Watch the video "Awesome Vinaigrette in Less That a Minute"

 For years, I ignored this, and then I got caught in the trap: I learned overnight how to make a killer salad dressing and now I have to come in to the kitchen and make one every time we have salad! This said, it takes literally less time to do the basic vinaigrette than it took me to write these paragraphs.

3 measures of olive oil (you can experiment with oils, but as Popeye will tell you, OO is the place to start)
1 measure of vinegar
1/3 of a measure of mustard
(optional a few drops of honey)

Put these in a bowl big enough to cotain the salad. Using a small spoon, a fork or whisk, stir them together while turning the bowl, slightly askew so the dressing coats the bottom and as much of the sides as you can.

The mustard is important. If you can get a good fancy one that is both spicy and fruity, skip the honey. My current favorite is Dijon with raspberries. Barring that, I use the typical French (but not French's) mustard.

Once you get this down, you can experiment for the rest of your life, adding bits of red onion, shallots, truffles, herbs, capers, garlic, chives, or a thousand other ingredients. You'll be like a Bordeaux wine maker, assembling, blending until you have the perfect complement to your salad vegetables.

 

 

Found the original image on the site Internet Food Assoctation.

Seriously? I thought cheese was fattening?

What is or is not fattening will depend a lot on your personal metabolism, but it's safe to say that the two cheeses I just named are fat. Or, better stated, they probably contain around 40% fat. But here's the dirty secret. You remember how low-tar cigarettes usually made people smoke twice as many? Well, the opposite is also true, strong flavored cheeses like Comté, Roquefort, Stilton and Cheddar only need a few grams in a sandwich, in a salad, on a gratin or a pizza or in any dish to make it taste rich and, let's not mince words here, cheesy! Strong cheeses are also great with many white wines, both dry and sweet, and thin shavings of Comté will weigh almost nothing, yet go beautifully on the nibbles tray.

0% cheese is is not cheese at all, it's a "cheese product", both rubbery and tastless. Don't go there! Watching your weight is no big deal, it's like Google's "Don't be evil", just "Don't pig out". Small portions of great food with true taste will leave you with full enjoyment and not make you need to stuff yourself. Follow Comte_USA on Twitter to see recipes and retaillers where you can buy fine cheeses in your area (of the USA).

Yes, Comté is my favorite cheese and yes, I sometimes work Comté but my opinions are my own.

A while back, I berated and lambasted a woman for wasting my professional consulting time and not wanting to trade her professional graphics time in return. Well, Karen, you're still a cheapskate! However, when it comes to dealing with phone companies, I am a huge cheapskate. I hate paying for services I don't use and paying too much for the ones I do use.

When Free, one of the large French Internet triple-play operators in France came out with their sexy new Freebox v6 Revolution, I pored over the documentation and reviews as much as I used to do with the sci-fi articles in Playboy Asimov's Magazine. It seemed too good to be true. So far we've had excellent luck, and here's a summary if you'd like to see why I was lured to leave a company we liked a lot.

Internet: DSL 22Mb/s - someday Free will also do fiber in our street. Apparently they will also be a mobile operator within a year or so.

The modem/router box is literally plug and play (and works for both DSL and FFTH) and it's IPv6 compatible.

The same box includes a DECT base. That means if you already have DECT phones like the Siemens Gigaset, they can work with it out of the box. Otherwise, you just plug your phone into a jack on the back.

The modem/router talks over the power line to a "set top box", the FreePlayer. The units are pre-paired so there's no configuration to do.

The player brings flawless HD TV (morte than 56 channels with nothin' on) and a 250 gigabyte NAS unit. The Netwark Attached Storage appears as an external mounted drive on both Windows and Mac computers. You can move your video collection over to it and watch then using the remote. You can also attach several kinds of external drives to the player and the router.

The whole thing was designed by Philippe Starck, which is a big deal for some, tarte à la crême (means the lastest bullshit) for others, and not of interest to me. In fact the remote would have been better designed by Apple, Logitech or Sony, but whatever. The buttons are mushy, but it mostly works.

Back to my cheapness. What grabbed my attention initially was not Free's unlimited calling to 118 countries, including every single one I've ever needed to call in my life, China, Argentina included. No, it was the unlimited mobile calling to all French operators. Because receiving a call is free on mobiles in Europe, calling one is very expensive, usually around $0.20 per minute. Now, voilà, it's included in the monthly payment. For mobile, I've been testing a no-contract option for Internet on the iPhone. Here's the montly run down:

PAYG (Mobicarte) $16 / month - includes few calls, but sufficient Internet (EDGE/3G) to use maps, Gmail, apps and the web.

