Last night’s dinner

May 1, 2017 • 10:45 am

One of the advantages of having visitors break up my hermetic existence is that I get to visit nice restaurants, including some I haven’t been to before. It’s my usual policy to never take a visitor to a restaurant I haven’t vetted before, but last night I broke the policy (my go-to bistro was closed) by dining at Ruxbin, an Asian-American fusion restaurant on the North Side of Chicago.  There are obligatory five- or three-course prix fixe menus; you choose one, and then the table chooses either three or five courses from a list to be shared (see the site for an example).

We of course opted for the five-course menu; my motto is that of A. J. Liebling: “Anyone who really likes food likes a lot of food.”

Before the formal meal, an amuse-bouche of “sushi”: a small bit of raw skate with wasabi, green apple puree, and a flower (a lot of the dishes are garnished with edible flowers). The restaurant is BYOB, so I brought a bottle of good French champagne. Note that the glass they provided was NOT a real champagne glass; you want a “flute” to conserve the bubbles, not one of these bowls on a stem:

A bread course: homemade warm sourdough rolls with a delicious unsalted butter with chives, accompanied by radishes and lettuce. The butter and rolls were fantastic:

Appetizer choices:

We chose the wedge salad, far better than any wedge salad I’ve ever had:

And the foie gras: this is half the dish (see above for the other stuff in the dish; it’s placed atop a round slice of toasted bread.

A palate cleanses: a piece of fermented cucumber (not exactly a pickle) and a glass of lentil and basmati rice soup:

Choices for the main course:

We had the fruits de mer and the duck breast, cooked “rosé”, of course. The seafood:

Close up of the seafood. The sauce was so delicious it could have been served on its own as a soup, so I asked for extra bread to sop it up:

The duck breast with the other stuff named above:

There is a choice of two desserts:

Chocolate melanges are everywhere, so we went with the black sesame baklava with black sesame/kumquat ice cream, kumquat slices, custard, raspberry, et al. Again, a fantastic course. Look at everything going on on this plate, yet the components harmonized well and each bit offered a new combination of textures and flavors:

And a gratis treat: chocolate-covered grapes with some kind of sprinkles:

It was a superb meal, well worth the price, and I love the BYOB feature since I can bring my best bottles. Although I broke my “no unknown restaurant” rule, I did so on the advice of my foodie friend Martin, who had been to Ruxbin several times and loved it. (Martin’s advice is reliable.)  Find yourself a foodie pal whose advice you can trust!

Photos by Nicole Reggia

The religiosity of National Public Radio

May 1, 2017 • 9:00 am

One of our readers, Thomas, has a website called Airbag Moments, which seems to be devoted to cogent critical review of the U.S.’s National Public Radio (NPR). For years I’ve been harping about the organization’s pro-religious stance (see some of the posts at this search), and not just from unctuous Krista Tippett, either.

In his latest post, “Yes, public radio is pro-religion“, Thomas makes a good case for that thesis, citing not only entire shows on NPR that are religious and pro-religion (as far as I know. there are no atheist shows); but also announcers that have religous belief or are soft on faith (a surprisingly large number); individual shows that are blatantly pro-faith; “religion unfriendly” events that are ignored or downplayed by NPR; and public statements or tw**ts by NPR announcers that give tongue to faith. He also inquired about this issue (and their faith) to several NPR announcers, some of whom actually answered him.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you think NPR is evenhanded about faith. Here’s something that surprised me (quotes from Thomas’s post are indented):

Shockingly I just heard the contributor credits at the end of Science Friday and was horrified to learn that the Templeton Foundation is a sponsor. The missions of that very wealthy foundation include trying to prove various religious notions like the efficacy of prayer, and to promulgate the misguided assertion that science and faith are compatible. I have not detected much bias in this direction on Science Friday, but I am not a regular listener. I don’t know when this unfortunate relationship began.

