If Esperanto isn't evil, why are they always hating on Volapük?

The world of home video has come full circle. I watch movies and TV shows these days with the Netflix online service, mostly, which is quite fast at work (distractions can help me stay focused, sometimes) but takes a terrific amount of time to buffer when I watch it at home. What's worse, it has to buffer fully at the current spot in the video before it will let you move to a different spot.

The application records the place you left off, even if it's the end---so if I ever want to watch something at home that I've already watched, I always have to remember to rewind.

That's what I'm talking about.

Rule 34 is self-referential.

So, yeah. Religion.

I went looking this morning for Hooke's Micrographia. (Done right, it would make a great gift book, being both a classic and full of rather striking drawings. Sadly, there seem only to be paperbacks with rather weak illustrations.)

Check out the Amazon page for it. The tags are:

religion(402) science(291) atheist(206) evolution(194) god(168) christianity(109) richard dawkins(96) biography(92) history(90) immunization(20)

and the "Active Discussions In Related Forums" are

Evolution of H1N1 has been predicted
Global warming is nothing but a hoax and a scare tactic
The emperor of evolution has no clothes. Who is the Emperor?
Magnetism can increase intelligence
Earth Quake
Homosexuality and Natural Selection?

In other words, useful information (e.g., tagging Hooke's work with "microscope") is almost completely drowned out by the fight between pro-science atheists and anti-science religious people.

Set aside the Columbia School of Journalism "two sides to every story" bullshit and admit one thing: creationists are 100% wrong, and are 100% to blame for this fight. There's nobody has to go out and push the theory of evolution: it is a fact, it is the foundation of biological science, and the layers upon layers of research it makes possible has savedbillions of human lives by improving crop yields and curing diseases. The fight exists because of the people who, for reasons that have nothing to do with observing reality and everything to do with their adherence to doctrine, claim otherwise.

Now, it's theoretically possible to be both pro-science and religious. I have met people who claim to believe both (a) in the tenets of religion and (b) that science is more informative than religion about the nature of things and the causes of events in the physical world; and indeed, even the President of the United States makes such a claim.

But where are these people, exactly, in this fight? It's really kind of odd that one of the sides is pro-science atheists, specifically. I don't see, say, mainstream Christians getting into it with the Creationists over this; if they get into it at all, they're standing on the sidelines telling everybody to chill, and that this level of anger isn't productive.

Get off the goddamn fence. The longer you sit there, the more you look like the other side.

merle_ had a post that reminded me of this.

I parked my bike at the Davis Square subway station a week or two ago, hanging my helmet on the bars as usual. A woman waiting for the bus asked "aren't you afraid someone's going to steal your helmet?" and I explained that no, it was cheap enough to be easily replaceable ($30 new) and not worth stealing (resale value $0, since it was old and battered and Boston has a group that gives away free new helmets, no questions asked). I used fewer words than this, because I am a laconic motherfucker what is never verbose.

After a little back and forth, I said "if somebody needs my helmet that badly, they're welcome to it" and left to get on the train. She said "ooookay" in a voice that said

"(1) I think you are crazy; and
(2) I am going to steal your helmet as soon as you're gone, just to make a point".

Poll #1392656
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

When I came back 12 hours later,

What do you do with your helmet?

(NB: normal bicycle helmets. Motorcycle helmets and special nice gear you only wear sometimes are a different matter.)

Also, my lights are way more resell-able, and I leave those on, too. Thieves take note: they are coated in ball python venom.

Poll #1390943
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Anything happen the last six weeks or so?

I apologize for the previous post, now hidden. It was somewhat trollish in demeanor, not in line with the idiom I've been cultivating, and not likely to be effective in advancing any worthwhile goal. It was an artifact of my mood and of my hearing about a bolus of unpleasant current events culminating in despicable behavior on the part of the leaders of a major world religion.

I remain of the opinion that, as others have said, Pope Benedict XVI could stand a kick in the teeth, and also that there is no God. (Extensive citations available upon request.)

This has been your slightly more level-headed message of the day.

I thought it was too late to get a Eurail pass (since the official site said it was too late when I checked on Tuesday, even with overnight shipping), but I ordered one from RailEurope.com at 4 PM yesterday, and it was delivered to my house (thanks maru_mari!) at 10 AM. On the basis of that experience, I can't recommend them highly enough.

