Metaphor Police: Walled Gardens

It is fashionable amongst the technoliterate to use the metaphor of "Walled Gardens" for any "closed" or "controlled" system or environment they don't like. Crying out in anguish, "it's a walled garden!" is supposed be not only meaningful but also critical. This confuses the hell out of me, because walled gardens are great.

I'd wager most people who use the term have never seen an actual walled garden. They are lovely, functional, useful, productive. They help keep rabbits out (sometimes). They protect from the elements. They allow a really efficient use of space in a low-tech way. They are attractive and can produce more, longer, than an unwalled garden. If you had a country home that had one you would probably never want to go back to not having one.

So here's the odd thing: I've never heard anyone talk about actual walled gardens as if they were bad things. Yet when people talk about technology the metaphor is used as an unequivocal evil. As a counterexample, here's a simple metaphor that works great because its metaphorical use matches its literal use: "piece of shit". Generally, not always, but generally, a literal piece of shit is not a good thing. Likewise, if you describe your car as "a piece of shit", people get that you are making an unambiguous judgment. It works fine as a metaphor. With literal walled gardens, my experience of them is as a good thing. Every time I hear the metaphorical used in disgust, I think, "what's wrong with that?"

"But it's a walled garden!" Uh... great, more lettuce/broccoli/apples for us!

Ok, I get that we need a shorthand criticism for closed/controlled/no-user-serviceable-parts environments, so *some* metaphor would be handy. I think we can do much better than wrongly maligning poor walled gardens.

Goofing Off With The Camera (longer exposures)

As mentioned earlier this week, went out Christmas night with the camera. The photos weren't especially good, but the fun was in the taking. Here are a couple samples.

See the blue & white sign in the middle of the roundabout? That's where we later setup the camera for the shot below.

The shot from the sign in the roundabout.

State of the Village

Another fine year for South Hackney, aka Victoria Park Village. Family-friendly cafes are doing well, with several more opening in the past year. Elbows continues to be a favourite, but recent addition Amandine is nice as well, joining Loafing and the latest, Tipico. Plenty of coffee yet not a chain in sight. Good! The butcher (Ginger Pig) and fishmonger (Jonathan Norris) are doing well, and The Deli Downstairs is doing great business at its location on the roundabout. I still consider it the "new" location for the deli but I guess it's been there a while now. Bottle Apostle continues to win accolades and custom. I suspect it's drawing folks in from a broader area than the local Hackney and Tower Hamlets neighbourhoods, deservedly so. SpitJack's continues as a favourite of the restaurants. We keep going back. If anything, it's gotten better -- e.g. the hamburgers have been cooked just as requested recently (I nearly weep with joy when I find a restaurant that doesn't overcook hamburgers). The Fish House continues a strong run. The Empress of India has changed hands and has dropped "of India". I've not yet been in this incarnation but Timeout reviewed it favourably. Su Sazzagoni also looks to be going well, but Chilliz restaurant, in between the Empress and Su Sazzagoni but open for years prior to each, has gone out of business and its replacement, Chambers, has just opened. Standard Tandoori, across the street, is our go-to curry vendor, and will hopefully continue its long residence.

Pub-wise, Lauriston holds steady as a firm local favourite and the Royal Inn on the Park has revamped its garden a bit. A ways along the north side of the park, The Brittania to the east continues its apparent mission to be all things to everyone while to the west the pub on the corner of Skipworth Road has changed yet again. Must be a cursed spot. Looks nice but I've not yet stopped in. South through the middle of the park, good to see The Crown keeping pace (nice pub, good food, the people at Geronimo Inns seem to know what they're doing), after the site hosted a well-intentioned but poorly executed organic gastropub followed by a doomed tapas restaurant.

Sad news up on Well Street: Izzy bid farewell to the kebab business, leaving by choice at the end of summer. Sadly, Izzy's has been replaced by a "we buy gold" shop. We are still well-covered for kebabs on Well Street, though, panic averted.

