蔡瀾知己會

Just read in a magazine about this 蔡瀾知己會 (www.bobofanclub.com). It is all about 蔡瀾 and his recommended restaurants in Hong Kong. It also has some of his articles.

The Tourism Association of Hong Kong had put up a star rating system for restaurants a few years back, but it never takes off. No one knows the criteria of the rating, and I don't even know whether it is a 3-star or 5-star system. With the long track record of food commentator, everyone know 蔡瀾's criteria of recommendation: authentic and made with heart. No much, no less. And those are the only ingredients of making a good food. Most of the recommended restaurants are just small family businesses: husband and wife, brothers and sisters operating small noodle shops.

Most importantly, everyone can access the list online. It is going to be a new benchmark for quality restaurants in Hong Kong.

It can't be more interesting

Fourteen hours after Obama delivered his acceptance speech in front of 84,000 supporters and 38 millions people on TV as the first black candidate for the president of the United States, the 72-years-old John McCain announced his VP pick that surprises every single American: a 44-year old Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska. Before taking office as governor in 2006, Palin was mayor of a small Alaska town of only 65oo people. She is even 3 years younger than Obama.

It seems the McCain camp has changed his election strategy. Instead of showing how different he is from Obama, he is now trying to match up with him in every aspect. His pick of a young woman as VP candidate can also get Hillary supporters' votes. It will also throw Joe Biden a big challenge in his VP candidate debate. What a great strategy.

It is going to be the most interesting election ever in history.

More tomatoes

Cherry tomatoes

We've got a pitch of land at work set aside for people to grow veggies. These days we see a lot of cherry tomatoes ripening. A couple of the owners are away and let us pick their tomatoes. They are delicious.

My Desktop

Claude Monet. Gare Saint Lazare, Paris. 1877. Oil on canvas.

Priest to hold nun beauty pageant

An Italian priest says he is organising the world's first beauty pageant for nuns to erase a stereotype of them as being old and dour.

Antonio Rungi says The Miss Sister Italy online contest will start on his blog in September.

More from BBC news.

___________________

An update: the plan has been crushed by Father Rungi's superior prists.

Clouds

These days I fall in love with taking pictures with clouds.

Aug 24, 2008

Aug 10, 2008

Aug 10, 2008

Tranquilness

BW experiment 01

Focus B&W (Picasa) -> reduced light + increased contrast (GIMP2.4) -> Threshold adjustment (GIMP2.4)

Aug 17, Sunny

Another Aug that breaks heart. This is how it looks like outside the window.

Wild Mushrooms

I strolled around outside our work place this morning while my experiment was running. I saw a guy picking wild mushrooms on the pitch outside the greenhouse. It was only a small pitch with 5 big tall trees. He told me that there were plenty of edible mushrooms, along with a few poisonous. He showed me around and told me which were which. I had a bite of his picks, and then he picked a few more for me. I asked him how to cook them, and he said just sliced them and cooked them with butter and garlic. So tonight I bought some steaks and had wild mushrooms as sides. Sophie was not so confident with the mushrooms, but she ate as much as I did.
This is where we picked mushrooms. The thing in the middle of the pitch is a big steel bird, one of the newest addition to our collection of artworks. The car next to the pitch is my GTI.

Memes

from July/Aug 2008 issue of Skeptical Inquirer

... Although Kim, Ji, and Hwang were Korean educated, because they earned their PhDs at prestigious universities in the United States, their scientific indiscretions cannot be attributed to academic inbreeding. What, therefore, can be the cause of this spate of unethical scientific behavior?

Richard Dawkins, in his article "Viruses of the Mind" (Free Inquiry, Summer 1993), explains the incredible vulnerability of young minds to "infection" by cultural information packets, termed "memes." Bu definition, memes are paradigms uncritically accepted as "truth," which are then amalgamated into a person's developing personality. Once installed, they act like a computer virus, contaminating the "infected" individual's clarity of reason throughout adulthood. If the meme concept is accepted, it may partly explain why some highly educated scientists' faith in their own hypotheses could be so unshakable that they would guiltlessly cook the data to make it match their conclusions. Korea's Ministry of Science might better meet its goal of elevating research ethics by investigating Korea's early childhood education than by disturbing booklets to lab directors.

Frank Reiser
Department of Biology at Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York

Although his claim of having cloned human stem cells using nuclei from epithelial cells is fabricated, Hwang's dog Snuppy is a real clone. Picture taken by amos_w.

Eat kangaroo to save the planet

From BBC news

Switching from beef to kangaroo burgers could significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, says an Australian scientist.

The methane gas produced by sheep and cows through belching and flatulence is more potent than carbon dioxide in the damage it can cause to the environment.

But kangaroos produce virtually no methane because their digestive systems are different.

Dr George Wilson, of the Australian Wildlife Services, urges farming them.

He says they have a different set of micro-organisms in their guts to cows and sheep.

Sheep and cattle account for 11% of Australia's carbon footprint and over the years, there have been various proposals to deal with the problem.

Now Dr Wilson believes kangaroos might hold the answer.

He said: "It tastes excellent, not unlike venison - only a different flavour."

The country already produces 30 million kangaroos farmed by landholders in the outback.

But Dr Wilson is keen to see that population dramatically increased to produce the same amount of kangaroo meat as that currently produced by conventional livestock.

A Sunny Sunday Morning

Today is the first sunny day of the whole week. I went back to work and rode my bike around a bit in the morning. The sky and the clouds made a very nice backdrop for pictures. I didn't have my G9 with me, so I could only take pictures with my cellphone.


After a few hours' sunshine, it started to rain at 4 pm.. It rains half of the time this year. My lawn had never been dry enough to lay on.

Glacial Point, Yosemite

Glacial Point is a famous spot to appreciate Yosemite Valley, in particular the Half Dome. We arrived there for sunset. To be honest, the sunset there is not any spectacular. I have got some interesting photos out there though, and they are not about the Valley below.

Bushism

"Wait a minute. What did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gas? That's interesting. I hadn't heard that." -- George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Feb. 28, 2008

"My job is a decision-making job, and as a result, I make a lot of decisions." -- George W. Bush, Lancaster, Pa., Oct. 3, 2007

"What was the question? I’m 62, I’m having trouble remembering a lot of things." -- George W. Bush to a journalist at a press conference in Washington, D.C., July 15, 2008

My new GTI

I got it Thursday but only managed to drive it briefly on a highway. I am still adjusting to the throttle and slightly different timing to make turns.