Month: November 2014

by Doctor Science

Brett asked for “a Thanksgiving recipe thread in time for pre-Thanksgiving grocery shopping”, and it sounded good to me. Also, I’d like to have my traditional Thanksgiving (or other turkey-based holiday) recipes up somewhere that the family can find them in an emergency.

My traditional turkey dinner includes: Herb-Brined Turkey, Chestnut-Rice-Rye Stuffing, Roasted-Garlic Gravy, and Two-Cranberry Sauce with Grand Marnier. The herb brining comes from this Epicurious recipe, the herb butter from this one, the stuffing was invented by my mother (who finds traditional bread stuffing too gluey and greasy), the gravy and cranberry sauce are basically my own inventions — insofar as anything in a traditional meal counts as any one person’s invention.

My recipes are under the cut; talk about your own, trade tips, strategize your meal. And discuss the eternal Thanksgiving question: what wine?

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by Doctor Science

I hadn’t really understood, on a gut level, how unusual American violence is until after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, MO. As people started talking about what happens in other wealthy, “civilized” countries, I realized that Americans experience — and expect — an extreme level of violence from both police and their fellow citizens.

As I’ve thought about it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most important ingredient in American violence is slavery. The past isn’t dead, it isn’t even past.

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by liberal japonicus
Those crazy folks over at Superscholar heard your complaints about the Eurocentric nature of the last chart and have come up with this. The title is a reference that I hope is obscure enough to keep the likes of y’all guessing, though whenever I think that, someone usually gets in within the first 3 comments.

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Doctor Science

So when I got to the computer late this morning, I discovered that the European Space Agency spacecraft Rosetta had reached its target, the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (which really needs a snappier name, people), and had sent out its lander, Philae.

Which is the general kind of thing that people have been doing most of my life, so no longer really future-y. What makes me really feel like Yes, This Is the Future:

1. The Rosetta Mission has a livestream. And a twitter account.

2. Their second tweet after Philae’s successful landing:

Fortunately for all, Philae does not wear a shirt.

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by Doctor Science

In my earlier post about I Corinthians 11, I said I was convinced by Evangelical translator William Welty’s reading, that Paul was telling the Corinthians head-coverings (for men or women) don’t really *matter* all that much theologically, but that in any case women should make their own decisions according to their own consciences.

I like Welty’s reading not just because it makes Paul non-misogynist, but because it reads smoothly, Paul’s argument hangs together and makes sense. But the trouble is that it’s untraditional: for at least 1700 years, these passages have been read to prove that women *ought* to cover their hair in church, and to adopt an attitude of general subservience to their patriarchal masters.

How good a writer can Paul be, really, if he was being consistently misread for so long? — and misread not merely by the naive, but by the most intelligent and educated minds in Christendom, for *centuries*. It makes Paul look like a poor writer, and/or makes all the smartest people in Christendom look like poor readers.

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