So, uh, there's a new Discordian sacrament.

It involves squirting cold water in your left ear. Or, what the hell, someone else's.

Meanwhile, here is loosechanj's idea of music:

maru_mari has a Honda Shadow now.

Being visible is an acquired skill, and one that is probably harder and definitely different on a motorcycle. Her efforts made me think about what I do on a bicycle:

- Trackstands at intersections, standing on the pedals while moving; be up off the seat any time except when I'm head-down spinning or just killing time.

- Look where I intend to go, look the driver in the eye to establish that they see me and are braking (but don't look long enough to give the impression that they have a choice), then look where I intend to go.

- Subway Face: a nice cold facial expression that says "you are made of meat, but I am not currently hungry" is optional but sometimes helpful.

- Once I'm looking where I'm going to go, go already. (Don't give them time to think "hey, I could hit the gas now and intimidate that guy".) I watch for bozos in my peripheral vision and stop/dodge if they're doing something stupid.

What do you do on a bike, motor or otherwise, to get people to see you and not hit you while you get to go where you want to go? Does it work?

Poll #1360422
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Have you repulsed the monkey this week?

How does that make you feel?

Poll #1358884
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What's getting in the way of your mad science experiments this semester?

Walden Pond is in Concord.

Psych, it's in Lynn.¹

Massachusetts is fired.

Anyway, I'm probably going to ride out to one of those on Saturday, starting when I'm back from Tai Chi (11 or so). It's supposed to be sunny and 40°, which is like summer. I figured I'd go with the one with the little shed where that dude lived that one time and they tore down the shed and build a new one just like it. Anybody feeling particularly Thoreauvian, you know where to find me.

¹There is a Walden Pond in Lynn. I'm sure it's a nice pond. It's not Walden Pond, though. But if you start in Medford and just say Walden Pond, guess where Google Maps wants to send you?

Current Mood: thoreauly disgruntled

Not sure who dglenn linked to this Philip K. Dick essay recently.

In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feel when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhorn turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God's power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.

Incidentally, there are snakes in Hawaii.

Getting a little into Arthur Russell this morning.

I have a mandolin
I play it all night long
It makes me want to kill myself
I also have a dobro
Made in some mountain range
Sounds like a mountain range in love
But when I turn up the tone
On my electric guitar
I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me
I went out to the forest and caught
A hundred thousand fireflies
As they ricochet round the room
They remind me of your starry eyes
Someone else's might not have made me so sad
But this is the worst night I ever had
'cause I'm afraid of the dark without you close to me
You won't be happy with me,
But give me one more chance
You won't be happy anyway
Why do we still live here
In this repulsive town?
All our friends are in New York
Why do we keep shrieking,
when we mean soft things?
We should be whispering all the time...
—Magnetic Fields, "100,000 Fireflies"

this is the worst song i have ever seen in my life. the only reason i even looked this crap up is because i am doing a essay on daniel handler which used to be in this horrible band i hope this band doesnt exist anymore because if it does then it really needs to die
—anonymous review of same

What's stuck in your head?

The Boy Who Cried Wolf
On Grief

I'm sorry. I don't know how it happened. It's been weeks since I posted something really regrettable, so I'm going to have to rip off pure_doxyk:

Poll #1342884 A Misterious Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Why am I Mr. ___?

Goodbye, Mr. ____.

Mr. ___, he dead.

Poor, poor, Mr. ___.

For extra points, which two Misters would you interchange in order to make their order more beautiful?

I forgot to mention that I was tagged with this meme once:

If you can read this, you're officially authorized to ignore memes. If somebody tags you, you still don't have to do it: you're free to be quiet for a while, or just say something that you want to say instead of something scripted. Likewise, you don't have to believe in anything that's not true if you don't want to. You still can if you want, but you don't have to.

So I'm tagging everybody, and it's OK if you don't tag anybody else, but it might be nice if you did, you know?

Now that I'm free, all I really want to do is go to Pittsburgh.

(1) technical support, n.: jock strap for rock climbing

(2) The Who's "My Generation" makes a decent marching cadence

I had read about generators but not used them. I did some reading up after the user group on Wednesday night and figured out how they work, and:

If you write a function that happens to have a "yield" statement in it, the function becomes a generator, which behaves in a completely different way from a normal function.

