make yourself feel better and you think $20 is a bargain to do that, this is probably a good product for you.

EDIT: There's now a follow-up article.

Major Geekery

On an unrelated note...

	I received 92 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz canon s5 is

Contrapasso Video

Lord Lorenzo Petrucci made this video at the Kingdom Arts and Sciences event in June 2006, but Blogger only recently made it easy to put up here.

Count	Steps
	The first movement of the music repeats three times.
1-12	Start proper, holding hands, and do a Riverenza grave with the left foot.
13-24	Do two Continenze, first to the left and then to the right.
1-12	Do two Passi gravi and one Doppio presto, starting with the left foot.
13-24	Do two Passo backward, starting with the right foot, and then two Riprese to the right.
25-48	Repeat the sequence.
	Change to the second movement of the music for three repeats.
1-12	Take right hands and do two Passi gravi and one Doppio to the left, starting with the left foot.
13-24	Take left hands and do two Passi gravi and one Doppio to the right, starting with the right foot.
25-36	Release hands and turn to the left with two Seguiti ordinarii; atthe end bend at the knees a little to perform a meza Riverenza.
37-48	Do two more Seguiti ordinarii turning to the right.
1-48	Same as the previous verse except take arms (up to the elbow) instead of hands when turning your partner.
1-12	Take both hands with your partner and do two Passi gravi and one Doppio presto to the left.
13-24	Do two Passi gravi and one Doppio presto back to the right.
25-48	Releasing hands, the lady turns as in the previous two verses, but the man will do four Seguiti flanked: two back and two forward. At the end, turn to stand proper and take hands.
	Change to the first movement of the music for two repeats.
1-48	Walk forward together doing eight Seguiti ordinarii.
	Change to the second movement of the music for three repeats.
1-12	Riverenza to your partner.
13-24	Do two Continenze gravi, left then right.
25-48	Turn to the left with two Seguiti ordinarii; then do two more Seguiti ordinarii turning to the right.
1-12	The man does two Passi gravi, and one Doppio presto forward, starting with the left foot: the lady will do the same backward, starting with the right foot;
13-24	The lady will do the same forward, and the man back.
25-48	Both do turns with Seguiti ordinarii as before.
1-12	The man alone will do the Riverenza with the left foot:
13-24	The lady alone will do the Riverenza with the left foot;
25-48	The lady will do the two said turns as before. The man will do four Seguiti ordinarii: 2 flanked back, and 2 forward.
	Riverenza

Merry Christmas

And a Happy Whatever Holiday you might be celebrating around this time. If you're not celebrating a holiday... well... save it up for whenever your next one rolls around.

Fjorleif shared this little gem with me, and I'm passing it along to all who visit.



And if the embedded YouTube video isn't working, try this.

Water, Water Everywhere

I spent a long weekend down in Atlanta for a belated birthday celebration (it's a round number, that's all you need to know), and one of our activities was to visit the Georgia Aquarium. Their ocean tank is really impressive, with a sixty foot long viewing window made of acrylic two feet thick. I managed to snag a couple of pictures with my cell phone camera: not the best tool, but you work with what you have.

The whale shark in the foreground is actually one of their young males, coming in at only fifteen feet in length, if I recall correctly. One of the females -- over twenty feet long -- is following in the background. The aquarium staff say they're hoping their whale sharks will grow to thirty or forty feet in length and even breed, if they're really lucky.

For a little sense of scale, here's Fjorleif standing in front of the window. The big fish swimming by her is a grouper. According to the staff, the acrylic window does not magnify what you see through it, and the keep a block of the acrylic off to the side so you can verify that for yourself.

A New Chain-Letter Scam: The Microsoft Lottery

It's actually not a new scam, it's just the first time I've gotten a chain letter that uses it. This is the “you've won a lottery you didn't even know you entered” scam. We'll rip this one apart piece by piece the way I like to do.

MOTTO: FIGHTING POVERTY AROUND THE WORLD

Since this one's not going to ask me to engage in criminal behavior, it opens with an appeal to my generosity instead of my greed. Not that greed isn't going to be a factor, of course.

