by ·Comments Off on Picking Sides

Fielding Mellish: Are we fighting for or against the Government?

CIA operative: CIA is not taking any chances this time. Some of use are for and some of us are going to be against them.

The US have a rather poor record of picking sides, when it comes to dictator-sponsoring. Sure, they could do worse: like France’s Foreign Minister, who assured Mr. Ben Ali of her enduring friendship (along with offer of police back-up)… a mere two days before the Tunisian people drove him out of the country for good. A comically bad timing.

Not long before they opted for an altogether different approach to democracy-spreadin’, the United States used to have nothing but kind words for their good Iraqi friend, Mr. Hussein: shining beacon of containment, if not stability, in the Middle East. Containment made all the more necessary by the fresh return of Mr. Khomeini to Iran, where the people were oddly pissed at the United States for blatantly overthrowing their previous, democratically-elected, government in order to back their own puppet-dictator…

By comparison, I guess a few decades of murder, military coups and oppression by proxy in half of Latin America is a mixed diplomatic bag for the US. At least they managed to keep Pinochet in place longer than Baptista. And, while their success rate on backing a stable dictatorship in Bolivia was only slightly above average, they certainly get extra points in creativity for enlisting a notorious nazi war criminal to help them along the way1nothing beats the know-how of an infamously sadistic Gestapo officer, when it comes to fighting communist insurgents.

Back to our Winter of 2011, where increasingly degrading global economic conditions provide the proverbial straw to the Middle-Eastern camel’s back, sending it to the street2those same economic woes that prompted Western countries to reach for the lube while bending over in front of Goldman Sachs. For the Department of State, Tunisia was a thankfully low-stake gamble: sure, Ben Ali was a model of stable, affably-corrupt, anti-islamist3In our post-cold-war days, “anti-islamist” is the new “anti-communist” magic label that gets you US backing and CIA funding. dictator, but Tunisia wasn’t exactly a central piece of their Middle-East strategy. And with Club-Meds as its main natural resource, Halliburton wasn’t rushing at the door either. So it did not take much to release reasonably non-commital statements in support of “the will of the people”, when the chances of said people appeared to raise slightly above your average strangled-at-birth democratic uprising.

For Egypt, Mrs. Clinton was considerably more restrained in extolling the virtues of democracy. At first suitably neutral (aka “I understand your inspirations… but why must we use violence to settle this? Can’t you people wait another couple decades for a peaceful transition to democracy?”), and progressively more assertive as the situation evolves (but never more than the strict minimum), on the off-chance that she might have to woe Mubarak’s successor in a not-too-distant future. Because if you think the US doesn’t know when to drop a losing horse, you should ask Imelda how long it took Ronnie to erase her husband’s number from the White House speed-dial, when the wind started turning.

Perhaps most surprising (and somewhat hopeful) about the ongoing events in Egypt, is the apparent detachment of the army from Mubarak: not a week ago, every single analyst assured us that Mubarak could rely on the indefectible support of his military, ensuring that no movement could be taken beyond a certain point. In reality, it currently seems like the army might soon join in on the demand for him to step down (remains to be proven what role they would play in the immediate aftermath)…

Anyway, if Egypt pulls this off after Tunisia, I can think of quite a few pet dictators in the region that will start worrying for their job.

by ·Comments Off on Science Politics

Hearing the details of the submission strategy for our next publication, feels like attending a mob meeting.

My advisor is the hidden son of Sun Tzu raised by Machiavel.

by ·Comments Off on Un momento… Estoy hablando japonés!


(context here, if you have never seen the original movie)

Yesterday, a friend emailed me about a New Year Party thrown by some friends of hers. I hastily misread the description of said friends from 狂言 (きょうげん: stage actors) to 狂信 (きょうしん: religious fanatics) and was, understandably, slightly less excited by the prospect than I should have been.

I could of course play that silly anecdote as yet another illustration of my terminally inept Japanese skills. But in the end, even though I had to quickly look up 狂信, the fact I instinctively knew its reading and felt confident enough to make that mistake makes me feel surprisingly happy about the shape of my Japanese.