(I don't have a problem with generators. Ruby's Enumerable, Scheme streams, all good. The problem is that you have a function that, without any change in how it's declared, changes from a function-you-call-and-get-something-back to a function-you-call-to-get-an-object-that-you-call-a-method-on-to-execute-the-function-you-wrote because somewhere in its code is a magic statement that changes its nature.)

When you write a language feature like that, you're saying you don't give a damn about readability. For a language that sells itself on readability, that's FAIL FAIL FAIL SUPER FAIL. Go home, blog about what you did, and study Cobol for a year as penance.

$ python
Python 2.5.1 (r251:54863, Jul 23 2008, 11:00:16) 
[GCC 4.0.1 (Apple Inc. build 5465)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> def function():
...     print "hello"
... 
>>> def generator():
...     print "hello"
...     yield "goodbye"
... 
>>> function()
hello
>>> generator()
<generator object="object" at="at" 0x6bbc0="0x6bbc0">
>>> generator().next()
hello
'goodbye'
>>> 

This is my country.

I adopted a wait-and-see attitude toward Obama. Folks are bitching about Kool-Aid and unicorns and whatnot. But that's bullshit. This is why.

1. Minimalist shoveling is not neighborly. (Nor is shoveling out only your driveway and not the sidewalk a-tall. To each able-bodied person in the house up the street that does this every year: you are a terrible person and your lineage is attainted by wickedness. May you slip and bruise your arse so it hurts to sit for a month, and after that repent of your ways.)

2. Neither is allowing dictionary attacks on your web site. (That's why each site I use has its own long randomly generated password that I store under the protection of a long randomly generated password that I have memorized. And that's why the President-elect's Twitter was pwn3d and mine wasn't. Well, that and the fact that mine's not worth pwning. But still.)

3. IT'S ALIVE! (kinda)

4. If you find you are spinning your wheels:

- lay down some traction, Jackson;
- get yourself a tow, Joe;
- break out the shovel, Lovell;
- use the winch, wench;
- buy yourself a Jeep, creep;
- use the differential lock, you cock;
- step on the brake, Jake;
- ask for a push, George Walker Bush;
- wait for the thaw, maw;

but don't burn out the bearing, Schering. Your mechanic may thank you for the business, but the noise and smell annoy those around you.

Thank you for your kind attention,
—en_ki

On New Year's Eve, in Oakland, transit police murdered Oscar Grant in front of a trainload of witnesses with cell-phone cameras. The videos are readily available on YouTube. I won't link to them; a handcuffed man, lying on the ground, is shot to death on camera, and it's disturbing to watch, and you should make a considered choice to look if you feel you need to.

Oakland has since had both peaceful protests and riots with substantial property destruction. sol3 comments on the latter article.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I didn't hear about this until Bay Area friends began blogging about it in the last couple of days.

I don't have informed comment; I am just following sol3 and merle_. But since I didn't hear about this story outside LJ, I am passing it on.

My one reaction that I don't think I will want to disown later: thank Sapience for camera phones. Even ten years ago, it would have been entirely possible that this would not have been recorded, and perhaps the cop would have gotten away with it. Instead of the traditional suspension-with-pay and half-assed investigation followed by acquittal, he has already lawyered up and resigned; may it not save him.

Money is not stuff.

It does not have any value.

A US dollar you spend today is worth the amount of work someone is willing to do for it today.

If you don't spend it today, it's worth the amount of work someone is willing to do for it when you do spend it.

(1) A while back, Baby Boomers—people whose parents fought in World War II—First World people who are now old—did some work.

With their "pay", they bought food and toys (which come from the Third World), shelter and entertainment (which keep the money spinning around the First World economy), and "investments" (which not only keep the money spinning around the First World economy, but more or less bring it back to the same people when they ask for it).

(2) Now they want to stop working. They feel they are entitled to this, because they have reached the age at which people used to die.

Unfortunately, "money" is not magic. It does not turn into stuff on its own. There is no limit to how much money you can put away and have it still be completely worthless if you and everybody else decide to stop working at once.

Sorry, guys. You don't get to retire.