Christmas Cooking Notes

Geese from the butcher, "medium" but quite large, 5.5 kg min each. Removed legs for confit. Roasted crown of -- started 220 for 15-20 minutes, reduced to 200, did not take very long -- removed when breast was 70C outer, closer to 65C near the bone. Was very nice. Served the four of us well, with not much leftover. For the other one, removed the breasts and wrapped them together for the freezer, for a boneless roast later in the winter. Rendered all the fat out of everything and made the confit. Great yield of fat this year. Full large jar with the 4 legs, plus another sizeable jar of the pure stuff.

Chestnut dressing: poor chestnuts, kind of dry and low yield, very tedious to peel, so not nearly as many as for Thanksgiving. But overall the dressing was better. I attribute this entirely to the stock used. This one was made with roast turkey stock (from the thanksgiving turkeys) rather than chicken stock. Turkey stock is liquid gold. I don't know why, but it's always the best bird for stock. So next thanksgiving I need to get turkeys early just to make stock. I hope I remember this plan in time.

Green bean casserole and mashed potatoes were fine. Used King Edwards for the spuds. No complaints.

Cranberry relish was really good, and an excellent counter to the rich goose. I think it goes even better with goose than it does with turkey. Unfortunately we likely won't be able to get fresh cranberries whenever we get around to eating the goose legs.

Dessert involved "cake fountains", which are essentially fireworks you stick into your cake. Unusually for us, this did not lead to any fires, injuries, or property destruction.

A Nice Non-Encounter

The older youngster and I went out for a walk tonight and brought my camera and gorillapod. We were goofing off with some longer exposures in the village and at one point scampered to the raised garden in the middle of the roundabout for an interesting point of view. As we were setting up the gorillapod around the top of a lit street sign in the roundabout, a police car eased right by us. There was no questioning or stopping. The shot didn't turn out especially great, but it was very cool that we got to enjoy taking it hassle-free.

Last-Minute Christmas Cooking Tips

Probably too late, but if you're fretting about a turkey, my top tip is to cook the legs separately. Turkey is not an easy bird to cook, even less forgiving than chicken. The breasts are at their best a shade undercooked, while the legs are better well (or very well) done. I've heard of an interesting method to put ice packs on the breasts for an hour or so prior to roasting if you want to cook the bird whole. This would give the legs a head start, the breasts a handicap. Another method, which I sometimes use on chickens, is to make deep slashes across the legs & thighs -- rub in butter, salt, pepper, whatever else *after* the slashing. This exposes a lot more surface area and lets the legs cook quicker. You also get more crispy edges and pieces are a little easier to pull off the bone if you don't mind kids eating with their fingers. For turkeys now, I always cook the legs separately, roasting the breasts on the bone, breast side down on high heat for a while (220C for about 45minutes), then breast side up at lower heat (200C), until done (I take it out when it's 65C near the bone, or sooner). When you flip it, rub a new coating of butter over the bird to encourage the skin to get lovely deep golden brown and crispy. No matter how you roast it, let it rest after the oven. Thirty minutes is fine, or even longer. Fifteen minutes minimum if you're super impatient.

I'm cooking goose as (now) usual for Christmas. Goose is much easier to cook than turkey. Even so, I cook the legs separately, just because having confit of goose leg later in the year is one of the delayed delights of christmas. Plus, goose fat! Down to the very last nutella-jar full of last year's bonanza.

Thanks For All The Cash, Suckers!

So Citibank (recipient of huge piles of save-us cash from the taxpaying public) recently changed terms on some of their entry-level checking accounts. Flat fee if you don't maintain a certain deposit level across any and all "linked" products. Reasonable in general? Sure. But that particulars? Fee is $15 a month (seems high!) unless you maintain net deposit balances of... $6000. Wow! I may be out of touch, but that seems like an awful lot of money to have on hand to park into accounts effectively bearing no interest whatsoever. That's some brass, Citibank -- congrats!

