Year: 2015

Running Education in Like a Business Means Overpaying Managers Who Loot the Institution

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The Governor of Iowa, selected a new president for the University of Iowa, the state’s flagship education institution, and it turns out that has no educational experience, and he has lied flagrantly on his resume:

But UI may not seem like such an attractive alternative these days. As the Yes Men performed at the press conference, the Iowa Board of Regents was in the final stages of selecting the next UI president. In a very unusual arrangement, the regents chose not to renew previous president Sally Mason’s contract two years ago; since then, she had been working “at will” on a day-to-day basis. If some observers worried that this arrangement would render her a tool of the regents, those fears were confirmed when Mason endorsed an ill-conceived regents funding plan that would significantly cut UI’s budget, infuriating many on campus.

Now, Mason is out: Eight days after the Yes Men’s visit, the Iowa Board of Regents unanimously voted former IBM and Boston Market executive Bruce Harreld as UI’s next president, despite Harreld having no university administrative background. He did work as an adjunct senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, but that’s the extent of his college workplace experience.

On the résumé Harreld submitted to the regents, he listed his current job as the managing principal for the Colorado-based Executing Strategy, LLC. This company “confidentially (advises) several public, private and military organizations on leadership, organic growth and strategic renewal.” However, that business doesn’t exist. The Colorado secretary of state has no record of a company of that name.

On Sept. 1, during a public forum that was part of Harreld’s on-campus interview and visit, I asked Harreld to explain this discrepancy. He replied that Executing Strategy was a company name he previously used and that he accidentally listed it in his current work history.

“Shame on me,” Harreld said. “I too quickly pulled it from out of my head and put it on the résumé. There is no Colorado corporation. I live in Colorado. That’s my post office box.”

His résumé also neglected to list the co-authors on his publications, attributing them solely to Harreld. The only part of his résumé that didn’t contain a glaring error was Page 3, which consisted almost entirely of personal information such as “Four adult children who all have advanced degrees” and “Elder, Presbyterian Church.” Given Harreld’s business background, one would think he would have taken more care with his résumé when applying to be the president of a major university.

Harreld’s public forum did not go well, to put it mildly. His rambling 35-minute presentation contained little more than vague generalizations and repeated catchphrases such as taking UI from “great to greater.” At times he rolled his eyes and looked exasperated while facing questions from students, staff, and faculty. When a UI staff member asked him what initiatives he might have planned to improve workplace morale, he replied, “I don’t know that I have any. Now what? Staff? I dunno. … What more would you like me to say?” Harreld then ended this exchange with an abrupt, “No, I’m done. OK? If you don’t mind.”

Is there anyone out there who believes that this guy was hired for anything but political payback?

This guy is going to be a complete clusterf%$#?

So Not a Surprise

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It appears that a single minded focus on testing at the expense of education doesn’t even work on other fill in the bubble tests like the SAT:

New statistics show that average SAT scores countrywide have dropped to their lowest level since the college admissions exam was redesigned in 2005, continuing a 10-year trend that education advocates say illustrates the failures of test-driven schooling.

According to the College Board, which reported the statistics on Thursday, the average SAT score for the class of 2015 was 1490 out of a possible 2400, with points declining on all three sections of the test—reading, math, and writing.

That raises an alarm for the The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), an education advocacy group, which said the latest SAT numbers highlight the failings of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) and other standards-based scholastic achievement measures.

Bob Schaeffer, FairTest public education director, said in response to the latest statistics, “Test-and-punish policies, such as ‘No Child Left Behind’ have clearly failed to improve college readiness or narrow racial gaps, as measured by the SAT,” adding that other standardized admissions exams like the ACT and the National Assessment for Education Progress show similar trends. 

 I would note that Obama, and His Evil Minions™, in particularly the perfidious Arne Duncan, have been even more aggressive in pushing relentless testing and corporatized education and breaking the teachers unions than their predecessors, so don’t expect this study to make any difference in policy.

Pass the Popcorn

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Please Implicate Rupert ……… Pretty Please?

Mark Hanna, who used to work security for Rebecka Brooks, the former (and current) head of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper publishing in the UK, has promised to blow the whistle on her:

The former head of security for Rebekah Brooks has said he will blow the whistle on Rupert Murdoch’s UK newspapers, the day after it was confirmed she had been re-hired as chief executive of News UK.

 In a video uploaded to YouTube, Mark Hanna, who was acquitted last year along with Brooks and her husband, Charlie, of plotting to pervert the course of justice, claims he was “extremely close” and trusted by executives at News International and he now wanted to show how “underhanded” they had been.

Hanna was the director of security at the company, now known as News UK. Unlike Brooks, who received a payout of more than £16m after resigning from News Corp in 2011 and has been reinstated, Hanna was made redundant after the trial and received £30,000 from the company.

 “I am now standing up against those that sit back and treat us all with contempt – the Murdochs and Brooks of the world,” Hanna said in a two-minute video released on Friday.

 Hanna, who is unemployed and living on benefits, said the decision by Murdoch to reinstate Brooks four years after the phone-hacking allegations and the closure of News of the World had infuriated him and many others.