On the “objectivity” of NPR when it comes to reporting about religion:

Journalists are routinely required to disclose conflicts of interest and even recuse themselves from stories or even their jobs. Michelle Norris, for example, left her position as host of All Things Considered when her husband took a position with Obama’s reelection campaign. Yet religion gets something of a pass in this regard. It is routine for reporters not to discuss their personal beliefs and practices even when they are reporting on religion. This is an obvious double-standard. How can a Catholic reporter, who seriously believes in transubstantiation, the infallibility of the Ex-Cathedra utterances of the Pope, etc., possibly be objective when covering Catholicism if the assumption is that Norris can’t be objective about Obama because her husband works for the campaign? I mean I sort of get it about Norris, although I credit her with having a totally independent brain from that of her husband and personally think she needn’t have stepped down, but a person’s religion is a deep part of their personal identity – not just something their spouse does.

You may think this is a non-issue, but unless we keep calling attention to this kind of stuff, America will slide deeper into superstition. This station is, after all, funded in part by the American taxpayer, and thus should be secular in tone.

Here’s one religious show on NPR:

Interfaith Voices. Their treacly, obsequious-to-religion slogan on Twitter is “Approaching the world’s religions with an open, humble mind.” Hosted by a Catholic Nun. (I always find it ironic to approach religion with a “humble mind” given the unfathomable arrogance so many religious folks have involving their evidence-free certainties about reality and personal relationship to the infinite almighty.)

Do they have atheists and agnostics regularly on that show? If not, than this is non an even-handed treatment of religion.

And here’s an example of the ludicrous religious dissonance of someone who many of us probably listen to regularly, Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition:

UPDATE 4/30/29

Scott Simon went into some detail about his personal theology in an interview on today’s show:

NEVINS: Do you know where you’re going? I don’t believe in heaven or hell. So…
SIMON: No. I know what I tell myself, but do I know that for sure?
NEVINS: What do you tell – what do you say?
SIMON: Oh, I – you know, I believe in a heaven and I’ll be reunited…
NEVINS: You think that?
SIMON: I’ll be reunited with my parents and with my lost sister and with, you know, every pet I’ve ever had and loved. And I’ll be up there waiting for my wife and children. Is that for real? Of course not. But that’s what I tell myself to get through the day.
————-

Thomas added in an email to me:

I’m familiar with this sort of double-think from intelligent people, though I have never subscribed to the idiotic banality “genius is holding two opposing ideas in your head at once.

What kind of person tells themselves stuff they don’t think is “real” so they can “get through the day”?

NPR’s creeping religiosity not only surprises me, as always happens when smart or eloquent people profess faith in superstition, but also bothers me. Perhaps you have to be an atheist to notice this kind of airwave pollution, but I object to it.

Scott Simon. Will he see Fluffy in Heaven?

Monday: Hili dialogue

May 1, 2017 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning. It’s the 1st of May, so in Europe we get a holiday today.

In 1753 Carl Linnaeus published Species Plantarum which introduced binomial or two-part names with the first word always indicating genus.

Today in 1785 was the first time The Marriage of Figaro was performed. The plot is kind of like a soap opera that is allowed to go on for three hours, but the Overture was an instant hit and was encored with four other numbers. The emperor Joseph II did what all philistines and power-drunk busybodies do and banned encores by the end of the week citing “excessive duration of operas” as his concern.
In 1961 another supreme leader banned elections in his country: Fidel Castro:
The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.
In 1941 Orson Well’s Citizen Kane premiered in New York. For all its critical success, it didn’t go great at the box office. It is now considered to be one of the best films of all time.
In 2011 President Barack Obama announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan.
And finally, we get to the felid section of today’s news.
Hili: There is something magical about a blue sky.
A: What is that?
Hili: The tiny birds.
In Polish:
Hili: Jest coś magicznego w błękitnym niebie.
Ja: Co?
Hili: Te małe ptaki.

 

Alexander Van der Bellen can wear his own damn hijab

April 30, 2017 • 12:15 pm

by Grania Spingies

Alexander Van der Bellen

Racism and bigotry is an ugly thing, it’s inexcusable and any form of assault or attack ought to be vigorously prosecuted in the criminal courts, and the victim or target of the assault should also bring a civil suit for damages against the perpetrator.

