death on a cracker

You've heard of "death by chocolate." This is sort of like that. It's a dessert, or an appetizer, or even an amuse-bouche. Any cracker will do, but the payload is the important part, so err on the side of mild. A saltine is a pretty simple and easy to obtain cracker, but water crackers hold up a little better, and thinly sliced pieces of pan-toasted (in the same manner you make croutons) bread from a baguette is probably the best choice.

Cheese should be something with flavor, and a fairly dry cheese, although it must have some oil. I wouldn't go as dry as parmesan, or romano, but a combination of the two  might work if it were ground or in thin (very thin) slices. Gouda is wonderful, but an aged, not smoked or fresh gouda. The various bleu cheeses are a bad idea, although gorgonzola is a good choice. Basically, something with a flavor that can stand up to the next ingredient, which is sort of like the nuclear weapon of the culinary arsenal. We get a cheese stocked locally that has peppadew in it, but is otherwise a traditional jack cheese. I have no idea what a peppadew is, but that link gives you an idea of the other possible characteristic of the cheese: don't be afraid to go down the road of cheese with added ingredients. Improvise. You'll have to.

The third ingredient is a habanero pepper. I get about six crackers per pepper. I slice the pepper thinly, and horizontally (across the middle, rather than from the stem down) so they form a ring that I can place on the cracker. I place cheese atop the pepper (I use Red Savinas because I grow them myself; you may find this entirely intolerable and prefer something more like a scotch bonnet, or if you simply haven't the stones, a jalapeno or poblano).

This is the magic. You then nuke it. Give it fifteen seconds or so in the microwave, and make sure that the cheese and the pepper are still firmly joined — this may require some re-arranging — and then another fifteen. Leave them to cool, because you don't want them to get your hands oily.

Precautions. First, working with habaneros, especially of the Savina or other super-hot strains is best done with gloves. This prevents getting their ... treasures in places you wouldn't expect, like under your fingernails, in your eyes, on other sensitive mucosal surfaces of your body (you would not believe how often you touch such surfaces in a given day if you started keeping track; this is another reason people should wash their hands more and learn how to use hand lotion). Second, good grief, they're spicy. The original recipe is the Leary Biscuit. Basically, by heating the cheese, we create a bit of a solvent, which takes the pepper's oily bits (which is where the spicy stuff is, thankfully), and places it into solution. The cracker serves as a substrate and something to pick it up with (otherwise, really, this would be fondue, right? — not that habanero fondue is a bad idea, really…). As with preparation, take care not to get the cheese and oils on your hands.

In general, they are delicious. It's a terrific dish for a summer day with a nice, solid beer (a very hoppy something or other, or something sweeter like a belgian double bock, or a lambic ale maybe) that can "take the heat," as it were. The cheese means that you get to taste all of the pepper, the pepper means you get to experience the heat for, depending on the pepper, even up to a few hours. It kind of sticks to your lips, which is the fun part. You'll be sitting there an hour later, grinning like a fool, reaching for a beer, thinking, man, were those tasty. But you probably won't want another serving for a while.

Enjoy. I figured I'd write this down and submit it to the vast interwebnal peanut galle(r)y for mass consumption because there's no reason potheads should have sole use of the Leary Biscuit as a vehicle for delivering the goodness of plants.

Cheers.

Obscenity on the interwebs.

short: "soft" censorship, and the categorization of the obscene and genre, again. perhaps ad nauseum.

I am really quite upset that Google has seen fit to "warn" users that Becky's weblog is obscene. I have commented at stupendous length about this in the past. Becky is amazingly insightful and has a talent I admire greatly. She reads at least as much as I do (which is to say, a lot), and is able to provide links to both sources and videos to complement or bolster her expressed opinion.

Becky, I think, is also a lesbian. I'm not sure, because I've never really read her site because of her sexuality, I've read it because of its political commentary. I've read it because of her very insightful commentary on the Libertarian party, which I'd desperately love to be a part of but just can't see making any progress or, really, doing anything useful whatsoever. I continue to read it because, despite the incredibly busy layout of her weblog (which is her prerogative; I've heard people tell me the colors on my site "make their eyes bleed." fortunately, I think most of the regular readers herein are of the RSS variety, rather than "direct hit" variety), it is a very good read.