"Live" Bus Departures from TFL

Nice concept: each bus stop in London has a unique number on it. Text it or enter it onto a web page and get ostensibly realtime information on when buses will be swooping in to pick you up. Unlike the system NYC is trialling, there is no realtime map information. Which would be useful. But ETAs all by themselves would be useful. Except they're not because they are way too inaccurate. So they can't be relied on to judge when you should leave your house or leave work or duck out of a shop and into the rain. The system kind of works as a comedic diversion. We've been trying it every day this week. One day I checked every minute or two between 07:11 and when the bus actually arrived. According to the estimated time remaining, we should have expected a bus at 07:21, then 07:20, then 07:25. It eventually arrived at 07:27. I was mystified as to what happened between the 7:20 and 7:25 estimated times of arrival, as within a span of 2 minutes the bus got 5 minutes farther away. Was it going backwards?

Today was arguably funnier. If you're not familiar with London transit you might not realize how ludicrous this is, but you'll have to trust me -- seven #26 buses arriving within a 25-minute window is about as likely as the Queen giving me a lift to work in her Rover.

Not to worry, a few minutes later, a couple of those buses had vanished. And no, not by virtue of having arrived and then departed from the stop in question. Sigh. I hope I never find out how much it all cost.

Debt, Money, the Bartering Myth

Read a fascinating interview with an economic anthropologist who's written a book on the history of debt. I've not yet read the book but have ordered it. The interview, though, just by itself is well worth reading. Sample quote:

Since antiquity the worst-case scenario that everyone felt would lead to total social breakdown was a major debt crisis; ordinary people would become so indebted to the top one or two percent of the population that they would start selling family members into slavery, or eventually, even themselves.

Well, what happened this time around? Instead of creating some sort of overarching institution to protect debtors, they create these grandiose, world-scale institutions like the IMF or S&P to protect creditors. They essentially declare (in defiance of all traditional economic logic) that no debtor should ever be allowed to default. Needless to say the result is catastrophic. We are experiencing something that to me, at least, looks exactly like what the ancients were most afraid of: a population of debtors skating at the edge of disaster.

Indian Hotel Security

Oh yeah. Now this is more like it.

Get Your Cold Fusion On

E-Cat, anyone? Both Forbes and Wired have been covering the latest cold fusion gambit, Italian Andrea Rossi's "e-cat" power generator. A couple days ago he "demonstrated" the device for a supposed US buyer. Comically labelled a "success", the demonstration consisted of some water being heated up, while his devices remained hooked up to a *running* (and somewhat loud) power generator. Unknown people from the undisclosed "buyer" were said to "verify" the thing a success. Attendees at the glorious event were allowed to witness, sort of, but only one at a time. This is not even a good magic trick. Seriously, "Penn and Teller Do Cold Fusion" would be mind-bogglingly convincing, but you'd know it was a trick. So what's the play here? Is the idea that it is so obviously dodgy that people will believe it?

Contrast with the gents who thought they might have convinced some neutrinos to go faster than the speed of light (no word on whether the neutrinos immediately started plotting to kill their own grandparents). They made a public appeal to the rest of the particle physics world to find their mistake. They were highly reluctant to declare victory, and very eager to have tests repeated. That's good science. (Bit of a shame Gary Taubes isn't still writing about this kind of thing.)

In any case, Steven Krivit is recommended reading, e.g. this one from earlier in the week. One of Krivit's earlier hypotheses on the matter might be the most accurate one in play: “I believe [Rossi] doesn’t have what he claims. I believe he knows it. I believe he’s hoping that, if he can just get enough money, he can eventually make it work.”

Business Travel Notes

Done a few business trips lately. Flown longhaul on BA, AA, Cathay, Sing Air. My brush with greatness was seeing Gordon Ramsay in the AA first class lounge at JFK. I did not bother him, although if I had to say anything I would have mentioned that his Plane Food is one of the saving graces to Heathrow T5 (second best thing behind BA lounges). The AA flight was interesting. I luckily got upgraded to first class. The first class lounge was pleasant, no, not quite as nice as the BA business class lounge at JFK, but no complaints. From what I could tell, the AA business class lounge, like the United one, does the embarrassing thing of issuing travelers a couple of drink coupons and then nickel-and-diming you after that. Cheap. The AA in-flight service was really pleasant. I'd flown AA over the atlantic a few times in the late 90s and the service usually mediocre, so it was a nice surprise to be treated so well and cheerfully. Just one data point, but kudos to AA flight attendants.

