Children in the hands of an angry God

I know the rest of you are sick to death of the Red Sox, and the hyperbole that attends them, but you cannot imagine what this feels like. You have not been crushed by the annual cycle of predestined failure and pathetic optimism for your whole life. You did not wear your Sox headband to the Symphony, like Isabella Stewart Gardner. The image of the damned souls in Ms. Shea's first period Latin class 18 years ago yesterday is not seared into your brain. You have not borne an ever-longer genealogy of unfulfilled deaths.

Nor should you have. I admit, it's a little much. And now it's over, and you can forget it. So, I suppose, must we. But how? I'm at a loss. Last night, all my dad could say was: "I can't believe it." Neither can I.

the end of the world

I don't know what's up with the weather, but I guess it's appropriate since hell is freezing over... whoops, wrong link. Aside from showing why the Red Sox drafted him in the first place, Suppan's boner* seemed, miraculously, to erase Pesky's (which never happened anyway). History is literally being undone here.

* Supposedly, a friend's dad's patient's father (really) fell out of the Polo Grounds grandstand and died after Merkle's boner. Sorry, I just wanted to say "Merkle's boner." Also: "Enos Slaughter."

Anyway, here's more Salone news from the Times, IHT, Craig Laban's articles for the Inquirer [with bonus article on attempts to revive the American Chestnut], and "Il Principe" Carlo's own take in La Stampa.

The real stunner, today, though, is the LA Times's willingness to acknowledge that California is not a great place to make wine. Scandale!

Craig LaBan, the Philadelphia Inquirer's food critic, blogs the Salone del Gusto [via tfs]. Also see Julia Wiley's report at Sauté Wed.

Also: the Global Crop Diversity Trust is born.

Interesting and very there-will-always-be-an-England-y article on "Globalisation and Gastronomy: News from the Front," by which he means, "the food I ate in France and Spain." [via this via this]

Can anyone tell me why no one laid down a bunt last night? Nor, for that matter, did the Yankees. I mean, that's very nice and respectful and all, but don't you want to win the game? I guess the Sox made so many errors no one had time to square around?

I see that some people's resolve is faltering:

This one had all the makings of a classic Red Sox inning, one of those sequences that would come on ESPN Classic at 2:30 a.m. some night and cause any Boston fan to avert their eyes in horror, then frantically press buttons until the channel changed.... Sitting in Section 9, I remember thinking to myself, "My God, I really think he can get through this."

And it is understandable, now that it seems that it no longer matters that God is against us. But I'm not believing anything until the final out.

how to make a small fortune in the restaurant industry

I hear that a certain celebrity chef's eponymous 22nd st. grease palace was finally put out of its misery to make way for something called Caviar and Banana. Seriously.

No doubt, "crudo" will be served.

just links

Slow Food in the Christian Science Monitor; profile of ISU's organic ag extension specialist; Phillip Jones on plant-made pharmaceuticals in the ISB report; Pew report on gene flow in Mexican maize finally published [meanwhile, Chapela may end up in court]; Schlosser debates* trade journal columnist; Nobrega, et al., "Megabase deletions of gene deserts result in viable mice," Nature 431, 988 - 993* -- i.e. some DNA really is "junk", or at least not used in an obvious way all the time; Somers et al., "A high-density microsatellite consensus map for bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)," TAG Theoretical and Applied Genetics 190, 1105-1114* -- since we're all about the wheat genome here; Cormac Sheridan on molecular flavor startups, including Senomyx (Nature Biotechnology 22, 1203-1205*).

* sub. req.

The Eighteenth Brumaire of Johnny Damon

PSA for those of you fresh to the bandwagon: the Sox will lose the World Series. See, there is nothing particularly "poetic" about being a Sox fan; it is a condition that requires only a pure, unfeigned pessimism, nourished by icy, dark winters, stony soils, atrocious diets, and a century of spectacular failures. [Ed.-- You forgot heavy drinking.] There is nothing cynical about it, because it's true. [The relevant comparisons are to game six -- your pick]. This, of course, should not interfere with your joy at the Yankees' immensely pleasurable collapse. [Photo courtesy of Uncle Martino, and don't miss the pumpkin, via #1hs].

5 sec review

Christ, talk about shitting where you eat. And at $200 a pop, too. And: further Zagat trickle-down; Karp on apples, again [NY]; Parsons on SoCal spinys, and Leslie Brenner beautifully eviscerates blustery Bourdain [LAT]. Of course, the article of the week was Pollan's American paradox. Ok, back to work, and my terrine.

Who's your papi?

