'The Rhythm Section'

I first read this superb thriller, the first of four by Mark Burnell, soon after it was published in the U.S. in 2000.

I don't recall when I stumbled on the 2020 film of it starring Blake Lively, fantastic as short-haired brunette heroine Stephanie Patrick.

I highly recommend both — read the book first, which will enhance the movie version.

That's exactly what I'm doing: I'm about a third of the way through my second reading and I can't hardly wait for another viewing of the film — this time on Vision Pro.

Helpful Hints from joeeze: How to make your champagne more bubbly

So simple, even I can do it.

Wipe the glasses (the inside, booboo) with a cloth or paper towel.

A report by scientists in France (fitting, what?) published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry showed that wiped glasses show "an excess of effervescence" due to the hollow cellulose fibers knocked off a cloth or towel acting as "nucleation" (bubble formation) sites.

[via Sharon Begley writing in the Wall Street Journal]

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?

Nothing — Emily Dickinson

 

"Nothing" is the force

    that renovates

       the world

NearbyWiki — Find Interesting Places

This website lets you search for places that have their own Wikipedia page. 

Who knew that Montvue, my Podunkville subdivision (below), is represented?

You could look it up.

Lagniappe: I can even see my house where I'm sitting this very second.

[via Claudia Dawson writing in Recomendo]

The Golden Record

 

The most famous examples of faith in the stability of records as a storage format are currently 15.2 billion miles and 12.7 billion miles from the Earth respectively. They are traveling at 38,026.77 mph and 34,390.98 mph relative to Earth, beyond the heliosphere in interstellar space. The Voyager Golden Records housed on the Voyager space probes, launched in 1977, are made from gold- and nickel-plated copper instead of vinyl. They contain greetings in 55 human languages; 26 musical recordings including the works of Blind Willie Johnson, Chuck Berry, and Johann Sebastian Bach; field recordings of nature; and 116 encoded images of life. Each record is designed to last over a billion years.

The Golden Record is the ultimate outlier, a small preview of what might be achieved if a society brought real resources to the preservation and curation of cultural production. Most removable storage is not designed to travel the cosmos and last for over a billion years.

[via Century-Scale Storage]

Experts' Experts: What should you do with hot leftovers — let them sit, or refrigerate immediately?

Mom always said to leave them out to cool to room temperature before sticking them in the fridge.

Mom also said that reading in bad light would hurt your eyes.

Mom was wrong both times.

Maybe more — but let's not be haters: after all, look how well you turned out.

Erm... maybe it's time to move on.

Okay, then, on to Anahad O'Connor's "Really?" feature in the New York Times Science section, which addressed the very question raised in the headline up top.

The Claim: Hot Leftovers Should Cool at Room Temperature

The Facts: What to do with leftovers? One common bromide is that leftovers stored in the refrigerator must be allowed to cool first at room temperature.

The reasoning behind the claim varies. One theory is that allowing food to cool at a slower rate reduces the likelihood that it will spoil. Another suggests that hot food can somehow interfere with the circulation of cold air in the refrigerator. The notion may have originated back when food was stored in iceboxes, and thus could not be too hot when put away.

Whatever the rationale, the claim is wrong. According to the Food and Drug Administration, leftover food (particularly meat) should be refrigerated immediately after serving, and certainly within two hours of cooking.

Food bacteria can double every 30 or 40 minutes, and several outbreaks of food poisoning have been linked to meat cooked and left to cool at room temperature for too long.

Generally, the bacteria that contaminate food thrive at temperatures between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit, so leftovers should always be stored in a refrigerator set at 40 degrees or below.

When the quantity of food is large, it should be separated into small containers for quicker cooling, and reheated no more than once.

The Bottom Line: It’s a bad idea to let food sit at room temperature before refrigerating.

'The Silent Sea'

This terrific 8-episode Korean sci-fi thriller made its debut on Netflix in late 2021 

and subsequently submerged such that I didn't make contact with it until a couple weeks ago.

Strikingly original and with a superb cast of Korean actors, I soon forgot I was watching 

with the aid of subtitles.

The wondrously rendered Korean moon base of the future, where the show is set,

is beautifully detailed and absorbing down to its tiniest details.

Highly recommended.

Beyoncé and Prince Live at the 46th Grammy Awards on February 8, 2004

Electric is an understatement.

Artvee

Browse and download high-resolution copies of classical and modern art in the public domain.

Free, the way we like it.

[via Kevin Kelly and Recomendo]

Sidewise Award for Alternate History

I've always loved alternate histories.

My first encounter with one was back when I was a boy, when LIFE or LOOK magazine featured a story entitled "If The South Had Won The Civil War."

I was in junior high or high school at the time and I remember being completely fascinated by this deeply thought out "what if?" piece.

Cut to this morning when I stumbled on the Wikipedia entry "Sidewise Award for Alternate History."

