...to a new site.
http://www.somymachine.wordpress.com
Let the creative juices flow.
On the Hunt
For food blogs. I've been reading YumSugar and trolling AllRecipes for a few months now, but it just dawned on me today that there's a whole world of foodies out there that I haven't been paying attention to.
This looks delicious.
Faux News...
...and its consistently racist, slanderous programming makes me irate. Why do we allow this on network TV - what sort of people are these "news reports" catering to?
The Day Has Finally Come...
....when people are able to physically alter the weather. When I was little, I used fantasize about a machine that could convert wintery grey skies into puffy white clouds and sunshine, but I never imagined those ideas actually becoming a reality.
In preparation for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China has developed a 3-stage plan to control the weather over the "Bird's Nest", a brand-new, roofless, 91,000 seat Olympic stadium:
"First, Beijing's Weather Modification Office will track the region's weather via satellites, planes, radar, and an IBM p575 supercomputer, purchased from Big Blue last year, that executes 9.8 trillion floating point operations per second. It models an area of 44,000 square kilometers (17,000 square miles) accurately enough to generate hourly forecasts for each kilometer. Then, using their two aircraft and an array of twenty artillery and rocket-launch sites around Beijing, the city's weather engineers will shoot and spray silver iodide and dry ice into incoming clouds that are still far enough away that their rain can be flushed out before they reach the stadium. Finally, any rain-heavy clouds that near the Bird's Nest will be seeded with chemicals to shrink droplets so that rain won't fall until those clouds have passed over."
I don't know how I feel about having chemicals shot into the sky for the sake of clear skies...actually no - I'm very wary of it. This whole project screams modern day World's Fair - Now With Mad Scientists and Toxic Chemicals - to me. What's crazy is the fact that weather engineering isn't a new phenomenon -the US, China, and Russia have all been working on various weather-engineering projects for decades. The technology has been used to debilitate Vietnam during war, relieve droughts in China, prevent radioactive rain from Chernobyl from reaching Russia, and now to ensure sunshine on important days. Circle the one that doesn't belong.
Ultimately, I'm interested to see if the project will be successful. Throughout history, there has been mixed reports about the efficacy of weather-engineering, and a successful program could have the potential to help - and hurt - a lot of people. Even if there were immediate, positive results, I don't know if I'd support the use of the technology. Who knows what the long term effect of chemical weather change is? There's something about tweaking mother nature that just doesn't sit well with me...I feel like our world is backing itself into a fatal corner.
More on weather engineering and the Beijing Olympics from MIT's Technology Review here.
The tube is eating my soul
I take the Tube every day and it's SO expensive - 28 pounds for a weekly card, which amounts to about $56 a week - aie, it hurts to even think about it. On the other hand, London is huge and the public transportation system here is great. Given the size of the city, it's surprising how easily you can get to anywhere you want, so the cost is fairly justified. Still, I have to force myself to not convert from pounds to dollars, because the thought of paying $8 a day to take two tube rides makes me nauseous.....almost as nauseous as my memory of paying $14 for a slice of cold, congealed quiche with an undressed side salad yesterday, but I'm trying to repress thoughts of London's horribly disappointing food.
I get immense pleasure out of seeing my room clean.
Welcome to my home!My favorite part:
Mmmm...clothes. I loved going through my wardrobe in Chicago and picking out my favorite things to bring here, and I already found great stuff while shopping sporadically over the past two weeks. London has tons of good clothes that are relatively inexpensive - I think it's because all young women here dress with some sort of personal style in mind; it's wonderful. Being here is so visually refreshing....if only it would stop raining all. the. time.
bacon and mayonnaise, bacon and mayonnaise, bacon and mayonnaise...
British food actually is terrible! Apparently pasta with chicken and tomato sauce means pasta with chicken, tomato sauce, and mayonnaise. A sandwich with sundried tomato and mozzarella spread is actually wheat bread, a heap of mayonnaise and minimal mozzarella and sundried tomato bits. The grilled chicken BLT sandwich (that sounds amazing) ends up being flat bread slathered in mayonnaise and shredded romaine lettuce, topped with a hardboiled egg, unseasoned chicken, and massive amounts of bacon. I cannot believe this is the standard - high five America, you are still superior in one department.
Augh! I'd give anything to taste something savory right now.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Goodbye Hyde Park, The University of Chicago, ORCSA, and everything else I've been up to for the past 4 years...
....and my kitties, who are now the size of beach balls...such comfort eaters. No more being a homebody, eating mom's cooking, watching Weeds hour after hour, or going to sleep at 10pm...
Mmmm. Not homesick, just appreciative of my past two months.
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