A.C. Flory's Blog, page 62
May 21, 2020
Coffee and pop tarts
For your gastronomic pleasure, I present the Offspring’s home made apple pop tarts!
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And one of my beloved lustreware cup-and-saucer sets:
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Oddly enough, it wasn’t until today that I noticed this set is made in Japan as well:
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I really have had a love affair with Japan for most of my life!
And now for the pop tarts. This is not a hard and fast recipe so you’ll have to adjust the quantities to suit your own tastes.
The pastry is plain old, shop bought, frozen shortcrust. You should be able to use flaky or puff pastry as well. It just so happened that shortcrust was what we had in the freezer.
The Offspring allowed the sheets to thaw and then cut each one into quarters. One quarter for each pop tart.
The filling is where things get truly yummy. The apples are Granny Smiths but any tart, cooking apple will do. Sweet apples just don’t have enough flavour.
After washing the apples, the Offspring simply cut out the core and chopped the apple into bite-sized chunks. No peeling required. The skin actually adds to the flavour.
The apple went into a saucepan with some brown sugar [suit your own tastes], a lot of cinnamon, 1/2 a teaspoon of allspice and…a splash of champagne. The champagne is not mandatory, but like the pastry, it was what we had left over from the Un-Christmas dinner last year.
And before you ask, the Offspring doesn’t drink and I don’t like champagne so cooking is a great way of not wasting a perfectly good bottle of booze. I also use it in my Bolognese because I’ve been out of Shiraz for months. The champagne is ‘dry’ so it works pretty well.
The trick to making the apple is not to overcook it. Any liquid you add, whether it be wine or water, should only be enough to stop the apples from burning before they release their own juices. You really do not want to make apple sauce! As soon as the apples are cooked but still firm, remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool.
Preheat the oven to moderate [about 375F or 180C].
To assemble the pop tarts, place a generous spoonful of the cold apple in the middle of the square of pastry, moisten the edges with a little water [so the pastry will stick to itself], fold over, removing as much air as you can [without going insane about it], and press the edges closed.
Make a few small holes in the top of the pop tarts with the point of a sharp knife. This is to allow the steam to escape. Otherwise you might end up with exploding pop tarts. 
May 18, 2020
Hansel and Pretzel
I was sampling tracks on Soundcloud when I stumbled across a song titled ‘Hansel and Pretzel’. How could I resist, especially when the album was title ‘Headless Body in Topless Bar’??
Colossal Trailer Music
This track is deliciously bizarre and is going straight into the playlist for the Acolyte. Enjoy.
Meeks
[comments are closed]
May 16, 2020
Alternatives to Killing People for the Economy
I barely know how to balance my household budget, let alone fix the economic crises facing the world, but…I do understand the social contract that got us all here in the first place.
That social contract goes all the way back to the earliest days of homo sapiens, and it’s based on co-operation /within/ the group which allowed the group to compete with the ‘outside’. In other words, the group was stronger than each individual and therefore protected the majority of individuals within the group.
Even today, herbivores that can’t fight off predators on their own congregate in large herds. The sheer size of those herds provides a measure of safety to every animal in the herd…except those on the very edge. Yet even they have a better chance with the herd than if they were on their own.
Humans are herd animals whether we want to admit it or not, and all the rules and structures we’ve invented over the millennia evolved to allow ever increasing numbers of humans to live in our herds without turning on each other.
Thus protection from the ‘outside’ always required an element of compromise. For example, to allow the herd to survive, individuals are banned from killing each other. When that rule is broken, punishment follows.
No one wants to be punished, but we accept it because it’s still better than being deprived of all the benefits society [the herd] provides.
This, at its most basic, is the social contract. It’s what we expect of our governments and institutions. It’s the reason we accept rulers, the Law of the Land [herd] and pay taxes.
Unfortunately, being human, we always want more. More goods, more safety, more power, more ego stroking. And that’s okay too, up to a point.
What point? The point at which the desires of individuals start to threaten society as a whole.
I believe we are at one of those points now. The primary role of government, any government, is to protect the lives of its citizens. Instead, our governments are sacrificing lives to protect an imaginary concept called ‘the economy’.
The following article by Cynthia Kaufman explores the idea of the ‘economy’, how it works now, and how it could work in the future. As she says “The economy exists to serve our needs, it isn’t a god which requires sacrificial victims.’