………

He claims that during the trial at the Old Bailey he sat with Brooks, Andy Coulson, Ian Edmondson, Clive Goodman, Charlie Brooks, Cheryl Carter and Stuart Kuttner and witnessed what went on behind the scenes.
“To me, her previous director of group security, this is Murdoch’s middle finger being shoved right in my face after standing trial with her, and others, in what was classed as the trial of the century during which it was widely accepted that I should never have been involved.”

I really don’t expect anything to happen to any of the people at News UK, at least not while the Tories are running the government. They are too close to Murdoch, as evidenced by the fact that Andy Coulson, who was deputy editor of the News of the World during the phone hacking, went on to be Tories Communication Director, and then Cameron’s Director of Communications after he won election.

If Coulson becomes a disgruntled ex employee whistle blower, it could get ……… inconvenient ……… for Prime Minister Cameron.

TransCanada Appears to be the Washington Generals of Pipeline Construction

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Clearly, there was an Earth Shattering Kaboom

Yes, another one of their pipelines has demonstrated that it functions better as a pyrotechnic display than they are as transmission device for fossil fuels:

The cause of a natural-gas pipeline rupture near Emerson which forced two Manitoba families to evacuate their home remains under investigation.

 A spokeswoman with TransCanada, which operates the pipeline just south of the Canada-U.S. border in Kittson County, Minn., said Monday the company continues to conduct “a detailed investigation to determine the cause of the incident.”

 The rupture occurred Saturday night around 8:30 p.m., sending flames shooting up into the air.

 The nearby local volunteer fire department in Emerson was called out to the fire, said Emerson fire chief Jeff French.

 “You could see it from miles away,” French said, describing flames six to 10 metres high and three to five metres wide near the site of the explosion.

 Two homes on the Canadian side of the border were evacuated and residents were allowed back inside by 11 p.m. Saturday.

Yep, another pipeline blew up.

Of particular interest is the sidebar for the article, which details a pattern of problematic safety failures:

1. Otterburne, January 25, 2014

 A natural gas pipeline operated by TransCanada ruptured, sending a massive fireball into the sky during the winter of 2014 in Otterburne, a small community about 60 kilometres outside of Winnipeg. The explosion would force Manitoba Hydro to shut down natural gas flows to thousands of customers in the area, leaving some residents without heat for day. A pre-existing crack present for over 50 years was the culprit in a gas line explosion, a Transportation Safety Board of Canada investigation found.

 2. Brookdale, April 14, 2002

 A TransCanada Pipelines gas line ruptured, exploded and caught fire two kilometres west of the village of Brookdale, northeast of Brandon. The explosion created two craters — one at each end of the ruptured section of pipe — and burned for nearly four hours.

 About 100 people were evacuated within a four-kilometre radius of the blast, but there were no injuries.

 The investigation found that, similar to the Rapid City blast, stress corrosion cracking was found to have caused the explosion. It was unusual in this case as the affected pipe was coated with asphalt and buried in non-corrosive soil. It was discovered that the combination of the pipe’s coating separating from the surface, a fluctuating water table, the presence of anaerobic bacteria and other factors all combined to create a corrosive environment.

 3. St. Norbert, April 15, 1996

 At a spot where a TransCanada gas pipeline crosses the La Salle River, gas escaped from a crack in the pipe, caught fire and an explosion destroyed a nearby home. The explosion also left a 13.5-metre-wide crater on the bottom of the river and damaged hydro lines and trees on both sides of the river. No one was injured.

 The investigation found “environmental assisted cracking” to be the cause. A shift in the river slope led the pipe to move and stress out a crack in the pipe that may have been present since the pipeline was laid in 1962.

 4. Rapid City, July 29, 1995

 A TransCanada Pipelines gas line ruptured and caught fire near Rapid City, north of Brandon. An adjacent gas pipe also ruptured and caught fire which damaged a third line.

 The incident left a 51-metres wide crater that was five metres deep. One TransCanada employee suffered minor cuts and bruises.

 The investigation found the first rupture was caused by stress corrosion cracking, the slow growth of small cracks in an environment capable of corroding a pipe. The second rupture was partly the result of a delay in shutting down the flow of gas to the first pipe.

Note that this is just in Manitoba, and in 2 of the 4 cases, cracks in the line were unobserved for decades, and in a 3rd case, the rupture was mismanaged.

As Charlie Pierce observes, , “Pretty plainly, TransCanada puts its pipelines in the ground and then you’re on your own, rube. At this point, I wouldn’t buy a bucket from these clowns, let alone a continent-spanning death funnel.”

I will note that pipelines for bitumen, the vaguely oil like crap that comes from the tar sands, is nowhere nearly as well understood as that of oil or gas, so it would be problematic even for a pipeline operator that was able to find its ass with both hands.

In Your Face Bill Gates

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Basically, they said that the structure of charter schools, public funds but no public review or public accountability, violate the state constitution:

The Washington State Supreme Court, in a late Friday surprise, delivered a ruling that the state’s voter-passed, billionaire-backed charter school initiative is unconstitutional.

The high court’s 6-3 ruling found that the independently organized schools do not pass muster as common public schools and therefore cannot receive public funding.

“We hold that provisions of Initiative 1240 that designate and treat charter schools as common schools violate article IX, Section 2 of our state Constitution and are void,” Chief Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the majority opinion.