FROM THE DESK OF E-MAIL PROMOTIONS MANAGER
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,
MICROSOFT CORPORATION WORLD LOTTERY
UNITED KINGDOM.
Reference No:MSW-L/327015002/06
BATCH NO: #414
WINNER NO: 07
ELECTRONIC MAIL AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATION

AWARD PRESENTATION CENTER: UNITED KINGDOM

This entire “return address” is undoubtedly bogus from the first word. While it claims to be an official notice from Microsoft Corporation (a common victim of chain-letter name-dropping), the “From” address of the email is an Earthlink.net account. There is no way that an official representative of Microsoft is going to use anything but a Microsoft.com email account to send an official communication. On top of that, this header contains WAY more information than a real lottery notice would need; it's an attempt to create a false sense of legitimacy.

Dear Winner,

Microsoft Co-operation Management Worldwide are pleased to inform you today 30th of November, 2007 that you are a winner of our annual MS-WORD LOTTO LOTTERY conducted in Africa being the host of the event for this present year MEGA JACKPOT LOTTO WINNING PROGRAM held on the 14th of November 2007.

Since when has Microsoft ever had any inclination to run a lottery? The scammer is just throwing out buzzwords that make people think of large cash awards, even though such a thing has nothing to do with the way Microsoft does business.

Even if Microsoft were going to conduct a “lottery”, why on Earth would they do it out of Africa? There's no reason for them to operate such a thing from anywhere but their headquarters in Redmond, Washington.

Your email address was attached to ticket number 214-056-278 with serial number s/n-01025 and drew the lucky numbers 724-595-62-07-45 and consequently won in the 3rd category.

Just how my email address could get attached to this ticket number is something of a mystery, since I never did anything to acquire such a ticket. In reality, some hacker just stripped my email address off of an email header passing through a server somewhere and sold it along with a bunch of others.

As a result of this , you have therefore been approved for a lump sum payout of US$1,000,000:00 (One million united states dollars) payable in cash credited to file Reference No:MSW-L/327015002/06 . This is from total prize money of US$50,000,000 (Fifty million united states dollars) shared among thirty lucky international winners in this category.

Let the greed part of this scam commence. I get to collect a million dollars! Go me!

All participants were selected through our Microsoft computer ballot system drawn from a collation of frequent internet users all over the world from America, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and Australia, as part of International Email Promotions Program, which is conducted annually to encourage the use of internet and computers worldwide.

Microsoft runs this lottery to encourage the use of the internet? Who needs encouragement to use the internet? If they were somehow encouraging the use of a particular Microsoft product, they might have something vaguely resembling a motivation for a prize giveaway. This utterly random money giveaway is absurd, since it does nothing to promote Microsoft’s business.

Your fund (Cashier's cheque) has been insured with your Reference No: MSW-L/327015002/06 and will be ready for delivery but in order for your cheque to be issued and insured in your name and for you to begin your claim you are urgently required to contact Mr.Rob White, Foreign Service Manager, London United Kingdom, With this information .

Email {rob_white200@yahoo.com}
phone:+447045737966.

A manager for Microsoft using a Yahoo address to conduct official company business? How can people be foolish enough to fall for the scam at this point? You must have turned your brain off at “one million dollars” if this got past your BS detector.

Please note that this winning is valid for THREE WEEKS and failure to issue claims after this period will automatically void your payment. Remember to quote your ticket number, serial number and lucky number in your future correspondence and most importantly as part of our security protocol you are to quote this security code MSW/AUG/SS06 to the Foreign Service Manager, this is to prevent scam.

Urgent! Urgent! Don’t pause to think! You have to jump on this right away if you want to collect your million dollars!

Congratulations once again from the entire management and staff of Microsoft Corporation to all our lucky winners this year and thank you for being part of this Promotional lottery Program. Our special thanks and gratitude goes to Bill Gates of Microsoft and all his associates for alleviating poverty around the world through this promotion.

A bit more shameless name-dropping combined with another appeal to my charitable side (the irony hits like a cast-iron pan in the back of the skull).

