Brazilian Style Rice

I love this rice. It is tasty and it is reasonably quick to make and it makes me feel artistic when I make it (which I do often) and on top of those virtues it is almost fool proof. I’m qualified to say this because I am a fool and I have never ever been able to cook a satisfying dish of Uncle Ben’s Instant Rice. It is a grave disappointment to me, always and without fail. I don’t even try anymore.

For this adventure you will need some Basmati or Jasmine white rice, a one quart or larger sauce pan with tight-fitting top, less than a teaspoon of olive oil, a small strainer and water in a 2:1 ratio. Always 2:1.

Put olive oil in saucepan over lowest setting on your stove. Swirl it to cover. Pour given amount of rice into strainer and rinse with cold water. Let it drain and while it is draining return to the sauce pan and test the temperature of the olive oil. Test it by flicking a few drops of cold water into the center of the saucepan. If it sizzles and gases off the oil is at the right temperature. Immediately grab your draining strainer give it one more shake (you guys will understand) and dump it into the pan and stir. Stir it lightly (this isn’t waffle batter) and when the rice has been coated with the oil and become shiny it will suddenly brighten. At this point add your water in the prescribed 2:1 ratio. Stir it a bit and bring the mixture to a boil uncovered. When it boils, cover it and turn down the heat to the lowest setting on your stove. Do something else for fifteen minutes. When you return turn off the heat and give the rice a stir. It will be lumpy and sticky. That is just part of the process so don’t sweat that. Cover it back up and do something else for five minutes. When you return you will have a pan full of the most delectable nutty-tasting rice. Gone are the lumps and the stickiness. Enjoy! Don’t waste money on a rice cooker. They cause the user to engage in mindless non-artistic pursuits and they transfer money out of our economy.

Anyone Order a Bomb?

      Thursday ’s lawful and peaceful #blacklivesmatter demonstration in Dallas marked a technical ‘advance’ in policing of lawful peaceful demonstrations. After watching this from my safe perch in the Santa Ana Mountains I am not sure we want to continue on this path in the use of violence. I am bothered by the use of the robot-delivered bomb by DPD to end the violence. I certainly believe that the shooter certainly did a terrible deed many times over and he really have been prosecuted.. I just wonder about the method used to bring him to heel. I am not dismayed that the guy is dead. I wish he had survived so he could be tried for the crimes the government would have alleged against him had he survived. I would not have been upset if he had been killed by a sniper with what is essentially a hunting rifle. Given what the shooter was up to i.e. killing people, pitting sniper against sniper seems a reasonably tailored use of deadly force to end the ongoing situation.

      But the means of delivery of deadly force was quite unusual. Essentially the government built an IED an Improvised Explosive Device. They called Amazon and had it delivered by drone to the intended target. Well it really wasn’t a drone because it was land based and as far as I know Amazon wasn’t involved. But that doesn’t change the fact that they sent the fellow the bomb via a robot. People in Dallas were terrified and I don’t blame them. I don’t live in Dallas so I wasn’t terrified per se. To me the massacre was “another one just like the other one.” The other one having occurred only days before. There is a pattern emerging, gun violence is happening on a weekly basis. More people are getting guns and more people are dying. Is that connection so hard for us to make and understand? Okay let’s put that issue aside and let me try to explain why and on what levels the use of the robot bothers me.

      Let me state initially that I am a science fiction buff. So when I heard that they used a robot to deliver the bomb my ears stood up in coyote fashion. Robots were the cool thing of science fiction. The genre deals with weighty issues. One of the early and oft repeated issues getting the attention of scfi authors was the then infant science of robotics. Scifi’s fascination with robotics finally culminated in the perfect android, Lt Cdr Data of the StarTrek franchise. Along the way scifi authors created a code of conduct that bound that nascent science and the robots it created. The problem the roboticists was basically how do you prevent something smarter and stronger than you from taking over the society and even exterminating or enslaving that society?. The solution that developed in the literature pretty much said robots had to do what their human masters told them. This was subject to the overriding rule that no robot could ever cause harm to a human being under any circumstances whatsoever. This was the prime directive of robotics.

      The use of the robot-delivered bomb in Dallas certainly violated that prime directive that the robot must never harm a human being. When it did what it was told to do, deliver the bomb it killed the shooter pretty much by splattering him up against wall. That was certainly a violent act. I don’t think there can be much serious argument about that. That’s what IEDs do. Perhaps that’s the issue I am dealing with. The technology of robotics has developed to the point that it is no longer necessary to kill the malefactor with a rifle or a robot. Just recently I read a note about a similar robot being used to deliver sleepy time gases to a fellow barricading himself. He was gassed with the robot, he went sleepy time and was captured. Well now that seems like a good outcome to me. We get to put the alleged malefactor on trial to see if we can punish him. We could let his guilt be decided by the conscience of the community a petit jury. Speaking as a lawyer that is the preferred outcome of these things.