Wikipedia Overview:

..............................

Sideways Awards for Alternate History were established in 1995 to recognize the best alternate history stories and novels of the year.

The awards take their name from the 1934 short story "Sideways in Time" by Murray Leinster, in which a strange storm causes portions of Earth to swap places with their analogs from other timelines.

[Full disclosure: I just downloaded the story to my Kindle. You can too! But I digress.] 

The awards were created by Steven H. Silver, Evelyn C. Leeper, and Robert B. Schmunk. Over the years, the number of judges has fluctuated between three and eight, including judges from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and South Africa.

Two awards are normally presented each year, usually at WorldCon or NASFiC. The Short-Form award is presented to a work under 60,000 words in length. The Long-Form award is presented to a work or works longer than 60,000 words, which may include a single novel or a multi-volume series. The judges have four time also recognized an individual with a special achievement award in recognition of works published prior to the awards' inception or for other contributions to the genre.

..............................

Talk about the mother lode... there goes the rest of my life.

The Grandeur That Was Greece...

Above and below, a fourth-century B.C. gold Greek funerary wreath, believed to have been created by the master who forged the royal wreath of Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great.

The wreath, decorated with sprays of gold leaves and flowers inlaid with colored glass paste, was designed as a burial gift, probably shortly after the death of the Macedonian warrior-king Alexander the Great in 323 B.C.

The masterpiece was unearthed in the early 1990s and made its way via a labyrinthine path to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which in 2006 agreed to return it to Greece, which has maintained the work was illegally excavated in the province of Macedonia and then removed from the country.

Confessions of a Raisinets Eater

Only Wikipedia would cite them under "Chocolate-covered raisin."

"In the United States, they are also known as Raisinets."

Gimme a break!

I've been eating them since I was a little kid and I still love 'em.

They're a classic movie theater snack because a bag or box lasts forever, you get a zillion of them, and — bonus! — they're silent: no unwrapping/crackling noises/crunching sounds.

I tried the dark chocolate iteration last year since I prefer dark chocolate to milk but soon decided that dark chocolate Raisinets were a FAIL: that combination lacks the perfection of the original's combination of chewy and sweet.

Nowadays I keep mine chilled in the freezer until a good movie or game on TV rings my snack bell.

At stores everywhere.

Also at Amazon.

Your Face as a QR Code

But wait — there's more!

The more I learn about QR codes the more fascinating they seem to me.

A seemingly random array of tiny black and white squares can also serve as a pixelated display and at the same time be a gateway into internet space.

Wrote Kevin Kelly in Recomendo:

A lot of the dots in a QR code are superfluous, meaning that they can be arranged into a picture, and not just randomly.

Thus you can make the QR code into a picture.

QArt Coder is a website that will generate a QR code for a website you give it (say your homepage) using an image you give it (say your photo), yielding a QR code with a stylized image of you (or, say, a logo).

Short urls and small high contrast images work best.

Hold a phone's camera in front of it and it takes you to the website you linked it to.

Free, the way we like.

10 More Quotes That, On Occasion, May Prove Useful

See one, do one, be one.

The bleeding always stops.

It was over before it started.

Look at it in a quantum light.

Money is frozen desire. [James Buchan]

Coincidence is a glimpse of the scaffolding of reality.

The more you know, the less you need. [Australian Aboriginal saying]

A good surgeon never says "oops"; he says, "there." [Wiley F. Barker, M.D.]

A client's story never sounds better than the first time you hear it. [Unknown lawyer]

Love is giving something you don't have to someone who doesn't exist. [Jacques Lacan]

Internet Archive Design

It bills itself as "a digital archive of graphic design-related items."

It includes old font catalogs, logo handbooks, brochures, design yearbooks, visual display, handbooks for design machines, and graphic style guides — among many other things which you can peruse to your heart's content.

Curated by Valery Marier.

Free, the way we like it.

[via Kevin Kelly and Recomendo]

Experts' Expert: Picking a Christmas Tree

David Murbach was manager of gardens for developer Tishman Speyer.

As such, one of his responsibilities was choosing the giant, absolutely perfect Christmas tree which goes up in New York City's Rockefeller Center every November.

He scouted the nation — by helicopter — every year in order to find the very best living tree in the country.

You might consider him an expert on Christmas trees — I sure do.

Here is what he told Hannah Kate Kinnersley for her Wall Street Journal article on the subject of choosing a tree for your home.

1) Wait until two weeks before Christmas — or even less time — before buying your tree. "Trees dry out in hot interiors," Murbach told Kinnersley. He noted that though the Rockefeller Center tree indeed goes up a month or more before Christmas, "The Rockefeller tree is outside in the cold."

2) Don't look for a perfectly shaped tree. "It can be advantageous to get a tree with a flat side," he said, because "you can put it up against a wall to save space." [I would add that you can usually negotiate a better price for a tree that's misshapen.]

