OF A GOLDEN AGE

I double booked myself this weekend: WordCamp, the WordPress conference; and the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest. So, it worked out to WordCamp in the mornings and Lit Fest in the afternoons.

Yesterday’s WordCamp morning session was terrible. It began with a really awkward and bad musical number (no, seriously). There were three speakers, each of whom had very little real information to offer, and the whole of it could have easily fit into one hour instead of three. If I’d realized WordCamp was going to be PowerPoint show and tell or bloggy self-congratulating instead of anything substantial, I wouldn’t have wasted the registration fee and parking. Maybe for other people the novelty of the event was enough to carry it.

However, the emcee was Brian Gardner, an absolute marvel who wrote the theme I used as the basis for my site and the themes that most people use on many WordPress sites. Matt Mullenweg, the creator of WordPress, slouched in partway through the morning but didn’t say anything.

EDIT: Each presenter invoked lolcats extensively. Of all people in the world I figured geeks would be the MOST sick of lolcats.

I also wrote in a month ago asking about the food at the event since I have so many restrictions, and never got an answer or even an acknowledgment. Their sound system was inadequate and we kept having to ask them to adjust it in the back. And, it turns out, even creative people put together shitty PowerPoints.

A family friend’s father, who led a life of adventure, including a Merchant Marine stint aboard a ship called the Socrates.

Full-sized image here.

A while ago in the course of natural conversation I got to say, “Your money’s no good here, Mikey,” then wondered if I wouldn’t make a bang-up maven of organized crime.

Do this immediately.

Cut a medium-large Vidalia onion in half, then set each half cut-side down and slice it into very, very thin slices. You should be left with a whole bunch of C-shaped thin onion pieces.

Sweat them down by letting them simmer in a large, high sided frying-type pan with about a tablespoon of the oil of your choice. Let the onions become translucent and soft and absorb the oil. This will probably take ten minutes.

Add three or four cups of stock — I used vegetable of course — and bring the pan to a scant barely boil with just a few bubbles coming to the surface. Let them cook until the liquid reduces. All of it. This will take kind of a long time but it’s not like you have to stand there while it happens.

What you will be left with is a pile of the most intensely flavored, tender onions in the history of onions. They transform the same way garlic does when you roast it, into something unrecognizable and wonderful.

Put them on anything. I think they’d be best on a burger if you’re into that kind of thing. I put them into a big vegetable noodle soup.

One of my former math professors, Paul Campbell, teaches an all-levels course on the CBS show Numb3rs. At the time, I hadn’t seen the show and knew only that it starred the dreamy tag-team of Northern Exposure’s Rob Morrow and ubiquitous-but-underused David Krumholtz, plus Judd Hirsch.

People complain that the mathematics used on the show aren’t totally sound, or would only suggest a LIKELY answer rather than a certain one, and so on and so on. I don’t give a crap about that, because almost every television show demands a certain suspension of disbelief — does the legal world reflect Law & Order, does high school reflect Gossip Girl?

Plain and simple, it’s awesome that a show in the formulaic crime genre has chosen mathematics as its bread and butter, both glorifying the role of mathematics in our society AND hyping up whatever the future has in store. I really love it.

In the wake of the brutal murder of George Tiller, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the slippery slope inherent in conversations about abortion, religion, virtually any contentious issue.

I ran across Geordie Duckler by accident when he called our office for some A/V consultation. He sums up my feelings about animal rights in this article:

Portland attorney Geordie Duckler practices animal law exclusively, but as property. Animals, he said, gain instead of lose value over time as owners build affection and investment.

“Someone who runs over a dog may ask why he should pay the owner thousands of dollars instead of just buying a new dog. That might work with a piano,” said Duckler.

The concept that animals have rights, as humans do, appeals to many. But not Duckler, who noted in a legal column in “Bark” magazine that an owner can have a dog euthanized or end an animal’s pregnancy.

Duckler, who also holds advanced degrees in biology and zoology, said writings and advocacy by animal rights activists tend to be limited to mammals alone.

He asks why earthworms — simple and senseless, but animals, nevertheless — “are left out in the legal cold,” while others soak in “soapy tubfulls of nonscientific nonsense that we are not all that far removed from our animal ancestry.”

There are really devastating, scandalous arguments for and against animal rights — including Peter Singer’s discussion of an intelligent chicken versus a human being with developmental problems. And in animal rights, as with abortion, as with religion, as with everything, I am most wary of those who are the most certain.