Turducken

To the shops to get meat thermometer. Panic: is it too short to reach the the radius of a large turkey? I get a (longer-shafted) pizza oven thermometer which does, however, cover many more degrees and thus has much less accurate fine gradations.
Also kitchen thread, needle, and boning knife.

With global warming, John, the question is surely not "Is 2 degrees plus global warming if we do nothing certain?" but rather "Is there more than a 5% chance that 2 degrees plus global warming is coming if we do nothing?"
In view of the unequal balance of pro and con in the scientific community I'd find very it hard to say that the chance was less than 5%. If it's at or over 5%, that's warrant for strong action. In any case, I think the first step in any dispute over this is for some kind of numbers to be applied to statements of probabilities. What's your estimate?

Ponzi

There is a theme in the articles on Madoff of people asking where the 50 billion went to. With no actual knowledge on the details, isn't a classic Ponzi scheme largely redistributional, the money from new customers going out to old customers? You get the finagler's cut not so much by taking a percentage off the top as by heading off to Rio in the middle of the enterprise. A quick Excelling of a scheme where investors are paid 10%, there are no investment profits, there are no administration costs, and there's a constant flow coming in every year shows that the business goes into deficit in year 20. Anybody who's been in Madoff's funds for more than ten years has already broken even.

And on the financial front, isn't the problem with the boom pundits the same problem that comes up with Rudd's climate plans - the systematic downplaying of the possibility of low-probability catastrophic events in the belief that any such catastrophe is most unlikely to come along before the manager has taken his rewards and moved on? The chance of a total wipeout isn't factored in to anybody's structure of incentives.

Melbourne and Sydney may be lucky: we can always put a dyke across the heads. If we were Dutch we would have done it already.

Miller time

Has there in the history of the world been a worse decision than the choice of Frank Miller to bring The Spirit to the screen?

Though, to be fair, the Rudd decision to shoot for only a 5% carbon cut must come close.

Valentina Harris

The recipe I always use to sell people on the cookbooks of the incomparable Valentina Harris is this one, from Southern Italian Cooking;

Zucca Gialla alla Calabrese
Yellow Pumpkin with Mint and Capers

750g orange or yellow pumpkin [actually, what other colours of pumpkin are there?]
4 tablespoons coarse sea salt
500 ml (2 cups) sunflower oil [I generally use olive]
10 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons salted capers, well rinsed, dried, and finely chopped [but capers from a jar also work]
5 cloves garlic, chopped into slivers
5 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
8 tablespoons fine dry breadcrumbs

Arrange the pumpkin in a colander, sprinkled with salt. Put a weight on top and leave it to drain for an hour. [You can skip this bit, at a pinch]

Rinse and pat dry the pumpkin slices. Heat the oil till a small piece of bread dropped into it sizzles instantly. Fry the pumpkin for about four minutes on both sides, working with batches if necessary, then drain well on kitchen paper (paper towels).

Mix the olive oil and the vinegar with the capers, garlic, mint, and half the breadcrumbs. Arrange half the pumpkin in a dish and cover with half the dressing. Cover with another layer of pumpkin then cover with the remaining dressing. Press down firmly with your hands and cover with the remaining breadcrumbs. Leave to stand for a hour before serving.

This is classic Valentina because
1) it's reasonably easy;
2) it's very forgiving;
3) it's not something you would have thought off yourself, in a fit;
4) people are impressed by the improbability factor;
5) everybody likes it.

The strong flavours merge and blend till you can hardly pick them individually.

Zombie demography

Come to think of it, Zombie movies are surely inaccurate in their portrayal of flesh-eating mobs. When the graveyards gape and give forth their dead there must, actuarialy, be a higher proportion of the very old than is usually rendered. At least in the early days of the epidemic, there must be a near-majority of octogenarians, which you would think would be easier to deal with.

Other unanswered questions are
* what is the signal that inhibits zombies from eating other zombies?
* Could we synthesize it, thus enabling us to walk unhindered through the mob?
* Why doesn't the zombie effect affect animals? Except police dogs?
* given that what zombies actually want is brains, how do they get them without tools? I couldn't bite a skull open, and I'm not sure anybody could. It would be like trying to bite your way into a coconut (and have you ever tried to put two canine teeth marks on a person's neck? You have to practically dislocate your jaw).

Ideas for Movies that Need to be Recorded at the Exact Time You Think of them For Copyright Reasons

Zombie movie in which the dead are rising to attack the living. Set in an abortion clinic.

All Palin All the time

One comment has chiacked me for being obsessed with Sarah Palin, and having gone as far as looking at the teasers on Hustler's "Nailin' Palin" site I suppose I have to plead guilty. But in my defense (though this doesn't actually cover Hustler, to be sure) she is a character, in the Dickensian sense (or at least the Ricky Gervais sense) and those are rare, in politics or elsewhere. It's a combination of perkiness, verbal core dumps, and complete lack of consciousness of any limits.