It’s a serious problem and it requires serious attempts to resolve. Sometimes public gestures may be effective. In the Netherlands for example, recently Dutch politicians chose to hold hands in public to protest against homophobia.

Whether these sorts of demonstrations actually have the desired effect is unclear, but we can at least accept that these gestures and the participants are well-meaning and if nothing else deliver the message that bigotry is not going to be tolerated by society any more.

So when the Austrian president says he wishes to confront racism in his own country, that is to be commended. Although he says “It is every woman’s right to always dress how she wants” (gee, thanks) he then continues:

“…if this real and rampant Islamophobia continues, there will come a day where we must ask all women to wear a headscarf – all – out of solidarity to those who do it for religious reasons.”

How about no. You don’t combat bigotry by promoting a garment of paternalistic misogyny – or in this case by promoting its use by a group you neatly exempt yourself from: women. The hijab is in any case not actually a quintessential defining symbol of being Muslim. Millions of Muslim women around the world don’t wear the hijab. If it were essential to Muslim identity, then there would be no need or desire for groups like My Stealthy Freedom created by Muslim women who protest the hijab’s enforcement by people unnaturally obsessed with erasing the female body  – and the fetishisation of the garment by well-meaning but woefully ignorant Westerners.

Here’s a video from an Australian cleric telling us not only about the hijab but also what kind of hijab and clothing is more suitable and acceptable for women to wear (his own opinion, of course). The hijab is all about concealment of the female hair and body and displays of modesty for reasons of piety and purity as dictated by male leaders. Note the “we” in this video is men who get to tell their “sisters” what they want them to wear. Is this really the banner you want to march under?

https://twitter.com/LaloDagach/status/858423748558544897

If President Van der Bellen really wants to promote a right to dress how you want and combat racism against Muslims, then he can wear the hijab. After all, if the men of Iran can do it to protest the enforced hijab in their own country, then so can the president of a free, liberal European country where no-one faces criminal sanction for the clothes they wear.

 

Britain’s National Union discourages whooping because it disadvantages the deaf

April 30, 2017 • 10:45 am

Britain’s National Union of Students is a travesty: very regressive, authoritarian, and anti-Semitic. In fact, it’s so bad that several universities have withdrawn from it. The good news is that the last President, Malia Bouattia, who is Algerian but claimed to be black, and who was a vicious anti-Semite, was defeated in the latest elections in favor of Shakira Martin, a person who seems more conciliatory. (According to several reports, one here, Bouattia larded her farewell speech with anti-Israeli sentiments, ending by shouting, ‘Free, free Palestine!”)

But the NUS isn’t regressive-free yet. As the the Torygraph reported of the NUS conference, the attendees were warned not to “whoop, cheer, or clap”:

Students who whoop, cheer and clap should face “consequences” because they are excluding deaf people, delegates at the National Union of Students conference said.

Audience members were repeatedly warned that they must cease whooping to express support for a speaker, because it has a “serious impact” on the accessibility of the conference.

Delegates at the NUS annual conference in Brighton were encouraged to use “jazz hands” instead of clapping – where students wave their hands in the air – as this is deemed a more inclusive form of expression.

Estelle Hart, an NUS elections committee member who was chairing a session on Thursday, told students: “No whooping, it does have a serious impact on some delegates ability to access conference.”

The motion calls for “reduced cheering or unnecessary loud noises on conference floor, including whooping and clapping” and warns of “consequences for those who ignore this requirement”. In the past, NUS events have banned clapping on the grounds that it might “trigger anxiety”.

The NUS Women’s conference had previously discouraged clapping and noisy approbation in favor of “jazz hands” since clapping could be triggering.  Here are “jazz hands” in case you didn’t know:
What I don’t understand is why whooping should be replaced by “jazz hands,” which, after all, exclude the blind. At least the deaf can see when some form of approbation is going on.

The Torygraph also reported this:

Last week it emerged that Oxford University’s Equality and Diversity Unit issued guidance to students advising them that students who avoid making eye contact with their peers could be guilty of racism.