“This includes the Act’s funding provision, which attempts to tap into and shift a portion of moneys allocated for common schools to the new charter schools authorized by the Act. Because the provisions designating and funding charter schools as common schools are integral to the Act, such void provisions are not severable …”

………

I-1240 passed by a 1 percent margin in 2012, after charter schools had previously been rejected three times by Washington voters. Ninety-eight percent of its $10 million-plus war chest came from just 21 individuals. Bill Gates put up $3 million, Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton gave $1.7 million, Vulcan Inc. (Paul Allen’s development company) was good for $1.6 million, and liberal entrepreneur Nick Hanauer donated $1 million. The father of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gave $500,000.

………

In another telling passage from Madsen’s opinion, the court stated: “Under the Act (I-1240), charter schools are devoid of local control from their inception to their daily operations.”

“The Supreme Court has affirmed what we’ve said all along — charter schools steal money from our existing classrooms and voters have no say in how these charter schools spend taxpayer funds,” said Kim Mead, president of the Washington Education Association.

(emphasis mine)

Of course, over at Curmudgucation, Peter Green offers a modest proposal* to deal with this ruling:

………

So, find ways to rewrite the law so that charter money can stay in its own little lock box in its own big silo. This seems a bit overthought and overwrought. The court’s decision, as I understand it, is based on the idea that charter schools cannot receive “common school” public funds because they are not overseen by an elected school board. And if that’s the case, charters can fix this very easily. Are you paying attention, charter operators? I have your solution right here.

Just submit to being overseen by an elected school board.

Act like the public schools you claim to be. Make your finances and operation completely transparent to the public.

And allow yourselves to be overseen by an elected school board instead of a collection of individuals who are not answerable to the voters or the taxpayers.

I mean– what’s more important to you? Providing a strong educational alternative for those 1,200 students, or holding on your ability to do whatever you want without having to answer to the public? Is it so important to you that you not be accountable to the public that you would rather engage in time consuming rewrites of state law, or even just close your doors, rather than let yourself submit to transparent and open oversight by a group of citizens elected by the very taxpayers whose money you use to run your school?

We already know that charter schools are prone to overpaying their founders, forcing kids out who would bring down their test scores through abuse of the disciplinary process, and ignoring federal law on disabilities, so adding oversight to ensure that contracts, discipline, and special education policies is not a bad idea.

The impetus for charter schools have come from two sources, those people determined to destroy teachers unions because they hate unions, and the financial types who see a profit center funded by the general public.

Neither of these groups can tolerate the idea of transparency or due process, because it makes it too difficult for them to accomplish their nefarious goals.

H/t Diane Ravitch for pointing me to Mr. Greene.

*Yes, this is a allusion to Jonathan Swift’s essay.

And in the News of the Self-Evident

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The Justice Department has determined that police tactics worsened unrest and violence during the Ferguson protests:

Tactics used by police during the days of sometimes-violent street protest last year in Ferguson, Missouri, increased tensions between law enforcement and protesters, according to a report Thursday by the Justice Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Service, known as COPS.

The report said the use of dogs, snipers and tactical vehicles designed for the military “inflamed tensions and created fear among demonstrators.”

The COPS office reviewed how police responded in the 17 days after the fatal police shooting Aug. 9, 2014, of an unarmed black man, Michael Brown.

Although it focused on the conduct of four agencies — St. Louis County police, St. Louis Metropolitan police, the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the Ferguson Police Department — it said more than 50 law enforcement agencies were eventually involved. Their participation suffered from “inconsistency in direction” and a lack of effective communication.

The report said using dog teams for controlling crowds of protesters “invokes powerful emotions in many observing citizens and protesters, particularly where racial tensions exist.” Tear gas was used inappropriately, it says, without considering how protesters could safely move away.

I am a bit more skeptical of what was going on.

I think that the actions of law enforcement in and around Ferguson were calculated to stoke unrest, because they wanted a pretext to respond with violence in order to assert their authority.

Law enforcement wanted to create a violent situation in order to justify their use of violence, and they hoped for, and largely got, a complacent media to buy into their narrative in order to discredit the protesters narrative.

Son, I Think That We Need to Have a Talk about the Dangers of Furries………

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This is a bit disturbing


And coming out to his whole high school in public announcements is not good.

Let me clarify: My son is not a furry, he has a media class, and they needed to shoot a short scene, and he drew the short straw, and had to wear the unicorn sleeper.

He decided to make the most of this, and do school announcements in the costume.

Nothing to see here, move along.

A Very Good Point on Obamacare

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The folks at Naked Capitalism have never been big fans of the PPACA, because they feel that it has far too many sops to the evildoers in the US healthcare system, in particular the insurance companies. (I agree)

Now Lambert Strether makes what is an obvious point, that the “Cadillac Tax” on high value healthcare plans are pretty clearly a tactic developed to union bust:


I haven’t written about much about ObamaCare’s “Cadillac Tax” mostly because it seemed (as we shall see) such an obvious union-busting measure that there wouldn’t be much of interest to say. However, a recent Kaiser briefing on how many employers will be affected by it has generated a lot of coverage, and, as it turns out, the Cadillac tax — not that anybody could have predicted this — turns out to be insanely complex, based on a crazypants neo-liberal economic assumption, and will screw over a lot more working people than originally thought. (There’s actually some pressure on the Hill for reform or repeal, and not just by the usual suspects, but I won’t cover the politics of it here).