DSL/phone/TV     $52 / month - includes "unlimited" mobile and long distance, over 100 TV channels (90 are crap, but hey) and very respectable DSL speeds

So, for $68,  less than most people pay for their iPhone contract on ATT, we have all these services, a cheapskate's dream.

 

 

Science and religion have both been around for millenia.

You might say that religion, being based on events and writings that have been handed down century by century, has an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio. Whatever happened around 2,000 years ago must surely be distorted beyond recognition by now, like a photocopy of a photocopy (repeated a hundred times or so). On the other hand, science is quite the opposite, having been repeatedly and constantly challenged and changed to more accurately reflect what we learn to be true. After all, Pluto is no longer a planet. So, like religion, science has a way of imposing a framework on things, too.

I believe in science, not religion. I've often stated that I do not believe there is a Truth with a capital T. That truth is a personal thing in most cases and "Truth" is almost always based on beliefs. So how would this apply to science?

Because science is a discipline, it changes its story to accomodate new experience, experiments and natural laws when identified. Like the little kid in the old movie, "Yeah, sure that's it, Johnny took that pencil!" Because of these changes and adjustments, how can we be sure of anything complex?

I do believe that the inhabitants of a planet have an effect on the weather and climate of that planet.

I am not in doubt about global warming (which most agree now should be called global climate change), but I am in doubt about the arguments on both sides. Regardless of the issues, we humans are in the habit of using denial systematically. Ghosts don't and can't exist, the soul isn't real, you only live once. My opinion is much simpler: I don't know and we can't know until we do know. And then, reality might change and we'll be wrong. The real question is: what is reality? What if there is no reality other than the one in your own mind? In that case, we need to do a better job as creative artists, making our lives into more quality time, becoming our own leaders, rather than following others like a bunch of pilot fish.

Here's an afterthought: What is the difference between faith and ignorance? In both cases, you "just know". That's your Truth.

Sometimes the indications given to you from outside aren't the best. You need to think for yourself. Don't get caught in movements you are not contributing to. Don't blindly follow and parrot, invent and innovate. Start your own movement! Change comes from within. Be responsible, for yourself, for your family, for the world. Life is not against you, it wants you to be in charge of it. Do good, be good, the universe will generally reward for it.

Most of the times I've done simple "good deeds", let's say doing something for someone I don't know well, I've gotten some positive feedback within days. I brought a radio to a co-worker I barely knew in the hospital. That night was a charming moment, spent with his nurse. Unrelated? I don't think so.

Pay it forward,

always,

in advance.

Now get outta here, I mean it.

My wife's deceased cousin was a Catholic priest and a scholar. I didn't share his unflagging taste for choucroute any more than his Catholicism, but I really dug the fact that he respected others' beliefs to the point of never imposing his own on them. He had studied theology and would discuss things in an intelligent and respectful manner. He was happy to not discuss them too, as he was well-rounded enough to have a lot more to say than just a belief set or an agenda to sell one. I loved that about him, among other things.

 
René had a full white beard, wore a bérêt (and looked right in it) and had thick Mr. Magoo glasses on his nose at all times. He really was nearly legally blind, but that didn't stop him from driving his faithful 2CV.
 

 
He lived in the Voges, a region that, like my native Minnesota, has snow and cold in the winter and uncomfortable heat in the summer, leaving only fall and spring as tolerable visiting seasons. I recall René driving us around in that 2CV with his 10% vision and on those narrow, snow covered mountain roads, I literally thought "I hope his faith can cover us too in this situation."
 
And it did seem to do so. Still, I beg of those who are convinced they know the one Truth to keep it to themselves. Continually shoving your belief set in people's faces really shows a lack of respect in that it means you don't think their own set is valid. What you believe is what you believe.
 
You know the great thing about Twitter, the absolute killer part of it? You can silence anyone you don't want to hear from. I love that about IRC, to just /ignore someone who repeatedly gets on your nerves. In real life, this is awfully hard to do. I've calmly said that I'd prefer not to discuss faith, quoting my mother who said "religion is in the heart".
 
Having a fixed set of answers, especially those you learned from an indoctrination process rather than personal experience, may be nice for some people. I don't know if there is an all-powerful being and my ideas aren't totally fixed in that realm. I just don't want to be force fed the party line, whether it's religion, wine, software or politics.