But the BBC noted that Oxford later apologized for saying that the lack of eye contact was a “microaggression”  and “subtle, everyday racism” after being told that some autistic people, or those with social anxiety disorder, avoid eye contact. Finally, the Torygraph adds another bit of student insanity (sorry, that’s ableism) that I reported on earlier:

The University of Glasgow started issuing “trigger warnings” for theology students studying the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, whereby students are told they may see distressing images and are given the opportunity to leave.

This warning was given to THEOLOGY STUDENTS! Oy!

This is the kind of thing being done to supposedly rectify social injustice, but is really just virtue flaunting,  I’m all in favor of giving handicapped people access and opportunities that everyone else has, but the ban on whooping and clapping shows that good motivations can be carried way too far. This is exactly why the Left is riven with accusations of ideological impurity.

h/t: Jerry

Drink a Heineken, save the world

April 30, 2017 • 9:00 am

by Grania Spingies

You’d think that after the Pepsi fiasco a few weeks ago, any advertising agency – or any product producer about to launch a new campaign – would consider the mockery and derision aimed at the soft drink purveyor and demand that any similar campaign in the works suggesting that their own product could  in some way engineer social transformation be aborted immediately.

However, Heineken decided not to take the road of caution and went ahead with its own version of giving the world a coke. On the one hand, there is simply no good reason for any beverage vendor to try to flog their wares by trying to insinuate that they can make a meaningful contribution to transforming society in a positive way. On the other, Heineken’s latest attempt is by no means the worst in the recent spate of painfully self-conscious “socially aware” advertisements peddling mass produced beverages. Pepsi has claimed that title and will forever be the champion of the most inept and crass attempt to cash in on feel-good commercialism. Here’s a Canadian example of beer creating racial harmony. Is there anything that fermented hop-flavored sugar water cannot do?

What the Heineken ad did was select a small group of people with opposing political and social views and put them through ice-breaking and team-building exercises; with the big “reveal” coming on completion of the task, leaving the participants in the awkward situation of realising that the person they had been getting along with up to that point was in fact someone that they would normally not only have nothing to do with, but probably actively despise. At that point the cheesiness ensues when all the teams opted to sit down and have a beer and a chat with their former team-mate, possibly overcoming and confronting the issues that would normally polorise them.

But what saves the advert is not that it claims that a Heineken can bridge social divides. In fact the advert neatly avoids that trap. The product is certainly placed prominently in the final scenes of the advertisement, however it is clear that the catalyst is not the beer but the connections that have been built during the team-building exercises.

It is actually a fairly savvy acknowledgement that we all tend to label ourselves and present a small thumbnail version to the world, especially in these days of social media; and this leads to snap judgements and very often complete ignorance of the other side. Sometimes otherwise decent people can hold ignorant views. Sometimes, those people can start to change their minds.

Watch for yourself.

I can’t say I am a much of a fan of this new trend of socially aware ware-hawking. If I want a drink I don’t need to think that I am drinking a “woke” drink. I just want the flavor – or the alcohol.

Maybe beer companies should stick to being funny, it probably works better.

 

 

h/t: Pyers

Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 30, 2017 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning!

I’m filling in for Jerry this morning, he’ll be in later on.

In 1492 Spain gave Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

Click to go to larger version of image

In 1598 Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots. In 1927 actors Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood. In 1945 Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for just more than a day.

Don’t they look uncomfortable?

Finally, here’s a song that sounds like it is 50 years out of time, but it was only released yesterday. It’s a perfect for relaxing to while sipping your morning coffee or tea.

Over in Poland Madame Hili is having a relaxing Sunday herself.
Hili: I probably nodded off over this book.
A: This happens only to those who still like books.
In Polish:
Hili: Chyba przysnęłam nad tą książką.
Ja: To się zdarza tylko tym, którzy jeszcze lubią książki.
Meanwhile, Leon is up to similarly important things.
Leon: I consider this an opening of our picnic.

And finally, reader Stephanie sent this gorgeous photo of a lynx to Jerry, taken by Arielle DeMerchant near Scotch Lake in eastern Canada. There’s a story here about how she set about capturing this shot.