………

And if the unions can’t deliver wages, and now they can’t deliver benefits — or prevent existing benefits from being taken away — what exactly do they deliver? So who is to determine what is “generous”? Workers, or pencil-necked< neo-liberal economists? Who never mention whether CEO health insurance — or top 20% health insurance, for that matter — is “too generous”? That said, let’s turn to the crapification. From the Kaiser briefing:

The potential of facing an HCPT assessment as soon as 2018 is encouraging employers to assess their current health benefits and consider cost reductions to avoid triggering the tax. Some employers announced that they made changes in 2014 in anticipation of the HCPT, and more are likely to do so as the implementation date gets closer. By making modifications now, employers can phase-in changes to avoid a bigger disruption later on.

………

So, a race to the bottom that starts out affecting “overly generous” health insurance, and ends up affecting more and more of the rest of us. Typical. I doubt this can be fixed by Congress this year or next, since the Democrats will not be able to admit that Obama has ever made a mistake in any aspect of his sorry administration, and Republicans have no choice but to throw red meat to their base by trying to repeal it all together. Pass the popcorn.

This is not a bug.  It’s a feature.

If you were come up with a way to get the truth for any people behind Obamacare, whether Obama, Gruber, or whoever, they all would say that they want to eliminate employer sponsored health insurance by making various claims about how having open insurance markets and “skin in the game” will make healthcare more efficient.  (All the available evidence shows otherwise)

Obama has been (at best) lukewarm on unions, with no effort to push card-check, his hiring of union-busting heiress Penny Pritzker, his aggressive support of union-busting mayor Rahm Emanuel, his tepid opposition to “Right to Work” legislation proposals put forward in many states, etc.

There are way too many people among Obama’s “Chicago School” policy advisers who see an Ayn Rand inspired dystopia as a model for a good society.  (As an aside, it turned out that even Ayn Rand could not live in the world which she hoped to create.)

Our country is looking more and more like the USSR circa 1987.

Trial By Fire Recipe, With Recipes

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Trial by Fire went quite well.

The only mishap was that the camp oven that I used, basically a metal box that sat on top of the Coleman® stove, reflected a fair amount of heat back down.

The stove took a beating, it literally cooked the label off, and I had no need to pump the stove after startup, because the fuel tank heated up enough to self-pressurize.

The stove is still quite functional, Coleman® stoves are built like tanks, but it did melt into the plastic table.

Once I moved the stove and oven onto an expanded metal grill, everything went well.

As an update to my bagel experience, I did do the bagels with white fluor, and it worked a lot better.

It is much easier to work than the whole wheat, it comes together with the water better and faster, and it does get that marvelous glossy coating.

In any case, my recipes, and documentation, follow the break:


Neufchâtel/Cream Cheese

Ingredients

  • 1 quart whole milk (Neufchatel) or cream or half & half (Cream Cheese)
  • 1 package (1/8 teaspoon) Mesophilic starter culture
  • ¼ Tablet Rennet or 2 Drops liquid rennet
  • Butter muslin (fine cheese cloth)
  • Sea salt to taste (optional)

Instructions

Heat cream until lukewarm (80-85° F).

Use a glass container to hold your cream.

Add rennet tablet to ¼ cup water and stir until dissolve.

Sprinkle in the starter culture into the cream and wait until dissolved.

Add rennet and stir gently to incorporate.

Loosely cover (not airtight).

Leave on countertop 12-24 hours to culture (It goes longer with a higher percentage of cream).

It’s ready when it somewhat resembles yogurt.

Cut the curds into roughly ½” bits, and ladle into a colander lined with 2 layers of butter muslin, and then pour the remaining whey though the cloth.

Allow whey to drip out at least 12 hours (the longer it drips, the firmer your cheese will be)

Scrape out of cheesecloth and lightly salt to taste.

Documentation:

The cheese comes from Normandy, and has a protected designation from the EU1.

It is believed that it is the oldest cheese made in Normandy,2 but the earliest definitive documentation found thus far is from the Saint-Aman Abbey of Rouen3 in 1543.

Bagels

Recipe:

Dough

  • 1 tablespoon (0.75 oz / 21 g) barley malt syrup, honey, rice syrup or agave, or 1 teaspoon (0.25 oz / 7 g) diastatic malt powder
  • 1 teaspoon (0.11 oz / 3 g) instant yeast
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons (0.37 oz / 10.5 g) salt, or 2 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
  • 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (9 oz / 255 g) lukewarm water (about 95°F or 35°C)
  • 3 1/2 cups (16 oz / 454 g) high gluten unbleached bread flour (Vital gluten can also be added)

Poaching liquid

  • 2 to 3 quarts (64 to 96 oz / 181 to 272 g) water
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons (1 oz / 28.5 g) barley malt syrup or honey (optional)
  • 1 tablespoon (0.5 oz / 14 g) baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon (0.25 oz / 7 g) salt, or 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt

Preparation

Starting and proofing the dough:

To make the dough, stir the sweetener, yeast, and salt into the lukewarm water, and give 15 minutes to activate.