What you imagined was going to happen was, you had (say) a million "dollars", and you would be able to buy a million Cokes (or other nutritious substance) with this. The problem is, when you and everyone else with a million dollars has the same idea at the same time, well... you don't get to have a Coke for a dollar anymore.

Here's what gets you a Coke around here these days:

- thirty seconds of skilled labor (a few hours at a time)

- a minute of skilled labor (in bulk)

- six minutes of cleaning floors

Not "a minute of skilled labor I did 20 years ago, for which I got $0.25 that is now a dollar". A minute of skilled labor delivered now.

So:

- You can't afford to get old and weak. If you and most people your age have can't work, then when you get cancer, you're going to die of it, untreated and alone. There is no magical rearrangement of "money" that will change this: it is a matter of exchanging work (or physical stuff) for labor.


Other so: here's the question: demographically, which groups got screwed by the housing bubble? Was it actually the Boomers (or their proxies, like Merryl Lynch) trying super-hard to grab what they could, pushing everybody into a frenzy of extra work and trying to skim some of it off while they still had the chance? Did the collective wisdom of the economy actually do what it was supposed to do after all?


Bruce is medium old. He thinks about this stuff.

Work. Work of value. Either do it, or arrange for it to be done. (And "pay somebody to do it" is dodging the problem.)

[If you live on Mars: LJ just fired a bunch of people and wrote a sunny press release about it. On my planet, that means your company has poor odds of surviving, either because of what motivated you to fire people or because you're assholes.]

I don't have the energy to run around to random other blog sites based on the LiveJournal code. If you guys all settle on a single one, maybe I'll join you there. While you're diasporating, note that Distributed LJ is already here: you can friend people who come from remote sites via OpenID.

But I use Twitter daily, and Facebook comes from Twitter. These are both real-name services, so please do find me by the real name in my sticky post if you can see it.

Al Franken finally took Minnesota.

I'm glad the Republicans have one less guy, but if you proposed to me today that all elections decided by 5% or less be invalidated and re-run, I would not object even if you wanted to start with this one. It's toxic to democracy when who's in charge comes down less to who the people wanted and more to the weather, or whose people got the flu that day, or whose people have better aim with a pen, or which way the election judges leaned, or who was on top when the lawsuit stopped the recount. At least if the election is re-done, new information available to the voters will be incorporated into the election result.

In other news: ever so glad I'm not British. (via Mark Bennett) It's "nice" to see another country going to shit in a way we aren't currently doing worse at.

There are a bunch of blogs I want to read, but I don't want to read them every day, but if I don't, I fall behind and some stuff drops off the end. Rather than letting that happen, I want them to appear in a big list with nothing getting lost so I can read more stuff when I have more time and less stuff when I have less time.

Is there a thing that will take my RSS feeds, poll them daily or more frequently, and stuff the links into del.icio.us with a tag for the feed and a tag that says "new"? It seems easy enough to just do it, but I'd just as soon use an existing tool.

—en_ki

Filthy German pop videos für alles! (Stupid non-embedding.)

I also recommend "Du Hast den Schönsten Arsch Der Welt", which I believe is, how you say, self-explaining?

This "Alex C" person's oeuvre is going to be the foundation of my collection.

I am attempting to get myself a big fat stack of German popular music other than Rammstein, in order to get some listening practice in before my trip.

Peter Fox, of the band Seeed (ja, drei ees), is currently #9 on the German pop charts.¹

If I search for him in my little iTunes Music Store whatzit, I get zero hits.²

If I search for him on Amazon's MP3 service, I get zero hits.²

If I search for him on Amazon.com without restriction, I get his latest album... as an "import", for $59.

If I search for him on Amazon.de, I get his latest album... shipped, from Germany, for €27 = $38.

If I search for him on The Pirate Bay, the FIRST HIT is the ENTIRE GERMAN TOP 100 for 2008, exactly what I am looking for, in one big file. It is 500 MB and I will have it all very shortly.

You will notice that I went to a lot of trouble to get a legitimate version of this thing. Had it turned up on iTunes or Amazon for $1/MP3, I would have happily paid that. Had it turned up on the worldwide internet retailer that gets approximately 100% of my (and the world's) business at some kind of reasonable price (as opposed to 3-4x the normal price), I would have happily paid that. And now I'm not going to, because you couldn't be bothered to sell it to me.

