Train to Nowhere

Lots of fun people take the train.

Apparently, Jan 27 was National Chocolate Cake Day. I don't know how I missed that one, but Robin Shreeves mentioned it on her blog, and offered this recipe for chocolate cake. It's never too late to celebrate chocolate cake in any form.

And here, from Duncan Hines, is a recipe for Black Forest torte. Don't eat dinner first, or you'll spoil your appetite for cake.

I'm sure many of you are wondering how you go about dismantling an old foundry when you no longer have need for it. Here, from North American Dismantling Company, are some photos taken as their workers take down the GM Saginaw Malleable Iron Factory. There's a very nice shot of a Volvo hydraulic excavator using a grapple to get at recyclable material.

No worries.

Disser, Lord of the Underworld

It's prudent to make an offering to an immortal with super powers, especially an immortal armed with Brussels sprouts.

It's Monday morning again. Did you know that our calendar is deceptive--it's stuffed with hidden Mondays that show up when you least expect them. That explains why there are more Mondays than there are any other days of the week. The gods did this to us because they thought we were having too much fun.

You can defend yourself against Monday with this chocolate torte, which was posted on pccuisine.com, along with the secret formula for making it.

And here's a picture of a nice tugboat. If you've got a spare $82,000, you can take it away and give it a nice home. It has a 400hp engine, and was built in 1943, a very bad year for touring Europe or the Pacific islands. Details here, on this website.

Here's an interesting new book in which the author talks about the fragmentation of modern life, and the need for a more holistic approach to things. There's a good review of it in the Times Literary Supplement (October 22, 2010), in which the reviewer, John Cottingham, singles out an important point.

"One of the central purposes of university education," he says, "...is moral improvement; but what is often in fact promoted in place of genuine moral virtue is a kind of fastidious self-regard or "self-respect"--what MacIntyre aptly calls "a wish to be able to think well of oneself.""

Cottingham calls this a 'sinister simulacrum of true morality'.

I think I can see Jean-Paul Sartre hopping down the bunny trail to cosh the author with a copy of 'L'Etre et le Neant'.

Here's a picture of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Hopping down the bunny trail, bringing chocolate to all the good girls and boys, and Brussels sprouts to the NOT good girls and boys.

Eat your veggies!

Graduate Students Must Have an Ostrich

I'm late with this one--I have no idea why it took so long, because it's not complicated. Possibly, a late start has something to do with it. I finally got the index page of my redesigned website up, although the whole rest of the site remains to be reworked and posted.

Here is a useful chocolate torte.

I can't think of anything else right now. Not chocolate, I mean. Anything.

Scotland forever!

Trojan Parrots Homesick for Norway

I've been tormenting myself trying to redesign my website--a task which I've managed to put off for more than a year. It's interesting how unforgiving cascading style sheets are: make a few simple miscalculations on your proportions, and the whole thing looks like something Mondrian would have painted while riding the roller coaster at a rutabaga fair.

Enough small talk! Here, from Visual Recipes, is a recipe for, and a picture of, a 'quick and easy chocolate pudding'. Just the thing to make you forget all about tiresome websites!

And here's a German chocolate pie from Big Oven.

I've really got to stop looking at these things, and get down to work. Just think of what Flaubert and James Joyce could accomplish in as little as one day! Joyce, for instance,would have written six words, and crossed out five. And Flaubert would undoubtedly have torn up an entire paragraph!

I'd rather be reading Dumas.

Good grief; here's a triple chocolate torte! How did that get in here?

Tie me kangaroo down.....