Secular Monk

Oct 07 2011 ∞
“ Jess Brewer, the owner of two Trusted Friends collectives in Redding, said if the federal government starts a crackdown on legitimate medical-marijuana centers it’s going to hurt one of the only sectors in the local economy that’s actually doing well.
— Ryan Sabalow “Medical pot shops on U.S. radar; owners of Redding collectives await word of crackdown” [Redding, California] The Record Searchlight, October 6, 2011

(Source: redding.com)

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Oct 03 2011 ∞

Wheat gluten

A while ago, my dad and I had a discussion about ‘wheat gluten’. It’s an additive that my dad puts in his bread machine loaves that I had never heard of before. I wanted to find out more, so I went digging.

A wheat berry, the fruiting part of wheat, contains all sorts of delicious and nutritious goodies, but as bread bakers my dad and I are especially interested in the berry’s protein content. The proteins in the berry (specifically glutenin and gliadin), when wetted, combine to form gluten. Gluten is sort of like a cold rubber band that stretches and rebounds, but tends to hold its shape when its left to sit for a while. Bread with a high gluten content tends to catch the carbon dioxide bubbles released by active yeast, and is therefore lighter and chewier than a lower-gluten bread, which tends to be denser and smaller.

‘Wheat gluten’ is a additive made from processed flour wetted to entice gluten formation, dried, then milled to recapture the gluten. This high-gluten additive can be bought from retail stores.

According to The King Arthur Flour’s Baker’s Companion Cookbook, wheat with a protein content over 12% makes breads which are better developed by a bread machine, i.e. are really tough to knead by hand. Common all-purpose flours have a protien content between 11-12%, and so my dad, with his bread machine, could add wheat gluten to all-purpose flour to improve the quality of his loaf. My hand kneading wouldn’t really benefit from more gluten since I couldn’t work the loaf properly.

Mystery solved. Cool! Its science!

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Sep 15 2011 ∞
brianburke: on san jacinto I call it: “Mountain man con style”

brianburke:

on san jacinto

I call it: “Mountain man con style”

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+ ∞
“ Often a player is in a position to gain an advantage by committing an infraction, but that player is morally bound to abide by the rules.
— Official Rules of Ultimate 11th Edition
Sep 08 2011 ∞
“ Listening to GOP Presidential candidates talk about science is like listening to children talk about sex: They know it exists, they have strong opinions about what it might mean, but they don’t have a clue what it’s actually about.
— Anonymous
Sep 07 2011 ∞
“ The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and somthing else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.
— Chuck Close
Aug 11 2011 ∞
“ I’d do a shot for every policy proposal [in the Republican Debate tonight], but I doubt I’d get a buzz on.
— Andrew Sullivan

(Source: andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

Aug 10 2011 ∞
“ My definition of conservative is a live-and-let-live, debt-phobic, small government pragmatism, with a strong but prudent defense policy.
— Andrew Sullivan

(Source: andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)

+ ∞
“ There’s no TV in my house. Well, there’s one in my garage that I sometimes have to turn on for news. But I don’t think I’ve turned it on this year. How do my kids respond? They play! They go outside! They use their imaginations! They have childhoods! … There may be a day when the decision gets made for me. I may snap a femur jumping off a rock – and that may decide it. I’m getting near fifty and I’m running around with nineteen- and twenty-two-year-olds. So far, I can keep up. … Any time you go out, the slate is clean. The fact that you’ve survived one thing doesn’t mean you’re gonna survive the next. … I don’t think about money too much beyond the big chunk of it I’m gonna need to send my five kids to college.
— C.J. Chivers, 46, ex-Marine, current war correspondent (cliché stuff I know, but I still like it)
Jul 07 2011 ∞
“
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