This is 2008. TWO THOUSAND AND EIGHT. The "internet" is not a "new" "thing" anymore. There was a really big bubble, remember? And it burst? Like, ten YEARS ago? That thing?

The idea that a random American should wish to purchase music from the top of the pop charts in Germany is not some bizarre idea that you are understandably uncomfortable with. It is the fucking norm. Go home and let somebody else run your business, because you are a grasping fuckwit with your big fat hand stuck in the cookie jar because you won't let go and eventually the market is going to find you and piss on you till you drink it.

¹ He is also the first performer on the German pop charts who (a) sings in German and (b) is not dull-ass emo shit. And apparently Warren Ellis has heard of him.
² Well, lots of random other people with "Peter" or "Fox" in the name.

ADDENDUM: oh, but look! I go back to see if there's a way to switch countries, and ITMS is offering their top iPod app, "iFart Mobile". Thanks, guys! I guess we really are living in the future!
And yes, you can "switch countries".

via the inimitable Vinay,

Dear Everyone,

I know you read Boing Boing. We all do. It's OK. Can you post something from somewhere else now?

—en_ki

Americans are still migrating steadily West, just as they have been since 1790, at a remarkably steady rate.

While the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously condemns the Administration's practice of torturing prisoners, the House addresses the urgent issue of persecution of Christians in America by the militant atheist majority.

The second link includes a convenient list of public servants who are utter worthless clowns. I recommend writing them letters telling them you despise them.

(EDIT: PZ is going off half-cocked again, and me with him. The second bill was from last year, and they haven't done one this year. Same clowns are still there, of course, and still clowns, but it's not timely.)

( time-sensitive War On Holiday poll )

More seriously, having been raised to personally abstain from violence and to believe various things about human rights rather strongly, but without a particular habit of direct action, this strikes home for me:

I do believe that where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. Hence it was that I took part in the Boer War, the so called Zulu rebellion and the late war. Hence also do I advocate training in arms for those who believe in the method of violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.

But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment, forgiveness adorns a soldier. But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish, it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature. A mouse hardly forgives cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her. I therefore appreciate the sentiment of those who cry out for the condign punishment of General Dyer and his ilk. They would tear him to pieces if they could. But I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature. Only I want to use India's and my strength for better purpose.

— M. K. Gandhi, The Doctrine of the Sword

Apropos of nothing, apparently the White House is hosting a Christmas shoe drive.

Volume I, Beginner: Williams Sonoma Meat Tenderizer (via various LJ folks)
Volume II, Intermediate: Asom Broso Tequila (seen at SavMor Liquors Somerville)
Volume III... well, if it were in your butt, you'd know where it was.

(Scales linearly to fit your ingredients, mostly.) Set oven to 350 degF. Separate 12 eggs. Put the whites in the mixer on high. Shred 3/4 lb of gruyere.

Make a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux, starting with 3 cups of milk. To it, add yolks and gruyere and mix up good. Salt and pepper and other seasonings to whim. Meanwhile, fry up some onions.

(At this point, if you are me, you intend to add a bunch of paprika and a little nutmeg. Instead you add just a bunch of nutmeg, and you notice after it is cooked. It is still delish, but it does not satisfy the motivating craving, so you will have to do this again next week. I recommend just seasoning it the way you wanted the first time around.)

At this point the egg whites are stiff-peaked, or you fail. (Fail = you still do everything the same, but you pretend you intended to make a baked fritata all along. I never fail.) Fold in that sauce you just made and the onions and stick the mixture in adequately many casserole dishes in the oven (mine have a fill line; if yours don't, leave perhaps a finger's breadth from the top).

While all this is baking:

like half a stick of butter and some semi-sweet chocolate chips in a pan = reaction vessel
3 raw eggs + 3/4 c milk + 1 tsp salt + 1 tsp sugar = feedstock
10 slices of big crusty sliced bread = other feedstock

Soak the bread in the eggy stuff. Fry it up in the pan. Repeat, two or three slices at a time, in some appropriately pipelined fashion. If you don't like your French toast to resemble an omelet, squeegee the bread surface with your turning whatzit before putting it in the pan.