      It’s been reported that the Dallas PD obtained the robot from the US defense department under a program through which surplus or outmoded military physical assets are released on favorable terms to local law enforcement. That program is a major factor in the increased militarization of local law enforcement agencies. Militarization of local law enforcement is a big issue in large metropolitan areas such as Dallas. Law enforcement in that context acts like an occupying army in those cities which have had their police departments militarized. The government assures us the robot was not intended to be an anti-personnel asset. Somehow that assurance isn’t very comforting to me or I think to the people of Dallas or any large city.

 

      Now this morning the malefactor is dead and the area sanitized so that no one will remember any of this in the coming weeks or months until we are visited by another malefactor. We have to decide what to do about all this before it is too late. There are those who offer “thoughts and prayers” which of course do nothing to solve the problem of violence and America’s first choice to remedy violence. Something else that does nothing except create more violence are the ridiculously insane calls for more guns. More guns as we have seen means more death and destruction. It is time to deal with this nonsense and put it to rest.

Long Time No See

     It's been well over a year since I've posted anything to this blog. I admit that I'm naturally inclined towards sloth. While  that isn't the entire reason for my failure to post  it is a large part. The rest of this post explains the other reasons.
     One reason for not posting is that I am an old angry gay white guy of Iberian-Basque-Celtic ancestry and each day I keep discovering more stuff for me to be angry about. It has kept me really busy.
      Another is my recent health history dealing with an orphan auto-immune neurological condition called  Myasthenia Gravis or MG for short. It is an orphan disease because it affects only 7 or 8 people per hundred thousand of the general population. So there isn't much interest in a cure. The pharmaceutical industry however has great interest in selling drugs especially palliative drugs for chronic conditions. There is only one palliative drug (and its generic form) on the market for MG and it isn't very effective at controlling the condition's effect on neuro-muscular function and it is pretty toxic, at least to me.
     Then came  the other diagnosis: another cancer had invaded my body. This was colon cancer. There was a partial blockage of my transverse colon. I was pretty much thunder struck. I had feared such a cancer since I was an 8 year old boy when my mother's friend was diagnosed with it in her descending colon (very bad). She had a colectomy and a colostomy and did live on into her 90s another fifty plus years. I didn't have that extensive a surgery and I managed to survive not only the surgery but also six months of chemotherapy. Chemo is not fun although I did drop from almost 220 pounds to 175 pounds. It is a diet to be avoided. I now have stretch marks but I have no visible surgical scar. For whatever that's worth.
     Happily I am in remission from both of my cancers. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2011. I treated it aggressively with radical surgery. I finished my chemo for the colon cancer in the middle of January and I'm now recovering from the damage chemo did to my body. My oncologist said recovery may take a year or more since chemo affects every organ system in your body from the top of your head to the soles of your feet.
     I survived this thanks to the chemo nurses who were just incredible, my physicians who were wonderful and who showed no signs of any god complex and my friends who hauled my butt from doctor to doctor and treatment to treatment (Myasthenia doesn't allow me to drive) and who took care of most of my needs during those six months. My friends also seemed to understand that I am the kind of person who when sick retreats to the very back part of his personal cave and tries to sleep off the sickness. It's no exaggeration that during that period I was sleeping 16-18 hours every day.
      Another thing: Cannabis really does have therapeutic value in spite of what the DEA says to the world. The DEA should be abolished but that's not about to happen, so I would just as happily see the DEA stop practicing medicine. So to recap I got through this part of my life due to the care of my healthcare providers, the love of my friends, lots of sleep and a good quantity of medical mota.
     Next thing up for discussion is why I am an old angry gay white guy

Post SOTU Letter to My Congress Critter--Mimi Walters

Dear Representative Walters:

First I must extend to you my congratulations on your election to and service in the 114^th Congress of the United States. I hope you serve well and honorably and do well by your constituents and by the Nation.

I watched the SOTU last night and I was impressed not just with the President's presentation but also by the dignity exhibited by your caucus. Your Members were for the most part dignified and pretty well behaved given their behavior in recent prior years.

What I am bothered about is that the Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader have taken upon themselves to wander off into the political territory generally occupied by Article 2 of our Constitution e

xecuting the powers of the Executive. I fully understand that the House and the Senate exercise lawful control over the Hill and it is within its rights to invite whomever it wishes to invite to speak to it. However such invitations should have at least some governmental and public purpose to them and the consequent disruption of their primary purpose, providing for the legislative governance of the Nation. The invitation extended to the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamen Netanyahu seems totally devoid of any public purpose or to accomplish anything of benefit given the duty of the Congress to work towards not only protecting the “state of the union” but also furthering the Founders' purpose of ensuring a “more perfect” one.

Mr. Netanyahu is regarded by many intelligent and thoughtful people both in and outside government to be a terrorist and a practitioner of state sanctioned terrorism. One only needs to recall the events between Israel and Gaza during the past year to recall acts of barbarism and terrorism on his part.

