Good Fortunes
Good Fortunes
A mountain of fortune cookies
For a feast.
Cracking one then another
All good.
One then another
All bad.
You have missed
The real meal.
Bob Schwartz
Category: Food
November 20, 2016
November 9, 2016
Sweet Things Happened on Election Day Too
Eight dozen cupcakes were baked, filled and decorated here on Election Day, having nothing to do with Election Day. Lemon, red velvet, chocolate raspberry, etc. Sweet things from the heart happened and will continue to happen. (They are delicious!)
September 29, 2016
Music of Other Tables
Music of Other Tables
Half listen so
Duets from other tables
Are sounds minus meaning
Words to notes
Scales of breakfast
And lives.
September 9, 2016
Govern a nation as you would fry a small fish
A message to candidates and voters from the Tao Te Ching. It is the first line of chapter 60, in various translations. Please read and feel free to interpret as you like. Comments are welcome.
If I were moderating a presidential debate, I would simply recite this line and ask Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump what this means to them. What illuminating fun that would be.
Govern a nation as you would fry a small fish.
Directing the flow of affairs of a large country
Is like cooking a small fresh fish.
Govern great nations
like frying small fish.
Ruling a large country is like cooking a small fish.
September 2, 2016
Taco Trucks on Every Corner. Pizza Shops Too.
Latinos for Trump founder Marco Gutierrez said yesterday “My culture is a very dominant culture. And it’s imposing, and it’s causing problems. If you don’t do something about it, you’re going to have taco trucks on every corner.”
This was meant as a comment on immigration, not food. Without going into the complexities of immigration or the bizarre backwardness/cluelessness/meanness of the Trump campaign, it does make you think about the connection.
If we had done something about the Italians (and we tried) maybe we wouldn’t have pizza shops on every block. Same for the Chinese and Chinese restaurants. Same for Eastern European Jews and bagel shops. And so on.
We do have pizza shops and/or Chinese restaurants and/or bagel shops on many blocks, even in the smallest towns. Taco and burrito shops too. We are better for it. This probably doesn’t tell us how to deal with the very difficult issue of immigration. But it does tell us something about America and American values and American culture. Just as the remark by Gutierrez tells us something hard to digest about Trump and some of his followers.
May 1, 2016
Stale Donuts: What I Share with Ted Cruz
This is a true and inconsequential story.
I may not be as smart as Ted Cruz. But he and I share something important.
Ted has said he loves donuts. I love donuts.
Donuts get stale, somewhat quickly. Donut lovers devise ways to freshen stale donuts.
On the campaign trail, Ted has talked about refreshing stale donuts (really). He says he puts them in a microwave for 12 seconds.
I also have a technique for refreshing stale donuts. I put them in a microwave for 10 seconds. (Too much microwaving can destroy their delicate texture.)
So while he and I share this love, we disagree slightly on this. We have bigger disagreements on other matters, of course.
I did not clerk for a Supreme Court Justice. I am not running for President. Etc. So maybe Ted’s 12 seconds are better than my 10 seconds. If you’d like, you can try it for yourself.
April 24, 2016
Matzo: Dealing with Eating the Bread of Affliction
Matzo is referred to as “the bread of affliction,” symbolizing the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, who didn’t have time to allow the bread to rise as they fled through the wilderness. Talk about flatbread, this is the ultimate.
If you are observing the Passover and avoiding bread for the next week, or even if you’re not, some thoughts about eating matzo.
- Put away the toaster. Save the counter space. You won’t need it for bread. And you can’t toast matzo. Even if you could, it would slip through the slot.
- Make matzo brei for breakfast. Matzo brei is kind of a cross between pancakes and French toast, made by soaking matzo in water, mixing it with eggs, and cooking it in a frying pan. Delicious all year round. You don’t have to Jewish and it doesn’t have to be Passover.
- Try all the varieties of matzo, or at least the ones that don’t seem a little extreme (Organic Spelt, I’m looking at you). Once upon a time there was only plain matzo, just like there used to be plain white bread. Now everything is mixed in: Egg, Yolk-Free, Egg and Onion, Spelt, Mediterranean, Whole Wheat, Garlic and Rosemary, and Everything (which actually doesn’t have everything, just garlic, onion and poppy seeds. Go figure.)
- Don’t try to make sandwiches. At the seder, the tradition is to eat a tiny sandwich of horseradish and haroset (a sweet paste representing the mortar of the building the Jews slaved on) between two pieces of matzo. The great sage Hillel supposedly created this sandwich, and his name is attached to it. Even this tiny sandwich throws matzo crumbs all over the place. A full-size matzo sandwich is not a good idea. No matter how wise Hillel was.
Happy Passover.