While all this is frying:

Take a withered old bell pepper you have lying around and begin frying it. Rapidly add some of the excess cheese (because duh, you bought a pound) and 3 eggs and scramble it up.

At roughly this point (around 35-40 minutes for me), the souffle is out and all this stuff goes out on the table. Ideally all your guests have major protein and fat deficiencies, because damn.

Serve with pinot grigio, pomegranate oolong tea, and gin and tonic; actual maple syrup; and that jar of wildflower honey that you've been working on for three or four years that is almost to the bottom and all crystalized. Hope you have several hungry friends. Then go out on the front porch and enjoy the aforementioned liquor and (for those so inclined) the fruits of Proposition 2.

via ebourland: POLITICS FAIL

Chicago corruption is funny and kind of cool in that so-bad-it's-good Buddy Cianci/James Michael Curley kind of way; Springfield corruption is sad and pathetic and depressing in a really hilarious way.

OK, +1 for breast-related math, -100 for IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE AND IS VISIBLY INCORRECT

P.S. I made sweet-potato pie. Twice.

P.P.S. mmmmmmmmmmm.

why yes, game night was pretty good. Having curled up with a growler of something strong to myself, I do not have further comment at this time.

Papa Was A Rodeo illustrated with scenes from Brokeback Mountain. $50, payable in drinks of your choice in Boston during the fortnight of your choice, or otherwise when I happen to be in town.

For you. You know who you are.

Current Mood: lagomorphic

Down in the core there's a place where there's nobody pagin' in
There's just the sound of the heads of the drives seeking over the disks in the array

And I've got something to help release the RAM
Something waiting there since the thread began

My garbage collector, it marks and then it sweeps
I'm the inspector over the heap

Look past the spinning locks (look past the locks)
Look past the thrashing jobs (look past the jobs)
Ignore the mountain of discarded text and blobs

(etc.)

In other news: man, I know bits are cheap nowadays and normalization is overrated, but remind me never to look at an Adium XML chat log ever again.

presented without comment

House Night = sushi night forever

Need to work on my maki technique. Getting to eat the results is a good incentive to practice.

Things that are now verified to be good in maki:

asparagus (we knew that)
(by the meat-eaters) raw tuna (they knew that)
brie + roasted garlic
brie + pesto + tomatoes + cucumbers

The rice needs to be in perfect shape. GBR fresh out of the rice cooker would have been ideal; my GBR that I cooked yesterday and reheated today was less so, and the stuff I whipped up in a hurry with not enough water (because it was drier than GBR to start with) was not so great either.

I need to find out what Snappy Sushi wraps their portabella roll in. It's like a yellow veggie tortilla, but super-thin.

Need wasabi root.

Wow. On the second try, I got germinated brown rice right, and it's excellent. The texture is closest to good sushi rice, distinctly chewy. The taste is like good brown rice, but distinctly umami-er.

Technique:

(1) Brew strong green tea. You won't be drinking it, so go ahead and oversteep it. This inhibits fermentation.

(2) Let the tea cool down below 100 degF. (This is how I got the first attempt wrong. Boiling tea, uh, somehow seems to hinder germination.)

(3) Put the tea and some brown rice in some reasonable vessel and keep it between 80 and 100 degF (I used 95) for around 16 hours (I used the mini-fridge I got when I was a feckless yuppie).

(4) Pour off the water, rinse the rice until it doesn't smell like oversteeped green tea at all. I filled and emptied the pot I had steeped it in 3 times.

(5) Cook at as you normally would (I cooked it in the rice cooker, ate a handful straight out of there which I quite enjoyed, and have been making fried rice with the rest), or allegedly you can eat it raw now (I didn't).

Failure to germinate just results in perfectly edible brown rice. Letting it ferment apparently stinks, though perhaps us beer fiends won't mind. The green-tea version definitely does not stink; I tasted nothing but rice, no noticeable tea residue at all.

Supposedly germination converts the starch into some more amino acids than you would otherwise get, including GABA.

Muss es sein? Es muss sein.

In other news, I have a standing Craigslist search for "unicycle" so that eventually I can spend approximately $0 on a unicycle approximately 0 miles from where I work. This person has been posting the same post every week for months. I am seriously considering buying the thing just so the ad will go away. If I do, I will rent a Zipcar specifically to run it over with. Twice.

yeah, that