For Mr. Boehner and Mr. McConnell to invite Netanyahu to address the Congress for no good reason other than to embarrass the President of the United States is truly beyond the pale constitutionally and gives at least tacit support to the wrongful acts of Israel and its prime minister. I urge you to publicly disavow the action of your leaders.

Sincerely,

Butchering Inconvenient People

Last night I watched a real union thug, not the imaginary ones invented by GOP politicians, on MSNBC defend the murder of a twelve year old boy cut down by other thugs for hanging out in a public park and doing things that twelve year old boys do and have done for millenia, going on imaginary adventures.

The 'union thug' was Jeffrey Follmer who is the president of the Cleveland PD's patrolman protective association and himself a low ranking patrol officer for the that city's police department. This is the same Cleveland that the US Department of Justice has strongly criticized as having a policy of deadly force use so terrible that the DOJ wants to have a receiver appointed by the federal courts to run that department. The DOJ inquiry was itself invited by the mayor of Cleveland who himself is horrified by the policies of his own police department. Apparently Follmer has great support within the department.

Thug Follmer's claim to fame is that he was infuriated by the Cleveland NFL franchise and he had demanded an apology for players wearing tee shirts supportive of Tamir Rice and John Crawford, twelve and twenty-two years of age respectively who were gunned down by Ohio “peace officers” who did not even make pro forma attempts to contact Tamir or Crawford before executing them. Their first and only contact with these two was to fire bullets into their bodies. Both were described only by the 'citizen informants' as black males in possession of guns. Apparently those officers knew (or thought they knew) all that was necessary to find them guilty of being scary dangerous people. It is apparently open season on black males in Ohio. Interaction between police in Ohio and black citizens is almost uniformly fatal to black males. So much for Equal Protection of the Law.

Bolt Guns as Euthanasia

More information has come to light on the slaughter and butchering of Marius the young healthy giraffe killed Sunday by the Copenhagen Zoo in order to protect the genetic purity of its herd of giraffes. The Zoo contends in its defense that this final solution was necessary to ensure he didn't pass his genes on later generations. The Zoo claims that Marius was euthanized. However it has come to light that he was 'euthanized' by the use of a device called variously a bolt gun and a captive bolt gun. The latter is more descriptive of the process of 'euthanizing' the soon to be dead creature. The captive bolt gun does not actually kill its victim. It is analogous to the use of a sledge hammer. It does not shoot anything into the brain, the bolt is held captive by the gun and is reused again and again.

The gun was invented in 1903 and is used in slaughterhouses to stun and concuss the animal before it is skinned and dismembered. The device is powered by either compressed gas or by a blank set off by a firing pin which slams a bolt toward the forehead of the creature being turned into hamburger or in this case lion food. It does not kill the creature it merely causes a skull fracture and a consequent concussion and a lack of consciousness.

In simple English what this means is Marius was hit in the forehead by a piece of metal hard enough to cause him to black out or simply to see stars, we don't know which since this device has not yet been tested on the director of the Copenhagen Zoo. Immediately thereafter and presumably while still alive Marius was skinned and the process of butchering him begun. I am amazed at the abuse of the English language that occurs when this process is called euthanasia.

Butchering an Inconvenient Giraffe

“Marius, a healthy 2-year-old male giraffe living at the Copenhagen Zoo has been euthanized; his body cut up and fed to the lions” so wrote National Public Radio this morning on its website. Those are pretty shocking words to hear or read. Euthanized? Really? What on earth was good about this death? That was a totally inappropriate word to use about this horrible event. The animal was killed. That animal was killed impliedly in public view of spectators and television cameras according to the author of the article. The giraffe was then skinned and butchered and fed to the Zoo's lion pride. I wonder if the Zoo was crass enough to sell tickets to this savage spectacle.

According to the article there was no room in the herd for this beautiful creature. They didn't want to give him away or lend him to some other zoo. They turned down offers to care for the creature. They turned down an offer from an undisclosed private person to pay the zoo almost seven hundred thousand dollars for the creature. That may or may not have a good decision. However declining that offer did not leave the Copenhagen Zoo with no alternatives other than slaughtering and butchering the animal for the benefit of the Zoo's lion pride. The justifications for the slaughter of the giraffe urged by the Copenhagen Zoo are almost laughable though. Preservation of the integrity of the gene pool could have been accomplished simply by excising the creature's testicles or otherwise preventing him from breeding. Removing him from the Zoo's herd and still preserving genetic diversity could have been accomplished simply by transferring it intact to another facility where his genes could be passed into another genetic pool. That would preserve some amount of diversity in the pool and prevent the donee institution from perhaps slaughtering one of its giraffes for the reasons urger in Copenhagen.

After reading the article and comments of Zoo management I am left with the feeling that this creature was slaughtered and butchered simply for the convenience of the Zoo or that the Zookeeper is truly a psychopathic personalty.