I'm still not really here, but thanks to the last-minute ministrations of DirecTV, I am feeling the love for Big P.A.P.I.

Also, the fact that Zagat sucks appears to be trickling down.

And a correspondent sends word of your new favorite restaurant [Independent]:

Sehnsucht ("Longing"), a cosy 50-seater cantina in the German capital's leafy Tiergarten district, is the brainchild of a former anorexic, employs a bulimic waitress and has an anorexic chef presiding over a menu that deliberately distances dishes from the ingredients they contain. Developed with the help of a nutritionist, the menu will list non-food names like Hallo (in reality a lobster bisque), Heisshunger ("Ravenous Hunger", a rack of lamb), and Seele ("Soul", which will appear at your table in the form of a cappuccino crème dessert).

"The concept has been especially created with an anorexic in mind," said Sehnsucht's manager, Katja Eichbaum, 32, a former office clerk who battled with her own disorder for 15 years. "Anorexics have to be taught that eating out can be fun." All portions will be "normal sized" and the restaurant, also attached to a refuge and advice centre, will be open to non-anorexics as well.

Sehnsucht is the latest to feed Berlin's seemingly unending appetite for curiously themed restaurants. The city already has two highly successful "blind" restaurants, where guests eat in pitch darkness, served by blind waiters. There is a café for the deaf and an ultra-trendy establishment, run by a slightly crazy Argentinean, where you eat what you're given, then pay what you think the meal is worth.

beyond good and evil

You emerge from your Wine Country Limo™ (you did spring for the sparkly grape bubblicious-colored stretch Hummer) in front of the the French Laundry to a parade of fanatics brandishing duck fetus pictures. I can't even tell who I hate more, but at least their embrace is amusing. And for what it's worth, the law will at least stimulate research on the subject more substantial than the current "tastes great!" "more filling!" debate.

And speaking of ethical matters, Nature is worried enough about "synthetic biology" to ask "Is it now time for another Asilomar?" By which they mean:

Almost 30 years ago, concerns that recombinant DNA technology could pose risks to human health and the environment prompted leading molecular biologists to call an unprecedented summit. They gathered at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, in February 1975, where they decided to voluntarily forego some kinds of research and to instigate safety measures to prevent abuses of the new techniques.

Is it now time for another Asilomar? Researchers involved in synthetic biology generally agree that more discussion of how to avoid risks is urgently needed, but have yet to take the formal step of calling for a summit. Some concerns were aired at a special session at the First International Meeting on Synthetic Biology, held in June at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, but it did not set out to produce policy recommendations.

Also; the 5-second rule has been proven to be mistaken; Europeans really don't want GM food; two takes [currently the second item; look into permalinks please, Regina] on the "arsenal" we are supposed to unleash on our batterie -- or something... Sorry, got a bit distracted there by my mental Metallica; let's just hope she refrains from walnut-cilantro paste in her Wellington, as Ruth Reichl could not; Josh and Bruce have tasty links, as always. See you in a couple weeks.

hiatus

A few things to read during my absence: you probably saw Stephen Labaton's article on the front page of the 9/26 Times [now archived]:

After a case of mad cow disease surfaced in Washington State late last year, federal regulators vowed to move swiftly to adopt rules to reduce the risks of further problems and restore confidence in the nation's meat industry.

Some rules were adopted this year. But a few weeks ago, the Food and Drug Administration, after heavy lobbying from the beef and feed industries, took steps to delay -- and to the concern of food safety groups, possibly kill -- completion of the most controversial and perhaps most expensive proposal for cattle companies.

That proposal would sharply restrict what could be included in animal feed. Shortly after the administration slowed its consideration of the rule, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association broke its nonpartisan tradition and endorsed President Bush for re-election.

Meanwhile, Schwartzie vetos Jackie Speier's bill that would have forced the California DHS to reveal meat recall information to consumers. The state can't do that, because then the USDA would withhold the information from them; and if they didn't, the meat companies would refuse to tell the USDA. The federal government has essentially no authority over meat packers.

It's even worse in Canada: the CBC discovered that the Canadian mad cow was ground up for animal feed -- and Canada has yet to enact even a rudimentary ruminant feed ban.

Elsewhere, our newly old friend Harry Cline really goes off the deep end on anyone who doesn't believe in biotech; The New Farm reports that the culprit for 9 years of stagnant soybean yields may very well be glyphosate tolerance [plus, bonus article -- actually entertaining! -- on pulque]; the story of PLoS, as BIOS ("open-source biology") launches; the current issue of open-access Electronic Journal of Biotechnology features an interesting review of attempts to engineer Bt toxins for improved insecticidal activity.

That will have to do.