Place the flour, and 4 tbsp vital gluten if you are using it, into a mixing bowl and blend the together with a whisk or fork.

Pour the liquid into flour.

Mix with hands or a big honking spoon and stir until it can form a stiff, coarse ball. If the flour is not fully hydrated; if it isn’t, stir in a little more water a tablespoon at a time.

Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

Knead the dough on a very lightly floured surface until the dough is stiff.

Let the dough rise at room temperature for 1 hour in a lightly oiled bowl covered with saran wrap.

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper, and coat lightly with spray oil.

Divide the dough into 6 to 8 equal pieces and form each piece into a ball on a work surface. Do not flour this surface. If the dough slides too much, add a little bit of water to the surface.

Shape the bagels by rolling them into cylinders about 10″ long, and then wrap the tube around the hand and wet one end, and place both ends together in the palm and roll until the ends are joined. (Some people will poke a hole in the dough ball and stretch it out, but this is an abomination)

If it slides, add a bit of water as listed earlier.

Let the dough rings proof in the refrigerator for 12-48 hours.

Baking

Make up the poaching water, and heat until lightly simmering

Remove the bagels from the chill chest, and check if the bagels are sufficiently risen by placing a bagel in a bowl of cold water. If it floats, it is ready, if not, wait 15 minutes and repeat. Dry off the bagel.

Preheat the oven to 500°F.

To make the poaching liquid, fill a pot with 2 to 3 quarts (64 to 96 oz / 181 to 272 g) of water, making sure the water is at least 4 inches deep. Cover, bring to a boil, then lower the heat to maintain at a simmer. Stir in the malt syrup, baking soda, and salt.

With a slotted spoon, gently lower each bagel into the simmering poaching liquid, and allow to poach for 1 minute, then flip and poach for another 30-60 seconds.

Remove from pot and place on baking dish lined with parchment paper which has been lightly oiled, place in the oven, and lower the temperature to 450°F.

Bake for 8 minutes, then rotate the pan and bake for another 8 to 12 minutes, until the bagels are a golden brown.

Cool for 30 minutes before serving.

Documentation:

The first recorded reference to Bagels was in the town ordinances of Krakow, Poland, where it was said that they were to be given to pregnant women.4]

Gravlax

Recipe

Ingredients

  • 3-4 lbs salmon fillets, skin on, all bones removed
  • 3 tbsp pepper
  • 5 tbsp sugar
  • 3 tbsp kosher salt
  • 1 fresh dill. A sh%$ load, at least a cup, the more the merrier.
  • 4 tbsp Aquavit (I could not find any, so instead I added about 2 tbsp of caraway seeds)
  • 3 tbsp grated fresh ginger (because my significant other strongly recommended it)
  • 2 tbsp Grains of Paradise (Just because I am a culinary badass)

Preparation

Cut the salmon into two equal portions and make sure that all the pin bones are removed.

Mix the salt, sugar, and all the spices but the dill together.

Sprinkle half the mixture over each fillet and rub it in with your fingers.

Line a glass dish with 1/3 of he dill, and place one fillet, skin side down., and place 1/3 of the dill on top of the fillet.

If you have it, drizzle the Aquavit on the fillet.

Lay the other half fillet on top, skin side up, and put the remainder of the dill on top of the 2nd fillet..

Cover with saran wrap, and place a glass dish on top of the fish and load up with cans to press the fish.

Place in refrigerator.

Every day, remove the weights, flip the fish, replace the weights, and place back into the refrigerator .

Repeat for 3-5 days.

To serve, wipe the dill and spices off the fish, and then pat the fish dry, and cut very thin slices.

Traditionally, it is served with a dill-mustard sauce, but I am making bagels and cream cheese, so why mess with that.

Documentation:

The word gravlax derives from the Swedish words for buried (cured) fish5, which denotes its origins as a buried fermented fish.

French Pralines

Recipe
Syrup:

Ingredients:

  • ½ cup Sugar
  • ¼ tsp salt
  • 1 cup water, or other suitable liquid. In this case, since I have a surfeit of liquid residue from cheese making, I have to do it my whey, so I am using the cheese making remnant.6

Directions:

Place ingredients in a sauce pan, and bring to a boil, and then turn down to medium and stir frequently.

In 20-30 minutes, the liquid should boil off, and the mixture should become a “caramel” color.

Place syrup in a steel bowl over boiling water to keep it free flowing for assembly.

Assembling pralines

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb almonds
  • 1 lb pecans (the pecans will be made separately, and are not a part of the competition, because while pecan pralines postdate the period, but it is an offense to nature do make a nut based caramelized confection without using pecans.)

Toast the nuts on cookie sheet lined at 350°F for about 10 minutes, then remove from oven, place in syrup, and stir until thoroughly coated.

Remove nuts from syrup with slotted spoon, allow excess syrup to drain, and then spread over a cookie sheet lined with lightly oiled parchment paper, and then cook at 350° F for 10 minutes.

To quote Ian Fleming, “When cold, devour”.

If you have left over syrup, save it for later, it’s good stuff.

Documentation

Pralines originated in France, and were invented/perfected by Lassagne, officer of the table to Marechal du Plessis (1602 – 23 December 1675), duke of Choiseul-Praslin7, from whence the name is derived.

