« January 2007 | Main | March 2007 »
February 04, 2007
Drinker's Choice!
In Austin, there's this fantastic Turkish restaurant, Ararat - one of Austin's best kept restaurant secrets (that everyone knows). They have bellydancing all weekend and live bands during the week, and some of the best middle eastern food you'll find. Make reservations, as it's a small place that's always jam-packed.
Anyhow, Ararat has an appetizer, called "Drinker's Choice;" described as " Sesame blended with lemon and pomegranate creates a distinctive sweet and sour taste, complimenting almost any drink. " It's mindblowingly good. My problem is that I don't live in Austin anymore.
I undertook re-creating it, and have come close enough.
Mix equal 2 parts tahini and 2 parts plain yogurt with 1 part fresh lemon juice (bottled tastes funny), and 1 party honey. Add 1/4 -1/2 part salt (to taste, to enhance the flavor), and 1/2 part olive oil (for smoother texture). Put on top dried cranberries, chopped dried apricots and figs, and chopped nuts (almonds, cashews, and/or walnuts). Drizzle generous amounts of pomegranate syrup (available at Trader Joe's), eat with warm pita.
Posted by griffjon at 02:20 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 02, 2007
Bribing is not good science
The Guardian reports:
"Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments [up to $10000 plus travel and "additional payments"] for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report."Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."
But, bribing, on the other hand, is a time-honored tradition in policy making.
The AEI, for what it's worth, is clearly a non-partisan group (up there with Diebold!):
The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.
Posted by griffjon at 12:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack