ricketyclick

Awhile back, I reported on my experiment with cold brew coffee. I was not impressed.

I tried again last night.

I used the recipe reported here, about 1-1/2 cups water with 4 ounces by weight of coarse, freshly-ground Community Medium Roast. Ah, except, um, the water is added in three steps, 1/2 cup at a time. I only saw the first 1/2 cup, and thought that couldn’t be enough, so I used 1 full cup. Infusion was for 7 hours in a glass bowl with a sealable plastic lid (basically, glass Tupperware.)

Again, I used filter papers on the vegetable steamer as a strainer, although this time I just set it in a large glass bowl.

I only got about one fluid ounce of concentrate, which I diluted with 9 oz. hot water, and added half-and-half and sugar as I would for an ordinary cup of coffee (yielding a total of just shy of 11 oz.)

It was delicious, if not transcendent. Very smooth, and the essence of what I think coffee should taste like. In fact, it tasted exactly like what the coffee section in the grocery store smelled like.

But I have to try it yet again with a reasonable amount of water, maybe two cups. A third of a bag of coffee and eight hours is just too much for one cup of coffee, albeit a really good one.

As a control, I also ground a little bit of the Community for my automatic dripper. That was good coffee, different although not better than my usual Yuban, but nowhere near as good as the cold brew version.

My niece Chelsea is taking a semester of college in Cairo. She arrived today, and has started a blog so the rest of us can keep up with her adventures.

Tales of Two Cities (and beyond)

She says she took a digital camera with her, so she should be able to post pictures soon.

Developing….

[UPDATE: Scroll Down]

Danger! Extreme Earworm Warning!

[link if the embed doesn't work.]
The animation and beat here are great, but the lyrics are mildly toxic. If a rash develops, discontinue use and consult a physician.

The tune in the chorus reminds me of something which I can’t quite pull up — I think a hymn. Slower, of course, and very different lyrics, but either a hymn or at least something classical.

I’ll update if I can identify it.

[update, but not for the chorus]
There’s a line at about 0:50 that sounds to me like “I went walking in my momma one day”, but the lyric sites report this as “I want walking in with my momma”. I can’t hear the “with”, and it doesn’t make any sense to me. The animation shows a huge goddess-momma, a Mother Earth, and no matter what the official lyrics say, I’m going to interpret that line as “I was walking in the World….”

Via Ambient Irony’s trip along the path to ostinato.

The tune is not exact, I think, but close enough to nag.

No, I suspect no plagiarism here; something more along the lines of Spider Robinson’s Melancholy Elephants.

I grew up listening to the version by the De Paur Chorus on their album Calypso Christmas, but regrettably I can’t find it on Youtube. I ripped my own digital copy from the horribly worn family vinyl, then hamfistedly scoured it of snaps, crackles, and pops. It’s a great album, great good fun, and I’m thrilled to find it on Amazon. I plan to post this, and another track or two, as soon as the nice clean new copy arrives.

Lawdog tells two colorful tales:

Chinese Guacamole

and

The Pink Gorilla Suit

No, seriously. It does exist. Tolewyn explains:

Apparently it took three actors to replace Heath Ledger in the last film he was making. Johhny Depp, Colin Farrell, and Jude Law have all stepped in to replace the late Mr. Ledger in his role in Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus” which he was filming at the time of his death.

When they learned that he had not updated his will to include his two year old daughter, all three of these gentlemen donated all of the money they earned from that film to her.

Good on them.

Over at the Bitch Girls:

A hunter who was checking into a Denver hotel yesterday before his trip to Africa was arrested for “unlawfully” carrying a gun - in rifle cases safely.  Unfortunately, Democrats are staying in the hotel.  So the cops hauled him off and only released him after he posted $10,000.

He is being investigated to see if his rifles have dangerous features - like a scope.

I started to respond in comments there, but it grew, so I’m making a full post of it here.

There was that big Mike Vanderboegh brouhaha a couple of weeks ago, about how citizens standing their ground for their right to keep and bear made us all look like crazed loons. (The big thread was over at Snowflakes in Hell, but that site’s down at the moment. I’ll put the link in when I can confirm it.)

This proves Vanderboegh was bang on: Those who want to take our rights away from us already think we’re dangerous lunatics.

Is it time to march on statehouses, courthouses, and Congress? Time to man the barricades? Time to openly revolt?

No, of course not quite yet.

It is, however, time for individuals to simply stand for themselves and say “No”. to make “cold dead hands” more than a slogan.

Now, I pray I will not be faced with this choice any time soon, but I pray that if I am, I will be able to take one or two jackboots with me.

I probably won’t, of course, because I doubt I’ll be given the opportunity to so much as flick off the safety. And if I am, I seriously doubt I’ll be able to bring myself to actually shoot another human being, as much as my freedom might depend on it.

That’s one of the problems here: on the battle field, a new recruit can depend on the veterans to fight for a volley or two while he gets his wits and his courage together, and overcomes his natural reluctance to kill. In a hotel lobby surrounded by non-combatants, with your guns all in cases, or during what seems to be a routine traffic stop, or in your bedroom at three a.m., you simply do not have the luxury of even a second’s hesitation, or the example of more experienced soldiers around you. And you know, absolutely, that you will die in the encounter, that you will never have the chance to argue in defense of your actions.

