it's toasted

The eponymous reaction was named for French chemist and pharmacist Louis Camille Maillard with the later collaboration of US Department of Agriculture fellow John Edward Hodge who described and established the chemical mechanism for it is the most common spell of kitchen-witchery, which we were heretofore quite in the dark about until being intrigued by TYWKIWDBI.

It endows baked, seared and roasted foods with their distinctive aromas and flavours. The process that leads to the production of hundreds of different and nuanced flavour compounds is the interaction of amino acids and sugars catalysed by reaching a target temperature—typically 140 to 180 degrees Celsius—flirting with the threshold of burning. French fries, stir-fry, malted beverages, Lucky Strikes, bagels, toast, roasted coffee and chocolate are some of the foods and drinks that owe their savour to the Maillard reaction.

bijlmemeer

Available as both a podcast and in transcript form, Miss Cellania directs our attention to two episodes of 99% Invisible (Part 1, Part 2) dedicated to the utopian architectural congress held in Athens in 1933, attended by Modernists luminaries Ernő Goldfinger, Le Corbusier and many other icons that led to the collaborative feat of in civil engineering outside of Amsterdam that would become the summit’s blue-print and model for urban-planning going forward.
Dubbed Bijlmer for short, the community was to be comprised of concrete towers arranged on a honeycomb grid—as too allow all units their share of sunshine to the exclusion of none—had big balconies and a big common area in each building’s ground floor for artistic endeavours.  Tubal walkways connected the ensemble of buildings as well as elevated, double-carriage streets for pedestrians and automobiles with large green spaces in between.  As with many social housing projects that are attended by both the air of prestige for the architects involved and the force of best-intentions, the neighbourhood underwent a period of decay and blight, which culminated dramatically with the tragic crash of an Israeli flagged aircraft crashing into two apartment blocs--giving the community the chance to reorganise as it rebuilt and recovered. 

droide astromeccanico

From the Italian word for a jaunty saunter, Gita the cargo droid from the company Piaggio (famous for their Vespas—that is, wasps in italiano and Popemobiles) meant to accompany humans on errands and help bare burdens that are two heavy or awkward to convey otherwise.
Designed with the goal that it should be able to carry a case of wine—and leave it’s human’s hands free for other things, Gita is self-navigating and can avoid obstacles and balance a load of up to twenty kilogrammes and seems to be a disruptor somewhere in a happy medium between (segue to) Segways and unaccompanied delivery robots and drones, which have both earned derision. Visit the links above for a demonstration and to learn more.

now do classical gas

Our gratitude to Kottke for not only disabusing us of the notion that Eric Clapton was the originator of the instrumental composition “Classical Gas”—first released in February of 1968—but introducing us as well to its interesting origins with guitarist and comedy-writer Mason Douglas Williams. Conceived as representative as the fuel of a classically trained guitar repertoire, the title was shortened from “Classical Gasoline” by an amanuensis, Williams came up with the song while working as the head writer of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour and performed it as intro- and outro-music on several occasions.

Having already garnered the attention of audiences and critics, Williams wanted to showcase the work in its entirety and recognised that it could be the perfect alternate accompaniment to the experimental, kinestasis montage work of UCLA student filmmaker Dan McLaughlin, a survey of art history in three minutes (with a bit of tweaking with the timing of the transitions as it was originally set to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. The short cemented the reputation and cultural moments of both arrangements. Be sure to visit Kottke at the link above to learn more and to discover more fine hypertext products.