almond joy

H baked a very good treat following a recipe he got from a colleague for a biscotti variant called cantuccini. These Italian biscuits (Zwieback) translate to “little corners” and were fun and easy to make. The ingredients as presented make a big batch, an entire baking sheet. The biscotti will keep for several days. In fact Pliny the Elder, upon first being acquainted with such non-perishable food boasted that they had a shelf-life of centuries. While I don’t suspect that’s true (since they get rock-hard eventually), being able to keep such stores was quite an important advancement for the Roman army and allowed for expansion of the empire. One could also just halve all the measurements, I suppose.
Into a large mixing bowl, pour 400 grams and add four medium eggs, beating them until frothy. Next add 500 grams of flour and approximately 400 grams of almonds (whole or sliced). Add a few drops of bitter almond oil or vanilla extract and one package of baking yeast and knead the mixture well by hand.
Turn on the oven to 180 ° C and allow to pre-heat while letting the dough to sit for ten to fifteen minutes. Next, form the dough into small loaves and place on the baking sheet for slicing. The dough is quite sticky but manageable. Allow to bake for 40 to 45 minutes, possibly removing the sheet to re-slice the biscuits half way through, as they will expand somewhat and become difficult to cut once baked and hardened. Afterwards, allow to cool and enjoy with coffee and/or grappa, and be sure to share with one’s co-workers and let them know that cantuccini was a staple of the Roman legion.

castle week: saxony or hogan’s heroes

The German mint has been issuing commemorate two-euro coins that feature the iconic architecture associated with each of the 19 states (Länder).

Each time I get one of these coins in the set as change, I think about the repre- sentatives. I don’t disagree with the selections of the continuing series, by any means, but there are certainly some other fine candidates out there that I’ve been fortunate enough to visit. One recent trip took us to medieval Burg Kriebstein by the town of Waldheim in the mid-west part of the state. This stronghold, dating from the 14th century, is remarkably well-preserved and has an equally noteworthy way of presenting a fairy-tale unified front, though closer study of the façade reveals different design elements and modifications through the ensuing ages.

This and other strategically located castes commanded the waterways of this region. Another alternative is the Renaissance fortification anchoring, dominating the village of Colditz, not far away by Leipzig. This building too has seen many different incarnations through the years from a residence of prince-electors and king-makers, to a premier zoo, to a debtors’ prison and workhouse, to a mental institution and perhaps most infamously as a prisoner of war camp for problematic Allied captives. There, SGT Kinchloe did not, however, have a radio in the coffee kettle—that Stalag was set in the Bavarian town of Hammelburg.

summative or headline roundup

Some cabinet officials in Germany’s ruling coalition want to levy a fee from those aggregator sites like Drudge Report or Yahoo! News and other services that supposedly profit unduly by leveraging the reporting of other agencies, baiting readers to their own mastheads then trickling off like Plinko bearings to the primary sources. This idea is only as of now a suggestion, but framers have been working on legislation since 2009 and similar plans have already been discussed in the States—with the Drudge tax, and has the support of some German publishing-houses (Verlag) and much hand-wringing and vocal protests on the opposing side. Lawmakers want these asymmetric earners (through front-page ads) to share profits with the makers of their content, the journalists. It seems like a fair proposition, at first, glance but the reasoning, I think, quickly folds. Aggregators don’t intercept potential advertising revenue (although I suppose, for example, if a reader first encountered some tempting resort ad in Pago Pago, the reader probably wouldn’t click on it a second time when mirrored on the newspaper’s web site) but feed and drive visitor traffic, and surely, in turn revenue.

If news- aggregators with high-visibility are targeted for skimming too much off the top, what’s to prevent this tariff from creeping to any link or the adjudging, rating, following or otherwise liking or disliking of social-networking sites? This proposal is like a shadowy, non-codified once-and-future ACTA or Son of SOPA, meant to de-vitalize the internet because the entertainment industry feels it’s turnover is being infringed upon. And there would of course be consequences, like the spectrum of what’s newsworthy shrinking and the feeder-services might be only willing to do business, find what’s fit to print, with its partners and affiliates.

prosopagnosia or lost-and-found

This strange news item from Iceland has already been circulating the internet, concerning a solitary foreign woman who visited the volcanic canyon of Eldgjá as part of a bus tour through the southern highlands, but I think the idea is pretty intriguing and bizarre. After a hike, she freshened up and changed her clothing and jacket. This act, which went unnoticed and made her unrecognisable to her fellow travellers, and a miscounting of the number of passengers on board by the driver and guide, caused a panic to ensue. The woman, draped now with the cloaks of something other than mistaken identity, did not recognise herself in the description of the missing passenger and certainly did not consider herself lost. Maybe, like in another historic case in Iceland mentioned in the article, she even participated in her own search-party.

I am glad everything turned out fine and it is starting to sound like an urban legend, but I think it begins to highlight some important questions.  Of course, this is a rare and frightening occurrence but I do wonder if there is not some mechanism responsible that’s a contemporary cog of inattentiveness and private, not shared perceptions. Like people saying, “without pictures, it didn’t happen,” and the ability to readily tag and label everything for processing and easily convey under most circumstances, documentary evidence, I wonder if our senses and personas are somewhat spoilt and skewed. I wonder if that means there will be more such incidents in the future.