As the U.S. begins to reopen after being shut down to protect us from spreading Covid-19, many people are beginning to talk about a choice between what is good for the economy and what will keep us healthy. Much pain and suffering has come as people have lost their livelihoods and their homes, and so we need to move quickly to put into place the things that will ensure that people have what they need to live. But rather than sacrificing people for the economy, we need to rethink what we mean by “the economy.” No one needs to be killed for us to have a healthy economy.
We live in a world where there is enough of everything we need for us all to live well, and to do so within the ecological limits of the planet. And yet, as the Covid-19 crisis has laid bare, the social systems…
View original post 2,198 more words
May 15, 2020
Paediatric Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children and young adults
Dr John Campbell first alerted us to this new, serious condition in children back in early May, and I mentioned it in this post. The condition was named ‘Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome’ and parents were reassured that it was very ‘rare’. You can find Dr John’s latest video on the syndrome here.
It terms of total numbers, Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome is still rare, but the numbers are growing, and we still don’t know much about it. What we do know, however, is rather scary because it upends the initial advice that children are miraculously ‘safe’ from Covid-19.
The following video explains these concerns very well:
I’ve cherry picked some important bits from the video:
0:40 ‘This virus has deceived us every step of the way. We have been behind this virus from the very beginning. And it still surprises us.’ [Andrew Cuomo, Mayor of New York].
1:10 [Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome] ‘… shares symptoms with the rare, potentially life-threatening blood condition, Kawasaki disease which can cause toxic shock.’
1:42 ‘There are now more than 130 cases recorded in the US. Three children have died.’
2:19 Image of the rash and swollen extremities of a child with Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome:
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2:34 Graphic showing the most common symptoms to look out for in your child:
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4:00 ‘We now know both that they [children] can get the disease [Covid-19] without symptoms, and they can become seriously ill from the disease.’ [Dr Lawrence Kleinman, Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA]
5:28 [These children have] ‘…no pre-existing conditions’.
When asked whether parents should be worried, Dr Kleinman was diplomatic, but suggested that parents should be ‘aware’ and ‘concerned’:
5:50 [Parents] ‘…and focus on the things they are able to do to protect their children.’
These things include [5:54]:
‘…keeping them [children] away from close contact with others with whom they’re not living, …wearing masks, and when out being around people who are wearing masks, …washing hands, and keeping surfaces clean, so-called ‘high contact surfaces’ like door knobs, counters, things like that where people touch a lot.’
As far as I can see, none of those suggestions is compatible with sending kids back to school.
When class sizes can be up to 30 children, social distancing is next to impossible.When kids play, they come into close contact with each other. That’s why head lice can spread so rapidly through the population of a school.Here in Australia, next to no one wears a mask, least of all our children. In poorer schools, there may be taps for washing hands, but there is often no soap. Or the soap runs out in the morning and isn’t replaced until the cleaners come in after school. And that’s a best case scenario.As for keeping close contact surfaces clean…kids touch everything, multiple times a day. Every time they go from one class to the next, in the toilet blocks, in the canteen… Keeping surfaces virus free is a nice concept, but that’s all it is. In practical terms, it cannot be done.
Taking the realities into consideration, Dr Kleinman is actually saying – do NOT send your children back to school. At least until we know more.
6:34 ‘…but we don’t know what the future holds. Every day we learn what we didn’t know the day before.’
And that seems to be the elephant in the Covid-19 room. This virus is so new, we don’t even know what it is that we don’t know. That’s why even the best advice can be outdated mere days after it’s been given.
In the beginning, we were told that children either didn’t get Covid-19 or only contracted a very mild disease. We were also told that ‘there was no evidence’ that children spread the virus [hence schools were ‘safe’].
We now know that children can get Covid-19, and they can get it without symptoms. That means they can spread it to other children and other members of their families. We are also learning that Covid-19 may trigger a delayed reaction in [some] children whereby their immune systems go haywire.
What we don’t know is why these children have this delayed reaction.
Is the connection to Covid-19 simply a coincidence?
Or are these children at special risk somehow?
And if they are, what is that special risk?
Will it strike more children as the pandemic continues?
To me, all these unknowns lead to just one question: is this a risk we really want to take with our children?
And this brings me to a special plea to the Premier of my state, Daniel Andrews:
Please, change your mind and keep schools closed until the start of Term 3.
It’s not that far off, but the delay could end up saving the lives of our children. Please don’t let the political animals in Canberra railroad you into going against your gut instincts. You have been right all along.
Sending kids back to school before we know how serious this Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome is, and how it links to Covid-19 is a massive risk. What are the benefits other than freeing parents up to work ‘for the economy’?
Most rational people in Victoria agree with your cautious approach. Don’t stop now. Please.
