Pasadena Museum of Art, 1963.
As an aside, Ted is much, much better at chess than I am. He’s also probably better at being naked than I am.
Mustafa invented a way of tapping this quantum effect via what’s known as the dynamic Casimir effect. This uses a “moving mirror” cavity, where two very reflective very flat plates are held close together, and then moved slightly to interact with the quantum particle sea. It’s horribly technical, but the end result is that Mustafa’s use of shaped silicon plates similar to those used in solar power cells results in a net force being delivered. A force, of course, means a push or a pull and in space this equates to a drive or engine.
[ read on @ gizmodo ]
Tonight’s reading, from the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections division, is the Death and Burial of Poor Cock Robin.
Church martyrs, with in the foreground St Cecilia standing in a cauldron of boiling water
1 avocado
1 English cucumber, skinned and chopped roughly
¼ white or yellow onion, chopped roughly
3 tbs fresh cilantro, chopped roughly
½ tub (aprox 3oz) plain Greek yogurt
1 pinch fresh mint
Throw it all into a food processor. Mush it. For best results, let it sit in the fridge for a few hours so the flavors mix.
The amazing Blackstone came to town when I was seven, and I saw how he came alive onstage and thought, God, I want to grow up to be like that! And I ran up to help him vanish an elephant. To this day I don’t know where the elephant went. One moment it was there, the next — abracadabra — with a wave of the wand it was gone!
In 1929 Buck Rogers came into the world, and on that day in October a single panel of Buck Rogers comic strip hurled me into the future. I never came back.
It was only natural when I was twelve that I decided to become a writer and laid out a huge roll of butcher paper to begin scribbling an endless tale that scrolled right on up to Now, never guessing that the butcher paper would run forever.
Snoopy has written me on many occasions from his miniature typewriter, asking me to explain what happened to me in the great blizzard of rejection slips of 1935. Then there was the snowstorm of rejection slips in ’37 and ’38 and an even worse winter snowstorm of rejections when I was twenty-one and twenty-two. That almost tells it, doesn’t it, that starting when I was fifteen I began to send short stories to magazines like Esquire, and they, very promptly, sent them back two days before they got them! I have several walls in several rooms of my house covered with the snowstorm of rejections, but they didn’t realize what a strong person I was; I persevered and wrote a thousand more dreadful short stories, which were rejected in turn. Then, during the late forties, I actually began to sell short stories and accomplished some sort of deliverance from snowstorms in my fourth decade. But even today, my latest books of short stories contain at least seven stories that were rejected by every magazine in the United States and also in Sweden! So, dear Snoopy, take heart from this. The blizzard doesn’t last forever; it just seems so.
[ source: ray bradbury by way of del howison & brain pickings]
Adapted from a recipe that a friend sent to me a while back.
+ Masoor Daal With Coconut Milk
1 cup masoor daal
2 cups vegetarian mock chicken stock
1 can (roughly 13.5 fl oz) coconut milk
4 garlic cloves
2 pinches saffron
1 onion, roughly chopped
3 tomatoes, roughly chopped
1.5 tsp turmeric
.5 tsp black pepper
Black salt to taste
Plop it all into a pot, stir well, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer for 25 minutes.
++ Onion Tarka
3 tbs olive oil
1 onion, sliced thinly
4 garlic cloves, chopped
Handful of fresh coriander
2 tsp black mustard seeds
Make the tarka about 10 minutes out from when the daal is going to be finished cooking. Sautee the onions and garlic until they’re crispy, then add the coriander and mustard and fry for about a minute.
Ladle some of the daal onto basmati or brown rice, then top with the tarka. Let the mix sit for a few minutes before serving.