March 27, 2016
Outsmarting a Coffee Machine
When I arrive at my hotel room, I find a very modern coffee machine. Very smart. It tells me to place the coffee pod in its holder. Close the lid. Another lid opens to accept water. Pour in water and close that lid. Place the cup on the pedestal, which it then knows is in place. Press the brew button. And in a matter of seconds, hot coffee.
But what if I just want hot water? Then I have to outsmart it. When it directs me to place the coffee pod in its holder, I don’t. I just pretend. I put the water in the tank, put the cup in place, and proceed as if what I want, what I am expecting, is a cup of coffee. What it gives me instead, what I want instead, is simply a cup of hot water. Which I can then use for any of the things you can do with hot water. Such as making a cup of tea with a teabag.
The machine is smart. Or I am smart. The machine is stupid. Or I am stupid.
Have a cup of tea.
Zhaozhou’s Cup of Tea
(Koan 233 of Zen Master Dogen’s Three Hundred Koans)
MAIN CASE
Zhaozhou asked a newly arrived monk, “Have you been here before?”
The monk said, “Yes, I have been here.”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
Later he asked another monk, “Have you been here before?”
The monk said, “No, I haven’t been here.”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
The monastery director then asked Zhaozhou, “Aside from the one who has been here, why did you say ‘Have a cup of tea’ to the one who had not been here?”
Zhaozhou said, “Director.”
The director responded, “Yes?”
Zhaozhou said, “Have a cup of tea.”
COMMENTARY
In the real truth, there is no other thing that is present. In worldly truth, the ten thousand things are always present. We should clearly understand that real truth and worldly truth are nondual and that this, in and of itself, is the highest meaning of the holy truths.
The monastery director was lost in the differences between the two monks, so Zhaozhou moved in all directions at once to help him see it. If you go to the words to understand this, you will miss it. If, however, you see into it directly, it will be like the bottom falling out of a bucket. Nothing remains. How do you see into it directly? Have a cup of tea.
July 30, 2015
Samsung’s Fruit Identity Crisis
Samsung wants to be an apple. What it fails to understand is that it was on its way to being a banana: basic, useful, nutritious, delicious—and ultimately way more interesting and even sexier than an apple.
Instead, it tried to be a bunch of different fruits, bigger and smaller, adding and subtracting features and flavors. In the end, it’s like one of those odd and unusual fruits that you see in Whole Foods but don’t know the name of, and don’t care because you pretty much still prefer bananas.
Okay, that’s not their only problem. They developed durable devices that worked better than well and didn’t really need replacement very often. (Apple solved this problem by convincing its tribe to switch from Fuji to Golden Delicious to Jonathan, even though they were still and all just the same fruit. Samsung couldn’t get away with this.) Samsung eliminated core features that people really liked, such as slots for a memory card. On top of that, Samsung has to deal with having a mediated channel, where wireless providers are still the last marketer and last link between them and the consumer. The feelings of most digital consumers towards their digital service providers range from frustrated tolerance to outright disgust. So having those companies as your “salespeople” is never going to be ideal.
There may not be a good solution for Samsung, at least not one that will maintain their thwarted expectations of ever-increasing sales and profits. But one thing they might do is stop thinking about apples and start thinking about why and how much people really love bananas.
May 6, 2014
Honeywell Kitchen Computer and the Delights of Old Tech
Some people love old cars. Others of us delight in old digital tech.
We are not alone. The latest episode of Mad Men on AMC includes the installation of a computer at the agency. And the new AMC series Halt and Catch Fire is (coincidentally?) about the early days of personal computing. (Halt and Catch Fire is a real/apocryphal/funny code instruction that might send a computer into an endless loop, resulting in its ultimately stopping or bursting into flames.)
This is a page from the Neiman-Marcus Christmas 1969 catalog. The impeccably dressed N-M housewife is standing next to what appears to be an unusual table, but is actually the Honeywell Kitchen computer, which can be purchased for $10,000. (The apron will cost you another $28.) “If she can only cook as well as Honeywell can compute.” Indeed.
Here is something completely different from the era, prophetic rather than silly. It is Isaac Asimov, a science fiction great, advertising Radio Shack’s TRS-80.
Note that in the spirit of what goes around comes around, this is a pocket computer almost exactly the size of a smartphone—or is a smartphone a pocket computer exactly the size of a TRS-80? Either way, Neiman-Marcus and Honeywell were clueless, but Asimov and Radio Shack were not.
That would be a pretty good close for this post. Except that the following ad is irresistible, telling us something else about the early days of computing.
Just as cars were, and to some extent still are, sold by using sex, sometimes so were computers. This is an ad for a plotter, possibly the least sexy of all peripherals. The copy is mostly bone-dry and technical. But then there’s the trio of the model with her dress open to her navel, the headline “New, Fast, and Efficient!”, and the lead “The TSP-212 Plotting System is a real swinger.” $3,300 COMPLETE. Well, almost complete, as the model is presumably not included. But you know, that cool plotter just might attract one.