SINCERELY,

Mrs.Olivia Malik

(PROMOTIONS MANAGER).
LOTTERY SPONSORS : CHIEF SPONSORS;
MICROSOFT CORPORATION UK, MICROSOFT CORPORATION AFRICA,
MICROSOFT CORPORATION USA, MICROSOFT CORPORATION ASIA .

Past winners.

I find it particularly ironic that whoever sent me this scam forgot to include a bogus list of past winners. Oops! I guess there are no past winners!

This scam is another example of Advance Fee Fraud. If I email this scumbag, he’s going to explain that I need to wire him money to cover a potentially endless series of gift taxes, processing fees, and other expenses that have to be settled before I can collect my “winnings”. He’ll get me to sink thousands of dollars into this if he can, and I’ll never see a penny back.

As usual, a quick Google search is a good way to check the legitimacy of any suspicious email you receive. A search for “MS-WORD LOTTO LOTTERY” will return an assortment of pages describing this scam, but not a single Microsoft page describing a real promotional lottery.

The pool of gullible victims of scams like this must be frighteningly deep, as the scumbag perpetrators continue sending these things out even though the scam has been known for years. Please don’t be one of the people in that pool.

No Great Story Survives Hollywood

Arwen, William, and I went to see Beowulf tonight.

*Sigh*

As the title of the post says, no good story survives contact with Hollywood screenwriters, and Beowulf is no exception. Honestly, if I hadn't actually read Beowulf, I wouldn't have had nearly as much trouble enjoying this movie: it's a decent story on its own. Alas, it's got just enough plot and characterization from the epic poem for you to know how badly it's been mangled.

It's not nearly as bad as the Christopher Lambert Beowulf, mind you. That was a tragedy of unprecedented proportions. On the other hand, it doesn't treat the source material any better than Beowulf and Grendel did. There's also a style to it that's very reminiscent of 300, which I suppose is a good thing if you liked 300. In any case, it certainly hasn't knocked The 13th Warrior out of its place as the best screen adaptation of Beowulf ever.

If you try not to compare it to the poem too much, you can probably enjoy it as a run-of-the-mill popcorn flick. It's got plenty of well-paced action, and there is a moral to the story. It might do with a bit less random shouting (one of those things that reminds you of 300), but that's endearing in a way, since it gives you something to heckle. This is a movie that begs for some good-natured heckling. Any movie that forces you to look at a fat and mostly naked CGI version of Anthony Hopkins needs to be heckled; to do otherwise invites madness. (If Shepherd Book is to be believed, I'm going to the special Hell.)

To my credit, I had the foresight to smuggle a couple of mini-bottles into the theatre to spike our soda. I only used one, and frankly, I should have used both for this movie. I'll be happy to watch this movie on DVD when it comes out, but I never intend to watch it sober again.

The final battle kicks some serious ass, though. No matter how badly the story offends your literary sensibilities, stay for that last round of eye candy.

Update: SurlySeraph on the Giant in the Playground forums had this to say...

"I feel like I just saw the hellish offspring of 300 and Troy."

Crystal Ball Aftermath

I spent last weekend in St. Louis attending the Barony of Shattered Crystal’s dance event, Crystal Ball. For the first time at this event, I actually stayed all the way through the last set. For those not in the know, Crystal Ball is a dance marathon with six sets of about ten dances each. The last set finished at about 4:00 am, and there were still some pick-up dances requested after that.

I didn’t learn a lot of new dances at Crystal Ball; mostly I refreshed myself on some dances that I’ve done a few times but haven’t performed enough to really know them “by heart”. The two new ones for me were a reconstruction of the Spanish Pavan by Mistress Alphia and Gratiosa, which Lady Tsire taught me in a crash course before the Caroso Ball.

Speaking of the Caroso Ball, this was also a first for me. Caroso Ball is a format which I’m considering using for Monday Night at Gulf Wars. Basically, it’s a glorified all-request ball, but it’s still rather fun. Basically, the host chooses a partner and a dance. After that dance, the partner chooses a new partner and dance, and so on through the evening. The number of people on the floor can vary – it doesn’t have to be all couples dances – but who decides what to dance next is always determined by the “line of succession” from the lead couple.