At the time, the word ‘praline’ had actually been used for centuries already, to address another type of candy, namely sugar-coated almonds. Clement Lassagne, chef to the French Duke of Praslin, César Gabriel de Choiseul, decided to dip almonds in boiling sugar in 1636. When asked what this tasty sweet was called, he named it after his master: Praslin. Later on these sugared almonds became known as ‘pralines’.8

1 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.C_.2013.316.01.0014.01.ENG
2 http://frenchfoodfool.com/2011/01/31/cheese-university-xii-neufchatel/ “In the year of the Lord 1035, the French nobleman Hugues de Gournay, a later follower of William the Conqueror, allowed a cheese to be used as a natural tax in the Bray valley in northern Normandy. It is by far the most ancient cheese of the region thrice blessed with so many products of excellence, and it was mentioned in documents of the Saint-Amand abbey of Rouen in 1543 as the grand fourmage de Neufchâtel, “the great cheese from Neufchâtel“. That’s what it is until today, a great cheese coming in a multitude of forms, call it by its proud name.”
3 http://www.regions-of-france.com/regions/upper_normandy/food-gastronomy/neufchatel-cheese/
4 http://www.haruth.com/bagel.html
5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravlax
6 You know, whey. I’m using whey, or as I like to say, where is some whey, there is a will.
7 http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodcandy.html#praline
8 http://www.discoverbenelux.com/?features=belgian-pralines-a-sweet-but-not-so-short-history

Doing the Cranky Baker Bit Again

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Doing pre-cook for the SCA cooking competition Trial By Fire, so once again, I am dealing with the vicissitudes of stiff and uncooperative dough.

This time, I am doing both white and wheat, and I’m cranky and tired.

The rules of the competition are that cooking must be done at the competition, but long prep, like a 12 hour proof, or 4 days of marinating gravlax, or of curdling and draining Neufchâtel/cream cheese can be done ahead of time.

That being said, my French pralines (c. 1636) will be done entirely at the event.

The pralines came from the fact that I had much liquid left over from the cheese making, or, as the saying goes, where there is a will, there is a whey.

34

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34 Democrats have now said that they will oppose any Republican attempt to override the nuclear deal with Iran, which means that they cannot override a promised veto:

Just before the Senate left town for its August break, a dozen or so undecided Democrats met in the Capitol with senior diplomats from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia who delivered a blunt, joint message: Their nuclear agreement with Iran was the best they could expect. The five world powers had no intention of returning to the negotiating table.

“They basically said unanimously this is as good a deal as you could get and we are moving ahead with it,” recalled Senator Chris Coons, the Delaware Democrat who lent crucial support to the deal this week despite some reservations. “They were clear and strong that we will not join you in re-imposing sanctions.”

For many if not most Democrats, it was that message that ultimately solidified their decisions, leading to President Obama on Wednesday securing enough votes to put the agreement in place over fierce and united Republican opposition. One after another, lawmakers pointed to the warnings from foreign leaders that their own sanctions against Iran would be lifted regardless of what the United States did.

It is the proverbial, “Big f%$#ing deal.”

The reality is that this is as good a deal as can be expected, and if it gets reversed, our allies will not return to the sanctions regime, so it is basically a done deal, but I still expect a Terri Schiavo type political clusterf%$# for the organization formally known as “The Party of Lincoln.”

That Sheriff and DA Who Blamed Black Lives Matter for the Shooting of a Deputy? Turns out That They Were Lying through Their Asses Off

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Will Bunch adds his own perspective on this based on his own experience jumping to conclusions, though I think that he is being to kind.

Bunch jumped to conclusions, but these guys clearly seized an opportunity to push a political agenda:

One of the easiest things in this world is to leap to a conclusion — especially when there’s some circumstantial evidence that fits what you’re looking for. It’s also a very bad thing to do. I know because I’ve done it myself — and I regret it to this day. Six years ago, a part-time census worker in rural Appalachia was found strung from a tree with the word “Fed” scrawled on his body. Although I was careful to note that the case was still under investigation, I wrote about the man’s death in the context of right-wing anti-government chatter during the first year of the Obama administration. I was writing a book about the Tea Party at the time and had just gotten back from a gun rally in Kentucky (true story). Anyway, it turned out the man had staged his suicide so his beneficiary could collect the insurance. I’d made a mistake…and also learned a lesson.

You’d think if anyone would know better than a lowly journalist/blogger not to leap to conclusions — especially on little or no evidence — it would be high-ranking law enforcement officials in a major American city.

………

Those are the facts of a sad and infuriating story. But top officials in Harris County — including the sheriff and the district attorney — went well beyond the facts of the case. Deputy Goforth had barely been transported to the morgue when these law-enforcement officials held a nationally televised news conference to blame the murder on the #BlackLivesMatter movement that’s been confronting America’s uniquely high rate of police-involving killings. They did so even as they also acknowledged they had absolutely no information — none, nada — about what the killer’s actual motive was

………

If Anderson or Hickman had uttered such baseless accusations in court, their words would have been tossed out by the judge and perhaps the basis for misconduct charges. Instead, the invented allegation was barely questioned by a feckless mainstream news media, then amplified by the right-wing echo chamber of faux news and political opportunists who seized on a chance to squelch a growing movement for social justice by linking it to a high-profile murder. It’s fair to note that officials in Harris County were emotional about the murder of a colleague — but where was the professionalism to know not to toss a match onto a political bonfire, with such rank speculation?