That’s hard, and when that starts happening, it’s going to be up to us to pile on in defense of our fallen comrades, and not spurn their corpses because they failed to follow the enemy’s rules of engagement to the letter.

In this case, Calanchini threatened NO ONE. He just wanted a room, a shower, a meal and a bed. His greatest crime was that he didn’t care enough about politics to know that a Big Important For His Own Damn Good Democratic Convention was in town, or that the particular hotel he choose had been taken over by by people who hate him and think he’s the crazy one.

I mean, Christ, he had GUNS! Plural, guns! Including handguns! Of course he’s dangerous bad crazy! Think of all the children he could have killed! Or Democrats, same thing!

===

This stands as a warning to all the Fudds and Zumbos out there. Just because you’re a hunter, doesn’t mean you can afford to think you’re above the fray. The grabbers absolutely want your guns too, and you with them. To them, you are as crazy and as dangerous as we are.

===

Meanwhile, Muslim terrorists, real crazies who, so far beyond standing their ground and fighting back, deliberately kill innocents, are deferred and kowtowed to at every opportunity.

===

Uncle points out, “This isn’t going to help Democrats appeal to the gun owner demographic.”

No, but then, they never really wanted to. This simply confirms which demographic they are appealing to.

North Charleston News Channel WDPE, via Pete Guither at Drug WarRant:

Police said there was so much marijuana they couldn’t let reporters see it because the smell would overpower them. They instead showed pictures of the haul.

Pete “noticed that they just left it sitting in a room with cops working (I guess they could handle the smell, unlike reporters).”

Bales of straw-colored dried plant matter displayed in tubs in a police office. Note desks, chairs, and copy machine in the background, to say nothing of the cop nearly comatose from the fumes, upper left.

Exactly, Pete. After all, they’re The Only Ones that have superhuman resistance to violence-inducing pot fumes and gun radiation.

No Quarter, via Classical Values:

But there is a very strange air about Republican operatives. In the last three weeks, I’ve talked to real insiders in VA, GA, AL and here. They all remind me of a unit waiting to cross the line of departure on an attack. Quiet, determined, last cigarette, last “can of peaches out of the ration,” radio checks, confident. They all use the term “safely nominated” when referring to Obama.

Republican operatives want Obama “safely nominated”.

I am very, very shy of making predictions or gloating or any such thing this early in the game, particularly given my belief that the major news media are very much in the bag for Obama. There is no semblance of “fair and balanced”. They’re going to be doing their level best to get Obama elected.

The fact is, however, that McCain and the Republicans have pretty much stayed out of the fight so far. They’re rested and ready, or ought to be, while Obama will have just finished a hell of a fight with his own party.

Which one looks like it belongs in a serious campaign of ideas, and which one looks like it belongs in a Hollywood awards party, or a Red China international sports rally?

[disclosure: the lower picture is a computer-generated mockup; the actual stage is apparently not yet complete.]

For the first time in my life, if I vote, it will be furtively. I will be ashamed to have cast a ballot, for anybody. This will very likely be the last national election I ever vote in, because I strongly suspect that whoever he is, the next President will prove that elections no longer matter, that The People are no longer in control of the political process.

I’ve been getting McCain campaign solicitations in the mail. They disgust me, they are so far off the mark. One of the early ones was done up to look like an official government document, and essentially ordered me to fill out the survey, and send McCain money. (Granted, it was immediately followed up by more ingratiating efforts.)

I’m pretty convinced that I will be voting for a guy who thinks my vote will give him permission to decide which of my rights I’ll be allowed to exercise, and by how much. Nuh-uh. I want to vote for the guy who will uphold his oath to defend my rights, as embodied in the Constitution, but that guy is not running.

However, Obama is the scariest candidate I’ve ever seen. He has virtually no experience. He’s Daley Machine Extruded Political Product, the embodiment of that Chicago slaughter-yard sausage you don’t want to see being made. His advisors and confidants are thugs and racist, anti-American Communists.

He’s a puppet, and the people pulling the strings are terrifying. They are not interested in letting me have any rights — they want to rule.

[I had some formatting problems putting this post together, which was causing some text to disappear. Fixed now.]

Patterico poses a statistical question:

50 standard coins are thrown onto the floor. Before the toss, each had an equal chance of coming up heads or tails. Before you see how they came up, all 50 coins are covered up.

Tom goes and uncovers 25 of them. All are heads.

Joe offers to give you $10 for every remaining coin that came up tails, if you will give him $12 for every remaining coin that came up heads.

1) Do you accept Joe’s offer?

2) Is there any question you would like to ask Tom before you decide?

The “official” answer has not yet been posted.

My answers, slightly edited, behind the spoilers tag:

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Yes, more surreal than even the current political landscape, which is saying something.
Part 1
Part 2

I particularly liked these lamps by Frank Buchwald.