3) "Mr. Murbach buys his tree from a street vendor but measures the available space before picking it out, including room for a stand and a star on top," wrote Kinnersley. She continued, "... He asks the vendor to cut the trunk into a point, rather than flat, to expose more of it and help it drink. Sometimes he uses a handsaw to cut it a second time."

An ingenious and obvious (after you've read it) idea, to increase the surface area by creating multiple exposed surfaces where before there was only one.

International Cloud Atlas

From the website: 

Welcome to the official site of the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) International Cloud Atlas. 

This Atlas describes the classification system for clouds and meteorological phenomena used by all WMO Members. 

The classifications also describe meteorological meteors other than clouds – hydrometeors, lithometeors, photometeors, and electrometeors. 

The Atlas provides a common language to communicate cloud observations, and ensures consistency in reporting by observers around the world. 

It serves as a training tool for meteorologists, as well as for those working in aeronautical and maritime environments, and it has become popular with weather enthusiasts and cloud spotters.

We hope this website inspires

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?

bookofjoe's Favorite Thing: Peleponnese Olives

I'm a long-time olive lover, ever since I was a kid.

I only happened on Peleponnese brand olives after I moved from LA to Podunkville, Virginia in the early 1980s.

What a revelation and improvement over every other supermarket olive up to that time.

There are many varieties, oftimes differing between supermarkets in the same area.

Try 'em all!

But you say your Podunk town is so off the grid, these olives won't be appearing on store shelves anytime soon.

I hear you.

Guess what: you can too, right here!

If you're not completely satisfied, let me know and I will happily refund three times what you paid for them.

That's the bookofjoeWay©®.

FutureMe

Wrote Kevin Kelly on Recomendo: 

Send your future self a letter. 

Might be a prediction, a goal, or a letter about something that happened today you don't want to forget. 

For 23 years FutureMe has been forwarding letters into the future for free. 

You'll most likely forget you wrote one and getting a note years from now will be a wonderful surprise. "Thank you, today you!"

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?

Amazon Easter Egg: Japan Store

Who knew?

This is a sub-site dedicated to products from Japan.

Cookware, toys, gadgets, candy, stationary, clothing, beauty supplies, and much more, many products Prime-eligible.

Way better than trying to use Amazon Japan in English.

Fair warning: there goes the day (and your money)....

Two Pleonasms

 

"Genuine leather" and "tuna fish."

Now, the former is one everyone including the ghost of the late, great Fernando Lamas, will smile at but the latter gets into some sensitive third rail territory.

I would hazard a guess that at least 95% of American native English speakers say "tuna fish" as opposed to "tuna."

Personal Trainer Business Card

❤️

Experts' Expert — Rob Kaufelt on the world's 10 most intimidating cheeses

Kaufelt was the longtime owner-proprietor of Murray's Cheese in New York City, once named the world's best cheese store by Forbes magazine.

That may or may not still be true but in any event, he is a recognized authority on cheese.

He wrote "The Murray's Cheese Handbook."

It includes his list of the world's 10 scariest cheeses, which are:

1. Bleu de Termignon

2. Cabrales

3. Chiabro d'Henry

4. Evora

5. Pecorino di Fossa

6. Salers

7. Stanser Fladä

8. Stanser Schafchäs

9. Stinking Bishop

10. Tomme Vaudoise

A sample review (one of over 300) from the book:

Stinking Bishop

The name refers to a type of pear, not to an unwashed clergyman, alas. This puddle of cheese made by Charles Martell in Gloucestershire is washed in penny, a hard cider made from pears, before it is bound in a springy strip of beechwood. We serve it in a dish; you'll need to, because no plate can contain this steadily spreading mass. Heady, fruity, and all thick milkiness, the Bishop pairs well with a dry, lightly effervescent hard cider.

....................

The book costs $20.51 at Amazon.

A quarter-pound of Stinking Bishop cheese (pictured up top) is $15. 

'bookofjoe declared a National Disaster'

It happened on January 2, 2007, nearly 19 years ago.

You could look it up.

All The Cats, Explained

Res ipsa loquitur.

Wrote Kottke:

From MinuteEarth, a quick tour of all the different kinds of cats in the world — extinct, wild, and domesticated — and how they are related to each other. Some interesting facts I learned:

• The saber-toothed tiger was the largest cat to ever live and researchers now believe it had a short tail rather than a long one.

• There was an American cheetah. It was bigger than the cheetah we know today and “almost as fast”. It went extinct around the time humans showed up in North America.

• Leopards and snow leopards aren't actually that closely related.

• Domestic cats are mostly descended from wildcats (not to be confused with cats who are wild — wildcat refers to two specific species, the European wildcat (Felis silvestris) and the African wildcat (Felis lybica).

Wait a sec — what's that song I'm hearing?