This behavior is contemptible, but it is also not unexpected, though it was egregious enough that the Houston Chronicle, a paper that could never be mistaken for the liberal media, also excoriated this behavior, particularly on the part of the Sheriff (paid subscription required, but you can also find it in the Google cache) noting that, “Linking a non-violent group with a cold-blooded murder, without proof, isn’t leadership.”

In the meantime, Fox News is gleefully using this as an excuse to use euphemisms for  n****r, which I’m sure amuses their audience no end.

What Ta-Nehisi Coates Said

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He notes that there is no Ferguson effect, and that this is a matter of fact, not of opinion:

The Times has a story today on the rise in homicide in some American cities. It’s an important story—one which is hurt by the utterly baseless suggestion that those who protested against Ferguson may well have blood on their hands:

The New York Times quoted two academics, one of whom suggested that police are too concerned to act with impunity, and the other who notes that the rise in murder rates in the St. Louis area predated the shooting of Michael Brown.

For police to be in fear of prosecutions of their misconduct* to be driving an increase in crime, it would have to occur after the trigger.

As my colleague Brentin Mock points out, to observe that homicides began increasing in St. Louis before the protests is not to make a subjective interpretation, but to offer a knowable and verifiable fact. If the “Ferguson Effect” is real, how can it be that it started before the Ferguson protests?

Neglecting this question is neither dispassionate nor high-minded. It is the sort of insidious “false equivalence” that so rightly irks my colleague James Fallows.  “False equivalence” runs contrary to the mission to journalism—it obscures where journalists are charged with clarifying. A reasonable person could read the Times’ story and conclude that there is as much proof for the idea that protests against police brutality caused crime to rise, as there is against it. That is the path away from journalism and toward noncommittal stenography: Some people think climate change is real, some do not. Some people believe in UFOs, others doubt their existence. Some think brain cancer can be cured with roots and berries, but others say proof has yet to emerge.

I’m sick of this, “Opinions on the shape of the world differ” crap.

*Or maybe it isn’t fear. Maybe it’s a bunch of cops throwing a tantrum. Certainly, it appears that some of their behavior, particularly with regard to the NYPD and Mayor De Blasio to be the acts of a petulant child.

James O’Keefe Jumps the Shark

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I am referring to the evil James O’Keefe, of ACORN infamy, and not my friend who spends a lot of time at the Massachusetts Pirate Party herding cats.

In his latest “sting” he had one of His Evil Minions™ buy a T-Shirt for a Canadian tourist:

………

The re­port­ers (in­clud­ing me) ap­peared con­fused about how they got to the press con­fer­ence hos­ted at the Na­tion­al Press Club. Present at the press con­fer­ence were five to 10 video cam­er­as, along with a room of 30 or so re­port­ers, all ob­li­vi­ous to the fact that we had been snookered in­to an­oth­er sup­posedly sa­la­cious re­lease from O’Keefe’s or­gan­iz­a­tion.

Clin­ton staffers have already been put on alert for hijinks from O’Keefe’s con­ser­vat­ive group, which gained no­tori­ety around the ACORN scan­dal, and put out a video last week show­ing a Clin­ton cam­paign staffer en­cour­aging a “vo­lun­teer” to ask Iow­ans if they are Clin­ton sup­port­ers be­fore re­gis­ter­ing them to vote.

“We have journ­al­ists across the coun­try in­vest­ig­at­ing in­side the cam­paign. Not just this cam­paign,” O’Keefe said on Tues­day.

On Tues­day, the group teased its second re­lease as “a power­ful new un­der­cov­er video con­firm­ing that cor­rup­tion has per­meated Hil­lary Clin­ton’s cam­paign at the highest levels.” The video pur­ports to show Molly Bark­er, the dir­ect­or of mar­ket­ing for Clin­ton’s cam­paign, ac­cept­ing a cam­paign dona­tion from a for­eign na­tion­al. Sounds pretty bad, right?

Then you find out that the “for­eign na­tion­al” is a Ca­na­dian wo­man who was simply try­ing to buy a T-shirt at Clin­ton’s kick­off rally, and that Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion’s own “journ­al­ist” ac­ted as an in­ter­me­di­ary straw buy­er to make the trans­ac­tion, tak­ing the Ca­na­dian wo­man’s money to pur­chase the shirt for her.

In the video, the Ca­na­dian vis­it­or (who, O’Keefe says, Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion did not find the name for) says, “Can I give her the money? She’s Amer­ic­an. Can she buy it for me?”

“She could make a dona­tion,” Bark­er says.

“Can you buy it for me?” the Ca­na­dian wo­man asks the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive.

“Sure, I’ll buy it,” the Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion op­er­at­ive says. “So Ca­na­dians can’t buy them, but Amer­ic­ans can buy it for them?”

………

Pro­ject Ver­itas Ac­tion is com­fort­able con­duct­ing its op­er­a­tions un­der eth­ic­ally du­bi­ous cir­cum­stances. The Wash­ing­ton Post’s Dana Mil­bank got at that in an ex­change dur­ing the press con­fer­ence with the group’s leg­al ex­pert, Ben­jamin Barr.