Meeks
Warrandyte, VIC
May 14, 2020
Hello and goodnight!
I was just about to toddle off to bed when I received an email from Sally Cronin of Smorgasbord Cafe and Bookstore, saying she’d posted an excerpt from The Godsend on her blog. -dance- And, she’s included Diana Peach’s fabulous review as well. As you can imagine, I’m thrilled.
The excerpt is a short bit about Kenneth, my broken hero. Hope you like it.
And now I really must go to bed. Sleep tight if you’re in my timezone. If not, have a happy day, and stay well.
cheers
Meeks
May 11, 2020
When the computer won’t start…
Don’t panic!
That’s what I said to myself at 8am this morning when I turned my desktop computer on, and it promptly turned itself off again.
Actually, if I’m to be completely honest, I said quite a few things, most of which only had four letters, but let’s not get too precious about it. I was panicked, and my second thought was…how on earth would I live without the internet? And my writing? And my music? Oh god…and no ESO?
Then I thought to touch the top of the computer, near where the CPU is located. It was warm. It should not have been warm, not after less than a minute of being switched on.
And this is when the baby geek in me stepped up and said, “Dust.”
Baby Geek was right. There was dust all over the top of the computer. Not surprising really, considering that it sits on the floor, surrounded by small, hairy beasts:
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Those two small beasts, plus Harry, another small feline beast, share the office with me, and they all shed. And if that wasn’t enough, my window faces north. When it was open over the summer, it let in a lot of smoke and dust, all of which would have been sucked into the desktop via the fans [internal] designed to keep it cool.
For those who don’t know, the average desktop computer is air cooled. Mine has two large fans located under those grills, which circulate air inside the box. I also have a small fan that sits on top of the CPU [the brain of the computer] and two more that sit on top of the GPU [graphics processing unit or video card]. Those two units are the most critical components of a pc, and if they overheat, the computer will automatically shut down.
I knew all this, but I still wondered, would this be the time when it wasn’t the pc overheating? If it was something more serious, how would I get it fixed?
After fortifying myself with a second cup of coffee, I set up the vacuum cleaner and my paint brushes and got to work. For those who are interested, this is a post I wrote some time ago about how to safely clean the inside of a desktop computer. If any of you are in the same predicament, please read the post carefully. You do NOT want to just stick the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner inside the guts of a pc. That would be a very, very bad idea!
To cut a long story short, I cleaned the computer, and it started up like a dream. Now, it’s purring away as if it had never tried to give me heart failure. Beast…
I hope your start to the day was better than mine. Have fun and stay well.
May 9, 2020
Corporations and Social Responsibility
My thanks to Scottie for introducing me to Robert Reich via this video:
My disillusionment with corporations began back in the early 80’s when I learned how Microsoft became ‘great’. Then, in the early 2000’s I began researching genetic engineering and discovered what another big ‘M’ had done to maximize its profits.
More recently, it’s been Facebook and Google et al. I still have a lingering fondness for Amazon, but that’s only because I’m a reader and a writer. And of course, let’s not forget the big financial institutions right here in Australia.
To say that I’m disillusioned with corporations is an understatement, and yet, I was still surprised by the Reich video. Something about the sheer size of these behemoths amplifies everything that’s cruel, callous and vicious in the human psyche.
Stopping corporations from becoming so big and powerful won’t make them paragons of virtue, but it will stop the effects of their bad behaviour from poisoning society. And maybe, just maybe, it’ll allow the law to deal with criminal elements more effectively.
At the moment, these corporations are not only ‘too big to fail’, they’re also too big to prosecute. Something really does have to give.
Meeks
May 7, 2020
Covid-19, worrying developments
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably reached a point where you’d like to forget about Covid-19 altogether, so sorry, but these developments could be important.
As always, my source is Dr John Campbell. You can find his latest Youtube video here. The three things that worry me from this video concern:
the implications of skin colourthe new inflammatory syndrome in childrenthe results of Germany’s cautious re-opening
Skin Colour
If you’ve watched Dr John’s videos before there’s a good chance that you’ve already heard his views on the role of vitamin D in possibly easing the severity of Covid-19. As people with darker skin produce vitamin D more slowly, he has been advocating that they be tested for vitamin D deficiency and prescribed supplements if necessary.
As someone with olive skin who was tested for vitamin D some years ago – and found to be deficient – I’ve made it a point to get out into the sunshine more. The connection to race though, that has made me feel a little uncomfortable. I hate racism in all its forms because I had a tiny taste of it as a kid in ‘White Australia’.