So, from time to time, I think because she is, you know, an adult, and has, you know, a healthy sexuality and libido, makes sexual comments or posts a picture of a naked person on her site. This is obscene? No, folks, this is not obscene, nor does it need a warning unless we assume that the readers of the entire blogspot.com domain are too fucking stupid to realize that sometimes people who have smart thoughts about things like, oh, our president, might also sometimes think about things like, oh, maybe the shape of somebody's ass.

I am really, desperately disappointed with the person at Google who was short-sighted enough to classify her site as worthy of a big warning banner. I'm not going to go as far as to say I know a lot of people at Google, and I know that their politics run in a certain direction and that direction is counter to Becky's, and that might possibly have something to do with it, because I really don't think it went that far. I think what happened is somebody (probably several somebodies) "flagged" the site, and some mindless automaton at Google looked at the website and saw nipples. Or half-covered (gasp! that's even worse!) nipples. Or mentioned possible sexual combinations of, I dunno, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton (like I said, I don't read her site for the occasional sexual commentary/banter/whatever). It makes me ill.

I say the very same things, only perhaps a little more heterosexually (and again, I am not even quite sure what Becky would classify herself as, sexually), and maybe I make more comments about unix, microcontrollers, and the department of defense than she does. But I've posted pictures of futanari, and of guro (for fucks sake!) and semen-on-chicks, and the lot, and I've done it for the same reasons she has. Because, really, somebody has to point out that this is no more chaste a society than it is a secular one, and none of these debates are free of sexual bias than they are of any other bias.

I think what has happened, and this is the part that makes me oh-so-angry with Google, is that this "warning" as been erected specifically because Becky is a woman, and women are not supposed to have pictures of naked or close-to-naked women on their website. If her template were purple script (as in Chancery, not "font") on an ivory background and she talked about politics while occasionally pining after various female celebrities, we wouldn't be discussing (and the discussion I think is happening elsewhere; I realize this is a monologue and rant) this at all. That part, people, makes me really angry. Of all the enlightened organizations in the world, Google, with its "20% time" and continual innovation, its information-must-be-free mantra, and so on, has no fucking business calling her website obscene (sorry, pdf, but it's the crux of the matter, the definition of the word, and Becky is no stranger to Potter Stewart-ism).

I'll say it again. It really, really saddens me that somebody has made this judgment; that a judgment was made at all. I wish I could think of something to do, to help point out how horribly absurd this all is, but I'm afraid this is the best I can do. If any of you would like to point out, on your own, or email Google, you're welcome to. However, Google has something of a reputation for being a big old juggernaut, way too busy to answer or consider individual letters. (I guess with the exception of weblogs flagged obscene, and even then, only the flagging, not un-flagging-thereof).


And, sadly, this isn't the first time this has happened to her. What the fuck is wrong with the internet? The very people that make these decisions are the same people that read William Gibson and Bruce Sterling and Neal Stephenson and think the internet is some vast wild west, and that people are homesteading on blogger, that this is their own private island of expression and public thought. Yet, they're letting their own prudish, egocentric biases into the network like a bunch of frightened children or dithering, borderline-senile senators. Good god, people. Grow the fuck up.

pipe dreams

I find myself thinking, the more I read about the UAVs and UGVs and UUVs being developed, that the skills I've developed working with microcontrollers is really rather portable to both the civilian market and the defense/intel market. The civil sector hasn't quite figured out how useful they are, but things like UAVs are great for aerial surveying, and civil security agencies ("mall cops") haven't figured out how useful things like hover-and-stare capabilities and micro-uav's are. Then there are throw-bots and the like.

At any rate, I'm not sure I really want to do that, but I am really starting to enjoy working with C again, and seeing represented in hardware and software the ideas I'm trying to implement. You know, having a diode or voltage regulator instead of an assert() or whatever.

Anyways. I should probably spend less time reading trade rags and more time relaxing on the weekends.