Mil­bank: “I’m no ex­pert on cam­paign fin­ance law, but was that leg­al for your per­son to take that cash?”

Barr: “It’s a tech­nic­al vi­ol­a­tion of the law. It’s akin to jay­walk­ing for cam­paign fin­ance. This is a low-dol­lar threshold con­tri­bu­tion. There’s no re­port­ing is­sues at play. It’s less than $200. So at most it would be a small civil pen­alty that’s a few hun­dred dol­lars. But what we’re really wor­ried about is the Hil­lary cam­paign that has taken in a wide ar­ray of con­tri­bu­tions. Once you ag­greg­ate bey­ond $2,000, then you’re with­in the crim­in­al sanc­tions.”

Mil­bank: So you vi­ol­ated the law as well?

Barr: Yes.


………

“Is this a joke?” The Daily Beast’s Olivia Nuzzi asked later in the Q&A. “This feels like a prank.”

“Is this a joke,” O’Keefe re­peated. “Well, the Clin­ton cam­paign doesn’t think it’s a joke, be­cause they’re talk­ing to The Wash­ing­ton Post about it. And we sent the let­ter to the Clin­ton cam­paign, so no, this is not a joke.”

Not only does O’Keefe have the gump­tion to of­fer to en­trap a polit­ic­al cam­paign to the tune of $40, his group is now seek­ing re­dress for its own straw pur­chase.

“The Clin­ton cam­paign should re­turn their il­leg­al con­tri­bu­tion. I don’t see oth­er rem­ed­ies. That’s the only rem­edy that we’re seek­ing,” O’Keefe said at the press con­fer­ence.

………

To quote Charles Baudelaire, “The dev­il’s finest trick is to per­suade you that he does not ex­ist.” O’Keefe has the op­pos­ite in­ten­tions. His finest trick is to per­suade you that he does still ex­ist, and is worth listen­ing to.

Even the Washington Post, which has never found a Clinton scandal that it would not eagerly pimp, has determined that there is no “there” there.

A Canadian tourist wanted a t-shirt, and a member of O’Keefe’s “Wretched hive of scum and villainy” took pity on her and bought it for her, and somehow it’s a big Clinton scandal?

Dude, you have had your 15 minutes of fame.

Get a real job, and stop living in your parents basement.

Bagels Turned Out OK

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Even with the boiling, we did not get a gloss on the Bagels tonight.

It wasn’t quite as chewy as I would have liked on the inside, and the crust was decidedly non-glossy.

I think that both may have been an artifact of my using “White Whole Wheat” flour, because I could not find a white flour without malted barley flour, and Sharon* is violently allergic to both malt and barley.

Also, I found the flavor just a bit too yeasty.

The wife and kids loved them though.

I will repeat that this was literally the first time that I have ever made bread, so I cannot complain.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Remember the Loon Who Wanted the Government to Assassinate Law Professors Who He Disagreed With?

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A law professor who published an inflammatory article urging attacks on law professors and “Islamic holy sites” and who has been dogged by accusations of misrepresenting his academic and military credentials has resigned from the US Military Academy at West Point, the Guardian has confirmed.

US military academy official William Bradford argues that attacks on scholars’ home offices and media outlets – along with Islamic holy sites – are legitimate

Although West Point hired William C Bradford on 1 August, a spokesman said the prestigious undergraduate institution where the US army educates its future officers parted ways with the controversial academic on Sunday, the day after the Guardian published an article highlighting Bradford’s proposals to treat US scholars as “enemy combatants”.

“Dr William Bradford resigned on Sunday,” army lieutenant colonel Christopher Kasker, a West Point spokesman, told the Guardian on Monday. Bradford had taught five lessons for cadets in a common-core law course, from 17 to 27 August.

The West Point resignation marks the most recent academic departure for the controversial Bradford, following a decade’s worth of apparent exaggeration of his service record and academic career.

It remains unclear how thoroughly West Point vetted Bradford before hiring him.

………

Bradford has had a checkered academic career. In 2004, he quit a job teaching at the Indiana University School of Law after allegations emerged that he had exaggerated his military service, portraying himself inaccurately as a Gulf War veteran, an infantryman and a recipient of the prestigious Silver Star, an award for gallantry in action.

The army provided Bradford’s releasable service history to the Guardian on Monday. Bradford was commissioned into the army as a second lieutenant – the same rank West Point cadets hold upon commissioning – in 1995 and served the majority of his six-year service in military intelligence in the army reserve. He neither deployed nor earned any awards.

In 2005, the Guardian has learned, Bradford took a visiting professorship at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, teaching property law. A former student who wished to remain anonymous said Bradford’s behavior included “doing push-ups in class [and] making students stand and give answers in a military-like manner”.

Bradford, the former student said, ended up leaving his class – and ultimately the college – without grading the final exam.

Seriously?  This guy was employed at West Point?

Whoever is responsible for his hiring put “Wingnut Welfare” over both academic integrity as well the good order and discipline in the armed forces.

They need to be fired, and whatever security clearance that they might have needs to be replaced by a Cap’n Crunch decoder ring.