Texas Prisons End Special Last Meals In Executions

via NPR 

A former inmate cook who made the last meals for prisoners at the Huntsville Unit, where Texas executions are carried out, wrote a cookbook several years ago after he was released. Among his recipes were Gallows Gravy, Rice Rigor Mortis and Old Sparky's Genuine Convict Chili, a nod to the electric chair that once served as the execution method. The book was called "Meals to Die For."

Taipei Exchanges

第36個故事
作詞：雷光夏
作曲：雷光夏

夏天的雨水飄落　寧靜公園
深夜的微風拂過　吹乾了樹
在街角的咖啡店　相遇的一刻
故事從頭　我對你依然心動

溫暖的太陽照著　冬天的花
你微笑著讓我　抹去眼淚
看這座城市　漫漫　被時光移動
若伸出手　還是渴望被你把握

給我　我想要的生活

面對　最坦白的眼眸
前方　是一片晴朗星空
答案　靜靜擁抱我

V: I am watching `Taipei Exchanges'. I am having a hard time watching this. They're just too rich. The city is too clean. I don't know about the vox pop sections, either.

me: Oh?

V: I understand how those HK movies can make the city seem so beautiful and romantic. This movie makes Taipei look like Austin. It very much is not.

me: What city does it closely resemble?

V: Detroit, haha

Sleepwalking towards the 1930s

"The problem is in large part to do with the application of an incorrect metaphor, the easy-to-understand idea that a household has to live within its income. But governments are not households, and the idea of cutting your way to prosperity cannot be read across from an individual’s finances to those of the state."

The Belgian Solution

Texas Smoke Barbecue

"...although the meat itself has been slaved over for hours by the pit master and refined to the nth degree, no one sees any contradiction in serving it with cheap saltines, industrial white bread or the world’s worst beans or corn bread. "

Texas Cult of Smoke Barbecue

"...obsession with limited government produces impressive failures of wisdom and compassion in otherwise intelligent people"

Sam Harris

HoMM3 - Stronghold theme

Honour

"With the primitive barbarian, before the simple content of the notion has been obscured by its own ramifications and by a secondary growth of cognate ideas, "honourable" seems to connote nothing else than assertion of superior force."

Theory of the Leisure Class, by Thorstein Veblen, Kindle Loc. 205

Yes! Another Avatar series!

Can't wait. Looks like the Avatar world set in the Republican Shanghai period. With a bit of steampunk clockwork contraptions thrown in.

A Song of Ice and Fire - book 5

Finished A Dance with Dragons and came away not satisfied with the un-GRRMesque cliffhangers. For example, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Storms all have their plots and resolutions; ACoK with destruction of several of its pretenders and ASoS with the Red Wedding. Feels like ADwD needed maybe another 200 pages?

I do like how the dreams and prophecies are continuing to play out. Coincidentally, a friend tells me the HBO adaptation of the first book doesn't have any of the dream sequences. I guess it's something that doesn't translate well into the other medium; unfortunate, because they are some of the reasons why the writing is great.

The HBO adaptation, however... appears to have upped the sex without conveying the sense of female agency in the novels. I suppose the more narrow purpose of the TV adaptation is to entertain and not to overturn conventions. Regrettably, one can watch the TV series and utterly miss this dimension of the novels.

If I have to pick one favorite part of the book, it would be this chilling passage:

...A shadow fell across them both, blotting out the sun. The queen felt cold steel slide beneath her, a pair of great armored arms lifting her off the ground, lifting her up into the air as easily as she had lifted Joffrey when he was still a babe. A giant, thought Cersei, dizzy, as he carried her with great strides toward the gatehouse. She had heard that giants could still be found in the godless wild beyond the Wall. That is just a tale. Am I dreaming?

...

Cersei never saw where Qyburn came from, but suddenly he was there beside them, scrambling to keep up with her champion's long strides. "Your Grace," he said, "it is so good to have you back. May I have the honor of presenting our newest member of the Kingsguard? This is Ser Robert Strong."

"Ser Robert," Cersei whispered, as they entered the gates.

"If it please Your Grace, Ser Robert has taken a holy vow of silence," Qyburn said. "He has sworn that he will not speak until all of His Grace's enemies are dead and evil has been driven from the realm."

Yes, thought Cersei Lannister. Oh, yes.

Controls

"One day when I was a junior medical student, a very important Boston surgeon visited the school and delivered a great treatise on a large number of patients who had undergone successful operations for vascular reconstruction. At the end of the lecture, a young student at the back of the room timidly asked, “Do you have any controls?” Well, the great surgeon drew himself up to his full height, hit the desk, and said, “Do you mean did I not operate on half the patients?” The hall grew very quiet then. The voice at the back of the room very hesitantly replied, “Yes, that’s what I had in mind.” Then the visitor’s fist really came down as he thundered, “Of course not. That would have doomed half of them to their death.” God, it was quiet then, and one could scarcely hear the small voice ask, “Which half?”

"Half of X is pointless, we just don't know which half"

Prerogative of the harlot

"... power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Clash of the press titans

Collapse & Rescue

Morality, public opinion, and punishment

"道德不能代替法治，舆论不能代替法治，而严厉的刑法更不能代表真正的法治"

仲伟志 - 明史、海瑞、主旋律

"Morality cannot replace the rule of law; public opinion cannot replace the rule of law; severe penal codes cannot represent a true legal system."

Zhong Weizhi - Ming history, Hai Rui, and the main theme

The Last Space Shuttle

What if mankind, realizing he will never reach the stars, builds himself a digital universe to spite God?

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy - opening title, closing credits

Interregnum

Courtesy of Wikipedia,

An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin inter-, "between" + rēgnum, "reign" [from rex, rēgis, "king"]), and the concepts of interregnum and regency therefore overlap.

Everything is forgiven Pearl Buck, everything

Women in China: A Social Revolution

L.A. Noire - 'Main Theme'

Tales from the Annals of French Exceptionalism

Band of Insiders

'Once again, Lévy claims that the rules of law do not apply to those with whom he dines:

"I hold it against the American judge who… pretended to take him for a subject of justice like any other."

Even more incredibly, he writes:

"I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed ‘accusatory’, meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime."

One wonders what system of justice Lévy would propose.'

France attempts to impose e-book prices on Apple, others

"I am happy, as we all must be tonight, that our gathering is prepared to vote definitively on what will be the first such law in the world for digital books—a pioneering text in our ever-changing world," said MP Hervé Gaymard last week as a joint parliamentary commission presented its final version of the bill text.

eG8

"In France, there are still people who maintain their criticism of this [three strikes authority HADOPI], who view it as a repressive body, whereas in actual fact it creates momentum from a pedagogical standpoint." (Minster of Culture)