It was, of course, lovely to see Lady Tsire again. I’m sure she won’t take offense when I point out that she’s a Dance Nazi Snob (EDIT: OK, I was wrong). The arguments that come up over whether we should include non-period dances in SCA ball lists always amuse me. I can sympathize with Tsire, too: non-period folk dances certainly can be fun, but that doesn’t mean we should include them on the list for period balls. Some of them are so traditional in the SCA, though, that including them can become a Royal Edict. I’m on the fence about non-period dances; I avoid putting them on my lists, but I don’t boycott them if someone else puts them on their list.

After a few hours of crashing on a futon (thank you again, Tsire), I managed to roll myself home with only one stop along the way for a quick power nap. Now if the soreness in my legs will subside, life will be about back to normal.

Beowulf Opening

The latest movie incarnation of Beowulf opens today. While I'm cautiously optimistic and looking forward to seeing it, I can tell from the advertising that the story is going to be substantially changed from the epic poem. Whether it will be as badly abused as it was in Beowulf and Grendel or in the 1999 version of Beowulf starring Christopher Lambert remains to be seen, although it would be difficult to mangle the story as much as they did. I daresay this new version will beat both of those, but it probably won't live up to the greatness of The 13th Warrior.

Is It Really That Big?

According to the World Wildlife Fund, a couple of Thai fishermen caught a 646-pound catfish back in 2005. The picture came round again in Yahoo News, attached to a story about a dam project that could endanger the giant catfish.




But that’s not what I’m writing about. I’m more interested in the picture itself. It uses the same technique we saw in the “Hogzilla” and "Monster Pig" pictures to make this fish look larger than it really is. It’s a perspective trick that works with photographs because your depth perception is fooled in flat images.

I’m not necessarily saying that the fish isn’t as big as it appears, mind you, but it may not be. The fishermen are posed behind the fish, and with the right composition of the photo, it’s impossible for us to know how far behind it they are. The farther back they’re posed, the more our perception of the fish’s size is inflated.

I’ve no doubt this is a very big fish, of course, but it wouldn’t be the first time a fish story got exaggerated a bit in the retelling.

Update: If the photographer wanted to clear up all doubts about the size of the fish in the picture, he should have one of the fishermen (or just his hand, or something) in front of the fish, so we could be sure that the men weren't posed well behind their catch.

Tolkien Madlib

Eleven Woks for the Housewives under the sky,
Forty-one for the Janitors in their cellars of stone,
Sixty-seven for Goat Gerders doomed to die,
One for the President of Finland on his lugubrious throne
In the Land of Mt. Fuji where the hippopotamuses lie.
One Wok to inseminate them all, One Wok to elucidate them,
One Wok to masticate them all and in the darkness wrestle them,
In the Land of Mt. Fuji where the hippopotamuses lie.

I do believe the meter got trashed.

So little to report

I can't really say I've been up to anything worth blogging, lately.

Well, Juliana did help me get my hammered-dulcimer tuned, but I haven't exactly learned to play it overnight. Still, it's something. I can hunt an peck out some tunes on it, but playing it properly is a long way off.

So, in the interest of keeping the blog from drying up too much, I give you... another mad-lib.

A number
A noun (plural)
A group of people
A number
A group of people
A place (plural)
A number
A group of people
A person
An adjective
A place
A noun (plural)
Four verbs

Sacrilegious Mad-Lib

I am going to be so tarred-and-feathered for this...

Flashy are the metallic in crystal,
For theirs is the Labour Party of Picardy.
Vivacious are those who flounce,
For they shall be defenestrated.
Alpine are the grim,
For they shall eat Mt. Rushmore.

Blessed are those who traverse and cant for stubbornness,
For they shall be immigrated.
Blessed are the redundant,
For they shall obtain world peace.
Blessed are the parti-coloured in heart,
For they shall see Sarah Michelle Gellar.
Blessed are the beekeepers,
For they shall be called constituents of Elric of Melnibone.
Blessed are those who are gurgled for righteousness' sake,
For theirs is the MI-6 of the Bermuda Triangle.

Blessed are you when they haul and retrieve you, and say all kinds of intellectual property against you falsely for My sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your perfume in South Africa, for so they swallowed the Inca who were before you.