Peterman's Eye

Around The World With Breakfast.

Sat, 25 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

I've gone to my farm in Kentucky for the weekend. It's a great place to relax, do a little hard physical labor, and forget about the rest of the world. If you don't have such a place, I highly suggest you get one. In the meantime, here are some breakfast foods from around the world. From: Foodbeast

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Reviving A Classic.

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

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Peterman's Choice*
The Perfect Citizen.

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

It’s a paranoid's dream.Shades of "Big Brother."Could this be a nefarious plot to spy on every citizen in the land?That's what some would have you believe. In case you haven't heard, The Wall Street Journal revealed less than a month ago this nugget:"The federal government is launching an expansive program dubbed 'Perfect Citizen' to detect cyber assaults on private companies and government agencies running such critical infrastructure as the electricity grid and nuclear-power plants, according to people familiar with the program."It may be a good thing, since just about every nuclear power plant, train station, subway system and local power company that now connects to the Internet, is employing an antiquated system. Ripe for an attack. "Cyber" is a prefix used to describe a person, thing, or idea as part of the computer and information age, and actually goes way back.Ancient Greece, naturally.Taken from kybernetes, Greek for "steersman" or "governor," it was first used in cybernetics.When Plato writes about the struggle between the “good person” and the “good citizen” in "The Last Days of Socrates," it seems to mean the same thing.What Perfect Citizen means in this program is open to interpretation. According to the same report, Raytheon was awarded a $100M contract and declined to elaborate.Krish Shetty, the CEO at Wiznucleus, a company that focuses on protecting nuclear power plants and power companies from cyber-assaults, says, "Protecting the aging utility infrastructure in the U.S. requires a risk-assessment for every plant and at every endpoint."What do we make of all this? The perfect answer is not required.

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Peterman's Choice*
The Geometry of Pasta.

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

The Perfect shape + The Perfect Sauce = "The Geometry of Pasta," a new book by Caz Hildebrand and Jacob Kenedy that focuses on an essential component of the perfect pasta dish. The shape.Over 350 in all. Every single one is different in form, consistency and color.Italians talk of "construction that satisfies the physical and the mental."There are thin solid cylinders, of course, in various sizes, that are perfect for thin sauces:Spaghetti Alla Marinara. But a chunkier sauce needs a swirl that holds as it travels from plate to mouth: Fusilli with tuna in mushroom sauce. Why are there hollow tubes? For stuffing. Ribbon pasta is flat and includes lasagna, fettuccine, and pappardelle.Let us not forget: Shells, corkscrews, wagon wheels, radiators, giant snales, tennis racquets, small ears, little thimbles, each looking for the perfect complimentary sauce.Discovery of a 4,000 year old perfectly preserved bowl of long thin yellow noodles unearthed in China indicates pasta may have originated there. Apicius, a Roman writer of the first century AD, describes a pasta made to enclose timballi and pies called "lagana." Pasta, which means paste, is made from a paste of flour and water.Leave it to the Italians to make that paste worthy of a sculpture in the Boboli Gardens.But we're still left to wonder, how all this edible geometry originated.Was it an Italian mother trying to get her children to "Mangia Mangia" by making little Butterflies?Or was it a frustrated "da Vinci" who played with dough at home? Or maybe Leonardo, himself?Which came first?A pasta that grabs? Or a pasta sauce that needs grabbing? Nobody exactly knows, but food historians say pasta shapes go back to at least the 15th century. We do know those shapes eventually resulted in pasta molds, where every Italian chef worth his bolognese had them.The Perfect shape + The Perfect Sauce = the Geometry of Pasta.Throw in the perfect community and we should definitely stir things up.

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Peterman's Choice*
Digging Deeper.

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

Was there ever a time when people sat on a beach and didn't try to push wet sand around until it resembled something?At least something they could recognize. Surely, the ancient Egyptians must have made sand models of the pyramids.A 14th century Orissan myth claims the poet Balaram Das built devotional sculptures from sand.During the middle ages, many Europeans avoided the ocean because they believed you could get the plague from the waters.Later, a genius convinced the British upper class that drinking saltwater was a good way to cure "windiness of the spirit" and other ailments. It got people going again; true, they were slightly dyspeptic, but they had a giant sandbox to take their aggressions out on.One of the first known references to what some of them were doing in the sand comes from an 1883 children’s book titled “Conversation of a father with His Children,” where the child asks to build the "sandcastle." Atlantic City, NJ in the late 19th century saw artists in bowler hats making sand sculptures, and spectators walking along the boardwalk throwing them tipsIn 1944 a hurricane demolished the sand dunes, which gave the city government an excuse to ban sand sculpting since it had become a distraction.But you might as well stop the tides.Today, mermaids and various renditions of the Sphinx, along with castles of every description, are still favorites.Just about every beachside resort town hosts at least one sand art contest. Even so, the real magic of sand lies in wait to be molded and shaped by gifted loners that know, with a shovel, a bucket and a few sand wedges, they can create a not so lasting monument.So what is it about spending all day on the biggest tower of sand the world had ever witnessed, adding tower upon tower, and then watching it all wash away with the tide?Is it a reminder of life's impermanence?Or is it this?“I watch a castle disappear in the sea.I’m glad it wasn’t me."(From a poet who wisely chose to be anonymous.) Or do we just like to play in wet sand?The Chicken and Egg mystery is finally cracked and I think this one is too.I vote for wet sand.