But…this statistical data from the UK is too stark to ignore:
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The graph shows data that has been adjusted for socio economic factors and other risk factors that could skew the results. Despite this, the stats show that there is a continuum of increased risk based on skin colour. Basically, people of mixed race are just as likely to die of Covid-19 as the control group, which is white people.
From there, however, the likelihood of dying increases as skin colour darkens. People with black skin colour are shown to be twice as likely to die of Covid-19 as white people. And this is the graph that has been adjusted for other, known risk factors.
There may be some other, unknown risk factor at work, but if there is the slightest chance that skin colour, and hence vitamin D production is involved, then taking vitamin D could save lives.
There has been well documented research done on vitamin D and the effect it may have on protecting cells from viruses:
‘Vitamin D has long been recognized as essential to the skeletal system. Newer evidence suggests that it also plays a major role regulating the immune system, perhaps including immune responses to viral infection. Interventional and observational epidemiological studies provide evidence that vitamin D deficiency may confer increased risk of influenza and respiratory tract infection.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3308600/
There is also a lot of research that shows the health impacts that result from a lack of various other vitamins. The following are just a few of the best known ones:
Vitamin K
‘Vitamin K deficiency in adults is rare but does occur in infants. The main symptom of a vitamin K deficiency is excessive bleeding caused by an inability to form blood clots.’
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/320394
Vitamin C
‘Scurvy is a disease resulting from a lack of vitamin C (ascorbic acid).’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy
Vitamin A
‘The major cause of blindness in children worldwide is xerophthalmia caused by vitamin A deficiency.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10643184/
I’m no expert on nutrition and vitamins, but it seems clear to me that vitamin D may save the lives of those most at risk. If that’s true, it must be acknowledged and used.
Inflammatory syndrome in children
So far, this new syndrome is quite rare – about 20 cases in the UK and 64 in the US – but it has been associated with Covid-19 so parents should be aware of it. The screenshot below was taken from Dr John’s video:
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No one knows exactly what connection this new syndrome has to Covid-19, but any connection is worrying.
The syndrome has been named: Paediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome.
Re-opening in Germany
As Australia is also looking to cautiously ease the lockdown that’s protected us so well, I found the results from Germany less heartening than Dr John. The statistics shown are for only the first ten days since the lockdown in Germany was officially eased:
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Even if every German citizen immediately raced out and kissed everyone they met, the incubation period for Covid-19 is between 2 and 9 days, give or take. As such, the numbers of new cases are not likely to rise exponentially for a week or two yet. In other words, I don’t think we’ve seen the true effect of the easing in Germany. Not yet.
I may be overly pessimistic, but I’m seriously scared that money, and human impatience, will give rise to a second wave of the virus, a second wave that will be significantly worse than the first.
During the Spanish Flu pandemic, the second wave was caused by a mutation in the original virus that made it much more virulent:
‘Reported cases of Spanish flu dropped off over the summer of 1918, and there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the power to kill a perfectly healthy young man or woman within 24 hours of showing the first signs of infection.’
https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
The Covid-19 virus does not appear to be mutating yet, but the more people that are infected, the greater the likelihood that one of them will host a mutated version of the virus.
Scientists all over the world are trying to develop a vaccine that will stop the spread of Covid-19, but they’re not there yet. They need more time.
I believe it’s up to us, and our governments, to do everything in our power to slow the spread of this virus. Not just to reduce the number of people dying from it, but also to reduce the chance that it will mutate. If the Spanish Flu is anything to go by, that mutation will not be benign.
I truly hate to be a Cassandra, but I’m really scared that we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Stay well,
Meeks
May 6, 2020
Cookies and Milk
The title of this post should have been ‘Coffee and Cake’, but we made the Triple Choc Chocolate biscuits last night, and it was too late for coffee, so…
Ahem. The Offspring and I adore these biscuits because they really are made with three lots of chocolate. There’s cocoa and melted chocolate in the biscuit dough, and then there are lumps of chocolate in each biscuit as well [the recipe is at the end of this post].
You can see how gooey and melted and divine those lumps of chocolate are here:
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and here:
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and here:
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That’s why these biscuits are at their most divine straight from the oven. They are delicious cold as well, but not quite as delicious.
May 1, 2020
Smorgasbord Cafe and Bookstore – New Book on the Shelves – #SciFi Innerscape Omnibus: Books 1 to 3 of the Innerscape trilogy by A.C. Flory
Just checked my email and discovered that Sally has the Innerscape books in the Cafe. -dance- Please pop in and say hello. There are a lot of very talented writers there so I’m thrilled to be included.