BA flights were good as always. Onboard service almost always really nice. And I love the LHR T5 first class lounge. Sadly, looks like I've not quite flown enough this membership year to retain my coveted "gold" status, so no more first class lounge for me. Oh well. In related news, T5 still sucks. Although arriving in T3 was crazy -- that terminal's a bit of a madhouse now. I hear good things about T4 now, but of course it's difficult to get there because the express train doesn't stop. Maybe it's easier to say that LHR is pants.

In Tokyo I used both Narita and Haneda. Haneda is approximately 1700 miles closer to Tokyo than is Narita. Quick little international terminal there, great stuff. Everything about HKG is as good as I remember. I did get to use the Cathay lounge for the first time, which was actually kind of dull. It was smallish, and all table service (or chair services I suppose). I prefer self-serve, but if the waiters want to keep grabbing me glasses of fizzy water, I guess that's fine. I left the lounge early and wandered around the airport a bit. One shop I liked was sponsored by the local trade association and featured solely Hong Kong designers. Lots of phone cases but some interesting other things as well.

Cathay flights were predictably really nice. One feature I loved: an outside camera view (underside of plane, facing forward). Very cool while landing.

Singapore's Changi airport takes the cake. Just fabulous. Bustling and efficient yet somehow calm and quiet. No constant blaring noise that especially fouls US airports. Carpeted walkways, lots of space and air, good shops, good looking choice of restaurants (food standards are high in Singapore by default). Live koi! Free video games. Free internet. Gardens. Free movie viewing. A gym. And a bunch of other stuff I've already forgotten. Damn.

Mumbai airport. Well, not sure I can describe it accurately. Waited on the tarmac a while after parking, after a flight in Sing Air that was of course super nice. Exited onto bus. Immediately (seriously, fewer than 10 meters away) upon going through passport control, had to queue up again to have someone verify that my passport was stamped. Why? Do they not trust the people who just stamped them? That sets the tone. More queues, scans, checks. Leaving was even worse. New form and long queues just for immigration control while leaving. Why? Why do they care who leaves? Then umpteen security checks. Noisy place. At the boarding gate, between queuing up to get on the plane and actually getting on the plane, the security tag on my carryon and my boarding pass were checked no fewer than 5 times (5, *after* arriving at the gate), including a rescan and search. In one of the earlier security lines, I did accidentally bodycheck a soldier with an interesting-looking automatic weapon. He was very polite and apologetic, even. I shudder to think what would have happened I'd done the same in a US airport. So in general, despite a very, very short time, there, the thing I noticed about anything, such as the airport, less than pleasant about Mumbai: it would be a thousand times worse except most everyone is so darned good natured. So mostly it's just fine and I end up chastising myself not to be an asshole.

Food on the trip to Asia was excellent all around. Great food in Tokyo. The bar is high. Expensive but baseline quality even at average place is extremely high. Fantastic stuff. Hong Kong I love kind of all around. Food there can be excellent, or can be a bit dodgy, but I enjoyed plenty of the good stuff, including an epic dim sum lunch that had about 5 more courses of food than I was expecting. Singapore very nice, although the whole city is a bit like a grown-up warm-weather canary wharf. That much nicer but so overly controlled and curated it doesn't have the pizazz and buzz of, say, Hong Kong. But stunning at night. In Mumbai I had a couple great meals. One more local, lots of vegetarian dishes that were quite tasty along with a minority of meatier fare. The second was meat-heavy northern cuisine. I ate about 5 pounds of perfectly cooked and beautifully spiced lamb shank. Yum.

Hotels? Stereotypically, the standard of service at hotels in each leg of my Asia trip was just fantastic. As with airports, really puts western experience to shame. Mumbai hotels take security very seriously, as you might guess. (Is there some rule about having a really impressive-looking Sikh manning the final security check at the front door of every hotel there? Seriously, each hotel I went to had a large, super-relaxed-and-friendly-because-he's-probably-a-stupendous-badass smiling arrivals into the metal detector.) In any case, every hotel on my trip seemed to take service very seriously. Although the Tokyo Hotel could have done with less bowing, more wifi. And let's just say the Hong Kong Mandarin Oriental won the overall prize for awesomeness.