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Peterman's Choice*
The Soul of Wit.

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

"If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter."The line was so good that Franklin, Hemingway, Cicero, Voltaire, Mark Twain, and Blaise Pascal claimed credit. We do know that this came from Shakespeare's Hamlet, spoken by Polonius, which was ironic, because he was such a windbag:"...My liege, and madam, to expostulateWhat majesty should be, what duty is,Why day is day, night night, and time is time,Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,I will be brief: your noble son is mad:Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,What isn't but to be nothing else but mad? "Brevity. From the Latin brevitas:The quality or state of being brief in duration. Concise expression; terseness.William Strunk wrote the bible on brevity in “The Elements of Style.”"A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts."A thousand page novel may not be brief, but it can have brevity.A four page short story may have nothing to do with brevity.Then there was this cure for lack of brevity: John Coltrane, great as he was, was famous for his long saxophone solos. He said to Miles Davis, "I just can't stop playing." Miles said "try taking the horn out of your mouth."Brevity, mixed with the all important, levity.Especially welcome on a humid Friday. And then did I tell you about Operation Brevity? A limited offensive conducted in mid-May 1941, during the Western Desert Campaign of ...Wait...why is someone removing my laptop? I didn't even get around to wondering if these short attention span times are forcing too much brevity upon us? What would Polonius say?

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Peterman's Choice*
See you at the Astor.

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

You remember double features?Or maybe you don't. If you didn't like the feature, you had another movie that was sometimes better than the feature. And then you got the cartoon.A comedy short like The Three Stooges.A March of Time newsreel. And, an intermission. Block booking was a form of forcing theaters to buy B movies along with the so called A movies.It was great for directors like Val Lewton, James Whale, Joseph Lewis and Roger Corman, whose movies found a wider audience.In 1948, The U.S. Supreme Court decided the practice was illegal in United States v. Paramount Pictures Inc.Although the U.S. won, moviegoers may have lost. While theaters were no longer required to purchase movies, drive-ins continued the practice.Until people stopped driving in to drive-ins. Which brings us to the Astor, a classic, single-screen art-deco institution located in St Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia. Where you'll get an "utterly-delightful James Stewart double — a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon!""Two people who work at The Shop Around The Corner [PG] don't realise they are pen-pals — it's the first feature at 2 PM on Sunday, July 25. It is followed by It's A Wonderful Life [PG] about a man who thinks he's achieved nothing."July 29 pairs "The Losers" [M] with this year's big Oscar winner, Kathryn Bigelow's "The Hurt Locker" [MA 15+].Lest you think this is just a theater living in the past, they're also film historians that happen to be technically advanced."Jour de Fête" was intended to be seen in a brilliant French color system known as Thomson Color, but director (and star) Jacque Tati, playing it safe, also shot it in black and white at the same time—which was the way the public saw it.The Astor was able to show it as originally intended.As they did with "Gone With The Wind" and "Ryan's Daughter," restoring them to new life by the use of a new printing procedure they and Chapel Distribution pioneered.After you see your double feature, you'll greet the 18 year-old white and ginger cat called Marzipan (who's on Facebook) in the lobby.She'll be sitting regally on one of the couches, waiting for the patrons to pet her as they leave the cinema. I seem to recall a parlor game, where the idea was to put two movies together, that just, well sort of told a story.One of the best was pairing “What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?” with “She’s working her way through College.”Go ahead, give it a try.

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Well, Technically Speaking...

Sat, 18 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

I've gone to my farm in Kentucky for the weekend. It's a great place to relax, do a little hard physical labor, and forget about the rest of the world. If you don't have such a place, I highly suggest you get one.In the meantime, how many of these stories did you already know?See you on Monday.PetermanFrom: TopTenz

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How Current is Your Currency?

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

I've gone to my farm in Kentucky for the weekend. It's a great place to relax, do a little hard physical labor, and forget about the rest of the world. If you don't have such a place, I highly suggest you get one.In the meantime, how is your coin collection coming along?See you on Monday.PetermanFrom: The Week

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Wave Of The Open Sea.

Thu, 16 May 2013 21:00:00 PDT

Archaeologists, geologists, and scholars are hotly debating whether Sardinia is the lost city of Atlantis. If only they can find the Pillars of Hercules. First mentioned by Plato in 360 BCE , he wrote about a civilized island lost from what we now know to be a tsunami. Today the island is alive and well with the highest concentration of centenarians per capita.

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Peterman's Eye

Around The World With Breakfast.

Reviving A Classic.

Peterman's Choice* The Perfect Citizen.

Peterman's Choice* The Geometry of Pasta.

Peterman's Choice* Digging Deeper.

Peterman's Choice* The Soul of Wit.

Peterman's Choice* See you at the Astor.

Well, Technically Speaking...

How Current is Your Currency?

Wave Of The Open Sea.

Peterman's Choice*
The Perfect Citizen.

Peterman's Choice*
The Geometry of Pasta.

Peterman's Choice*
Digging Deeper.

Peterman's Choice*
The Soul of Wit.

Peterman's Choice*
See you at the Astor.