About 8 years ago, I decided to learn Japanese. Or more exactly: I hurriedly learnt a dozen Japanese words, fragments of grammar and notions of kana reading, landed in Japan, promptly got drowned in an ocean of linguistic helplessness, then decided that, one day, a visit to my local bank would not turn into low-grade stand-up comedy (at my expense).

When you think about it, 8 years is a pathetically long time for someone who still can’t read a newspaper without a dictionary (and lots of spare time)… Slightly less shameful, I guess, if you account for my constantly travelling back and forth over that period. Also: while I have come to appreciate countless aspects of Japanese culture and developed a perverted obsession with matters of kanji writing, I did not grow up obsessed with Japan. I never had a strong personal interest in learning this particular language (or living here, for that matter) and might just as happily have taken on Russian (maybe will, who knows). It slowly grew from a mix of absolute happenstance, necessity, frustration and stubbornness when confronted with near-impossible challenges (yes: I am the kind of asshole who will devote a sizable share of a decade to learning a language, just because: fuck-it-I-can-do-it).

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by ·Comments Off on Experimental Bakingstry

It is no secret that I like to cook and bake. I have even posted a few recipes here in the past, ranging from Agedashi Tofu to Mango Chutney Pork Chops and Squirrel Melba.

As any sane person would, I blatantly ignore measurement recommendations in recipes. Except when cakes or pastries are involved. Baking is a much different job from regular entree cooking. If entree cooking was engineering: intuitive, reliable and practicable by a trained monkey1Just kidding Engineering M.Sc. friends, we still need you., baking would be much more like chemistry: finicky, unpredictable and liable to poison you if something goes wrong.

Baking is tough, and in a continuous effort to make me more marketable on the 40-to-50-year-old Japanese dating scene, I have been striving to improve my skills. Sometimes with helpful professional tips from friends, but most often through trial and error. Which is where the present entry comes in:

Being a scientist with early-onset Alzheimer and lingering ADD, I need to record the results of my culinary experiments lest I endlessly repeat the same mistakes and end up losing my entire roster of lab-test guinea pigs friends, to food poisoning. After toying with a few different solutions for the 21st-century housewife (from short-lived handwritten notes to mind-boggingly annoying “recipe sharing” websites), I settled, as I usually do, for the easy way: piling it on that shapeless clutter of random notes and pointless observations that we call a blog.

All that to say: the notes below are hardly proper recipes, more like experimental reports and notes for future experiments. No details and how-to’s: only list of ingredients, measurement corrections and fatal mistakes to be avoided. You might find them somewhat useful, but they are mostly addressed to future me and his elusive quest for the perfect chocolate mousse. Feel free to peruse, but don’t say you weren’t warned.

Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

  • 200g extra-dark chocolate2In chocolate as in crack-cocaine, never go with less than 70% pure..
  • 100g butter (no more).
  • Shot-glass worth of strong brewed coffee.
  • 5 egg whites, 3 to 4 egg yolks (can use all 5 egg yolks but will result in runnier, stickier mousse).
  • 60g sugar (not 200g, for chrissake).
  • Rum
  • Few drops of vanilla extract

Notes:

  • Essentially based on Julia Child’s already quite awesome recipe, with a few crucial changes: her recommended sugar dosage will kill all diabetics in a 100km radius, if they haven’t keeled over from the massive butter-induced heart attack.
  • Whisk the crap out of egg yolks+sugar+rum (electric egg-beater for the win): makes the result less runny.
  • Dash of lemon juice (/cream of tartar) to whisk egg whites, pinch of salt at the end to retain consistency. Yay for high school chemistry.
  • Get chocolate as cold as possible (but still liquid and smooth) before mixing to egg whites: ice-cube bain-marie.
  • Special extra-sex food-porn edition: tiny ultra-dark-bitter-chocolate specks or candied orange zest.

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest cake)

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