“The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.” — Hunter S. Thompson
Autumn Leaves
I’m enjoying the flood of articles bashing the new iPhones/Apple Watch/Apple Pay in the same way I enjoy the autumn leaves. In a week or two, they’re all gone (until the next product launch). Because it’s really hard to write these when most of the people sitting around you in Starbucks has an Apple device in their hands.
Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, predicts Apple will sell 92 million new iPhones by the end of the year.
Oh, sure, you can get a little mileage from the “Apple people are sheep” trope but that wears quickly. No, this is the sweet spot when the parody videos can go a little bit viral and the tech pundits can gather in basements to make fun of the guys who got dates to the prom.
Dog Spa
Beyond Chicken
Today I tried my first Beyond Meat product (Beyond Chicken!). Sautéed in a little oil. I was impressed. Look, smell, texture, flavor… damned close to chicken. I gave it an 8 out of 10 (close enough). I decided to give it a try after reading an article in Wired that talked about reverse engineering “animal flesh” in the lab.
“Replicating the flavor of animal flesh is just a matter of gathering certain amino acids, especially the yummiest acid of all, glutamic acid, the key component of monosodium glutamate, or MSG. (In the brain and nervous system, glutamate is a critical neurotransmitter; its taste, umami, is one of only five we know of that the tongue can perceive.) Any decent flavorist can whip you up a brew that tastes like roasted chicken with little more than hydrolyzed vegetable proteins and yeast extracts, using equipment from a high school chem lab.”
A (hypothetical) question for meat eaters. What if someone could create a product that was indistinguishable in every way from animal flesh. Something that could fool you in a blind taste test. And let’s say it cost the same (or less) and it was less harmful to the environment that traditional meat production. Would you eat it?
TV is for old people
“The median age of a broadcast or cable television viewer during the 2013-2014 TV season was 44.4 years old, a 6 percent increase in age from four years earlier. Audiences for the major broadcast network shows are much older and aging even faster, with a median age of 53.9 years old, up 7 percent from four years ago. The median age of viewers who watch CBS is 58.7 years old. Fox has the youngest broadcast audience, with a median age of 47.8 years. Live television viewing (is) down 13 percent for all ages except for viewers 55 years and older.”
Source: Research by media analyst Michael Nathanson of Moffett Nathanson Research. (WashingtonPost.com)
Burning Man 2014
Lake of Dreams from roy two thousand on Vimeo.
Clouds
Destin 2014
Lucy: Red Ball (2014)
Lucy’s favorite thing in the world. If we even say the words, “Red Ball” she springs into action. So we started saying, “RB” but she quickly made the association. I know of nothing more satisfying than playing fetch with this loving creature.
The Bone Clocks
Just finished The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell and found it… gripping. Never thought much about that word as applied to stories, but this novel grabbed me me and held on, even when I wanted to put it down (as he described “a nuclear wilderness in 2043, after a deluge of viruses and natural disasters.”)
From the New York Times review: “You may not believe in telepathy, second sight or reincarnation, but if you enter Mitchell’s universe you can’t not believe in them either.”