Ogblog

I wish I could make this stuff up.

This recipe comes courtesy of Bach's Lunch, a 1971 cookbook published by the Junior Women's Committee to benefit the Cleveland Orchestra. They sold the book for a whole $3.00. Some of its recipes were provided by cooking celebrities of the day, but most of them were favorite recipes of the wives of prominent Clevelanders. Each recipe ends with the name of the person who supplied it.

IDIOT'S DELIGHT

1 - 8 oz. pkg. cream cheese
1/4 bottle Pickapeppa sauce or Worcestershire sauce

Unwrap cheese and place on a plate. Pour sauce over and serve with English water biscuits.

Mrs. Arthur Modell

Error message of ze day

The International Mozart Foundation in Austria has posted the sheet music for all of Mozart's scores online, and is offering them as free downloads. Apparently they're been very popular, and the number of downloads must be straining their server, because the download page bears this warning message:

NOTE: We are overvelmed by the resonance of this website. We regret any delays in accessing this site and are working on expanding our server capacities

Volcano Vaporizer

While poking around on my hard drive, I unearthed a Game Neverending chat transcript from about three years ago. It's from when yeoz had discovered a bug in GNE Mark II that allowed him to pick up an enormous number of items, and he was seeing just how far it would go. Here's his moment of glory:

yeöz:*Ahem*
yeöz picks up 2880851 bananas.
striatic: yes!
Aaaugh! applauds
yeöz: You pick up 2880851 bananas. pack weight +230468080.
yeöz: i'm not going to eat them though...
striatic cries tears of joy.
yeöz drops 2880851 bananas.
striatic: are you still below 0% capacity
yeöz: holy cow
yeöz: it jumped even
yeöz: -531k%
Aaaugh!: What are you going to do for an encore?
striatic: because then you can walk around with them and not lose energy
yeöz picks up 2880851 bananas.
yeöz drops 2880851 bananas.
striatic: weird
yeöz: i'm only -70k% with *all* the bananas :)
Plurp has arrived.
Aaaugh!: I wonder how many harpsichords you could carry now.
striatic: nice work
Plurp: An infinite number.

 .The analysis showed that the Volcano vaporizer vapor was remarkably clean, consisting 95% of THC with traces of cannabinol (CBN), another cannabinoid. The remaining 5% consisted of small amounts of three other components: one suspected cannabinoid relative, one suspected PAH, and caryophyllene, a fragrant oil in cannabis and other plants. In contrast over 111 different components appeared in the gas of the combusted smoke, including a half dozen known PAHs. Non-cannabinoids accounted for as much as 88% of the total gas content of the smoke.

The study used standard NIDA cannabis with 4% THC content. A quantitative analysis found that the Volcano® delivered 46% of the THC into vapor following three 45-second exposures of the sample to the heat. This compares favorably with the typical efficiency of marijuana cigarettes as observed in other studies, which depending on conditions can fall below 25% due to loss of THC in sidestream smoke. An important feature of the Volcano® is that it uses a balloon to capture the vapor, thereby avoiding leakage to the air. It is possible that higher THC efficiencies could have been reached with the vaporizers by stirring the sample around and exposing it to more heat.

The combusted sample achieved a relatively high THC efficiency of 78% upon complete combustion. The high efficiency seems due to the fact that the sample was completely consumed by combustion, and that smoke leakage was effectively prevented by the laboratory setup. Similar conditions do not obtain under normal circumstances when a marijuana cigarette is smoked and much of the THC is lost to the air or left in the unburned "roach."

The Wombat

The wombat lives across the seas,
Among the far Antipodes.
He may exist on nuts and berries,
Or then again, on missionaries;
His distant habitat precludes
Conclusive knowledge of his moods,
But I would not engage the wombat
In any form of mortal combat.

—Ogden Nash

The world is too meta

Traditional media outlets have begun using Wikipedia as a source from time to time. In a piece about the abashed Michael Richards ("Michael Richards: still not a Jew"), the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles referred to his Wikipedia article for some biographical details. Shortly after the story was published, somebody edited the Wikipedia article to add the Jewish Journal piece as a reference regarding his religious upbringing. Nnrf. My brain hurts.

The Times, they are etc., etc.

I'm not normally one to pay attention to the font choices of British newspapers, let alone attempt to critique them, but when London's The Times redesigns, I suppose it's worth paying attention. It is, after all, the paper for which Times New Roman was created. Newspaper mastheads are often a good place to observe the evolution of typographic style, and The Times was kind enough to provide a slideshow covering their changes since 1785. The professional crowd seems to approve of the change, but I'm not so sure I like it. While it does hark back to a design from the 1960s, and certainly meets their goals of being "masculine, English, direct, [and] simple", it's too abstracted for my tastes. It looks fine in mixed case, but in all caps, it's as if it's become a caricature of its former self. Maybe I just need some time to get used to it.

Here are their most recent mastheads and typefaces:

Times Roman (1982)

Times Millennium (1991)

Times Classic (2002)

Times Modern (2006)